The korean and vietnam wars and argues that covert participation helps to keep wars contained. The Woodrow WilsonCenter Hosted this onehour event. Its a great pleasure today to welcome back austin carson. He also has the distinction of being a title a stetitle a scholar. He is just written a new book, secret wars covert conflict in international politics. It will be available for purchase after todays talk. Dr. Carson is an assistant professor in the department of Political Science at the university of chicago. He has published widely already. He is published in the journal of politics and security studies. He has launched on his second book project already. It analyzes the role of Sensitive Information and secrecy and international organizations. He received his phd from ohio state in 2013. As i previously mentioned, he was a Summer Research scholar under the title a program here at the institute in 22 2013. With that, i will turn the floor over to austin. Thank you. Thanks also to all of you for coming. Its great to be back here at the Wilson Center. I really appreciate the institute to support the Cold War International history project. And a shout out to victoria and sydney for all your done to make it possible. I want to start my talk about this book with a simple but profound question. How have we, as an International Community avoided world war iii after suffering two catastrophic global conflicts in the first half of the 20th century . We have so far managed to avoid it. The most common answer that scholars have given is it has something to do with the spread of democracy, with the emergence of international law, the development of Nuclear Weapons and usually assured destruction, or the structure of International Systems for much of that postwar period. One of the arguments my book advances is a sort of provocative but interesting claim, that a nonobvious reason for why weve avoided world war iii is secrecy. Ive argued that factors like the spread of democracy or Nuclear Weapons are insufficient to prevent ideological and geopolitical disagreements from emerging. Civil wars happened, smaller wars happen, and interests, opportunistic or defensive remain. This clashes of interest invite militarized disputes and invite situations that could escalate to larger scale conflicts. Limited war, as an exercise is very difficult. Its hard to restrain oneself when one adversary might not respect the same form of restraint. Limited wars often times are messy. In this book, i argue that leaders believed that secrecy about external no attorney interventions specifically, could help keep those inevitable clashes of political interest that can emerge and take manifestation on the battlefield, temp those classes clashes from becoming larger wars. Its specific use. Hiding external military intervention. Its on covert forms of military intervention. And the secrecy dynamics that surround it. Using secrecy allows governments, major powers, to conceal aspects of conflict which would otherwise invite the domestic political reactions or reputational reactions or miss communicate among mis communicate among adversaries that would make limited war difficult to maintain. One of the things that developed in that book is the process is supported by a surprising and interesting form of collusion. What youll see later on is a presentation of some of the raw materials, which show the degree to which the u. S. Was aware of covert soviet or Chinese Military involvement in some of the most important wars of the 20th century. Despite knowing that, they chose not to use that information as a political weapon and to stay quiet themselves about that. One thing that this needs is part of how weird avoided world war iii has come at a steep price. It begins a conversation about the requirement of outright deception, misleading, deceiving the american and other publicly publics. Not just trivial matters, but who was killing whom. We might go now, and i might be able to show you evidence of the truth of the covert side of the korean or vietnam war. It means the stories we tell about those wars in the conventional sense is often not accurate. Its a bit to be wrestled with. While the book is historical, it raises some questions that are of clear relevance for today in a world of cyber conflict, for example, where the attribution or deniability of acts of aggression or portion is at the center of debate about what to do with that form of conflict and escalation dynamics remain a challenge for actors that are working in that space. What i want to cover today is review some of the main ideas of the book, which have two components, conceptual or theoretical argument and historical findings and narrative that i draw out in the book of the book. Then im going to walk you through some of the archival evidence. It showcases some of what the Wilson Center did for the project. That was provide some of the raw material for the claims i make in the book. And also because its fun to look at things that used to be secret. I want to lay out the basic argument. I developed a limited war theory of secrecy. I want to start by stepping back and laying out some of the basics and defined what the book is doing. I asked two questions specifically in the book. First, why do governments, major powers intervene in an ongoing conflict . The second question, why in instances of covert intervention, might an adversary collude in keeping that intervention secret . Its important to clarify that when i talk about Covert Military interventions, and i think this is an important point for today, covertness is the intention to covertness is the intention to conceal a specific sponsor of an action. The intention is to keep it secret and not officially technology. It doesnt mean that secrecy is always 100 effective. Just to take an example for the book, the u. S. Intervention in laos during the vietnam war was regularly reported in american newspapers and yet, when you read the declassified material from the leaders managing a program, they were bending over backwards and engaging in incredible linguistics with the american role in laos. The doesnt mean their role was over my definitional use of the term. It means it was more of an open secret in a cap wellkept secret. The book is framed by two conventional intuitions or scholarly explanations for what governments will be doing with secrecy. One is the traditional Operational Security logic. Loose lips sink ships. Wartime secrecy is a resource that, once its used at the expense of the other side but it to protect once forces in the field or engage in surprise military maneuvers. The other is, especially in american context, is to handle antiwar or reluctance to go to the war. If a leader thinks they require intervention, but you have domestic public that is asleep at the wheel or is opposed to the intervention, secrecy may be a way to get around that. There is a lot of truth to both of these. These logics, especially the Operational Security one, is consistent with and accompany the logic i will layout. They are too simplistic in doing secrecy number one as it being at expense of an adversary. I tell a collusive story in this book that is interesting. It suggests there is something more complicated going on. Theres also something more complicated going on at the domestic level. Domestic populations and reactions are not always a force for restraint. They can be something that makes it difficult and costly for leaders to act with restraint. I developed a distinct logic for secrecy that is anchored in the process of fighting limited war. Especially in the modern era. I use that answer of what the secrecy due in war do in war to answer both of my questions. Its a reason to engage in the first place and it is a reason why, if youre an adversary and you witness your arrival using a comfort intervention covrival using a covert intervention its in your best interest to keep quiet. I boiled down into four points. The first one is escalation of military complex, a Regional Convention conflict or above, and the Current International system, is wrote his latest target. All states ruinously destructive. All states try to avoid conflicts reaching that level. Thats the starting point of the argument. I date that particular reality, or the perception and appreciation of it to world war i, Chapter Three of the book, that kicks off this story i tell. Secondly, i argue that control and not just the costliness, in the modern era, is incredibly difficult. Controlling a war and scope and scale of it is very difficult in the modern era. Two reasons. One is domestic politics and the problem of hawks versus doves. If you are following the news out of india and pakistan, some were saying that the force that pushes the hand in pakistan or india and forth over kashmir was the fear of looking weak. In a democracy, that can be a significant problem. If the military in pakistan views a leaders decision as to week in the face of a rival, that could be the end of the government. That can make control of the escalation and people start after people start dying, out of control. The other is the mystification problem. Its difficult to know mystification problem. Its difficult to know if you are ready to engage in limited war, if the other side is going to as well. It takes two to tango. The book gets into something that hasnt been analyzed in the field of International Relations with as much care as it should be. Which is, how do governments, through their behavior or words, but mostly behavior, to indicate their interests in keeping conflict limited. They are going to get involved with an intervention but they want to keep controlled and geographically limited. How do you communicate that to an adversary . The third point in the theoretical argument is that covert methods of intervention address those two escalation control problems. The problems of domestic policy and miscommunication. It allows you to provide arms or military personnel to one of the sides of the conflict he support without humiliating and major power that might come in on the other side. That is, you dont do your intervention in a way that creates domestic constraints for those reacting to your intervention. That helps retain escalation control even as you enter and put your thumb on the scales of the conflict. The second mechanism that i develop is a little more subtle. Thats that adversaries appreciate that their counterpart has three options in the modern system. They have dont intervene, overtly intervene, and covertly intervene. When you witness the other side engaging in covert intervention, that can indicate something. That tells you there dont willing to do more than nothing. Theyre also more restrained and doing the maximum. That can indicates a mix of resolve, because its nor the nothing, and restraint, because its something less provocative than the most extreme alternative. I will show you some evidence of a second about how that interpretation helps support and reinforce and provide a useful signal that one is interested in controlling the scale and scope of war even as one intervenes. In the theory chapter, if you do pick up a copy, you will see i draw parallels to early death everyday life. I draw on sociology, my intuition from this was from the fluidity and the viscosity of social life is not pointing out flaws that other people have, its looking the other way, is the art of saving face. A lot of what my story about covert dissent secrecy is about, is in appreciation of the way that getting both sides of the opportunity to save face is an way to avoid afortat cycle of escalation. The fourth and last point and then i will move on, is one of the byproducts of this secrecy limited war process im developing in the book is the unexcited uses of secrecy. Number one is the collusion stuff. If secrecy is serving the focus of Operational Security or protecting your own leader from a dovish domestic reaction, there is not a lot of reason why the other counterpart, the adversary, should keep secret about that intervention if they detect it. A limited war logic does. If they also share an interest in supporting their interests, but not having conflict get out of control, theres a reason to collude in keeping secret or on the backstage and aspect of where which my drive escalation. The other byproduct of this is the open secrecy situation. I mentioned earlier, what i argue in the book is that seeing your adversary even after their covert intervention has been exposed to a certain extent, maintain that fiction that they are not involved, can become a sort of grammar or communicative mechanism to say, they still want to keep this under control. That provides a logic for why open secrets can be useful. In the book, i develop this argument and make a historical a broad historical claim and a series of chapters devoted to individual conflicts. The Overall Historical coverage of the book starts with world war i. The end book is the u. S. Occupation of iraq, 10 years ago. World war i, i make an argument about how the nature of escalation, or the appreciation of how a situation works changed after world war i. This medication became much more salient. The destructiveness of a conventional nonnuclear, but conventional, global scale conflict was graphically and tragically displayed in that conflict. That sets the wheels in motion. That sets the wheels in motion for the development of new ways of intervening in the war which i talk about in of experimentatian. Intervar period as a period of experimentation. It showcases the first case study that i look at, which is the spanish civil war. A series of external interventions by italy, the soviet union and germany, which were members of the nonintervention committee, but were actively participating in the war. They never owned their participation. They call them volunteers as a way to shield them. I then pick up the pieces after world war ii and look at the korean war, looking at the external interventions and the secrecy dynamics in that conflict. I have a chapter on the vietnam war. At the end of the cold war, in soviet occupied afghanistan, looking not only at the u. S. Assistance to afghan rebels, but also covert soviet crossborder operations into pakistan, for example. Also a short section on the u. S. Occupied iraq. There also two key themes about the historical arc. Escalation control problems are recurrent issues. And that most of these most important conflicts of the century have a covert aspect to it which is important to understand. Now i want to review some highlights from two of the chapters to show you some of the raw material that i worked into the narratives in those case studies. Im happy to talk about some of the other conflicts i just asked but i will talk about the discussed, but i was not what the korean and vietnam war. First, the korean war. External interventions that i analyze in that are the u. S. , which intervened on south korea. China, it is hard to describe their intervention. There were clearly visible Chinese Ground troops that entered in 1950. And the soviet union, which very effectively kept its role secret. They sent pilots that engaged with the u. S. My focus today is on the soviet role in the air war. That was the origins of the book any dissertation it is based on and one of the most interesting aspects of it. I talk about some soviet documents first. They came from the Wilson Center. One of the soviet documents that we now have access to was translated a transited and a four report by the commander of the soviet air division that was sent to engage during the korean war. That included figures, and internal report, for accounting purposes in the soviet military bureaucracy. The reported soviet aircrews, which entered in november 1950 and state active through the end of the war, shut down 1097 enemy aircraft during the war. Enemy being american aircraft. They suffer 319 soviet aircraft and 110 pilots that were killed. The missions they were flying to burn were to protect bridges that spanned the river that divides china from north korea. The airfields in that area and hydroelectric stations as well. This was not just for a couple of weeks. This was a sustained operation for a few years. This included specific messages about the logistics of doing a Covert Military intervention. One of the documents that came from the Wilson Center collection was a cable that was sent from stalin to a military official in november of 1950. It was authorizingits in russian, i had to have it translated. It indicates and gives instructions to provide and send troops with secret training manuals which had been approved in 1950 earlier, and to allow the were minister of the soviet union to allow to send men into russia korea, wearing soviet uniforms, but changing into chinese uniforms when they get to china. They pretended like they were the chinese. This was picked up on and noticed by american pilots. They noticed a plane flying effectively, using world war ii era tactics, which we knew the chinese didnt have, but the markings on the plane were north korean or chinese. The other was one of the other political things that came up, another one a company Wilson Center, is from the notary commander in charge in both korea, veselnitskay. He tell stalin, and im glad this it wasnt me having to do this, at the same time, we consider it necessary to report that our pilotswork will be discovered by u. S. Troops right after the first air combat, because all the control and command over the combat of the air will be conducted by our pilots in the russian language. Here, they realized the tell. The town would be their communication in russian language and it would be detected by the u. S. September of 1950, before the soviets and stalin and the decision to send pilots. Something they did in november. This language issue is one of the funnier anecdotes that came out of this research. At the end of the cold war, americans were trying to find veterans of the korean war and interview them. When they interviewed, was that the instructions they received to speak in chinese were dangerously unrealistic. It worked until the first real fight in the air, bu