A useful tool for breaking down complex problems into digestible chunks is the "WHAT - WHO - WHEN - WHERE - HOW" paradigm.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series addressed WHAT and WHEN, describing some of the constraints on planning and preparing in "normal" times to protect your community against emerging threats; and presenting examples of historical and hypothetical events, natural as well as man-caused, that could result in a serious short-term or long-term breakdown of the societal and governmental structures upon which we normally depend. More resolution on these topics has to come from your own Security Analysis, in particular your Threat Assessment and Vulnerability Assessment, so that (for instance) you're not wasting time theorizing about the aftermath of a tsunami when you live 5,000' plus above sea level.

To reiterate those points:

WHAT?

The goal of community defense is to protect life, health, and property within the boundaries of your community, against a spectrum of violent threats relevant to your particular situation. We are not addressing "security" in the context of locks, alarms, Neighborhood Watch, and police response. Nor are we primarily concerned with safety and welfare issues like utility outages, availability of medical care or other essential goods and services; as serious as those can become, over time, they are "tame" problems; defense against violent threats is a "wicked problem". We will discuss the distinction between these two types of problems in Part 4, in the context of leadership and decision-making.

Wicked problems will probably be the norm, as we attempt to create and manage a collective security approach to the decayed state of public order in our neighborhoods and communities. You must operate within the law, even when the law hinders or restrains your right of self-defense. The threats you face are imminent and potential threats, moving freely and under protection of the law, within the sanctuary of normalcy, until the moment they impinge upon your rights – or violate the law, which you are not empowered to enforce. You seek to preserve your safety and protect your rights, but a misstep will put you on the wrong side of the law. Wicked enough yet?

Your problems here involve imminent or actual violence targeting your community, and the actions you can take to deter, disrupt, or detect and defeat that wicked sort of threat -- with due consideration to legal, political and social constraints upon those actions.

WHEN?

The need for community defense will arise in both short-term contingencies and protracted crises, across a broad range of scenarios (like natural disasters or civil unrest) that can precipitate trouble or compound its difficulty; when public resources you have relied upon, e.g., law enforcement, emergency medical services, and fire protection -- are unavailable, unresponsive, or critically delayed. Part 2 of this series profiled several historical and hypothetical scenarios, and suggested a host of others, that could place you in that position.

WHO?

Now we'll move on to consider who is responsible for community defense under these circumstances, and how you need to approach the vital questions of recruitment and leadership.

You and your neighbors will be responsible for your own protection, at least until properly constituted authority shows up (if they do). If you face violent threats of any scope and intensity beyond mundane robbery, mugging, and home invasion, your chances of survival and success are far greater as a community than as individuals or family units alone. A stark example of this logic is found in the history of the civil disorder following national default and economic collapse in Argentina in 2001. Some individuals and families who anticipated these troubles had established "retreats" in secluded rural settings and in some cases were successful in reading the tea leaves, and got out of their urban and suburban environments ahead of the madding crowd. Their fate, however, was often grim. Gangs from the cities or from dystopian fiction roamed the countryside and assaulted these retreats, many of whose occupants died, badly, far from any source of assistance. How could a family unit maintain watch 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year-round? How many family members were proficient in the use of firearms, and in defense of a stronghold against superior numbers? Apparently, too few. Neighborhoods and communities that pulled together weathered the crisis more successfully.

The first challenge is recruitment, a process of (to steal a phrase) "community organizing", or simply put, opening these discussions well in advance of a crisis. Don't expect that you can play this as a pick-up game, choosing your team ten minutes before the need arises.

We addressed this process in Part 1, noting that in most cases your neighbors were not recruited, or did not self-select, with these scenarios in mind. When the topic is raised, some will be responsive, encouraged, and engaged, while others will place their fingers in their ears and back quietly (or noisily!) out of the room. Some of these predilections will be clear to you before the topic is ever raised, but you might be surprised; many serious, preparedness-oriented people do not advertise their interests but pursue them quietly, in isolation.

It would be unusual to find more than a quarter of a local population who are dedicated, capable, trained, fit, mobile, and willing. These will normally be young or middle-aged adults with some level of firearms and tactics training and/or experience. They may sign up for the role of armed defender on short notice, but the next, immediate and crucial step will be to develop shared understandings, contingency plans, consistent and serious training, an organizational structure and redundant forms of communications. Within the boundaries you have established for your community, how many such folks will you be able to recruit? Do you really need more than two hands to count their numbers? If so, count yourself lucky.

You will probably have three or four times more people than that core cadre of defenders, who may be older and/or less fit and less capable if it comes to a fight, or to any other strenuous form of response that requires physical skill, stamina, and coordination, such as firefighting, evacuation, or emergency medical care. They can nonetheless still perform vital services in a crisis, if willing, providing logistical support, observation, and communications. Some may less fit, but still able to shoot well from static, established positions - to defend themselves and others in a protected locale while a reaction force mobilizes and maneuvers to support them. In a historical context, this recalls pre-feudal and feudal societies that relied on strongholds to hold out against raids until relief or reinforcements arrived - an example repeated in the New England militias of colonial times. Outside of condominium, apartment, resort, or other dense, multiple housing units, most Americans to some degree or other think "their home is their castle" and will not easily be persuaded to abandon it even if better security is attainable by concentration and cooperation. The point is here is to recognize differing capabilities and preferences by assigning people roles they can and will perform.

Leadership in Community Defense

Any organization has leaders: those who hold title and authority by virtue of their ability, appointment, or election; those who volunteer their time and effort in roles for which they are not compensated; and those who are natural leaders by virtue of ability, experience, influence, and the trust of others developed over time – although they may not, by choice, fill any leadership role in normal times.

Now we add a new wrinkle. Leadership in crisis, where lives are on the line and hard decisions must be made, requires some different abilities than those which thrive in times of peace and civil order. How many county commissioners or homeowners' association presidents are chosen for their ability to lead in combat, or in any life-threatening emergency?

In the transition from normalcy to crisis, some traditional leaders will prove adequate to the challenge, but others will not. On the other hand, some individuals who do not play leadership roles in normal times will step out of obscurity and thrive when necessity calls. Military history is full of examples like Ulysses S. Grant, who was a capable officer in the Mexican War but failed at farming, business, and most every personal endeavor thereafter until called back into service for the Civil War, where he proved to be one of the most capable generals on either side, and led the Union to victory.

You must learn to recognize, respect, and develop the abilities required for leadership in crisis. Because both your area of operations and the size of your security organization are probably beyond the scope of one person's direct control, you will have to develop a chain of command, not an easy challenge in a voluntary association not accustomed to discipline and concepts of subordination. Communications up and down that chain of command – and laterally among peers within it – will be vital to success.

You must master the art of manipulating people – and before you recoil from that concept, let's clarify what we mean by an example. Over the last two decades, U.S. military command structures and operations have become "joint" in nature. This means that leaders and units of all five services routinely serve together, especially officers at the command and staff levels. The staff of, for instance, U.S. Central Command included many naval officers during a period when its main business was running two simultaneous land wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. When CENTCOM's chief of staff welcomed a newly assigned Navy officer whose training, professional education, and career experience were all in the field of submarine nuclear propulsion, he did not throw up his hands in despair. Instead, he thought, "This guy is probably a superb logistician; if his boat sails without the right inventory of tools and parts, a routine mechanical event can cause the boat to sink and everyone to die. He may even be borderline OCD; but I need that level of obsession with detail, and intolerance for error, to ensure the troops have the supplies and equipment they need to succeed." He understood that if he assigned the submariner to a job in Operations or Plans for which he was not prepared, he's setting him up for failure, so he uses him in an area where his particular strengths and abilities are an asset. That is what we mean by "manipulating people." It's a good thing.

E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One

Community defense presents leadership challenges far different from what one might have faced, for instance, as a commanding officer or senior NCO in the U.S. military. There, despite their diverse heritage and backgrounds, unit members in recent times have been volunteers, selected, trained, and socialized to serve together under a clearly defined chain of command in a unit with a well-defined mission.

By contrast, communities organizing to defend themselves may be as widely varied as a modern gated subdivision, an established urban or suburban neighborhood with less well-defined boundaries, a small Midwestern town or farm district, or a rural valley in the Rocky Mountains or Appalachia. Community members will not only differ in age, socio-economic status, race, gender, and culture, but will also be distributed across several wide spectrums that will influence how individuals react to and participate in community-wide efforts. You probably won't attempt it unless you are seeking a degree in sociology, but you could probably plot every adult member of your community on each of these scales:

  • Families that have lived in the area for multiple generations, versus relative newcomers – a calculus that will be different from one region and cultural milieu to the next.
  • Community leaders and networked, active people – the sort that hold local political office, serve on school boards and commissions, attend public meetings, belong to social and fraternal organizations, and socialize often, versus solitary types who keep to themselves and are not "joiners."
  • Married or single parents with children in the home, versus older parents with adult children no longer in the home, or couples without children, young singles, and the divorced or widowed – all circumstances that influence a person's goals and attitude toward collective enterprises.
  • Persons with leadership or management experience in larger organizations (often outside the community, or in previous careers and settings), versus workers and independent business people lacking that experience.

Command or Consensus?

Building a voluntary association of such varied personalities into a cohesive organization, designating leaders, and constructing a chain of command that will function in an emergency, will be quite a challenge.

Groups comprised of friends, families, neighbors, and business associates are voluntary associations. Individuals have the right and the ability to withhold participation or withdraw from it, and the coercive elements – the consequences for non-performance – established by regulation and custom in (for instance) military service are either absent or far less stringent.

Under these conditions, participation in community defense efforts will be motivated by shared understanding, mutual trust, and implicit communications. However, in crisis conditions, consensus is a poor basis for decision and action. When you're being shot at, or are about to be, there is limited time for hand holding and consensus building. The sovereign authority of the individual must be yielded – voluntarily – to the authority of a tactical leader. This will only happen if the leader is trusted, and trust must be built through shared experience, and by training of several sorts, from cognitive learning through repetitive skill development (that develops consistent, high level individual performance under stress) to training exercises that simulate the stress and friction that usually degrade collective performance to less than the sum of its parts.

America's history and demographics have created a society that often has little sense of "community." Although they may have friends and family in their local community, city, suburban, small town and rural dwellers alike often are not acquainted with many of their neighbors, nor do they necessarily have much in common. Thanks to our social mobility, their jobs, the commodities and services they purchase, and their recreation and social interactions are often found well outside the neighborhood they live in.

What this all means is that you will likely start with a small group of trusted friends and family, and a somewhat larger circle of acquaintances who will appreciate the need and the possibilities of community defense to varying degrees. You will probably have an even larger group of folks that you do not know well, but whom you would like to recruit and who may be well-disposed. In most cases, you will work your way outward through these rings, establishing your bona fides, making your case and enlisting support with each in turn. Community or neighborhood associations may be of value in this process, if only by bringing people together in a setting where you can make presentations and accommodate debate.

There are few examples in history of broad-based participatory democracy working efficiently, especially in times of crisis, which is another reason for your efforts to begin well before the crisis. Your early meetings will likely be mixture of fifth century B.C. Athenian mob-ocracy, the British House of Commons at its rowdiest, and a New England town meeting, which while far from perfect is actually the best and most recent example you can aspire to, and a subject worthy of some study before you begin [a good place to start is Frank M. Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works, American Politics and Political Economy Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003]. The one thing it will NOT look like is a pre-mission briefing for an infantry platoon, or the morning brief of a metro police department, so get those happy images out of your head.

The best outcome of this stage may be a compromise that engages the largest number of supporters you can achieve, and the establishment of smaller, more effective committees to proceed with various aspects of planning and organization. Patience, tolerance of diverse opinions, and an ability to compromise will be important attributes; suppress your inner drill sergeant.

It is at this early stage of organization that you will discover talents and abilities in your community of which you were previously unaware. You will also encounter resistance and distrust; you will have to earn the trust of that wide spectrum of people we spoke of earlier, and a critical issue will be the determination of who will lead your community defense effort. You may find that there are well-known and respected leaders in your community who command more trust and loyalty than yourself, and that existing community organizations are able and willing to be folded into a security network. Do not fight such realities; exploit them, remember what we said earlier about "manipulating people." Keep your focus on the outcome, not on the process or upon illusions of control.

In Part 4 of this series, we will address key concepts of command applicable to leaders at all levels in a community defense organization, including unity of command, intuitive and recognition-primed decision making, the shortcomings of reliance on procedural solutions, initiative-based tactics, commander's intent, implicit communications, and mission analysis – both the systematic method and the process Clausewitz called coup d'oeil ("strike of the eye"). In Part 5 we'll take on the HOW - the basic tactics, techniques, and concepts for defending your community against violent threats.