Property & Peace: 

Insurgency, Strategy and the Statute of Frauds 

by Geoffrey Demarest 

This May 2009 electronic version contains some typographical corrections and 

minor content modifications from the version printed in early 2008 by the 

Defense Intelligence Agency. Most of the text was completed a year earlier, in 

2007. Suggestions or comments are welcome and can be directed to the author 

at geoffrey.demarest@us.army.mil 

The ideas expressed herein are the author’s unless stated otherwise in 

the text or footnotes. Nothing in this book is or reflects an opinion, 

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Abstract

The success of a society depends on construction of formal, 

liberal property regimes. The United States and other Western countries 

waste billions of development dollars every year on programs that have 

not been built on firm property systems. 

The West’s property regimes are successful because of the high 

quality of the evidence of everyday rights, the capacity of the citizenry 

and governments to implement the meaning of that evidence, and 

because the basic rules which determine what can be owned and who 

can be owners are liberal in measure appropriate to the common 

understanding of justice. 

Formalized property information feeds conflict resolution 

mechanisms by clearly identifying owners, claimants, rights and duties 

so that disagreements can be more peaceably reconciled; creates 

confident stakeholders willing to support the rule of law; helps create 

and expose capital, which ameliorates negative socio-economic 

conditions that fuel internal conflict; produces landowners who are less 

inclined to engage in illegal behavior because they risk forfeiture; and 

the records associated with formal property provide a powerful forensic 

tool with which to support peaceful conflict resolution processes, 

restitution programs, and bring violators of basic human rights to 

justice. 

The condition in which humans are secure in their possessions 

is in-and-of-itself a happiness. Nevertheless, the principle assertion of 

this book is not that building property systems will lead to peace. The 

assertion has been in the negative. In countries where informal 

property regimes are allowed to continue, there will not be peace. 

Outside the lines of formal property lies possession by force. The 

gamut of societal choices is narrow, the choices few – formal property, 

internal violence, or tyranny. People should not be led to choose 

tyranny over violence because the condition of formal property has not 

been offered. 

ii
Back Cover text 

The soldier may ask what this bloodless, tiresome subject of social 

contracts and documentation has to do with his job, with warfare. The 

answer is “nothing” – unless he wants to find and fix an elusive enemy; 

unless it is important to the soldier to establish conditions after combat 

that will allow him to go home; unless he thinks it important to keep 

insurgencies from forming, so that his presence in those environments 

is not necessary; or unless he would prefer there to be fewer places 

where terrorists were bred and sponsored. 

This book argues that the quality of foreign real-property systems be 

made a priority issue in US diplomatic, military and intelligence 

thinking and strategy. A polity that does not formalize ownership rights 

and duties, especially rights and duties related to land, will not enjoy 

peace. Comprehensive, precise and transparent expression of real 

property is a necessary precondition of peace; places outside the lines 

of formal property necessarily slump toward possession by force. If by 

success of a society we mean parallel improvement in freedom, 

material prosperity and social peace – a trio which together might fairly 

be called human flourishing – then construction of formal, liberal 

property regimes and land-use systems is as important as holding 

elections or prosecuting human rights violators. The process of 

formalizing property, moreover, illuminates power and power 

relationships. It also exposes the otherwise invisible lines of 

communication and sanctuary that power over places provides. 

iii
Property & Peace:

Insurgency, Strategy and the Statute of Frauds 

Contents 

Acknowledgments ......................................................... ix 

Author’s note regarding the subtitle ........................... xi 

Concepts Summary ..................................................... xiii 

Chapter One: Why “Property”? ..................................... 1 

Purpose and assertions....................................................2 

What is it? ....................................................................... 7

Quality of the evidence ................................................ 15 

Rights and duties written down .......................... 15 

Infinite divisibility of ownership ........................ 23 

Owners and the reach of identity ....................... 29 

Making use of the evidence ......................................... 32 

The court ............................................................ 32

The market .......................................................... 33

Political action ................................................... 36

Basic ownership rules .................................................. 37

Liberality ............................................................ 38

Homelessness ..................................................... 40

Communism ........................................................ 43

iv
Chapter Two: The Globalization of Trespass ......... 49 

Omission and the structure of life............................... 50

Particularization of power ................................. 54 

The spread of law ............................................... 58

Moral asymmetry ............................................... 62 

Enthrall, Extort, Pique ................................................ 65 

Brigandage ......................................................... 65

Insurgency & counterinsurgency ....................... 70

So what.................................................................. ..... ...74

Land worth ......................................................... 75

Human rights ...................................................... 81

Violence and peace ............................................ 92 

Are there threats close-by? ........................................ 100

Cuban upheaval ............................................... 101

So far from God ................................................ 111

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez ................................ 116

Chapter Three: The Colombia Case ......................... 119 

The calculus of violence ............................................. 122

Noble revolution ............................................... 124

Four ownership plans ...................................... 128

The object of organized conflict ................................ 133

ELN, AUC, FARC ............................................ 133

Doubloon at rest ............................................... 140

Colombia’s property legacy ...................................... 151

Law as legitimacy ............................................. 152

The resulting cadastres and registries ............. 155

Un-property strategy ................................................. 161

Putumayo and Ploesti ...................................... 162

Giving property away ....................................... 167

Harvest of amputees ......................................... 175

v
Can the war be won militarily? ................................ 179

Crossing Lines of Communication ................... 181 

Taking property away ...................................... 192

Can the war be won politically? ............................... 194

The shape of the problem ................................. 194

Bigger troubles ................................................. 199

Deserving to win ......................................................... 200

 

Chapter Four: Hohfeld versus Haushofer ............... 207

National Security Strategy of the United States ...... 208

Geopolitics ....................................................... 211 

Plate tectonics .................................................. 229

United States military strategy ................................. 239

Right war, right knowledge .............................. 241

A general whose road homeward is cut is 

ruined ............................................................... 251

Appropriate organization and weapons ........... 255

 People and real estate: countering urban violence 

 .......................................................................... 259

Developmental strategy ............................................. 264

Land reform ...................................................... 264

Fixing Cuba ...................................................... 274

Knowledge strategy .................................................... 281

The relevant things worth knowing .................. 281

Indiana Jones and direct sensing ..................... 287

GIS ................................................................... 291 

Property Strategy ....................................................... 293 

Measuring property .......................................... 297

vi
Chapter Five: What is to be Done? ............................ 307 

Create property .......................................................... 309

Learn Geography ....................................................... 313 

Produce property knowledge .................................... 319 

Build national security law, international law ......... 323 

What should not be done ........................................... 326 

Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and other places .............. 335 

Restatement ................................................................ 348

Appendix: Instrument to measure the 

quality of a property regime ..................................... 355

Bibliography ............................................................... 359

Index ............................................................................ 373

About the author ........................................................ 374 

vii
Acknowledgements 

The number of individuals that deserve my thanks is so great I will 

undoubtedly forget to include important names if I attempt to list each 

of them. Among the organizations that contributed most to completion 

of this project I want to highlight our Foreign Military Studies Office, 

the members of which have suffered me in this matter far longer than 

humanity dictates. Their assistance and guidance is always insightful, 

informed, positive, enthusiastic, useful and creative. Of special help 

from outside the Office were the Mercatus Center at George Mason 

University, the Department of Geography at the University of Kansas, 

and the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence in Washington, D.C. I 

also wish to thank my family for their patient support. 

viii
Author’s note regarding the subtitle 

In 1677 the English Parliament passed what would survive as one of 

the most durable instruments in English-speaking law, the Statute of 

Frauds. More than just a convenience for the court, it was a moment of 

recognition that physical technologies, and persons who could put them 

to use, were available in sufficient quantity to be applied to ameliorate 

the human tendency to lie, cheat and steal. From that point on, any 

important agreement in the realm (anything dealing with land was 

considered important) would have to be in writing if it were to be 

recognized and enforced by the State. Later, agreements would have to 

be signed, then witnessed, then notarized, then copied, photocopied, 

distributed and even put on the Internet. All of the requirements go to 

the same end – to make evidence more reliable and court decisions 

more effective. Subornation, perjury, contempt and vigilantism are 

more likely contained, and systems of commitments can span beyond 

human memory and familial control. The jurisprudential event of 1677 

was a milestone in the evolution of an innovative discipline that had not 

been not so formally appreciated since the time of the Romans. The 

Statute of Frauds is mentioned in the title to this book to acknowledge 

that the rejection of oral evidence became a competitive advantage of 

Western civilization. The West systematically prepared the legal 

environment for conflict resolution. That the pen is mightier than the 

sword is more than shibboleth. The importance of this cultural 

inheritance may have been overlooked, forgotten or taken for granted, 

but it is a quotidian key to peace. The requirement that the evidence of 

human agreements be precise, comprehensive and transparent is much 

of what makes life in your county peaceable. It is what puts so many of 

today’s practical geographers to work at the county courthouse or 

office of the city manager. There they maintain ownership maps, landuse plans and the like. If not for such records, their maintenance and 

the courts and markets that apply them, we would live in a world of 

possession by force -- a continual physical struggle -- the kind of 

constant violent contest in which we find much of the rest of the world. 

ix
Concepts Summary

1. Why Property? 

Property is an elemental approach to conflict resolution. 

-- Property is not touchable things, but things along with 

sets of rights and duties associating people with things. 

-- Property is a social contract - an agreement about who 

has what, and about enforcing agreements. 

-- The alternative to property is ‘possession by force.’ 

2. Globalization of trespass 

 Power, property and wealth can be the same. 

-- Insurgents reject the social contract, criminals simply 

break it. Both can use terror. There are plenty of 

combinations. 

-- Globalization includes expanding civil law and social 

contracts. 

-- Globalization also means diffusion of the power to 

reject social contracts, or to break them. 

-- Some of the most pressing national security issues, 

like changes coming to Cuba, are best considered in 

property terms. 

3. The Colombia Case 

 Colombia has suffered violent organized insurgents and 

criminals more than most countries. A democracy, 

property is the key to both victory and lasting peace. 

x
xi

4. Hohfeld versus Haushofer 

 US strategy was built on obsolete, big-space geopolitics. 

-- We can improve the way we measure power. 

-- We can apply property analysis to internal armed 

conflicts that geopolitics does not help us understand. 

-- Property analysis starts with the rights and duties at 

issue, identifies owner and claimant identities, their 

objectives and their resources. 

-- Formalized property causes wealth and power to leave 

tracks that can be found and followed. The most 

important tracks are not physical, but cultural. 

-- We can measure the likelihood that societies will 

harbor smugglers and murderers. 

5. What is to be done? 

Study social contracts, improve property. 

-- Learn geography at the local level and at the contract 

level. 

-- Seek knowledge about property rights and duties. 

-- Prepare environments for conflict resolution and 

victory. 

-- Fix a bad social contract, defend a good one. 
Chapter One: Why “Property”? 

Purpose and assertions .................................................. 2 

What is it? ....................................................................... 7

Quality of the evidence ................................................ 15 

Rights and duties written down .......................... 15 

Infinite divisibility of ownership ........................ 23 

Owners and the reach of identity ....................... 29 

Making use of the evidence ......................................... 32 

The court ............................................................ 32

The market .......................................................... 33

Political action ................................................... 36

Basic ownership rules .................................................. 37

Liberality ............................................................ 38

Homelessness ..................................................... 40

Communism ........................................................ 43

 

Chapter One: Why “Property”? 

 

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy, 

Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saäy. 

Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns; 

Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.1

 Alfred Lord Tennyson from "The Northern Farmer" 

 

1

 Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson Selected Poetry: Edited, with an Introduction by 

Douglas Smith (New York: Random House, 1951), p. 307. See also, Tennyson’s 

Lady Godiva, perhaps the best rendition of the legend, which relates her ride as a 

property tax protest. 

1
Purpose and assertions 

“How could something so important have slipped our minds?”2

 Hernando De Soto 

 Places with informal property are doomed to violence. No 

formal property, no peace. 3

 This book argues that the quality of foreign real property 

systems be made a priority issue in US diplomatic, military and 

intelligence thinking and strategy. The text does not argue that creating 

better land records will assure peaceful coexistence. Formal real 

property record systems correlate with peaceful societies, but the 

principle assertion here is in the negative. Even with formal records, 

functioning property courts, and a free and fluid market in land a place 

may still suffer violent dissention. However, a polity that does not 

formalize ownership rights and duties, especially rights and duties 

related to land, will not enjoy peace. Comprehensive, precise, 

transparent expression of real property is a necessary precondition of 

peace; places outside the lines of formal property necessarily slump 

toward possession by force. From this assertion others follow that bear 

on the way global security is pursued... 

In lands where property has not been formalized, most 

other developmental efforts will be a waste of time and 

 

2

 Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West 

and Fails Everywhere Else. New York,: Basic Books, 2000, p. 8. Mr. De Soto is one 

of the leading proponents of property formalization as a cornerstone of equitable 

development.

3

 In some social contexts and on small scale humans live harmoniously without the 

necessity of a local courthouse filled with property plats and their keepers. But the 

author’s assertion is made in a world of large polities and desperate conflicts. In this 

context, the assertion is absolute: there cannot be a liberal polity, free and peaceful, 

without formal property. 

2
money, since they will ultimately succumb to violence and 

tyranny. 

Human rights prosecutions are usually a chase after the 

ultimate symptoms of a society’s failure to create and 

respect formalized property. 

The above statements imply a prescription that property systems be 

strengthened or “formalized” -- a word that will be given its required 

explanation a bit later, but which in shorthand means that agreements 

about rights and duties be accurate, comprehensive, and easily available 

for inspection, so that they may be given meaning through some 

predictable enforcement mechanism. Formal is not the same as liberal, 

also an important quality ultimately likely to promote social peace. 

Liberality concerns the variety of identities that can successfully claim 

ownership, as well as the gamut of rights that can be successfully 

claimed. The revolutionary or the insurgent, for the purposes of this 

text, rejects the overall system of ownership -- the basic rules regarding 

who can own what and how. The pure criminal just breaks the rules. 

As to some countries of the world where political violence is the 

norm, or armed conflict is underway, an argument may arise that 

formalized property is a luxury attainable only after security and peace 

are achieved. This may be true in the most immediate sense of active 

combat, however, the more consequential truth is the opposite. First 

there must be formal property, and then there can be security and 

peace. A final assertion, leading from those just made, regards what we 

know and what we don’t know about the world, and about conflict. We 

do not know enough about who owns what in the world. Hence, the 

last of the series of secondary assertions, touched on repeatedly 

throughout the book, is as follows: 

Those who deal with issues of peace and violence, or of 

economic development and social justice, or of threats to 

security, should demand to know who owns what, and 

3
where. A democratic society must know in detail who 

owns the land and how much it is. 

The above point, about what leaders should demand to know, does not 

exclude military commanders, and especially those facing an intelligent 

enemy in situations where maneuver combat of heavily equipped forces 

is the exception. In ‘low intensity’ combat situations, property 

information may fuel the most powerful kind of intelligence able to 

uncover enemy whereabouts, associations, wealth and lines of 

communication. 

 A purpose of this book, then, is to convince, on both the 

theoretical and practical levels, why property creation and 

formalization should be raised as a principal column of plans for a 

peaceful world. As a virtue of “nation-building,” “stabilizing” or 

“democratizing,” the formalization of property deserves mental, 

emotional and practical weight equal to that of human rights 

prosecutions, fair elections or satellite images.4

 Foreign diplomacy, 

security strategy, intelligence planning and developmental efforts 

would do well to incorporate the spread and growth of formal, if not 

liberal, property regimes. 

 Let there be no doubt as to the relationship of this argument to 

national security, beginning with that of the United States. The United 

States’ national security goals for places like Iraq, Afghanistan or 

Colombia are that they not be cradles, harbors or facilitators of 

smuggling and murder. Whether the specific object of contraband is 

 

4

 That property creation and formalization would be as important as elections in 

aiding the cause of liberty is a point eloquently made by Richard Pipes in Property 

and Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 2000); “Democratic procedures in electing 

governments do not automatically ensure respect for the civil rights of citizens. If 

proof is required, one need only recall the reign of Napoleon III, who used his 

lawfully obtained mandate to suppress freedom of the press, to arrest and exile 

citizens without due process, and altogether to arrogate to himself dictatorial powers. 

Democracy, indeed, can be “illiberal”.” Ibid., p. 280. We can recall with this master 

historian the reign of Napoleon III, or we can watch Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez doing 

the same now. 

4
drugs, people or plutonium; or if murder is perpetrated by suicide, 

landmines or something bigger, our best understanding holds some 

places more likely than others to be source-grounds of dangerous 

behavior. The United States has apparently determined that peaceful 

measures cannot timely deter some smugglers and murderers from 

doing it grave harm, and considers itself within its right to label them 

enemies, and to visit preemptive violence on them. The nature of 

things thus stated (and regardless of the validity of the posture in any 

given case) the national strategy documents of the United States 

express an observation that underlying social, economic and cultural 

conditions help determine if a foreign place will birth or aid the 

intolerable. 

 The United States has proposed a goal: to protect itself, and a 

corollary hypothesis: that to do so it must destroy an identified enemy, 

and at the same time ameliorate conditions that create enemies. 

Whether or not it is succeeding in the latter is for the reader to decide 

and is not the point of this work. However, restating the upshot -- 

efforts to ameliorate the conditions that create enemies will fail if they 

are not founded on the improvement of property systems, whatever else 

is or is not done. The social contract is the property system and viceversa. To the extent the property regime in Haiti is better now than it 

was a decade ago Haiti will proceed away from the kinds of behaviors 

that are dangerous both to Haitians and to others. This will be 

correspondingly true for Iraq ten years into the future. Unfortunately, 

despite all the foreign developmental and security resources expended 

on Haiti, too little was directed at building the social contract as 

evidenced in a functioning property system -- and the disheartening 

result is patent. The same may be true of Iraq. 

 American strategic and military thinking has evolved in the 

context of state-on-state concepts, which are obsolescing. With so 

many non-state entities able to enter lethal competitions, it can be 

clumsy and misleading to define conflicts according to large physical 

spaces. The new power entities, whether dangerous in the context of 

some apparently localized contest over control of valuable resources, or 

5
because of a demonstrated ability to apply force in distant corners of 

the world, rarely act out of pure spirituality. They act according to a 

plan to take or maintain power -- to change, preserve or violate a social 

contract -- to gain, protect or ignore some set of preferential rights and 

duties. The complexity of some of these violent enterprises can be 

better understood through the kind of analysis that a property lawyer 

might apply. While such an approach may sound legalistic, it is based 

on an idea of flexibility and cost-benefit, seeking first to understand the 

rights and duties at issue, the rules that might apply, the identities of 

interested parties, their objectives, resources and vulnerabilities. It is a 

method not so distant from military strategy. It is very cognizant of 

physical geography, but in terms of the many overlapping sets of rights 

and duties associated with space, and of the many possible identities 

and alliances that pertain. There exists a tradition of analysis of 

property not well known to the military and intelligence communities, 

but to Americans in general, litigious bunch that we are. 

 To begin the argument, this first chapter examines property 

theory and its place in questions of human rights and organized 

violence. It asserts the relation of formal property to peace as a matter 

of economic and legal logic, common sense and universal experience. 

Chapter Two applies the theme and its pieces to worldwide security 

concerns. Chapter Three uses the context of a real place suffering a 

virulent armed conflict to repeat the same arguments in greater depth. 

Chapter Four moves back in the direction of theory, exposing an 

essential flaw in American strategic writing. It prescribes insertion of 

property-based strategic theory, property intelligence and propertydirected courses of action. It proposes that the timely improvement of 

property regimes can improve prospects for military and police success. 

The last chapter, Chapter Five, restates the consequences of failure to 

insert property toward the center of foreign policy, and re-asserts the 

opportunity. Finally, Caveat Lector: 

Property is a bore. It rarely contributes meaningfully to a 

conversation. It’s an annoying old idea that, given half 

the chance, will sit down beside you and maunder on 

6
about its past glory, its veneration by Locke and 

Blackstone, or its running battles with Marx and 

Proudhon ... Mention something topical though, and 

property will be at a loss...5

The topic here is not an abstract peace, however. The topic is catching 

kidnappers and bombers, stopping drug dealers and poachers, 

ameliorating conditions that invite rebellion, subversion and 

insurgency, and winning wars.. It is about creating safe, prosperous 

and free societies. Still, you have to want to read about property. If it 

were not so important, I would advise reading something else. 

What is it? 

“That low, bestial instinct....”6

 Leo Tolstoy 

 The rub is in the definitions, naturally, so some pedantry in 

defining the word property is necessary, a chore to be completed 

immediately and, I hope, painlessly. 

Property is a contract among society and owners that 

recognizes preferential rights and correlated duties. The strength 

of the social contract can be judged by the quality of its 

observance, which depends on the quality of the evidence of 

ownership and on the capacity of both owners and the society 

(usually by way of some government) to act on conclusions logically 

drawn from the evidence. 

 The mental exercise to be mastered in understanding property

as used here requires adopting the idea that property is not a tangible 

 

5

 J.E. Penner, The Idea of Property in Law, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 1. 6

 Simon James, A Dictionary of Economic Quotations, Second Edition, (Totowa, 

New Jersey: Barnes & Noble: 1984) p. 25.

7
object, but a set of recognized rights and duties associating a tangible 

item (perhaps a place) with an owner-identity. Although the term 

property denotes a broader set of preferential interests than just those 

associated directly with real estate, we are most immediately concerned 

with struggles relating to real property, and it is in the context of rights 

and obligations related to land that most of the examples in this book 

reside.7

 Those rights and obligations constitute the details of a contract 

between society and its members. The ‘social contract’ is an agreement 

to peaceably enforce lesser agreements (and to resolve disagreements) 

regarding advantages and disadvantages. If politics is the allocation of 

scarce resources, then the property regime is the pacification by law of 

that allocation. So the definitional starting point is that property is not 

so much about locations and dirt (although these are important), but 

rather about the mix of rights and obligations that someone or some 

group claims, and that the society (generally by way of government) 

affirms. Therefore, “creating property” means the entire process of 

establishing and solidifying an agreement about agreements regarding 

rights and duties associated with places and objects. The creation of 

property is a process of institution building.8

 A property regime is 

formal to the degree that documentation regarding ownership and 

tenancy is accurate, comprehensive and transparent. 

 A column of Western cultural progress is the use of technology 

 

7

 We can go further to say that a useful idea is ‘tangible’ and that intellectual property 

is a growing source of conflict. On this point and on the relation of innovation to 

national security see, Robert J. Shapiro and Kevin A. Hassett, The Economic Value 

of Intellectual Property, Washington, D.C: USA for Innovation, 2005 online at < 

http://www.usaforinnovation.org/news/ip_master.pdf; See also, Geoffrey Demarest, 

“Patent Earnings and Military Power,” Arms Control, Vol. 14, No. 3, December 

1993, pp.440-450. 

8

 Reinold Noyes, The Institution of Property (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 

1936). “[T]he idea of the right of property--the central concept of the legal institution, 

grew out of the right of action...In early law, property was the legal means of 

securing it. Only later did it come to be conceived as something which existed 

independently of the action or transaction and which the law merely confirmed.” Ibid. 

p. 159.

8
to improve the faithfulness of evidence regarding everyday rights and 

duties, including the duties of government. (Formalizing real estate 

records can involve considerable technical effort --interviewing, 

surveying, monumenting, mapping, registering, filing, digitizing, webmounting and so-on). Much of the success of Western societies, and 

much of what is often alluded to as the American Way, is bound to the 

systemic creation of irrefutable evidence regarding rights and duties 

related to things, and particularly to real estate. However good the 

evidence, however, rights remain inchoate unless they can be exercised. 

This exercise of rights usually requires that an authoritative body can 

consider and act upon the evidence, or that a functioning market exists 

within which rights and duties can be traded. That is why we judge the 

strength of the social contract according to its observance, by which we 

mean to tie the evidence together with its practicable consequence. 

This observance of the social contract (the combination of solid 

evidence and the realistic possibility of doing something with it) gives 

the contract strength within its basic rules. These basic rules, however, 

may still be unjust according to one perspective or another. For 

instance, we may be easily able to determine what varying rights and 

duties pertain to owners within an area, and all of those owners may 

have quick access to enforcement mechanisms that operate smoothly 

and according to set procedures and standards; but if an appreciable 

claimant identity lives within the population, but is excluded from 

participation as owners, there still exists great potential for conflict. 

Some readers may be immediately stressed by the word 

property, or challenged; preoccupied that it is synonymous with 

“private property” and a tattoo of capitalism and Western cultural 

arrogance. Indeed, formalized property is a hallmark of Western 

culture and a basic institution in most materially successful economies, 

if not all. The most defensible goals of human development: freedom 

of expression, association, movement, worship, material prosperity, and 

non-violent resolution of conflict, are more likely achieved where 

rights and duties associated with land are formalized -- regardless of the 

name given the overall system. The question of cultural variation, and 

the attendant possibility of outright rejection of private land ownership 

9
as an element in the social contract, is addressed later in this chapter, 

and so the reader is asked to suspend judgment on that point for a bit 

longer. It is argued, however, that private property and semi-private 

property exist everywhere, whatever the nature of a property regime’s 

broad outlines. These property preferences can be made explicit and 

protected wherever the social contract agrees to their existence. 

By government we do not mean to imply ‘big,’ ‘federal,’ 

‘national’ or even ‘county’ government, but rather any organizational 

construct imbued with the authority to judge evidence, resolve disputes, 

limit the exercise of rights, and probably tax. We call the property 

system an agreement about agreements or a contract regarding 

contracts, but we suppose contracts are best made freely among parties 

somehow capable of negotiating terms, albeit at times indirectly. To 

the extent fewer-and-fewer individuals exercise more-and-more of the 

rights we associate with real estate (access and exclusion, profit, safe 

enjoyment, alienation, preservation, collection of rents, etc.) a property 

system tends toward tyranny. The tyrannies of a property regime may 

grow from the cultural fabric as much as from political formulae. 

Matrimony is a contract involving property, a contract type that almost 

all human societies recognize and underwrite in some form or another. 

Many societies enforce uneven rights between spouses, and it could be 

fairly said that by way of this institution alone the number of potential 

owners can be cut almost in half.9

 A piece of land may be the subject 

of many contracts and many levels of government expression beyond 

matrimony... to include neighborhood covenants, municipal codes, 

county zoning, school district levies, and so on. Furthermore, 

governments are so often themselves owner identities that, while 

 

9

 For instance, from a 2005 report from the Nepal Section of the Women’s League for 

Peace and Freedom comes the following: “In September 2001, the parliament of 

Nepal passed a bill accepting, though mainly in principle, an equal inheritance right 

for females and males. The bill says that a female child is equally entitled to paternal 

property as a male child but the girl must leave her share of paternal property to her 

parent family after her marriage. Though it still retains the age –old discrimination 

between males and females in the society, the bill is progressive in many respects. It 

is a victory of progressive people, especially that of progressive women of Nepal.” 

See http://www.wilpf.int.ch/world/windex.htm.

10
distinction between government and owner is often clear, it is as often 

not. 

The word liberal adds difficulty to our assertion about property 

and peace. Liberal and formal are not the same qualities. Formal 

property ownership entails comprehensive, precise and transparent 

evidence of ownership, the logic of which can be duly enforced. 

Liberal, meanwhile, refers to the most basic rules delimiting the 

distribution of rights, however evidenced. A property regime is more 

or less liberal to the extent different categories of person are admitted 

as owners and a broader array of rights can be had. This text does not 

stay completely clear of the debate over the relative advantages of 

private as opposed to common ownership, but that debate itself can be a 

fetter. The ultimate expression of private ownership -- total, 

independent, unencumbered and uncompromised individual exercise of 

rights in land -- may not constitute property ownership at all. Such a 

condition is sovereign lordship, which must be defended by unyielding 

force. It is only when lords reach agreement with their neighbors that 

property is created. That is to say, in order to speak of property at all 

an agreement must exist regarding conflict resolution – which leads 

inexorably to the recognition of a role for government. Mundane facts 

of ownership show how complex and subtle the lines between private 

and common ownership rights actually are. So, rather than focusing 

solely on owner rights, we want also to underline duties, and especially 

those of government in the social contract. We see that where the State 

fails to shoulder its immediate duties (conflict resolution and 

prevention or amelioration of trespass), the property regime is less 

likely to promote human flourishing, and that the reverse is true also: to 

the extent governments do shoulder duties; the balance in the social 

contract favors the prospects of peace, prosperity and freedom. Rather 

than claim that this or that balance between individual and communal 

ownership is best, the argument herein favors liberal property regimes 

that feature fluidity, divisibility, precision and transparency in 

determining the balance. 

There are, then, two broad qualities that this book advocates 

11
regarding property systems as they relate to the cause of peace: 

formality and liberality. The principle argument is about formality, 

however, because without precise, clear, stable evidence regarding who 

claims what, any question of how to divide the pie is subject to 

corruption, deceit and extortion. Likewise, clear evidence makes the 

observance of contracts far more likely and peaceable. There is almost 

no practical amount of additional formality in a property system that 

would be detrimental to the cause of peace, and without formality no 

long-term peace is likely. A liberal property regime is one that 

broadens the range of potential owner-identities and allows these 

identities to own the fullest range of rights. If a property regime 

encourages flexible, rapid and precise markets for rights in real estate, 

it may be more conducive to peace than one in which decisions are 

made more centrally or by political processes. In this, however, there 

reside questions of balance and timing, the optimal measure of 

liberalness being susceptible to specific cultural and political details. 

As we tinker with who is allowed to own what in a society foreign to 

our own, we can directly threaten cultural basics. The property rules 

related to gender that the West confronts in Islamic lands present an 

interesting example. As a property regime becomes more liberal it may 

become more conducive to social peace, but disclaimers and exceptions 

are obviously required. To the extent a system of ownership is 

informal, however, liberality is an empty notion and the prospects of 

peace dim. 

Believing that to identify a problem without stating a solution is 

only to depress, this book makes several recommendations about what 

to do and about who should do it. Western powers will continue to 

insert themselves into the fates of a number of less fortunate countries, 

often on the back of good intentions. (By Western I mean the have

countries, first-world, developed, the North, etc. The author doesn’t 

buy in happily to any of these terms.10 All, including Western, are 

 

10 Regarding this point see Bauer, Peter. The Development Frontier: Essays in 

Applied Economics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991. 

Bauer is thoughtfully unrelenting in his destruction of popular developmental 

categorizations. “Discussion on foreign aid envisages the world as being one-third 

12
stylizations and relative ones at that. Japan is in the West and Chile in 

the North. I use West and Western in this book as admittedly lazy 

shorthand.) This book says flatly that unless this one area of Western 

success -- formalized property -- is actively exported, the West’s good 

intentions will be paid in disappointment. 

On occasion, as in Iraq after the takedown of the Hussein 

regime, a window of opportunity presents itself during which the old 

status quo of ownership is weak, when basic changes in a property 

regime can be more speedily implemented. At such times, property can 

be formalized and liberalized by external influence and action.11 If in 

Iraq, Haiti, or places like them, the property regime is not formalized 

while the opportunity presents itself, there will be less likelihood of 

success in setting those societies on a path toward whatever goals of 

societal engineering the West might wish for them. There exists a more 

aggressive aspect as well, a Big Brother aspect that must be weighed 

carefully for better and worse. Formal records – transparent, 

comprehensive and accurate – allow for control, for enforcement, for 

punishment. At best they represent the ability of the public to ensure 

tax equity, environmental protection, debt responsibility, forensic 

efficiency and government accountability. At worst, and especially 

when the quality of transparency is missing, precise records are another 

tool in the service of repression and tyranny, exposing individual 

wealth and whereabouts to government abuse. 

 

rich (the West) and two-thirds poor (the Third World or South). In this picture, 

extreme poverty is the common and distinguishing characteristic of the Third World. 

But there is a continuous range in the per capita incomes of countries. The absence of 

a distinct break in the series undermines the concept of a Third World demarcated 

from the West on the basis of per capita incomes. The line of division between rich 

and poor countries is quite arbitrary. One could equally well say that the world is 

two-thirds rich and one-third poor.” Ibid at p. 40. 

11 Meanwhile, we should recover Geography itself as a lead discipline for matters of 

state, because the object of ownership, and of most armed struggles is, after all, a 

place. Property, as a subject of study, provides a link between law and geography. It 

is simultaneously the link between economics and strategy in assessing and 

addressing internal conflicts, allowing precise assignment of relative value to 

territory. 

13
There is one more disclaimer and one more admission to be 

made at the outset. It is a disclaimer demanded by the semantic 

muddle: Peace to me is not the absence of violence, but rather the 

absence of both violence and its impending threat.12 What constitutes 

“impending” and “violence” is left for the reader to decide, and there 

exists considerable logic in the supposition that at some point all 

ownership is backed by force. So when does law become tyranny? 

This is a subjective question that could take the wind out of any idea if 

it were pressed home. The author trusts that he and the reader share 

some common understanding about the difference, about the conditions 

under which we would flourish and under which we would not. Maybe 

there are property systems that make active physical violence a rare 

occurrence, where private real property is all but non-existent, and 

where listings of rights and duties are not easily recognizable as 

property records. North Korea might be one of these places, but the 

author does not suppose it to enjoy peace. For the logical integrity of 

this book, places such as North Korea, Syria or Cuba are tyrannies. To 

the extent a reader disagrees, gives these countries a bye and calls them 

peaceful, then the cause of this book becomes equivalently difficult to 

share with that reader. 

As for the admission, it is about the impertinence of saying the 

emperor has no clothes. Does this book say, “You missed this, and if 

you do not change you will continue to fail.”? Yes, the book does in 

fact have that in it. The admission is made up front so that the reader 

might regard the claim and overlook the insolence. To the extent the 

claim is valid, however, it calls for a sea change in developmental aid 

expenditure, intelligence spending, and diplomatic focus. It is an 

expensive observation. It says no less than the following: The West, 

and especially the United States, does not export quite the right thing, 

 

12 In this I defer to British historian Sir Michael Howard, who notes “peace implies a 

social and political ordering of society that is generally accepted as just.” See Michael 

Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order, (New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 2. Moreover, Howard observes that peace is a 

recent invention, not the historically natural state of human politics.

14
or search for quite the right knowledge. Elections are a useful tool in 

the service of liberty, but their implementation is chimera when done in 

the absence of a formal property regime. America is not just about 

elections. It is about property -- that is, the systemic creation of 

irrefutable evidence regarding who has what rights, the enforcement of 

logical conclusions drawn from that evidence, and liberal 

interpretations regarding who can own what. The ability of the US 

citizen to go to the polls and vote his or her individual conscious is a 

good thing. The ability to go to the county seat and pull out a plat map 

showing the exact boundaries of his or her rights in land is, too. The 

former is publicly extravagant and contested. The latter is taken for 

granted, but it is just as much an indispensable ingredient of a peaceful 

and prosperous social order. 

The United States will be more successful in whatever 

expeditions it takes to guide the prospects other lands if it focuses a 

little less on the election of leaders and a lot more on the creation of 

peaceful property systems. 

Quality of the evidence

“When we say that a man owns a thing, we affirm directly 

that he has the benefit of the consequences attached to a 

certain group of facts, and, by implication, that the facts are 

true of him.”13

 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 

Rights and duties written down 

 The first stream of inquiry into the quality of a property regime 

regards the quality of evidence. When we in the West examine the 

 

13 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “A Legal Right is Nothing But...” in Edward Allen 

Kent, editor. Law and Philosophy: Readings in Legal Philosophy, (New York, 

Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970), p. 125. 

15
improvisational and unregulated circumstances of many less-developed 

parts of the world, we generally neglect to consider the informality of 

land records. For that matter, most of us don’t think about land records 

at all, ever. Still, property records are integral to our political heritage 

and success as a society -- as much as elections, about which we think 

obsessively. Particularly when the United States has attempted to 

export liberty, it has stressed fair and open elections, but it is only just 

beginning to sense the superficiality of democratic edifices constructed 

to pacify the way leaders are picked, but uninformed by the architecture 

used to stabilize rights and duties in everyday life. As the developing 

world perfects its property records, markets and enforcement of real 

property rights, its prospects for peace and prosperity will increase. 

Nevertheless, the assertion here is not so much that real estate maps, 

registries and property courts will bring peace to violent lands. Again, 

the assertion is inverse: If developing countries in conflict do not 

formalize property, electoral democracy will not be sufficient to 

provide long periods of internal peace. The options are few: formalized 

property, violent internal competition, or tyranny. 

 Figure 1 below is a cadastral map showing what was, at the time 

of writing, a nice corner lot owned at one time by Horace Demarest just 

outside the western boundary of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. (A 

cadastre is an inventory of land information, usually based on the 

parcel lot, and matched to a registry of ownership interests.) The lot is 

at 159th Street and Fort Riley Road. The map is a copy of the 

subdivision plat from county records. Any of the readers of this book 

can go to the Leavenworth County courthouse and obtain all this same 

information and more to see if Horace still owns the lot, if he paid his 

taxes, if the area has been changed in some way, what zoning laws 

apply, how much it costs to buy a building permit, etc. (the records in 

Leavenworth County are transparent)

14 All the land has some owner of 

record; there isn’t any “no man’s land” (the records in Leavenworth 

County are comprehensive). Everyone knows pretty much who owns 

 

14 Leavenworth County has a modernization project underway with which it hopes to 

eventually digitize all the county map data and mount it on the Internet. 

16
what, although the details are forever being re-considered, as the 

market for land is fluid. The lines on the plat map shows easements for 

utilities of various types, including a natural gas pipeline, setbacks 

delimiting permissible building areas and so on. Visible on the aerial 

photo is a burden not recorded on the plat; the Department of 

Agriculture did some terracing as a conservation measure, and may 

require that it not be substantially undone. Other local owners got the 

county to disallow overweight vehicles on 159th Street, which might 

pass the property going north toward the military prison. The 

surveyors who created the subdivision plat map are licensed and 

bonded, and Horace bought title insurance (the records in Leavenworth 

County are precise). The chances he would ever have had to defend his 

rights with physical force are remote. He was confident that the law 

enforcement and justice systems in the county were sufficiently aware 

of the meaning of the evidence, sufficiently secure against bribery and 

sufficiently accessible that he could obtain relief in a peaceable way 

from any potential trespasses (the social contract is observed). 

17
Figure 1. Horace’s Old Lot 

From the Leavenworth County GIS Department and the County 

Registrar’s Office 

 It is unlikely that the political or managerial leaders in 

Leavenworth would make a decision to pave the road, change zoning or 

garbage collection without considering the properties affected. This 

isn’t to say local leaders would never violate citizens’ rights if they 

thought they could get away with it on occasion, but the system makes 

it difficult. Horace’s property is a complicated set of rights tied to a 

precisely demarked place on the earth, those rights protected by an 

extensive edifice of laws, regulations and contracts, almost all of which 

are evidenced in written, signed and witnessed documents. Even if the 

federal government wished to expand Fort Leavenworth to the west, it 

18
would have to hurdle a number of legal and political barriers.15

Regarding the “rule of law,” it bears repeating that Horace’s 

rights were evidenced in written, signed and witnessed documents. 

Kansas, like all of the United States, has a Statue of Frauds. A 

jurisprudential inheritance coming from 17th century England, the 

statutes require that in order to be enforced, important agreements must 

be in writing, and that all agreements involving an interest in land are 

important. In other words, if the State is to hold up society’s end of the 

social contract we call property (that is to say, enforce the alleged rights 

of an owner or claimant against some trespass, infringement or denial), 

the agent of the State (perhaps the court) must be shown a written 

document. Acceptance of this standard is so broadly internalized that 

we refer to the document itself as the contract (or maybe we say, “Who 

has the deed to the ranch?”) – no document, no agreement, nothing to 

enforce. In almost every dispute regarding an interest in land, the 

defense lawyer will at the outset invoke the protection of the Statute of 

Frauds when there is no instrument (acceptable writing). 

The purpose of statutes of fraud may be variously stated – to 

avoid a fraud on the court, or to protect people from false allegations of 

having entered into a binding agreement. The aggregate historical 

purpose, however, and what makes the Statutes of Frauds a gem of the 

English-speaking jurisprudential heritage, is broad practical rejection of 

oral evidence of important contracts. This rejection of oral evidence 

serves justice in several ways. For one thing it protects the judicial 

system. To put a court in such a position that it must choose among 

contending stories is to assure that on occasion the party telling the 

truth will loose in spite of the best efforts of judge and jury. In such a 

case, the righteousness of the truth lies with the loser, thus engendering 

 

15 The positive scenario does not deny the worrisome drama of federal “takings” 

issues, usually appearing in environmental cases that have raised the question of 

property out of its century-long slumber. Perhaps best among the readings that put 

US property rights in historical, philosophical and international context is Tom 

Bethel, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages, New York: 

St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 

19
disrespect for the court as well as vigilantism. Moreover, to not 

establish a system that rejects oral evidence is to encourage 

subornation, perjury, bribery, blackmail and extortion. If a system of 

jurisprudence does not generally reject oral evidence, that system 

necessarily fosters dissipation of whatever standard of honest dealing 

the society might otherwise hope to maintain. Perhaps there exist 

societies in which witnesses never lie under oath, and judges are wise 

to all the subtleties of differing stories. Those societies do not need our 

help. 

Broad rejection of oral evidence was a possibility that presented 

itself on the attainment of specific technologies. The written contract 

becomes a norm because of writing, obviously, but also because of 

paper, ink, printing presses, formal education, signatures, notaries, etc. 

The phenomenon of written contracts is not jurisprudential alone -- an 

observation which brings us to yet another useful term, transparency. 

Transparency, as a valued aspect of democratic governance, has gained 

force and favor in recent decades, but it is the same quality as 

embodied in the Statute of Frauds. Transparency evokes the idea that 

government debates, records, decisions and agreements should be 

apparent, visible, available for inspection and so on. Transparency is a 

better word than ‘visible’ in this context because transparency carries 

with it not just a sense of exposure, but of seeing through the evidence 

to the truth of the matter at hand, and it carries as well the notion that 

things be visible not just to a select group, but to everyone. The 

technologies of writing allow that an agreement be manifested in 

visible form. Throw in a photocopier and agreements are made more 

transparent. As each party keeps a copy, another goes to a neutral 

office, and notice is published in the local newspaper, etc. The whole 

effect is to better reject the loss of trust and credit that a system that 

accepts oral evidence can suffer.16

 

16 This is not to suggest that there could ever be an all-or-nothing, oral-vice-written 

evidentiary world divide. The author worked a case involving a forged mortgage 

document, and to prove the document was a forgery had to hire a handwriting expert 

– whose testimony was oral. 

20
Society’s effort to limit fraud is an uphill struggle against a 

clever enemy, but now the Internet offers the latest contribution to 

transparency and to the construction of social trust. Web-based or webavailable records make tampering more easily detectable. Requiring 

that a set of land records be made permanently available on the Internet 

is an extension of the same public policy thinking that led to the 

original Statue of Frauds in the 17th century. It is not just a rejection of 

oral evidence; it is a purposeful march against a human tendency 

toward dishonest dealing. It is the recognition and application of 

technology to make fraud harder, trust in the social contract stronger. 

As the quality of evidence is improved things like collateral, insurance, 

equity, credit and non-violent conflict resolution are the bi-products. 

For our purposes, this one cultural inheritance (the systemic 

impairment of dishonesty) is the central aspect of what we mean when 

we use the words “formal,” ”formality” or “formalize.” Beyond the 

first requirement of writing, formal systems require validated signatures 

and other controls. The goal is a system in which the general standard 

of evidence is raised. Eventually, we approach the condition of res 

ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself). It is a point at which the local 

sheriff can look at the plat map and the signature on the title or deed, 

determine without further requirement that the fence line is in the right 

or wrong place and slap an immediate restraining order on the 

trespasser. 

The importance of stable evidence cannot be overstated when 

speaking of the “rule of law.” If the de facto system of law 

enforcement regarding interests in land is one in which enforcement 

authorities act on logical determinations drawn from formalized 

evidence, then objective enforcement of the rule of law is the norm. If 

the public force regularly imposes decisions based on the oral 

arguments of one claimant versus another (or on corrupted or 

fraudulent documents), the authorities tend to become partisans in 

possession by force. To avoid partisanship, perhaps the appropriate 

authorities simply avoid the question, abrogating the duty of the State 

within the social contract, and leaving resolution of conflicts directly to 

21
the parties. In Leavenworth, the police do not listen to the neighbors 

scream and yell about who should live in one or another trailer (well, 

OK, maybe sometimes they do). Preferably they detain those 

perpetrating violence and let the court enforce the right of quiet 

enjoyment, usually on the basis of the written evidence. 

Conflicts over territory abound, and those not resolvable in civil 

law can quickly escalate to require application of the criminal statutes. 

To the extent solid evidence is made generally and easily available, 

peaceful resolution of conflicts and respect for the system of justice are 

greatly improved. To the extent evidence regarding the ownership of 

land is informal, that which might have been resolved as a civil matter 

inexorably devolves toward criminal. No matter what programs are 

implemented to better train police forces in underdeveloped countries, 

and no matter what efforts are expended to protect the independence, 

physical integrity and legal education of judges; if the system of 

ownership evidence is not formalized, the long-term prospects for 

peaceful resolution of conflict about land is slight. It is one of the great 

unremembered pieces of corporate wisdom that oral evidence is 

undependable, and that its broad acceptance is an encouragement to 

social disorder. Cementing this wisdom in the statutes of fraud is a 

victory of jurisprudential history. For Western countries to 

“professionalize” police and judicial systems in underdeveloped 

countries, but simultaneously fail to implement this piece of civilization 

regarding evidence, is a root cause of repetitive failure. It is a central 

reason why efforts to improve a government’s human rights conduct 

are off-center when focused on criminal law and not on civil law, 

particularly as the latter applies to real estate. The construction of 

systems of reliable evidence is tantamount to preparation of the 

environment for effective adjudication of conflicting claims. This is 

parallel if not equal to what the military intelligence official, faced by 

internal disorder where the conflict over control of land has become 

violent and widespread, would correctly call the intelligence 

preparation of the battlefield. Unfortunately, most American 

intelligence officials, so used to a home where the practical engine of 

conflict information is taken for granted, do not think to address the 

22
laws, bureaucracies and technologies that serve to prepare authorities 

for success in identifying and locating the contestants for power. 

Infinite divisibility of ownership

 Under the system of property concepts generally shared among 

the states of the United States and rooted in English common law, the 

practical ownership of a piece of real estate can be infinitely 

subdivided.17 A “life estate” can be granted that gives certain elements 

of ownership to a person only for the life of that person. A “remainder” 

might be bought or sold that gives rights in the property only after the 

death of the holder of the life estate. Possible subdivisions of the total 

ownership of real estate include the right of current use and enjoyment 

(such as an apartment rental) subsurface mineral rights or an easement 

for running a community sewer line. A “usufruct,” or usufructuary 

right, gives use, enjoyment, and profits from land belonging to 

someone else. All these rights are associated with correlatives and 

opposites. While an apartment renter holds the right to use the 

apartment, the landlord and others have no right to enter without 

consent (or perhaps a search warrant). The law enforcement system 

should be assigned a duty to protect the renters’ rights as well as those 

of the landlord. Potential horrors of landlord-tenant relationships are 

familiar in most jurisdictions, as is the rocky history of landlord-tenant 

laws. 

 

 To illustrate this point, consider a piece of ground on which a 

corporation owns a condominium built in a zoned part of suburban land 

 

17 Almost any law school casebook might do to express this concept to the point of 

pain. The text to which the author was subjected was an earlier edition of the 800-

page text by John Cribbet, Corwin Johnson, Roger Findley, and Ernest Smith, The 

Law of Property: Cases and Materials 8th edition, (Foundation Press: April, 2002); 

For the economist, many of the same dimensions are laid out in that jargon using 11 

pages in Armen A. Alchian and Harold Demsetz, “The Property Right Paradigm,” 

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History, 

pp. 16-27. 

23
controlled by a municipal corporation.18 Assume there are various 

easements on the property (telephone cable, sewer, water and various 

other access easements), there are several taxes being paid and one of 

the condominiums has been turned into a public gym. The title to the 

underground mineral rights is in doubt because the majority 

shareholder in the corporation owning surface rights had sold a deed 

restriction limiting access to the subsurface value, and has since has 

died and bequeathed his shares in the property via a life estate to his 

nephew. Children walk to school over one corner of the property, an 

ancient burial site and some dinosaur fossils can be found under 

another corner, and the lots overlap four state and gerrymandered 

federal voting districts. 

 The division of ownership in many American real estate 

markets is no less complicated than in this Kansas hypothetical. So 

who is the real owner? Who owns the title? ...And so what, if pieces of 

ownership are evidenced in various deeds, contracts for sale, municipal 

codes, wills and court orders? There may be no "real" owner even 

while everyone mentioned is the real owner of some part. Additionally, 

every element of ownership in this complicated web involves more 

than just rights. Each element involves “non-rights” and duties, some 

of which are even less apparent than the ownership rights. The owners 

of the land where the school children walk to school have a duty to 

ensure the children’s’ safety while there. Identifying the owners with 

that specific duty becomes a very important money question for a tort 

lawyer if one of the children were to fall and get hurt. The lawyer will 

identify the appropriate owner based on the injury, and he or she will 

probably start looking for rich owners first. The plaintiffs’ lawyer will 

attempt to convince a judge or a jury to establish an unmet duty. 

Others, with tenuous ownership interests the neighborhood, will have 

non-rights associated with the land as well. For example, a burglar has 

no right to enter the apartments. The State, probably manifested in 

police and prosecutors, will perhaps meet their duty to the apartment 

 

18 The examples offered on this page are adopted from Demarest, Geoffrey. 

Geoproperty: Foreign Affairs, National Security and Property Rights. London: Frank 

Cass, 1998, p.13.

24
dweller’s right to deny access and will try to punish the trespasser. 

More complicated still is the non-right of persons living hundreds of 

miles away to pollute the air with acid rain, which diminishes the value 

of the right to unfettered enjoyment. It is very possible that someone 

would make legal demands respecting this type of non-right. 

Additionally, our example of suburban land is placed in a North 

American common-law jurisdiction. That is to say the tradition of 

decisions and case precedents weighs on the manner in which each 

right might be brought to and considered by the courts. Still, so many 

codes, covenants and local statutes apply that the division of ownership 

or its analysis would not be very different if the location had been set in 

some other Western country with a code-based property law tradition. 

 If someone were to own all the various rights in a piece of land, 

it would be said, under English common law, that the land was owned 

in "fee simple absolute" or that the owner "held the fee". Of course, no 

piece of land is really held in fee these days. The government always 

finds the right to tax, over fly, zone or condemn. The closest a wouldbe total owner can come is to hold a clear title to a remote piece of dirt 

outside any school district or municipality, insured by a reputable and 

solvent title guarantee company. Not many of us want or can afford to 

live on such a plot. If we did, we would find that complete ownership 

of the land still entails some public and private duties. A restraining 

order could be slapped on us at the request of even distant owners if we 

waste the land or despoil it in some way that endangers their lands, 

enjoyment of public lands, or even that endangers some species of 

animal. An owner, unless he is the nuke-armed tyrant king, cannot do 

just anything he wants. 

The community is going to hold some common rights in private 

property no matter how dear a price is paid for the dirt. In addition, the 

worth of land and the measure of its worth in the marketplace are 

intimately related to personal priorities consciously or subconsciously 

assigned to various kinds of rights in land. As we gain a greater control 

of some rights, we find that the value of the property (probably 

reflected in its market price) is very limited in relation to other rights. 

25
In other words, if we escape city water easements, we must dig our own 

well. If we invest in a place as a source of income, we will have a 

different sense of the attractiveness of the market price depending on its 

exposure to shared rights. The hermit and the restaurateur relate to a 

piece of land differently because of the relative importance of distinct, 

definable rights and duties associated with the land. While in 

possession, the hermit will place greatest emphasis on the right to 

exclude access. The potential for expressing and enjoying one type of 

right as opposed to another rests greatly on geographical location as it 

compares to the envisioned use. In deciding if we might buy a specific 

piece of land, the location, price and allowed uses guide our decision -- 

the price and allowed uses in turn having been determined in great part 

by the location. 

 The point will be made that property is not a recognized concept 

in many non-Western cultures. I don’t believe this to be the case, 

although property may be poorly recorded, and the possible distribution 

of rights associated with land more restricted. Moreover, we can apply 

a property-based analytical approach to conflict regardless of the 

varying nature of legal or belief systems. At the root of the definition 

of property is the idea of claims about relationships between persons 

and things – relationships that involve preferences and advantages. If a 

people, whatever the nature of its belief system, makes a competitive 

claim against a rival group or culture, or attends to any competitive 

claims among its members, these are, logically, claims of ownership. 

One may say, for instance, that the belief systems of North American 

Indian tribes were completely distinct from that of the arriving White 

man, and that most Native American belief systems contemplated no 

private ownership of land. However, the Native American belief 

systems obviously included an understanding of land ownership at 

some level. Otherwise, what logical complaint could a Cheyenne have 

made that Sioux were hunting in Cheyenne hunting grounds. What 

argument could the Arapahoe make that land was taken from him by 

the White man? What could be taken away if not rights, at least shared 

rights, to access, use and enjoyment, or to preservation? If it were not 

for a perceived loss, there could be no complaint. For the practical 

26
purpose of examining conflicts--if there is no complaint, there is no 

conflict. Apt consideration of ownership conflict incorporates and 

reconciles potential incompatibilities among diverse systems, but that 

wisdom hardly disables the applicability of property theory.19 The 

notion of property as an infinitely divisible basket of rights and duties 

encompasses any cultural variation. Some perhaps purely Western 

legal jargon appears in the explanation of the model, and as Mr. De 

Soto allows, 

“This is not to say that culture doesn’t count. All people 

in the world have specific preferences, skills, and 

patterns of behavior that can be regarded as cultural. 

The challenge is fathoming which of these traits are 

really ingrained, unchangeable identity of a people and 

which are determined by economic and legal 

constraints....Legal property empowers individuals in 

any culture, and I doubt that property per se directly 

contradicts any major culture.”20

 I would go further than Mr. De Soto to say that property per se

offends no cultural schema, major or otherwise, and that even the less 

venerable cultural traits are not offended by the prospect of identifying 

and formalizing rights. Property statutes, registry systems and real 

estate markets reflect the development of ownership rules with a 

Western cultural stamp, marked by the application of fraud-control 

technologies. While these characteristics may be absent elsewhere, 

why would this suggest that accuracy, precision and transparency in the 

allocation of rights and duties be a disrespectful cultural imposition? 

The scope of personal or private property, forms of tenancy and degree 

of communal ownership will all have their relationship to and influence 

on cultural norms. Unintended consequences of changes in the forms 

 

19 The most vigorous theories of international human rights, as well as most 

geopolitical theories, are Western inventions. It would be picayune to accuse a 

property interpretation of human rights or of geopolitics as being ethnocentric. The 

terms of reference are no more or less universal than the term being questioned. 20 Hernando De Soto, supra, p. 226.

27
of ownerships are, needless to say, a real possibility. Still, the most 

likely cultural characteristics to fall prey to the formalization of 

property, with its demand for precise and visible evidence, will almost 

everywhere be those cultural characteristics serving paternalism, 

concentration of power, impunity, and tendencies toward enslavement. 

While this logic may not be perfect, it is compelling. If interests in 

church lands, royal palaces, matrimonial holdings, or the extensions of 

communal lots such as Mexican ejidos or Israeli kibbutz are mapped, 

registered and published, it rarely works against equity or 

egalitarianism, provided that the descriptions of preferential, shared and 

overlapping rights are precise and comprehensive. “Culture,” at any 

rate, is a soft and absorbent concept, like toilet paper. Much can be 

stuck to it. If as an inherent aspect of a culture we admit and admire 

the absence of writing, and therefore the absence of stable evidence 

regarding agreements within the society, we must accept that the reach 

of justice will be limited by the strength of personal honesty, obedience 

to unwritten social norms, and to quirk. That we might admire such a 

society, if successful in fulfilling human needs and aspirations, goes 

without saying. We would have to prepare ourselves, in such a rare 

circumstance, to face the violence sure to ensue as that little society 

bumps up against anything better armed. 

 Although property regimes pertain to interests other than just 

those associated with real property, we are first aware of struggles 

relating to land. Differences in land ownership practices (culture-toculture and age-to-age) are well documented, but none of that 

documentation supports a conclusion that any of those ownership 

practices are particularly difficult to describe using English 

jurisprudential language. In this age there is little weight in arguments 

claiming that a culture has no room for specificity regarding rights and 

duties, or no capacity to have those rights recorded and preserved. 

Making the division of rights in land explicit and stable through the 

application of available technologies has been the hallmark of peaceful 

and free societies. 

28
 The enthusiastic assertions I’ve made above about formalized 

property are not new, and they indeed carry a potential for ethnocentric 

mistakes in application. As Toby Dodge puts it, 

For British colonial administrators across the Empire, 

property rights were seen as universal and applicable to 

all territories they controlled no matter what the 

superficial differences between them appeared to be. ... 

Although the imposition of European notions of land 

tenure was interpreted by administrators as merely 

codifying what was already in existence, it had 

profoundly transformative effects. By its very nature, 

this system of solidification and homogenization could 

not countenance or even recognize local differences in 

approach to social organization.21

Owners and the reach of identity 

 It is good to have rights precisely expressed and the evidence 

stabilized, but to whom might the carefully divided and recorded rights 

and duties pertain? “Bourgeois means an owner of property. The 

bourgeoisie are all the owners of property taken together. A big 

bourgeois is the owner of big property. A petty bourgeois is the owner 

of small property.”22 If we adopt this definition from Vladimir Lenin 

at face value, then we might say that what we are proposing as an aid 

to peace is the “bourgeoification” of society -- making everyone an 

owner. Indeed, the idea of property supplied here supposes that every 

member of society is already an owner of property, since each person 

holds at least some basic rights regardless of his or her identity, the 

formality of ownership records, or the latitude & longitude where the 

person stands. As noted, just listing all the owners associated with a 

single piece of land can be a task, but beyond the simple identification 

 

21 Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History of 

Denial, (New York: Columbia University Press, 20030 p.105. 22 Simon James, supra p. 18. 

29
of owners is a problem involving the cohesion their identities. In the 

example of the condominium, rights are enjoyed by families that vary 

in their sense of identity, unity of purpose and feelings toward the 

rights and duties they claim and admit. One group may be closed, 

jealously protective of their privacy, and proud of their home, while 

the temporary residents next door might be a tad more gregarious and 

not as proud of their residence. Ownership documents only hint at the 

descriptors and determinants of ownership identity, even while they 

state who the owners supposedly are. The otherwise unrelated parents 

of the children in the suburban real estate example could form a 

powerful class-action argument to protect that single right of access. 

Their appeal might only have to influence a few city council members 

or ward healers who are responsive to a vague sense of equity within 

their electorates. The appeal of the parents could ultimately be 

manifested by a city ordinance, a lawsuit or other court action, or the 

outright purchase of a property right. Owner cohesiveness can be 

strong in relation to even a single specific right, even while no 

cohesiveness exists otherwise. Where there is a solid sense of shared 

ownership, where the "we-ness" is strongly related to a palpable 

property right, it follows that such owners are more likely to express 

and defend the rights they have as a group. 

 The ownership status of individuals can be credited to multiple 

owner identities. One of the parents of the children mentioned in the 

suburban example might fit all of the following groups: mother of 

children who cross that piece of land on their way to school, citizen of 

Lansing, Kansan, Black, immigrant from the Dominican Republic, 

Hispanic, owner of ten shares of Texaco, property tax payer, 

Republican, speedboater, female, Baptist, wife, Irish, short person, 

twin, lefty, kids hockey team representative, mother against drunk 

drivers, and alcoholic. Each descriptor can be matched to a right 

related to land that the mother is variably willing to defend or attempt 

to obtain. As a member of a racial minority she may be fiercely 

opposed to badges of racism. As a mother of school children and payer 

of property taxes, she may be opposed to allowing undocumented 

immigrant Mexicans from attending school in the district, but favorable 

30
toward Hispanic immigration to the state. Other identities may be at 

odds with one another as far as property rights are concerned. For 

instance, she may find it difficult to vote for a proposed ordinance 

against serving alcohol in the county. She is both an alcoholic and a 

member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 

 Which of her identities is momentarily operant? Many of her 

listed identities may be individually less stable or substantive than one 

might think. Almost all of our Kansan’s identities are artificial to some 

degree. Our Kansan, for instance, could look forward to having one of 

her kids play on the hockey team of a nearby Indian tribe. “Because of 

low populations, some tribes accept members with only one qualifying 

grandparent.”23 The need to maintain tribal membership is directly 

linked to legal recognition, which is in turn connected to preferential 

property rights. Our Kansan (until she moves across the river to 

Missouri) can choose which identities apply, and to what intensity she 

decides to pursue a given issue at a given moment. 

 The foregoing paragraphs make it apparent why the emotional 

intensity of ownership claims can be so situation-specific. An 

individual may feel intense group solidarity in relation to competition 

over one right associated with a piece of land, but may feel little sense 

of common identity in respect to another right associated with the same 

land. This is one reason why many analyses of international conflict 

can mislead. They often treat blocks of people and pieces of land in a 

way that does not allow for variable weighting of identities based on 

the specific rights in question. In domestic property adjudications, 

courts focus on specific rights, and plaintiffs’ and defendants’ lawyers 

are attentive to the cohesiveness of identity of all would-be owners. In 

addition, most ownership conflicts involve human characteristics such 

as capriciousness, ambivalence, error and ignorance. Analyses of 

international behavior, especially those that focus on state decisions, 

tend to underplay these human vagaries. 

 

23 Carl Waldman, Atlas of the North American Indian, (New York: Facts on 

File, Inc., 1985), p. 199. 

31
 The above examples tell us that simple cadastral maps would 

hardly be enough to impart an understanding of ownership in any 

sizeable piece of geography, and indeed that is the case. There are 

many other maps, however, that show parts of ownership, such as the 

boundaries of a spoken dialect, a soccer league schedule, telephone 

exchange, or the geographic distribution of an exiled minority or 

diasporas. All bear on ownership identity. Nevertheless, land registries 

and cadastres are the base maps of rights. They reveal (by presence or 

exclusion) the best capitalized, most invested, most accountable, and 

sometimes worst harmed. Where good records do not exist, their 

creation is an opportunity to give visible expression to ownership 

claims and contentions. 

 How finely rights are distinguished, along with how specifically 

the identities of claimants are defined, combine with the precision and 

durability of recording technologies in order to establish clarity of 

allocation (exactness as to who has what). This clarity, which we also 

call the quality of evidence, constitutes one of the three streams of 

inquiry by which we can judge the quality of a property regime. 

Making use of the Evidence 

“There are many things that free-trade does passably. There are 

none which it does absolutely well: for competition is as rife in the 

career of fraudulent practice as in that of real excellence.”24

 John Stuart Mill 

The Court 

Conjoined with the quality of the evidence of ownership is a 

quality less tangible: the internalized presumption on the part of the 

 

24 Simon James, supra p. 81. 

32
government of duties pertaining to it under the social contract. 

Although Leavenworth County extracts a property tax, most of which 

flows to local education and road maintenance, it goes unquestioned 

that the sheriff and court meet a primary responsibility to affirm and 

protect Horace against trespass. This may seem too obvious to 

mention, except that today, in many countries where aid organizations 

attempt to create property, they begin with an argument about 

improving the tax base. By neglecting to emphasize the duty of the 

government rather than the duty of the possessor, these efforts 

implicitly paint the “rule of law” as the power of government, rather 

than as a civilizing agreement the government is obliged to service. 

They fail to establish and underline the government’s duty of conflict 

resolution as the first reason for surveying and registering land. At any 

rate, the example of Leavenworth County, Kansas is offered as a 

springboard -- to place land ownership first in a US context before 

launching toward foreign lands. It recently came to the author’s 

attention that as late as mid-2005 no accurate accounting of people had 

been made in Iraq, that no comprehensive system of individual 

identification had been instituted and that property records were 

formalized in a very small percentage of the country. There is no 

mistaking the direction in which this argument leads: no hope should 

be wasted on the idea that Iraq will become a democratic and peaceful 

land, proofed against the excesses of radical charismatic elements, if 

the time-proven institutions of conflict resolution and control of wealth 

are not established. Unless the society can know who owns what, 

history and logic tell us that there is no hope, despite whatever 

immediate electoral exercise succeeds or whatever piece of physical 

infrastructure gets built. Lawfulness is based on good evidence as 

much as on good rules. 

The Market 

 The process of buying or selling residential property in the 

United States can be exciting, tedious or both, but it is never without 

paperwork. Many of us have experience in the matter, but few have 

33
attached the lessons of that experience to anything remotely concerning 

international peace or counterinsurgency or the like. The 

administrative details of selling a home can seem oppressively 

picayune and legalistic. An agreement to provide a termite inspection, 

a professional appraisal, or title insurance, or that there is no lead paint, 

etc. -- all perhaps toiled before a buyer is even whiffed. But in the 

whole these annoyances reduce and spread risk, and, although the 

balance may be tipped at some point, create a more fluid market by 

reducing the friction of doubt and mistrust. The documents displace 

some of the need to see the thing itself. They become evidence of 

conditions, protecting rights to be gained and lost in the sale. Fraud is 

the constant enemy against which the documents are a hedge. The 

behavior of the sales professional is itself the subject of legal scrutiny 

and inspection, and the representations of an eager salesperson are 

always the subject of potential disagreement. The buyer has a right not 

to be tricked into buying a pig in a poke, and the bank a duty to its 

investors not to be a participant in, or successfully accused of, a fraud. 

 In addition to the reassurances of product quality, however, 

there is a world of expectation regarding the effort to market a 

residence (or business, etc.) and it is upon this effort that the sales 

professional earns or doesn’t what can be a sizeable commission. 

Today, a property owner will likely sign an agreement that his home be 

placed on an electronic multiple-listing service. Finding the exact 

location of an offered property is increasingly a snap, and more-andmore information about taxes, schools and the like is available 

immediately on the Internet to prospective buyers. All this open 

information does not necessarily increase the price that a given house 

will fetch, but in the aggregate the vastly increased speed and distance 

of information about property means that certain rights of ownership 

are given greater effect, greater meaning. After all, if in the meaning of 

‘owner’ we infuse the right to sell, then that right is made whole only if 

a desire to sell can be effectuated. The right to sell is made better if a 

proposal of sale can be made clearly and quickly to a huge audience of 

potential buyers, all with reasonable expectations regarding what they 

might buy. So it is not just access to a quiet-title court that gives 

34
meaning to the owners’ rights. Some rights can only be given meaning 

through access to a functioning market, and what makes that market 

functional are the same qualities of accuracy, comprehensiveness and 

transparency of information that give the property regime strength as a 

conflict resolution mechanism. 

 The relationship of an efficient market in real property to 

general economic and social progress is not the direct subject of this 

book. That relationship has perhaps been best treated by Nobel Prize 

laureate Douglass North.25 To economists like professor North, the 

institution of formalized property owes to an advantage over violence 

in transaction costs, described as follows: 

Transaction costs are the costs of specifying what is being 

exchanged and of enforcing the consequent agreements. In 

economic markets what is being specified (measured) is the 

valuable attributes - the physical and property rights 

dimensions - of goods and services or the performance of 

agents. While measurement can frequently be costly, there 

are some standard criteria: the physical dimensions have 

objective characteristics (size, weight, color, etc.) and the 

property rights dimensions are defined in legal terms. 

Competition also plays a critical role in reducing 

enforcement costs. The judicial system provides coercive 

enforcement. Still, economic markets in the past and 

present are typically imperfect and beset by high 

transaction costs.26

 

25 See generally, Douglass C. North & Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western 

World, A New Economic History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 

26 Douglass C. North. “Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1993,” 

nobelprize.org at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/northlecture.html; see also, as it relates to interstate boundaries, Beth A. Simmons, “Trade 

and Territorial Conflict: International Borders as Institutions,” Paper presented at the 

annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, 

Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mar 17, 2004 Online <.PDF>. 2006-10-05 

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p73352_index.html. 

35
When transaction costs to secure the benefits of rights related to land 

appear too much higher than the private use of force, violence seems is 

a fairly common human economical option. North and Thomas 

expanded their historical observation of this phenomenon, suggestion 

that innovations in property arrangements stem from the need for 

common protection.27 Reinold Noyes’ research on the origin of 

formalized property indicates it was not one of response by a group to 

threats from outsiders, but rather a response within clans to resolve 

internal conflicts.28 The two are reconcilable. North and Thomas were 

observing developments in the Middle Ages, not early Rome, and, in 

any case, much of the difference in perspective lends to imagination 

regarding who is ‘inside’ and who falls ‘outside’ an ownership identity. 

In either case, the construction of formalized property terminology and 

institutions is related to the management of violence and to the growing 

complexity and success of a society. 

Political Action 

 Persons who consider themselves dispossessed, or are otherwise 

disaffected, often seek empowerment in numbers. That is to say, they 

may empower leaders able to define, engage, or exploit a unifying 

claimant identity. Innumerable possibilities for claimant solidarity -- 

race, religion, class, or any of the interests noted in relation to our 

Kansas mom—can attract or grow leaders. Those are successful who 

represent an identity that serves to affect a material change, even if only 

for the leader and only for a moment. Disaffected claimants, a unifying 

identity and effective leadership are standard variables in formulas of 

internal conflict. Since the late eighteenth century, but much 

accelerated since WWII, organizational innovations have strengthened 

this set of variables, especially in relation to claims for possessory 

rights in land. For the sake of efficiency, we can call these innovations 

 

27 See North & Thomas, The Rise of the Western World, note 24, page 19. 28 See note 8. above. 

36
‘socialist activism’ or ‘participatory democracy.’ Attendant 

movements have championed programs labeled land reform, agrarian 

reform or something more radical such as nationalization or 

communization. 

 The relationship that political democracy has to property 

ownership is no mystery, and is an eternal friction. To be property at 

all there must exist a social contract that recognizes preferential rights; 

but how stable is the contract if at any moment a new majority can 

change the government’s end of the bargain? It is the question of 

modern times, of the American and Communist revolutions, of the 

taking laws, and of almost all fights. The answers are essential, too. If 

we hold firm to what we know of the experiences of market economics, 

we see that some folk become richer than others, and that sometimes 

the material winners create dangerous levels of resentment and envy 

among their neighbors. The rich then confront the reality of property... 

that property is an agreement with social authority to recognize 

preferential rights so that the preferential rights don’t have to be 

defended tooth and nail. Those with a larger slice of the ownership pie 

may act indifferently or arrogantly to the perception of unjust 

differentials. The rich may be oblivious to underlying social formulae 

of mass action (steered by creative leaders as well as by the vagaries of 

human emotion) that can cause renegotiation of the social contract. 

Protection of property rights and the status quo is almost synonymous 

with conflict resolution, but only up to some point of tension that is 

marked by ostentatious advantages, at which time the balance of 

equities sometimes passes to those leaders who can mobilize and 

manage political action, maybe in the context of electoral democracy, 

maybe not. We need not be surprised at the tension between 

democracy and property, but we might seek the details of the matter, 

facts we rarely have in any appreciable measure. 

37
Basic Ownership rules

"It should be remembered that the foundation of the social 

contract is property; and its first condition, that everyone 

should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what 

belongs to him." 

 Jean Jacques Rousseau 

Liberality 

 Besides fixing the division of rights associated with things 

(especially land) and then identifying owners of the various rights, we 

must gain understanding of the regimes of rules that allow, disallow, 

protect or delimit those rights. The systems of ownership rules may be 

manifested in formal, written laws or may be expressed in other 

dimensions of belief systems that are more difficult to specify. In the 

examples of United States domestic real estate, rules exist as statutes, 

regulations, ordinances, covenants, deed restrictions, court decisions, 

etc. The rules often influence rights indirectly. Laws requiring 

registration, documentation, signatures and witnesses go to improving 

the quality of evidence, thereby allowing a court or police a greater 

possibility of being decisive, precise, even-handed and efficient. Laws 

that require real estate agents and salespersons to be licensed, trained 

and formally contracted also ease the burden of conflict resolution by 

lessening the possibilities of fraud and negligence in the marketplace of 

rights in land. Electoral laws such as those specifying what size of 

majority is needed on a city council to establish a zoning ordinance, or 

the rules for changing the basic rules of ownership, all weigh heavily 

on the nature of the property regime. 

 The rules that delimit the universe of possible owners, however, 

are generally among the basic distinguishing features of cultural 

variation. While minor cultural traits are rarely offended by the 

prospect of identifying and formalizing rights, questioning the rules 

regarding who may and may not become full owners is nonetheless a 

38
risky enterprise if conflict resolution is the goal. Challenging 

characteristics of a real property regime at its base may constitute the 

most direct cultural confrontation, even while simple formalization of 

property may not. Issues about who can own what indeed challenge the 

essential makeup of many societies. That said, formalizing such 

property regimes bears witness to cultural aspects that, for all the 

tolerance one might have toward another culture, expose what twentyfirst century Western measurement could only classify as unjust. 

 Even within the highly formalized regime of real estate rules in 

advanced economies, broader social influences play in the ownership 

environment for land. If a would-be landlord, even with little 

documented evidence of ownership, gives an eviction order to an 

occupier, and that occupier does leave, the event shows an exercise of 

mutually acknowledged power, if not formal ownership. “Possession,” 

as they say, may still be “ninety percent of the law.” If the power and 

arrogance of the taker are sufficient that others do not care to somehow 

challenge the seizure, or cannot, the new possessor (even having taken 

possession illegally) can eventually become the legal owner. This 

possibility serves as a reminder that legal ownership is related to the 

force necessary to support a claim. It is a fact of acquisition that may 

seem to condemn the entire edifice of records and procedures that we 

are advocating as a civilizing tool. Indeed, the assertion is emphatic 

that without formalized property the less-developed countries have 

little chance of internal peace, but the opposite was not claimed. Just 

because property records are created and courts established does not 

mean that peace or freedom is necessarily secured. A government bent 

on tyranny and control can replace any records with its own, and can 

buy or threaten courts. These events are occurring today in some 

countries that were on their way toward more formalized property 

regimes. 

 This is not a cynical declaration that ‘might makes right,’ but an 

observation that the enjoyment of rights associated with domestic 

property is not perfected without some basis of enforcement. Legal 

ownership, whether by title, contract, deed, government regulation or 

39
court order, can be lost in even the most formalized and maintained 

system of laws if the supposed owners do not assert their ownership in 

some way. In a country where the legal system is less respectable, 

formal legal ownership is more easily lost, often to a tyrannical 

government mechanism, to private interests enjoying the conspiracy of 

the government, or to preventable fraud or negligence. Landlord-tenant 

relations were already mentioned as an example of competing 

ownership problems. In geography with matured legal jurisdiction, if 

the owner of an apartment complex wants a tenant to vacate, the owner 

must follow certain laws, usually statutory. At times it annoys the 

owner that the tenant does not treat him like the possessor, and it 

annoys the tenant that he is not being treated like a full owner. To ease 

the potential for violence in these situations, legislatures try to enact 

precise, comprehensive landlord-tenant laws. In some jurisdictions, the 

laws favor the tenants, while in others the laws help the landlord 

repossess. Always these laws have an effect on market value, the pace 

of market activity and on legal regime itself. Rent ceilings, for 

instance, typically cause black market transactions in selected 

possessory rights, which decreases the level of confidence in the quality 

of sale and purchase, simultaneously lessens respect for the legal 

regime, and consequently diminishes the durability and strength of the 

rights themselves. 

Homelessness 

 A city park serves the common good by providing open space, 

psychological relief from the urban landscape, a place to play outdoors, 

to meet, to bird watch, to breathe. The community of park owners has 

an understood set of rights distinct from the rights they have over their 

apartments or offices (even while the value of these places is greatly 

affected by the value of the common property). These park rights 

amount to easy access to and limited use and enjoyment of a few very 

expensive commodities. With few exceptions, the homeless are kept or 

booted out of city parks because their claims are incongruous with the 

concert of rights normally associated with commonly owned urban real 

40
estate. Lawyers for the homeless may claim on their behalf that they 

must be provided the kinds of rights owned by apartment dwellers, but 

parks are not apartments. To give apartment-like rights to the homeless 

in a park requires that the common property value associated with the 

park’s original intent be greatly diminished, and that all the rules and 

regulations bearing on an apartment be contorted. Do building codes 

matter? And why have rules regarding the number of portapoties at 

Oktoberfest if none are provided for the park-bound homeless? Every 

time the question of homeless care is revisited it confronts a thousand 

pieces of evidence of established and codified rights, the vast majority 

of which came into being as the result of some conflict resolution 

event, or some reasonable resistance against negligence and fraud. 

Regardless of anyone’s theory about the justice or efficacy of private 

property as a concept, the set of palpable, individually identifiable 

rights associated with land continually reproves itself as being subject 

to market forces and generally resistant to insult. When, in the short 

term, political decisions are able to trump the market of property rights 

in order to favor immediately attractive claimants, the regime of rules 

may be disrespected, and possessory violence invited back into the 

society. 

 In Bogotá, Colombia one of the central issues of the latest 

mayoral race was that of public space in the city. Would the incoming 

socialist administration revert to allowing mobile street vendors to 

choke key sidewalks and parks? The answer included political and 

geographic compromise, informal business being allowed to fill certain 

public ways, but not others. This compromise, deft and perhaps 

necessary, may further weaken conformance to and observation of rules 

guiding urban land use and planning. Activists were encouraged to 

work by means of political organization and demand, and not through 

the morass of rules it currently takes to formalize ownership of 

businesses. Efforts to respond to Hernando de Soto’s call to reduce the 

number of steps required to legalize the street vendors’ businesses are 

hampered in the process. Vendors who buck the political organizers’ 

decisions regarding location preferences are rebuffed and disciplined. 

The problem in Bogotá is not to be cured by greatly improving the 

41
cadastre. Bogotá has an excellent cadastral office, but suffers the 

general informality of the property regime in the country of which it is 

the capital. People gravitate to areas where property is better 

formalized. So, if there is no comprehensive national effort at 

formalizing property, even a relatively efficient city will still suffer an 

influx of claimants whose first option in a democracy will be political 

organization for the purpose of forcing improvement in their possessory 

rights. In this manner, the rules of political action, which favor fluid 

claimant identities and redistribution based on democratic force, are 

often at odds with the more bureaucratic rules generally associated with 

formalized property. 

 We noted the economists’ observation that the use of violence 

may have apparent transaction costs below that of engaging formalized 

property institutions. Democratic action can also at times present lower 

transaction costs than the legalities of formalized property. In either 

case, if accession to the system of property is too expensive, even a 

liberal and formal regime may not present an economic decision 

preferable over the use of violence. 

 Imagine a situation in which the numbers of homeless in the 

city park gets out-of-hand due to a natural disaster or because the 

villages in a rural area outside the city are being threatened or even 

pillaged. The homeless population can change character. It may be 

peopled by capable, but desperate individuals whose talents and 

aspirations can be led to challenge the distribution of material benefits. 

A peaceful challenge might be mounted if an electoral democratic 

formula exists and makes economic sense, that is, the cost and speed of 

transaction appears favorable to the homeless’ leaders. Often it does 

not, and the option of extortion and theft present a relative advantage 

sufficient to overcome moral constraints on the use of violence. For the 

well-healed owners in Boulder, Colorado, homelessness means 

balancing moral sensitivity and aesthetic luxury. To owners in many 

cities of the world, homelessness presents a more dangerous set of 

choices. Knowledge of who has homes (and workplaces for that 

matter) is intimately related to who does not. 

42
 From the urban conflict in Medellín, Colombia in the 1990s 

comes an observation about the formation and consolidation of small 

illegal armed groups, such as militias that can grow into larger groups 

of brigands and rebels. In Medellín, where broad geographic factors 

caused a near perfect storm of flash urbanization, numerous infrahuman 

conditions arose as squatters established their flimsy residences. Life 

for many included the travail of sewage disposal. Laziness and 

arrogance on many and increasing occasion led to the flinging of bags 

of human waste onto the shanty roofs of downhill neighbors, and this 

needless to say, angered. Garden hoses were stretched to pirate water 

from more distant public pipes, and then more petty piracies occurred 

as people taped from those lines. The same occurred with the piracy of 

electricity, phone and TV lines. With each tap, the new node of piracy 

required enforcement, organization of greater force and more elaborate 

expressions of territory and extortion. Finally, the costs of violence 

were recognizably higher than formalization of property by the 

constituted government. At that point of cost understanding the 

government had psychological space to act decisively. When it did so, 

it also formalized property rights in the wake of its actions. If it had 

not done so, nothing would have been solved.29

Communism 

 It is at this point then that we mention the ponderous 

psychological weight communist theory has lain against practical 

understanding of land ownership. No body of literature or political 

philosophy has been as influential as Marxism-Leninism in 

confounding the logic of property. Campaigns to concentrate and 

direct the power of loose identities (workers, women, the downtrodden, 

the proletariat) have for a century-and-a-half popularized a false 

distancing of common and private property, excused the sub-rosa 

 

29 For a competent journalistic rendition of this history see generally, Ricardo 

Aricapa, Comuna 13: crónica de una guerra urbana (Borough 13: Cronicle of an 

Urban War), Medellín: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 2005. 

43
private ownership inherent in socialist governance schemes, and 

dismissed the variable and usually positive impact that the market 

sharing of rights in land has on its total worth. 

 The demise of the Soviet Union discredited but did not dispose 

of the manifesto’s influence on economic-developmental logic. Marx 

and Engles attacked “bourgeois property” emphatically, treating the 

notion as a palpable thing of which the proletariat did not have enough, 

and that had to take from the higher classes. Development writers 

continue to treat property as a problem of land distribution between 

classes, the distribution almost always measured in hectares rather than 

market worth. 

Much of the supposed scientific basis of communist theorizing 

derived from assertions regarding the nature of ownership in primitive 

societies and the natural evolutions of the same. Even before the end of 

the nineteenth century, there was sufficient academic exposure of the 

dubious anthropological foundation of Marxist historical scholarship. 

Modern communism finds no precedent in the 

institutions of early society, its conceptions and 

aims are of purely modern origin; and it can 

neither justify them on the ground of conformity 

with original sentiments of justice, nor, on the 

other hand, can be charged with going back to 

barbarism for its theory of rights. The original 

ownership of moveables by communities shews 

[sic] that the early usages of mankind are not 

models for our imitation. If separate property in 

land is contrary to primitive ideas and 

institutions, so is the separate ownership of 

chattels and personality of every description. If 

indeed we ought to revert to common property in 

land because it is primitive, why not also to 

communism in women, if that too can be shewn 

44
[sic] to have been the primitive system?30

It was already too late. The notion that private property was 

ethically and naturally inferior to common property had been offered to 

a world ready to confirm intellectually a revulsion against the human 

greed manifested by flamboyant excesses of private wealth. But the 

nature of man was not evolving away from the sense of security 

inherent in private rights, or from territorial motivation. One of this 

author’s favorite statements on man’s nature as it might apply to real 

property is from Robert Ardrey’s Territorial Imperative: 

“What has been good—or so I believe—about an 

opening inquiry into the role of territory in animal and 

human affairs in that it gives us in the future some place 

to stand. The night may be no less dark, the stars no less 

distant, the human outcome no les uncertain, the voices 

that advise us in forgotten tongues no less 

incomprehensible. But we have made a little place in 

the forest that we may regard as our own. We have 

sniffed about, recognized a few of its potential 

resources, found a hiding place or two that seem secure. 

We have marked out as well as we could the boundaries 

of our new domain and deposited scent on this tree 

trunk, that bush, to inform intruders that someone is 

home. We are predators, of course, and from time to 

time we shall go out looting and raping and raising 

general havoc in the surrounding countryside. There 

will be reprisals, naturally. And that is another reason 

why it will be so good to have some place to stand to 

regard as ours.”31

 

30 Emile de Laveleye (translated from the French by G.R.L. Marriott), Primitive 

Property, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1878). 31 Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal 

Origins of Property and Nations, New York: Antheneum, 1966, p. 352.

45
In the arguments laid out herein, however, the history or anthropology 

of ownership, or the relative validity of competing visions (private 

versus communal) are considered moot points.32 As a practical matter, 

rights are infinitely sub-dividable, some more suitably individual and 

private while others best understood and enjoyed in common. As it 

does with objects such as clothing, cars and food, the marketplace can 

serve as an efficient decision-maker for the distribution of rights in 

land. Central planning regarding real property rights, like central plans 

that tinker with markets for goods and services, suffer unwanted and 

unforeseen consequences. 

 The distinction between private and common property is 

generally not as clear as might be argued by those opposed to or 

favoring one form over the other. For the restaurateur, the system of 

ownership rules now in place in the US holds that the proprietor has no 

right to exclude patrons on the basis of their race. That is to say, 

everyone in the general public has the property right to enter the 

restaurant, whatever his or her race. The decision to use property as a 

restaurant means, as a result of acceptance of or acquiescence to the 

legal regime, that the private right to deny access is delimited. An 

implied invitation to the public creates a public expectation of fairness, 

and that expectation creates a new duty on the part of the restaurateur. 

With the invitation, everyone in the public "owns" a slice of the 

restaurant. Since the cohesive identity of the US public (at least in the 

context of the formal regime of ownership rules) now includes no 

distinction based on race, the correlative duty requires that everyone, 

regardless of race, be served. Note also that this and many other 

interpretations of ownership have not been historically constant, but 

have changed over time. 

 In examples used earlier, mention was made of Indian 

reservation lands. These common properties, belonging as they do to 

collective identities within a larger polity, carry their own set of private 

 

32 On the subject of competing visions, see, Gregory S. Alexander, Commodity & 

Property: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought 1776-1970, 

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997). 

46
ownership problems. Internally, limited private ownership can keep a 

possessor or occupier of a residence from enjoying important elements 

in the set of possible owner rights, such as the right of alienation -- to 

control the disposal of one’s rights in land through sale, gift, testament 

or some other means. In Colombia, for instance, it appears that 

ethnically or tribally-based ownership has been a factor in both 

hindered prosperity and vulnerability to violence. Ownership rights 

and their defense end up being represented through whole-identity 

politics, with small leadership groups becoming targets for genocidal 

threats, extortion, and bribery. 

47
48
Chapter Two: The Globalization of Trespass 

 

Omission and the structure of life............................... 50

Particularization of power ................................. 54 

The spread of law ............................................... 58

Moral asymmetry ............................................... 62 

Enthrall, Extort, Pique ................................................ 65 

Brigandage ......................................................... 65

Insurgency & counterinsurgency ....................... 70

So what.................................................................. ..... ...74

Land worth ......................................................... 75

Human rights ...................................................... 81

Violence and peace ............................................ 92 

Are there threats close-by? ........................................ 100

Cuban upheaval ............................................... 101

So far from God ................................................ 111

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez ................................ 116

Chapter Two: The Globalization of Trespass 

“In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but 

organized brigandage? For, what are the bands of 

brigands but petty kingdoms? They also are groups of 

men, under the rule of a leader, bound together by a 

common agreement, dividing their booty according to a 

settled principle. If this band of criminals, by recruiting 

more criminals, acquires enough power to occupy 

regions, to capture cities, and to subdue whole 

populations, then it can with fuller right assume the title 

of kingdom, which in the public estimation is conferred 

upon it, not by the renunciation of greed, but by the 

increase of impunity. The answer which a captured 

pirate gave to Alexander the Great was perfectly 

49
accurate and correct. When that king asked the man 

what he meant by infesting the sea, he boldly replied: 

‘What you mean by warring on the whole world. I do 

my fighting on a tiny ship, and they call me a pirate; you 

do yours with a large fleet, and they call you a 

Commander.”33 

 St. Augustine, 5th Century Cleric

Omission and the structure of life 

“The life of nations merely repeats, on a larger scale, 

the lives of their component cells; and he who is 

incapable of understanding the mystery, the reactions, 

the laws that determine the movements of the individual, 

can never hope to say anything worth listening to about 

the struggles of nations.” 

 Attributed to Marcel Proust, French Novelist

 To the extent it is a term for something dangerous, 

‘globalization’ refers to an amorphous set of phenomena, spurred by 

technological change, that causes or allows ambitions, aspirations, 

illnesses, foibles, frivolousness and even hate and psychoses to be felt 

at distant, multiple, and often unpredicted points on the globe. 

Globalization and trespass are natural partners, and together replace, in 

21st-century style, the awful but slow four horsemen of the apocalypse, 

or at least their horses. Globalization brings closer to us the dangerous 

behaviors spawned in distant places. Globalization seems to make the 

new threats to security harder to comprehend, and so makes their 

reduction or defeat seem a daunting task. As this chapter extends to a 

global scale the cause that property be made a central concept in the 

 

33 Saint Augustine, The City of God (edited by Vernon J. Bourke and translated by 

Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel J. Honan) (Garden 

City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1958), p. 88. 

50
search for peace and security, it necessarily contemplates the 

correlation between the quality of property regimes and social peace. 

The text proceeds by listing a number of dangers, discussing them in 

property terms. Admittedly, it looks at the world from a United States 

security perspective. This is not to equate absolutely the security of the 

United States with that of every other land, but rather to highlight the 

role of property and property theory in such a way that by extrapolation 

it might be understood as a central component in the security outlook of 

all countries. 

 'Globalization of trespass’ encapsulates for us three broad trends 

that shape the national and global security challenges. These three are 

the particularization of power, the extension of legal regimes 

worldwide, and a resulting increase in moral asymmetry. That is to 

say: The number of identities that can wield power at a distance is ever 

increasing; an array of legal controls on the use of law-abiding power 

also continues to expand; but behaviors guided by this growing body of 

law are over-matched by behaviors that wholly reject the constraints of 

that same law and civility. The three phenomena -- particularization of 

power, growth of national and international legal regimes, and immane 

rejection of the norms prescribed by those regimes -- together create a 

moral gap, a moral asymmetry, between the actions countries such as 

the United States are constrained to take, and those its enemies are 

likely to take.34

 The world of globalizing trespass presented here is one of 

hostile intent and exercised animosity, but globalization of ownership is 

simultaneously one of increasing civilization and opportunity. How 

can we observe the shrinking of the world – the acceleration of 

discovery, ease of individual travel, potential to create complex 

associations and to exchange and publish ideas, or to transmute 

 

34 This is not the same use of ‘asymmetry’ that is sometimes made by military people 

in reference to improvisational or capital-poor tactics, techniques and procedures 

employed by an enemy against a more materially girded foe. A smart fighter will of 

course seek affordable ways to overcome his enemy’s strengths. When has this not 

been the case? 

51
fungible capital from one enterprise into another -- and conclude that 

these are the predicates of an unpredictable and unsafe world? How 

can that be when so many places where these phenomena are most 

operant are predictably peaceable, even boring? Our Kansas property 

owner does not live in a world where violence is the norm. And the 

violence that she does suffer is rarely to be associated with political or 

organized violence beyond the level of local criminal conspiracy. 

It is something else, something missing in the world, which we 

can change. Perhaps the absence of basic conditions of human 

prosperity and fulfillment (human flourishing in the new developmental 

parlance) positively correlates with the geographies were the 

perpetrators of international and transnational crime are grown. Yet we 

really don’t know this to be certain, given that so many terrorists and 

insurgent leaders come from comfortable economic backgrounds. That 

those leaders represent the downtrodden out of some sense of 

responsibility, guilt or moral inspiration is itself a huge leap of faith. 

Nevertheless, to some degree, the failure of societies to meet what the 

National Security Strategy of the United States refers to as the ‘nonnegotiable demands of human dignity’ probably correlates 

geographically and organizationally with behaviors that threaten 

America and its allies.35 Places where basic rights are not observed are 

often places where dangers behaviors are encouraged or overlooked, 

and where the non-rules of moral asymmetry take hold. Governmental 

tyranny and corruption, even while perhaps motivated in isolation from 

any attitude toward America, the West or Western culture, we believe 

contribute to the danger. 

The globalization of trespass is more than the increase of 

enmity or new evil forms. Much of the formula for a dangerous world 

relates to missing elements in the civilizing process -- omissions rather 

 

35 Bush George W., The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 

(Washington, D.C.: The White House, 2002) p. 3. The listed non-negotiable demands 

are the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of 

worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect 

for private property. 

52
than commissions -- on what has not spread globally rather than on 

what has. Law is spreading around the world, but it is a light veneer, 

and it binds only the already civilized who have a stake in the social 

contract that the law reflects. The rule of law as we know it in the 

successful societies of the First World -- the operant, civilizing social 

contract -- is set on formal property, but in most of the world evidence 

of property does not exist or is effectively incomplete. The leaders of 

the Colombian FARC or of Al Qaeda manage considerable wealth and 

defend territory by secrecy and force. If secrecy of ownership were 

unavailable to them, their wealth and sanctuaries exposed, then their 

ability to use violent force would be insufficient to keep them from 

losing power. Such leaders are well aware of that fact. They control 

wealth that has been grown and protected by the social contracts their 

ruthlessness insults, but even while they work and rail against the 

system, they are careful to protect the records and confidentiality of the 

wealth that the system legally assigns to them. Not only can we take 

their wealth away, it will lead us to them. It is their Achilles heel. 

 The sub-sections that follow describe the three aforementioned 

trends that change the nature of our common security challenge: the 

particularization of power, the spread of law, and moral asymmetry. 

These three phenomena do not paint the whole world or the complete 

formula of violent conflict, but they are central to the challenge. 

Presumably the first two will continue to increase, but it is not 

necessary that the third increase as a result. What threatens us is 

described in greater detail by the situation in our Chapter Three case 

study, about Colombia. As new inventions generate new demands they 

give rise to new, commercializable resources -- new objects, ideas and 

places worth fighting over. Basic geography shapes the human 

territorial tendency to prefer local impositions and decision-making to 

those from a distance. As technology shrinks the world and loosens the 

confines of that geography, more and more would-be owners enter the 

bidding over preferential rights everywhere. 

 

 

53
Particularization of power 

Property and power are closely associated, but their distinct 

connotations matter here. Diffusion of property refers to the constant 

re-division and redistribution of rights and duties, while 

particularization of power refers to the greater and greater number of 

individuals and entities that can assert and enforce rights and duties (or 

violate them). Particularization of power refers to the multiple 

concentrations of cohesiveness and the appearance of leadership 

initiative sufficient to translate cohesiveness into resolve. We could 

say with an acceptable degree of imprecision that the particularization 

of power gives practical effect to both resistance against and support to 

the diffusion of ownership claims. 

In Chapter One, we outlined the property ownership and owneridentity of a single Kansan woman. That person can effect her own 

foreign policy, visit countries pretty much as she chooses, write a 

congressman to ask that aid be restricted to a foreign country, send 

money to a special interest group supporting a variety of causes 

overseas, use her Blackberry to send political propaganda around the 

world, invest or withdraw money from a company doing business in a 

given country, publish opinions and recommendations about foreign 

governments, sue in international courts, even become the defense 

minister of a foreign country, all with passing regard for the opinions or 

preferences of her own or any government. If she carries an 

emotionally powerful owner identity, perhaps as an Armenian refugee 

or a Chilean leftist, or especially if she has attained some degree of 

material wealth or artistic renown, she can exert a great deal of 

international influence. If she is a sociopath she may become the 

enemy of a whole nation state and if she has exceptional computing 

skills, even more so. She is the emblem of particularized power. This 

power, good or bad, is one product, evolved alongside physical 

technologies, of political innovations that radically changed the 

possibilities of dividing the ownership pie. America reinvented 

property, allowing a single person to exercise rights as substantial and 

54
far-reaching as those of government. That change has brought its 

unintended consequences, but they can be tamed. 

Aside from the individual there are uncountable kinds of owner 

identities that manifest global policies, some in close coordination with 

nation-state governments, some oblivious to governments, and some in 

diametric opposition. Organizations that deal with finances or 

information have especially powerful foreign policies and these in turn 

attract the participation of individuals and other organizations. In each 

case some person is benefiting from a right to access, use and 

enjoyment, expectation of safety, or profit. The government of the 

United States is not unified within itself in its foreign policy, thus the 

individual company or citizen picks and chooses which government 

foreign policy to support--that of a congressional committee staff 

member, that of the National Security Council, or maybe the foreign 

policy of a federal court. Not only is there no hope of a unified voice 

or a summa potestas in American foreign dealings, there is more and 

more a marketplace for foreign policy in which the government of the 

United States is but a major player. If an item of foreign policy interest 

enjoys a central position on the current administration’s foreign policy 

agenda, the government will be a very important player. There is, 

however, a finite amount of attention that can be given by varsity 

leaders, and when this attention space is occupied, matters fall to the 

second and then third string. With each lowering of the bureaucratic 

level of attention that the executive system can lend to a problem, other 

parts of the government, and influences outside the government, gain a 

greater share of power. 

What is true about the particularization of power and its 

expression in the United States is becoming the truth throughout the 

world, the particularization of power not limited to non-violent or legal 

expression. Within a country, property claims may be mounted via 

labor sectarianism, brigandage, religious cultism or extremism, armed 

insurgency, or any combination thereof. Some of these are what E. J. 

Hobsbawm called primitive or "archaic" forms of organized political 

55
action.36 Writing in the late 1950s, Hobsbawm looked at the political 

motivations and aspirations in what today might be referred to as gray 

area phenomena or “ungovernability.” In 1959, the kinds of movement 

about which Hobsbawm wrote were to remain a secondary academic 

concern while three more decades of Cold War unfolded. If written in 

2004, Hobsbawm’s examples might have included environmental, 

species protection, anti-abortion or anti-cloning activists. 

Technological advancement has lent the possibility of sophistication 

and renown to an ever-increasing number of the types of archaic 

movements that drew Hobsbawm’s attention 30 years ago. The 

intermingling of the legal and non-legal, violent and non-violent 

becomes more and more complex as technology empowers a greater 

number and variety of participants. The mob, for instance, is an 

ownership identity often generated by seemingly limited events, but 

determined by emotions that lend cohesiveness, and by the incapacity 

of other identities to satisfy expectations of ownership. The mob, while 

seemingly ad hoc and immediate, is a phenomenon with political 

longevity and utility that many individuals depend on and draw upon as 

a source of political power. Understanding the long-term political 

power of the mob is necessary to the understanding of the complete 

political calculus of many areas. Hobsbawm makes a convincing 

description of the evolutionary nature of the mob phenomenon, 

showing historical examples of changes from relatively spontaneous 

expression of shared frustrations and opportunism to a more 

sophisticated manipulation of the threat of mob violence for political 

leverage. 

Challenges to a nation-state’s government come increasingly 

from property claimants that are tenuously related or not related at all. 

Most of these operate within the bounds of existing national and 

international laws and ethics. Many, in fact, are dedicated to the 

improvement of legal and moral regimes. Some organizations, such as 

the International Red Cross or Amnesty International, deal with other 

 

36 E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement 

in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1959. 

56
non-governmental organizations and with the highest levels of many 

state governments. These are among thousands of organizations of 

every description that can claim international membership and exert 

partial or wholly independent supranational or transnational influence. 

Banks, because they hold the convertible wealth of many other owner 

identities, are also among the most powerful and least understood nongovernmental actors internationally. Banks can translate the 

cohesiveness of one owner group into support for the project of another 

owner group. They not only can launder money--eliminating the 

connection between cash or commercial paper and the manner of its 

accretion--they can also launder group resolve, using the funds of one 

organization to support the aims of others. 

In property terms, a transnational criminal organization can 

have great power because it can maintain cohesiveness of identity that 

can be translated by effective leadership into resolve for the purpose of 

gaining wealth. It can apply organizational and physical technologies 

to its enterprise and quickly reapply any wealth gained into the business 

of gaining more. The transnational criminal organization depends on 

little population or territory, but is always in the business of gaining 

wealth and can gain wealth at the expense of legally constituted 

ownership systems.37 This fact of 21st century life is alone enough to 

expose the inadequacy of State-oriented defense strategies. At the 

same time, there are no perfectly landless entities. Everything must 

touch ground someplace, even if only in a small computer in a small 

building on a small island. This raises the importance of geographic 

precision in matters of forensics and security strategy. Every 

transnational criminal organization, however agile, is led by humans 

who must sleep someplace and who move money that must be saved 

someplace. These ‘someplaces’ can be found. 

Dangerous individuals and entities thrive within the new 

universe of diffuse ownership and particularized power, and 

 

37 Graham H. Turbiville, Jr., "International Organized Crime and Its Impact on U.S. 

Interests." Prepared for the National Strategy Information Center Conference, 

International Organized Crime, June 1993. 

57
neutralizing them requires an analytical approach unbounded by either 

an obsession with national borders or the taxonomy of ideologies found 

in the encyclopedia. Property theory and property knowledge offers 

such an approach. After all, the scale of danger presented by an 

individual or organization is somehow commensurate with their 

material wealth. Evidence of that material wealth, and of all the places 

that it touches ground, will almost always be available to the diligent 

investigator, and can be used in one way or another to counter 

dangerous behavior. Furthermore, to the extent such evidence does not 

exist, it can be created. 

The spread of law 

 The rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free 

speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious 

and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property – in other words, 

the non-negotiable demands of human dignity -- are not concepts that 

will be easily acknowledged and digested everywhere. In the long run, 

however, resolve in meeting these demands will build a world that is 

less physically dangerous than it is today. Faith in that assertion is 

required. Like it or not, America at the beginning of the twenty-first 

century is striving to contribute optimistically, if aggressively, to the 

structure of life.38 St. Augustine, quoted at the outset of the chapter, 

outlined for us fifteen hundred years ago the strategic dilemma faced by 

the West today: It must not let the world’s criminals acquire power 

enough to subdue populations, but at the same time it must not act in 

 

38 The reference to the structure of life is to a 1943 speech of Franklin Delano 

Roosevelt in which he defended his concept of “Four Freedoms” saying, “We 

concede that these great teachings are not perfectly lived up to today, but I would 

rather be a builder than a wrecker, hoping always that the structure of life is growingnot dying.” Found in Philip Zelikow, “The Transformation of National Security,” 

The National Interest, Spring, 2003, online at 

<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2751/2003_Spring/99377572/p1/article.jhtml?te

rm=%2BNational+%2Bsecurity+%2Bmanagement, taken from an address by 

President Roosevelt delivered in Ottawa in 1943. Zelikow in turn cites Samuel I. 

Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952), p.356. 

58
such a way that it appears no better morally than did Alexander to St. 

Augustine. If the West promotes international law, it cannot 

unwittingly let that law be used as a strategic tool to stop the broad 

promotion of human rights principles. Perhaps the need exists for an 

international body that can prosecute heinous crimes, but emphasis 

might be better placed on civil law institutions, where the underbrush 

of conflicts can be cleared. When everyday rights and duties are 

transparent, and when more courts exist to resolve initial property 

disputes, then we may escape the dilemma. 

 Development of formal property regimes in service of longterm social peace implies development of administrative and civil law. 

In some cases also implies the development of international law. That 

said, there is a notable difference between public international law 

(focused on conflict or human rights) and international law related to 

commerce and what we commonly conceive of as property rights. The 

latter -- development of the international legal regime dealing with 

commerce and property – may be more likely to ease and prevent 

violence than the public international legal efforts that have been 

directly aimed at violence. 

 From unfriendly and unscrupulous pens, international criminal 

law can be a powerful tool in competitive diplomacy, and even 

favoring tyranny and the maintenance of illiberal property systems. 

The most aggressive use of international law threatens not only US 

interests, but also any civilizing development of international law itself. 

International law has a quality and power beyond the written aggregate 

of public and private international statutes, regulations, treaties, 

conventions, and customs we search to find the law. While there is 

sufficient inconsistency within that written body to cause a world of 

conflict, it is the law beyond the writing that disquiets. A defendant’s 

fate in an international court is likely disconnected from written law.39 

 

39 In a recent explanation of domestic American law, Alan Korwin states, “Once you 

cross the line from law-abiding (or unnoticed) to law breaking (or at least charged as 

such), the meaning of the law is a whole new game. Injected into the court system, 

the written law plays only a small role in your fate. Rules of evidence, procedural 

59
International law quickly becomes propaganda, and legal procedure 

gamesmanship. Mention of a few recent trends in public international 

law suffices to outline the danger. The growth of extraterritoriality, or 

erosion of the principle of territorial jurisdiction, is a direct product of 

high profile human rights outrage cases.40 China’s Li Peng, 

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Guatemala’s Rios Montt, Chile’s 

Augusto Pinochet, Israel’s Ariel Sharon, and the United State’s Henry 

Kissinger are among the better-recognized names that have been the 

subject of efforts to extradite and prosecute under the new tolerance for 

assertions of global jurisdiction by local courts. 

Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to challenge or punish 

the misuse of international criminal procedure, and it is 

correspondingly likely that further acceptance of extraterritoriality will 

lead to its use against US and other Western officials, most of whom 

will have less stature and defensive resource than a Mr. Kissinger. In 

order to give prosecutorial reach and administrative agility to the 

concept of global jurisdiction, however, many internationally minded 

jurists promote the development of the International Criminal Court.41 

While the ICC might one day emerge as an important civilizing tool, it 

 

rules, get-tough policies which may be in effect just then – or not, how crowded the 

courts are and with what, deals you can make in the hallways and back rooms (called 

plea bargains), the personalities of the players – from the arresting officer to the 

clerks, to your defense team, if any... the law, what it says, what it means, and how it 

is enforced and interpreted in light of every court precedent currently set, these all 

affect you in concert to comprise “the law.” Alan Korwin, Gun Laws of America

(Phoenix: Bloomfield Press, 1999) p. 6. The truth in this description applies to 

international courts, but multiplied. 

40 See Pat M. Holt, “The push for human rights could hurt Americans,” Christian 

Science Monitor, August 2, 2001 online at 

<http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/durable/2001/08/02/p9s2.htm ; Henry Kissinger, “The 

Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2001. This article can 

be found in its entirety online at 

<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Pitfalls_Univ_Juris_Kis.html. 41 See, for instance, Coalition for the International Criminal Court 

<http://www.iccnow.org/. “The Coalition for the International Criminal Court is a 

network of well over 1,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating for a 

fair, effective and independent International Criminal Court (ICC).”

60
is difficult to see how such a court could meet basic standards of equal 

protection and due process in the face of competitive strategic 

pressures, especially those aimed primarily to counterbalance or 

challenge the United States. 

The hallmark document of public international law, the United 

Nations Charter, has from the moment of its birth been excepted or 

disregarded on hundreds of occasions while respected and enforced on 

only a few. Within the last half decade, the United States government 

has taken decisions in regard to Iraq and other places that admitted a 

distance between the security perspectives of the United States and the 

probability of gaining effective UN support for those perspectives. The 

development of international security law within the UN system is 

presently stagnant, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, at least to the 

extent that “law” is applied aggressively as a strategic tool or as a 

manifestation of generalized anti-Americanism. The disheartening 

violence of Iraq’s climb away from totalitarianism after the takedown 

of the Hussein regime, along with the discrediting intelligence failure in 

regard to weapons of mass destruction, have raised both the underlying 

sentiment of anti-Americanism as well as the energy of international 

jurists who would apply international law specifically to check the 

alleged excesses of the United States. Had the proscriptive suasion of 

international law been empowered by an independent UN budget, the 

UN might have been dangerous rather than just exasperating in its 

opposition to US takedown of the Hussein regime. Whatever one’s 

opinion about the decision of the US to enter Iraq, it is apparent in the 

aftermath that pecuniary interests from within the United Nations could 

have caused it to physically oppose the invasion if it had better 

controlled both the expression and enforcement of international law. It 

is also apparent that nothing about the Saddam Hussein regime merited 

its defense. 

 While public international law related to global security has 

been a relative failure, the march of private or commercial international 

law, as well as the body of international technical regulations, 

continues with positive effect. It is in this realm, as much as in the 

61
context of public international law, that the expansion of formalized 

property systems will find growth. Even as public international law 

and international criminal trials become more politicized and less 

effective as tools of conflict resolution or dissuasion, a universe of 

international commercial rules and regulations interconnects rights and 

obligations globally. Taken as a whole this can be rightly described as 

the development of the international property regime. Surprisingly, 

while executive attention, and that of national intelligence services, is 

keen in regard to the application of international public law and its 

diplomatic and strategic consequences, the complexity and detail of 

private or commercial international law is relegated to unheard 

technical experts. Nevertheless, it is in the realm of private and 

commercial international law that much of the battle over globalization 

will be waged. 

 

Moral asymmetry 

 America’s enemies naturally resort to methods that avoid or 

obviate America’s capital and technological advantages. These 

methods of attack might be called asymmetric in reference to the 

relative absence of physical capital invested in weaponry or operational 

scale. This recognition of capital imbalance is not particularly useful, 

however, once it is realized that underdogs have always everywhere 

depended on cunning and economy to overcome material disadvantage. 

The most dangerous asymmetry is the moral abandon that allows the 

ruthless to act in ways that America and its allies cannot. The West’s 

civilizing standards, its cultural progress in law and behavioral norms 

are what today provide an asymmetric edge to its enemies, but only in 

the short term of violent enterprises. In the longer term, it is the fact of 

civilizing standards and discipline that separates and justifies a culture. 

It would be a shame if, in response to moral asymmetry the West and 

especially the United States were to fall prey to unintended 

consequences. That is, if America’s reaction makes it still more 

vulnerable to the threats it had hoped to avoid. 

62
 Terrorism is not as physically dangerous as the classic threats 

posed by other nation-states, or as constant and likely as organized 

crime. As the name implies, terrorist attacks are intended to inspire 

fear, are a surprise even when expected, and undermine our sense of 

civilization in a way other violence does not. Terror may be the action 

of the weak who decide they must, if they are to be of any 

consequence, seek advantage in ruthlessness. When intermixed in terms 

of sentiment, timing, and logistics with other outlaw conduct, terroriststyle action becomes supremely dangerous. When ruthlessness 

combines with advanced technologies and organization (and even more 

so when sponsored or encouraged by formal state governments) acts of 

terror rise to the stature of a principal threat. 

 If Al Qaeda is the model terrorist organization then terrorism as 

a conceptual category is further complicated. Arab governments may 

have played an abiding role in the establishment of fundamentalist 

Moslem schools around the world, perhaps as a Faustian bargain to 

keep radical violence at a distance, perhaps out of some measure of 

sympathy. It is in these schools that the majority of active Moslem 

terrorist leadership is nurtured and prepared for jihad. Private and 

perhaps public financial support contributed to the elements necessary 

to produce educated, trained, committed radical Imams prepared to 

empower Islam through violence. To the extent that sponsorship of Al 

Qaeda was intended to further state interests (if indeed this is the case) 

then American conceptions of terrorism’s causes, terrorist objectives, 

and the required responses might have to be adjusted accordingly. At a 

pre-Iraq war address to an audience at the National War College, James 

Woolsey seconded an assertion of Johns Hopkins professor Eliot 

Cohen that the US was in the beginnings of World War IV (He 

considers the Cold War to have been WWIII.).42 According to 

Woolsey, the WWIV enemy is a three-headed beast of Islamist Shias, 

 

42 James Woolsey, “World War IV” speech given 16 November 2002, National War 

College, Washington, D.C. See also speech to students at UCLA in 2003, 

< http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/iraq/doc/wwiv.html. 

63
middle-eastern fascists, and Islamist Sunni.43 Woolsey’s construct did 

not damn the Moslem world, but instead specified a targetable selection 

of indocile actors and described why they were worthy of classification 

as enemies. 

 The connection of terrorism to legitimate states, either as a tool 

of state foreign policy or as a side effect of indifference or 

appeasement, presents a mottled area for determinations of friend or 

foe. The United States cannot simply cite Switzerland or Saudi Arabia, 

for instance, as enemies; the US and these countries share wealth and 

find common ground on myriad matters including security. Besides, 

some American citizens have themselves supported Al Qaeda, and 

more the FARC. Public and private worlds are so intermixed, and the 

situations of many of the world’s governments so variegated and 

confused that perfect policy or diplomatic consistency at the national 

level is not possible. Property (sometimes pertaining to individuals, 

sometimes to larger entities) presents a more logical scale of approach 

to the problem of support activities to insurgent, gangster and terror 

organizations. At the property level of analysis, entities can be targeted 

surgically, proportionately and State-to-State diplomacy can be brought 

to bear within the confines of lesser offending identities. Such an 

approach, however, requires precise property knowledge. 

 In northern South America, the nexus between established 

government and terror deserves our worry. Hugo Chavez prized 

Saddam Hussein and prizes Fidel Castro among his friends, presents 

 

43 Woolsey, and by reference, Cohen, may be mistakenly focused on the Middle-East 

as the preeminent danger zone. The threat to Israel is palpable, but the complex 

threats posed from northern South America and the Caribbean are potentially more 

costly to the United States. As in the Middle East, terror groups benefit from 

accessorial behavior on the part of established states. The FARC is a terrorist entity 

under any reasonable definition, and accessorial behavior on the part of the 

Venezuelan government in favor of the FARC is hardly to be doubted.43 The 

Caribbean is also home to a population of radical Islamic Jihadists. Mix these facts 

with the potential political consequences of the Castros’ deterioration, and the nearabroad looks ever-uglier as a source of security challenges. 

64
himself as the ordained leader of socialist revolution and is excitedly 

anti-US.44 His regime will favor and nourish the FARC and FARC 

similars. Assured of sanctuary in Venezuela and Cuba, the FARC 

could become more dangerous to the United States than Al Qaeda. 

Enthrall, Extort, Pique 

[K]idnapping, extortion, bank robbery, and drug 

trafficking—four favorite insurgent activities—are very 

lucrative.45

 US Army Counterinsurgency Manual 

Brigandage 

 Brigandage is evil with social organization and a plan. 

Brigands (or gangsters, organized criminals, thugs, etc) are often the 

master employers of terror and terrorists, and, because they combine 

organizational expertise, aggregated disposable wealth and amorality, 

they are to be feared in direct relation to the destructive capacity of the 

weapons that may come into their hands. Bridging what is a police 

problem and what is military, brigandage straddles the cut-line between 

civilized-but-unlawful and uncivilized behavior.46 As corporate 

 

44 See, Washington Post, “Venezuela's Conscience,” washingtonpost.com, October 

30, 2005; Page B06, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901043.html;Juan Forero, “Chávez 

Restyles Venezuela With '21st-Century Socialism',” New York Times on line, 

October 30, 2005, 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/international/americas/30venezuela.html. 45 Department of the Army. Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Washington, 

D.C.: Department of the Army, 2006, p. 1-11. 

46 Sir Michael Howard recommends the medieval term latrunculi, used to distinguish 

the fight against these common enemies of mankind from wars against legitimus 

hostis or legitimate enemies. Fighting the former required less in terms of 

65
outlaws such as Colombia’s FARC thrive, observers begin to speak of 

ungovernability and failed states, but those characterizations might 

misdirect. It may be that the States in question, Colombia’s, for 

instance, are simply under siege. Physical coercion for profit is wedded 

by the brigand to the timeless political aspiration of avoiding 

government regulation and taxation, and of acquiring impunity for 

criminal acts by any means – best of all by assuming government 

power itself. Governments can become confused or divided by what 

may be seen as a question of “public safety” vice what is “national 

security” and so respond inappropriately. When states fail initially to 

confront organized crime, they risk grave errors of omission -- first 

simple irresponsibility or appeasement, then corruption perhaps, then 

on to criminal negligence -- until the state no longer has the power to 

contain the criminal enterprise. America normally falls victim to 

brigandage when its citizens stray into trouble abroad or because its 

commerce is subject to parasitism (although the history of the strategic 

power of the Sicilian mafia in America is not to be dismissed). Today, 

criminal enterprises have greater and greater global reach, and their 

day-to-day activities, while perhaps not rising to the dramatic level of a 

terrorist event, are of the same character and lead to the same result. 

Far more people have fallen in Colombia (or Nigeria, Thailand and 

other countries) to the piecemeal terrorism of illegal armed groups than 

died in the World Trade Center attack. As for the Colombian FARC, 

the United States government recognized its terrorist character years 

ago, but declined until recently to explicitly help the Colombian 

government defeat it. Over the last decade the FARC has murdered, 

kidnapped and bombed on thousands of occasions, and became too 

powerful to destroy without concerted military effort. It has cloaked 

itself successfully as a revolutionary force engendered and motivated 

by Colombian social injustice. The argument, long since void, 

continues sufficient as a justification for (especially European) 

accommodations to that organization, accommodations sweetened by 

FARC money and anti-American sport. 

 

international law, often more in terms of patience and fortune. “It's not so much war 

it's more like a hunt,” London Times, October 2, 2001. 

66
 When successful, criminal organizations metastasize, 

internationalize, and politicize. They call at first for routine 

compromises of the law, using minor coercion, perhaps justifying 

themselves under a cloak of social rebellion. Their initial presence and 

activity rarely rises to the level of strategy and military response. 

When it does, it is often too late for peaceful cure. Many of these 

organizations plague the world, and as a convenient part of their efforts 

to establish or feign legitimacy they often disparage, or even target, the 

United States. Most of the world’s countries acquiesce or collaborate 

with these outlaw organizations to one degree or another, so US efforts 

to curtail outlaw finances are at times impeded by a lack of political 

will within local governments – either because they fear domestic 

political repercussions, or because they gain directly from the illegal 

enterprise. Others simply disagree with the US view of the nature, 

progress, or virulence of the problem.47

 Today’s greatest outlaws may include outwardly licit 

corporations. What St. Augustine’s pirate captain said to Alexander is 

repeated today by self-assured thugs who ask what other recourse 

besides violence they have if they are to compete with that caliber of 

robber baron exemplified by Enron or WorldCom and legitimized by 

western governments. Therein lays the heart of the argument of the 

anti-globalization movement, and why stridently criminal entities such 

as the FARC have any support at all from the morally attuned. 

Curiously, America is one of the world’s least globalized countries, 

economically speaking.48

 

47 P.7 Terrorist Financing Council on Foreign Relations Maurice Greenberg, chair 

2002; p. 26 “...the Task Force finds that currently existing U.S. and international 

policies, programs, structures, and organizations will be inadequate to assure 

sustained results commensurate with the ongoing threat posed to the national security 

of the United States. Combating terrorist financing must remain a central and 

integrated element of the broader war on terrorism.” 

48 2003 A.T. Kearney/FOREIGN POLICY Magazine Globalization Index, online at 

<http://www.foreignpolicy.com The index measures a country’s global links, 

including foreign direct investment, international travel and Internet servers. Out of a 

total of 62 rated countries, the United States was rated 50th in overall economic 

67
 We might call crimes of strategic magnitude, but that do not 

involve direct use of violence, grand felony. Non-violent crimes such 

as embezzling, distribution and sale of illegal drugs, counterfeiting, 

smuggling, and related business ventures induce ruthless efforts of selfprotection, and are often concurrent with more violent criminality. 

Enron’s collapse would have to be considered a grand felony the scale 

of which has an impact on national security. The explanation of 

Argentina’s early 21st century bankruptcy is varied and complicated, 

but it is no stretch to assert that the Argentine nation fell victim to an 

Enron-type of felonious assault on the value of major Argentine 

firms.49 The felons that produced the Argentine debacle were not 

international terrorists or armed pirates. However, financial felons and 

violent gangsters slouch toward uncomfortable partnerships with each 

other as one set of criminals begins to depend on or extort the other for 

security, financing, and money laundering. Perhaps a harbinger, 

Argentina, as a result of initially non-violent but massively felonious 

behavior, is now more subject to violent criminality than it was only a 

decade years ago. Protection against grand felony requires 

transparency of records, aggressive professional auditing of large firms, 

as well as regulation of trading and accounting practices. 

 Uppermost in America’s response to the growth of grand felony 

is the effort toward business discipline and the promotion of valid 

corporate standards. In the end, the best leadership is leadership by 

example. There may be no other enduring method to mitigate St. 

Augustine’s charges, or to lessen the irony that the synthesis of 

American economic/cultural success (manifested in the multinational 

corporation) creates the antithesis of empowered anti-Americanism 

(manifested in armed, organized criminal mega-business). In the 

shorter term, America cannot act indifferently to the growth of thug 

 

integration, 60th in international trade. Ireland soars in the index as the most 

globalized country in the world.

49 See generally, Andrew Marlatt, Economy of Errors (New York: Random House, 

2002). While a satire, the humor in the section titled “Enron Admits It’s Really 

Argentina.” is valuably disturbing. 

68
organizations. Especially in the Western Hemisphere, where proximity 

to the homeland makes the danger more immediate, the US will 

vigorously assist its allies, militarily and otherwise, to defeat organized 

outlaws. 

 

 The quotation at the beginning of the chapter warns that 

arrogance of a dominant sovereignty can cause it to be considered no 

better than a brigand, at least according to the assertion of Alexander’s 

pirate foe. But the modern twist is of second or third-tier sovereign 

states trading on that accusation while they themselves perpetrate 

complicities with criminal organizations, or even act directly as 

brigands. Add to this the explosion in the number of non-governmental 

and international organizations. Many, often those with the gentlest 

names, are guilty of the same complicity with or enablement of 

criminal organizations and regimes. St. Augustine’s observation is 

flipped on its head and back again. Formalized sovereignties, NGOs or 

international organizations, or any conspiratorial combination can be 

brigand. It is behavior, not organizational genera, that matters in 

calculating the moral necessity of defensive reaction. Analysis of 

threats must not be distracted by the arguments of clever pirates, 

whether they wear an eye patch, a revolutionary armband or a 

presidential sash. 

 States are still the most powerful political entities that can 

organize resources for violence. Most states enjoy unity of command 

and considerable unity of purpose, can implement policies across 

borders, keep secrets to fund the ineffable, marshal manpower, 

expropriate land for military construction, provide sanctuary to others’ 

outlaws, and ally with friend or foe for unworthy purposes. As in the 

case of North Korea, for instance, the factor of conventional force is 

wrapped into conditions of geographic control and influence. North 

Korean infantry divisions threaten the South Korean capital. That 

North Korea might strike at Japanese sovereign territory with nuclear 

weapons is plausible, but that threat underwrites the intimidation that 

North Korea’s conventional divisions generate against South Korea, 

giving North Korea additional military leverage. Conversely, it is 

69
North Korea’s conventional military power that protects its ability to 

pose a nuclear threat. 

 If the Venezuelan national military were to further split in 

response to a growing challenge to the regime of President Hugo 

Chavez; and if some part were to devolve into a force disciplined to 

protect an exclusive Chavez dictatorship; it would likely also harbor 

and encourage the FARC (a charge the Colombian government has 

already made), which would in turn continue to attack the free 

development of regional energy resources, kidnap travelers, expropriate 

land, traffic in illicit drugs, and associate with other international 

terrorist organizations. The US military could be obliged to prepare to 

fight a national army of Venezuela, a contingency that the US, its 

military, and its allies in the region do not and cannot want. 

Venezuela’s formal military power may not seem to present a grave 

challenge to US forces, but there are some who feel the United States 

still has not prepared itself to fight in the full variety of terrains and 

geographies, or the full range of conflict types.50 The US military is 

notoriously reluctant to fight in urban or mountainous areas. Northern 

South America is either heavily populated, mountainous or both. 

Insurgency & counterinsurgency 

"You may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel." 

 Shakespeare's Falstaff on a consequence of civil war 

It might have been better to use a more inclusive term, “internal 

warfare’ as the title to this section. 51 An appreciable literature on the 

 

50 On this point, see for instance, John A. Gentry, “Doomed to Fail: America's Blind 

Faith in Military Technology,” Parameters, Winter 2002-03, pp. 88-103. 51 By the 1980s, "Low Intensity Conflict" (LIC) became the doctrinal container for 

most of whatever was not heavy unit maneuver warfare. LIC was the subject of 

military doctrine writing for more than two decades, but was always an un-favored 

title. "Low intensity" was an appropriate modifier to the extent that the ratio of metal 

70
related subjects exists within which can be traced a body of accepted, if 

dubious, theories as to why there are insurgencies, how they grow and 

how to defeat them. Insurgency is a currently popular term due to its 

use to describe the forces opposing the government of Iraq. It is also 

used to describe the armed leftist guerrilla movement in Colombia. In 

both places the term may be an overstatement. Insurgency suggests 

that to some appreciable degree the population is surging in revolt, but 

in Iraq it seems that much of the violent opposition is a mix of remnant 

Hussein regime supporters and foreign jihadists. In Colombia the term 

insurgent might at one time have been appropriate, but it has been years 

since the principle guerrilla organizations could reasonably claim 

anything more than marginal support from within the Colombian 

civilian population. In Colombia, both the supposedly leftist guerrillas 

and the supposedly rightist paramilitaries are brigands far more than 

they are insurgents. 

 

to men (that is, the relative capital investment in materiel) was lower than in a 

mechanized conventional war (in this sense the idea of LIC and ‘asymmetrical 

warfare’ are almost identical). The overpowering connotation of LIC, however, was 

always one of relative unimportance. But what was low intensity for the United 

States was a question of survival for some directly involved ally--this was the 

common complaint from abroad. Thus the term “LIC” fell on hard times, and was 

ineffectively replaced by Operations Other Than War (OOTW), the latter more 

explicitly encompassing multinational peace operations and disaster relief. The 

newer title proved as debilitating as the old in that it replaced a connotation of 

unimportance to the country with one of irrelevance to the soldier. The term left the 

daily lexicon of the US military when GWAT, or Global War on Terror, took up 

acronymic space after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.

See Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-20, Military Operations in Low 

Intensity Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1990) which 

superseded Field Manual 100-20, Low Intensity Conflict (1981) which superseded 

Field Manual 100-20, Internal Defense and Development (1974); See also Field 

Manual 7-98, Operations in a Low Intensity Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Department 

of the Army, 1992). None of these texts mention property as an issue or focus. They 

address urban environments cursorily and they mention organized crime briefly in the 

context of narcotics trafficking. A 1994 draft of the updated Field Manual 100-20 is 

titled Operations Other Than War, and while it incorporates Peace Operations, it 

maintains much of the Vietnam counter-revolutionary war flavor of its predecessor 

manuals. 

71
A suitable term for the course of action favored by gangsters 

and insurgents or terrorists is might extortionary warfare. Extortion 

supposes an illegitimate demand backed by the credible threat of force. 

The extortion may be strategic or very individual, and is often both. 

The method may be a letter to a local government, a kidnapping or 

bombing, but the term defines violence applied in the absence of war, 

perhaps in the absence of revolutionary strategy, with or without a 

political goal, and regardless of advantageous correlation of forces, 

save that advantage gained by amorality. Extortion is an available 

option for a whole array of identities, and is aided by every advance in 

communications and information technology. It is supremely flexible 

in that some form of violence can be leveraged against almost any 

vulnerability. Successful extortion, as well as resistance to extortion, 

requires detailed knowledge of the wealth to be extorted and where the 

extortionists can most efficiently and safely endanger that wealth. 

Throughout this book there is discussion of three defining 

aspects of internal warfare and two specific technologies which the 

United States has yet to dominate. The three defining aspects are: 1. 

the ability of an insurgent military force to disuniform and ‘disappear’ 

into the civilian population; 2. the essential requirement of the 

insurgent commander to concern him or herself with lines of 

communication; and 3. the need of government armed forces to operate 

within the confines of domestic law. The two pieces of modus 

operandi are the use of the landmine and kidnapping. 

The great military advantages of the West and of the United 

States in particular seem to be the projection of kinetic energy and 

massive logistics. If there is a need that can be met by great physical 

destructive force delivered at great distance, the United States military 

is without doubt in its own league. Because this is so obvious it makes 

the likelihood that enemies will avoid kinetic competition all that much 

greater. Interestingly, the West and in particular the United States has 

another comparative advantage and strength that is appropriate to the 

new universe of threats. That advantage is its organization of rights 

and duties related to wealth. It is an advantage that has previously not 

72
been considered a military one, or for that matter considered at all, but 

nevertheless presents an important advantage in counterinsurgency. 

The fact that an enemy does not maintain outward appearances 

and emblems of combatant or military status requires an approach to 

intelligence more akin to the investigatory methods of domestic police 

detectives. The detective method is greatly enabled by the presence of 

public records, ID cards, finger prints, property records, school 

attendance sheets, and all manner off public preparation of the 

environment to include such ubiquitous phenomena as school bus 

routes, phone books and street signs. 

The essence of strategy for an insurgent leader revolves around 

maintaining safe passage to sanctuary. This is discussed at greater 

length in Chapter Four in the section titled ‘A general whose road 

homeward is cut is ruined.’ The secret for his opponent to finding his 

routes homeward lies in detailed intelligence of geographic behavior, 

and that geographic behavior is often revealed by public documents, 

especially property documents. Any environment where public 

documents reveal relationships between people and places is a going to 

present a less survivable battlefield to the insurgent leader. 

The need of the government armed forces to operate within the 

confines of the law creates a corresponding need for precision in 

finding and fixing individual leaders. The standard of conduct for a 

plaintiff’s lawyer in the United States, if he wants to bring financial 

pain to a prospective defendant, is to have a piece of paper handed to 

that potential defendant appraising him of the action. That high 

standard of locating is possible because of the existence of extensive 

public records. The records make it possible for an average private 

investigator (with some requisite knowledge of local culture) to find all 

but the most clever and secretive individuals. Service of process 

cannot be accomplished with a canon, or can criminal arrests. If a 

military unit regularly goes out on patrol without a precise idea of 

where to find a suspected insurgent, it is safe to say that the level of 

intelligence is still inadequate to meet the conditions of civil law. The 

73
intelligence that the private eye or a policeman has at his or her 

disposal almost never includes data from a remote sensor or overhead 

system. The intelligence that serves process on defendants and arrests 

criminals is almost entirely a combination of local cultural knowledge 

and public records that are analyzed to determine likely whereabouts 

within the confines of law. Property intelligence is exactly suited to 

insurgent situations to the extent that the government continually tries 

to move its behavior in the direction of legal constraint. 

Property information and property-based analyses are more 

naturally suitable to three defining aspects of internal war: legal 

constraint on government forces, the ability of the insurgent to shed 

outward signs of insurgent status, and the need of the insurgent 

commander to avoid a decisive engagement with a physically superior 

government force (also expressed as his need to preserve the security of 

his line of communication for withdrawal). The two modus operandi 

mentioned above as being unsolved challenges for the United States 

military are the employment of IED (Innovative Explosive Devices) 

and kidnapping. Both of these technologies, one mostly physical and 

the other mostly organizational, are being constantly advanced by 

insurgent enemies of the United States and its allies. As to both 

activities, the location and defeat of the insurgent leadership will likely 

be the fastest rout to stopping them. Once again, going back to the 

three defining aspects of insurgent warfare, property intelligence is 

probably the most effective and suitable. 

So What? 

"Mine is better than ours." 

 Benjamin Franklin 

from Poor Richards Almanac

74
Land worth 

 The worth of real estate is determined, according to the old saw, 

by three things – location, location, location. If there are three 

determinants of worth, physical location is actually the least of the 

three – sort of. The first determinant of worth (and market price) is the 

content of the mix of rights purchased and duties shouldered. The price 

of a place is higher if the subsurface rights are included, if there are no 

easements, no lingering leasehold, and so on. So, while the distance to 

a school and the quality of the water certainly influence price, it is a 

mix of rights that we purchase, not just the environment. The other 

remaining determinant of value is the nature and quality of the regime 

of ownership rules. If the rules do not allow the ostensible owner to 

sell or bequeath, then the market value of what is bought and sold is 

likely to be less, all else remaining equal. This idea of buying rights 

goes unstated by the Kansan of our earlier example because property 

rights and rules are taken for granted in Kansas, and so seem to beg the 

question of value entirely. These non-physical ingredients of what 

gives real estate a good price have often been ignored in land reform 

measures, and their neglect has been a cause of failure.52 At the 

beginning of the paragraph an assertion that physical location was the 

least of three determinants of value carried the disclaimer “sort of.” 

That escape was included because the regime of ownership rules guides 

what rights can or cannot be purchased, and so, since the regime of 

rules is usually delimited by a geography with a political name (such as 

Kansas or Leavenworth County or Bogotá or Colombia), it can as well 

be argued that indeed it all boils down to location, location, location. 

 

52 They are likewise ignored in developmental engineering projects. See, for instance, 

George Mason University, Rethinking Institutional Analysis: Interviews with Vincent 

and Elinor Ostrom, (Vienna, Virginia, 2003). Renowned developmental economist 

Elinor Ostrom gives a prime example: “The initial plans for many of the major 

irrigation projects in developing countries focused almost exclusively on engineering 

designs for physical systems and ignored organizational questions. This engineering 

bias leads to neglect of proper incentives. Project engineers, for example, face strong 

pressures to focus on the design of physical works while ignoring social 

infrastructure, and to focus on larger rather than smaller projects. Few engineering 

schools offer any courses on property rights or institutional arrangements. Ibid, p.10. 

75
 The market of property rights is not a zero-sum world. The 

value of rights in land often increases as other rights are relinquished. 

For instance, if visitors enter a restaurant freely, the possibility of 

making a profit from the property increases. By giving up an exclusive 

right to entry, and not enforcing the right to deny access, the value of 

the right to rents increases. We also incur a duty to protect our visitors 

while on the property. A change in the mix of rights and duties 

associated with real estate can increase its value, but only if owners 

wield enough control over the changes to insure that the new mix of 

rights fits their priorities, the market demand for rights and the 

willingness to shoulder duties. In addition, property adjoining the 

restaurant may increase in commercial value, but may decrease in value 

as residential property. In the aggregate, property values can be 

measured by sale prices, taxes assessed, average local insurance 

appraisals, municipal bond ratings, commercial loan rates, stock 

quotations or even the number of tourist visits. Still, value remains a 

personalized concept, and as in any market, a higher price is available 

as a greater number of potential buyers are exposed to a reasonable 

potential for satisfying their preferred use. The recluse might not be 

well compensated by the added income generated by a restaurant. As 

zoning or land use plans reduce the potential uses of a piece of land, the 

potential can, but is not necessarily, reduced. It may be, for instance, 

that in a given area no parcels of less than ten acres may be sold, but 

the area becomes especially attractive to buyers seeking to live on 

gentrified hobby-farms. Or perhaps a warehouse zoning decision 

improves the marketability of an area otherwise unwanted. On the 

other hand, an area that cannot be reached because the road is not safe, 

or where there is simply no information about the value and potential 

price of land will suffer chronically lowered land values. The presence 

of landmine fields near a mountain community is not a positive element 

in most personalized senses of value. On an international scale, a 

country that cannot easily be entered, or from which one cannot freely 

travel, may become similarly hamstrung in terms of the aggregate value 

of its real property. 

76
 In order to understand all the influences that might bear on the 

worth of real estate, and therefore the price of a piece of land, we need 

to do more than list the identities of potential owners and the rights that 

might attract them. We also require a grasp of the cohesiveness of 

identity. It may be more costly to induce a group of existing owners 

who have a strongly cohesive identity to sell or share their ownership 

portions. It may also be harder to get them to meet duties implied by 

their ownership and associated with whatever rights they enjoy. Thus 

an analysis of the value and price of a set of property rights must go 

beyond two-dimensional identification of rights and related "owners." 

The analysis must also consider the nature of the identity of those 

owners. Finally, no strategic understanding of the value of land is 

possible without consideration of relevant aspects of the overall system 

of ownership rules--the market value of a Kansas restaurant will be 

greatly influenced by a pending change in zoning laws, as will the 

value of rural land in Colombia if the legal political authority is willing 

to cede land whole-fee to an armed outlaw group. 

 Almost every law influences the market value of real estate. 

Where the legal emphasis is on protection of tenant rights (and ignoring 

all other market factors) the prices of apartments would logically tend 

to be higher. After all, the value of possession is made greater by the 

greater security provided by the legal regime. It might be supposed, 

then, that the market value of rental property as an income producing 

investment would go down since there would be more risk involved in 

owning the complex. Curiously, given additional protection of the 

tenant by the legal system, the value of the apartment complex as an 

income producer may go up, since the rents may be higher and the 

clientele may, in turn, be more solvent. Of course this depends on 

other market factors. It is possible that the owner of the apartment 

building would see the profitability of his rights increase even after 

what seems an erosion of his rights in favor of the tenants’. The 

landowner has a right to gain income from the rental of other rights. 

That is to say, he receives payment for renting the right to possess 

space in his building. Although he wants to retain the right to eject 

renters because he feels this ensures the collection of his rental income, 

77
the government might limit his right of repossession once the landlordtenant relationship has begun. Government may have bolstered the 

tenant’s claim to exclusive possession, but the value of the landowner’s 

right to rents may have actually gone up with the value of the tenant’s 

possession. This is because prospective tenants may see greater 

security in the apartments as potential homes. The value of ownership 

is often increased for all parties when rights in the property are 

dispersed and shared. Likewise, sharing sovereignty, like dispersing 

rights in domestic real estate, can increase the value of a nation’s 

aggregated property. But this is not necessarily so. Value can be 

decreased when ownership is dispersed too much. 

 Gottfried Dietz, in a compelling statement on the subject, 

argued that eroding respect for private property in favor of common 

property (a result, he claims, of the assaults of socialist philosophy and 

decadent living) is a principal threat to the cause of freedom.53 

Decadence aside, it is good to recount the fuzziness of the boundary 

between what is clearly a private right and what is held in common. A 

private club is an example of shared rights owned in common. The 

club gains value in the counting of its members as much because of the 

sharing of rights as because of the exclusion. It is nevertheless 

important to the value of the whole that within the club the status of 

membership and payment be precise, complete and transparent. 

 So, how does this discussion about the perceived and market 

worth of real estate touch directly on the link between the formality of 

property and social peace or global security? The answer is four-fold: 

First, and least, a side effect of formalizing property is an increased 

likelihood of material prosperity. In the long run, material prosperity 

may indirectly promote peace. Secondly, experience and logic tell us 

that people fight over land, often focusing on supposedly advantageous 

geophysical attributes while oblivious to the nature of property 

institutions and how they conduce greater or lesser real estate worth. 

 

53 See generally, Gottfried Dietze, In Defense of Property, (Chicago: Henry 

Regnery Company, 1963). 

78
Also, every violent insult to human rights (a bomb, for instance) 

influences the market value of a place. Human security can be 

measured to some degree in the market for land. this is especially true 

in select industries -- like tourism. Finally and mostly, the issue of real 

estate worth touches directly on the link between property and peace 

because the institution of property is in essence and has been from the 

beginning a means of conflict resolution. Institutionalized conflict 

resolution based on clear evidence of ownership, along with effective 

mechanisms for giving meaning that evidence, greatly increases the 

worth of real property because the cost of peace is made to be less than 

the cost of violence. 

Since the end of the Cold War, a number of popular books on 

the general subject of property have been published, most dealing with 

the importance of property for attaining general prosperity, or as an 

integral element of a free society.54 The appearance of these titles is in 

some measure attributable to the manner in which the Cold War ended, 

with communism and its criticism of private property discredited. 

Hernando De Soto is perhaps most widely read among those writers 

who identified property development as a key to economic prosperity 

in poorer countries. Mr. De Soto, a Peruvian, has dedicated himself to 

marketing a powerful idea: a country’s institutional and legal 

framework must recognize and protect the value behind ownership if 

there is to be any widespread creation of wealth. Mr. De Soto 

 

54 See, for instance, Gregory S. Alexander, Commodity & Property: Competing 

Visions of Property in American Legal Thought 1776-1970, (Chicago: The 

University of Chicago Press, 1997); Tom Bethel, The Noblest Triumph: Property and 

Prosperity through the Ages, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Geoffrey 

Demarest, Geoproperty: Foreign Affairs, National Security and Property Rights, 

(London: Frank Cass, 1998); J. W. Harris, Property and Justice, (Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1996); Andro Linklater, Measuring America, (New York: Walker Publishing 

Company, 2002); J.E. Penner, The Idea of Property in Law, (Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1997); Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom, (New York: Vintage Books, 

2000); Svetozar Pejovich, The Economic Foundations of Property Rights: Selected 

Readings, (Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1997); John P. Powelson, The Story of 

Land: A World History of Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform, (Cambridge, 

Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1988).

79
convincingly establishes a causal link between formal property and 

material success of the population at large. 

“[M]ost people [in the third world] ...do not have access 

to a legal property rights system that represents their 

assets in a manner that makes them widely transferable 

and fungible, that allows them to be encumbered and 

permits their owners to be held accountable. So long as 

the assets of the majority are not properly documented 

and tracked by a property bureaucracy, they are invisible 

and sterile in the marketplace.”55

There appears to be, however, an obstruction in the intellectual 

path taken by the property writers of the last decade: the link between 

property and security has been greeted as an afterthought. Peace is 

anticipated as a secondary benefit when poverty’s cruel choices become 

less and less a cause of criminal and subversive behavior. It may be 

presumed that widespread economic desperation presents a common 

seedbed for willingness to commit violence; this has long been a staple 

of counterinsurgency theory, although some phenomena argue against 

it. Regardless, the important nexus between the existence of formal 

property and the condition of security is not indirect via prosperity. 

The link between property and security is direct and substantial -- 

greater than the link between property and prosperity. Prosperity, a 

worthy goal in its own right, can be promoted in many countries via the 

development of formal property regimes. This prosperity should have a 

positive effect on the general prospects for peace. Nevertheless, such 

an effect is speculative, while the linkage between property 

formalization and social peace are concrete and often immediate. Mr. 

De Soto, principally concerned with the benefit of formalizing property 

as a measure to defeat poverty, almost recognizes as much. He states, 

Widespread legal property will even help solve one of 

their loudest and most persistent complaints about 

 

55 Hernando De Soto, supra p. 211 

80
expanding urban poor – the need for more “law and 

order.” Civil society in market economies is not simply 

due to greater prosperity. The right to property also 

engenders respect for law.56

 The essential purpose, the historical purpose inherent in the 

process of formalizing property is one of conflict avoidance and 

resolution, as much as it is the creation of capital or of an efficient and 

equitable tax-base -- although the latter has been an attractive motivator 

for a number of governments to partially formalize property. The 

original reason for a definite, public, court-assured demarcation 

between the lands of two would-be owners was to keep them off each 

other’s throats. 

Human rights 

 Pre-WWII scholar Reinold Noyes contributed an elaborate 

observation regarding property as a psychological and linguistic 

concept. Purists have long held property to be merely a concert of 

rights, and Noyes furthered this view with an interpretation of the early 

evolution of Roman legal terminology. According to Noyes, words 

leading to the very ability to consider property as a substantive thing 

were, in the days of the early Republic, descriptors of legal or pre-legal 

court actions. Noyes found that the word property had referred to a 

complaint that an early Roman court would normally be willing to hear. 

In other words, an early Roman might have pleaded, "He hunted where 

only I may hunt, or "he took grain from land where only I may 

harvest." These claims of violated rights were called property, which 

led to the idea of property as a separate class of complaint and then as a 

special class of thing. According to Noyes, prior to the recognition of 

preferential rights in courts, the noun property could not exist to 

encompass legally owned things. Since the vocabulary leading to the 

notion of property as a location or object was legalistic, Noyes 

 

56 de Soto, supra p. 196.

81
discovered, in effect, that the invention of property law came before 

widespread usage of the noun. Furthermore, much of the early 

semantic debate about the property concept revolved around 

fundamental, abstract and prehistoric distinctions between law and 

power, power and right, right and claims. In other words, at some point 

in the Western jurisprudential past, distinctions between human and 

property rights, and the act of asserting them in court, did not exist, or 

at least could not be formally expressed to the court. This 

understanding of the commonality between human rights and property 

is today shared by leading developmental economists. The words of 

Svetozar Pejovich, for instance, could hardly be more to the point. 

“About the right of ownership, I. Fisher said: “A 

property right is the liberty or permit to enjoy benefits of 

wealth while assuming the costs which those benefits 

entail....property rights are not physical things or 

events, but are abstract social relations. A property right 

is not a thing.” (I. Fisher, Elementary Principles of 

Economics, New York: Macmillan, 1923, p. 27) 

Instead, property rights are relations among men that 

arise from the existence of scarce goods and pertain to 

their use. This definition of property rights is consistent 

with Roman law, Karl Marx’s writings, and the new 

institutional (property rights) economics. 

 

 This definition of property rights makes two 

important points. The first is that it is wrong to separate 

human rights from property rights. My right to vote and 

my right to speak on issues are my property rights 

because they define the relationship between myself and 

other people. In other words, the property-rights 

definition applies to all rights of an individual vis-à-vis 

82
other people. The second point derives from the first, in 

that property rights are relations between individuals.”57

From his perspective on the less-than-essential quality of the term 

property, Noyes had concluded that modern legal protections afforded 

to real property could be expanded to include every right associated 

with things in general. In the half-century since Noyes’ treatise was 

published, US courts indeed took the same direction and accepted an 

ever-growing list of theories of protectable rights litigated as property. 

It was a later trend to litigate the violation of human rights as a separate 

category of public action. Developmental economics passed through 

no such period, however, property-as-rights having been all but 

overlooked as a conceptual focus of developmental programs. 

 Under examination, grave violations of human rights, such as 

mass murder, will often be tied to competition over land that has not 

been civilized into a formal property regime. In this sense, human 

rights violations are a final result of a failure to detail, announce and 

enforce property rights. It would be counterproductive to routinize 

horrific crimes and diminish the urgency in confronting them by 

approaching them as property questions. Nevertheless, clashes over 

property are often the object if not the cause of the most serious human 

rights abuses. Many abuses are rooted in competitions for the rights of 

enjoyment and profit associated with land. In many geographies still, 

the human rights challenge is one of measuring not just the extent to 

which property rights are being protected, but the extent to which 

humans are being treated as property. A venerable American 

geopolitician, Theodore Roosevelt, stated, 

 

57 Svetozar Pejovich, The Economics of Property Rights, (Boston: Kluwer Academic 

Publishers, 1990), p. 27; also see generally, Svetozar Pejovich, The Economic 

Foundations of Property Rights: Selected Readings, (Northhampton, MA: Edward 

Elgar, 1997). For a more general primer on the economics of property, see Harold 

Demsetz, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” The American Economic Review, 

Vol. 57, No. 2 Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-ninth Annual Meeting of the 

American Economic Association (May, 1967), pp. 347-359. 

83
"In every civilized society property rights must be 

carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great 

majority of cases, human rights and property rights are 

fundamentally and in the long run, identical; but when it 

clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, 

human rights must have the upper hand; for property 

belongs to man and not man to property."58

Significant historical examples exit of impairments to the property 

rights of collective victim groups.59 These impairments, which have 

included restrictions on professional licensing, divestment and purchase 

of real estate, clothing markings, special naming conventions, marriage 

and intercourse restrictions, off-limits locations or concentrations, 

marking of transactions, special taxes and others. These have been 

specifically established as formal impairments in the social contract as 

to a vulnerable collective identity. Such impairments have preceded 

horrific mass violations of basic human rights and constitute an 

important intelligence indictor of future collective violence. 

 Detractors of property as an ordering concept of society may 

determine their opposition on the basis of self-imposed straw man 

argumentation. Such obstinacy ala Proudhon (that property is theft) 

makes its application as an instrument of reconciliation of rights and 

duties difficult.60 When Proudhon stamped his imprimatur on the 

 

58 Theodoreroosevelt.org, “The Man in the Arena: Citizenship in a Republic” 

(Address delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910), Theodore Roosevelt 

Association Speeches, online at 

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/research/speech%20arena.htm. 

59 On this point, see, Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (New 

York: Holmes & Meier, 1985) pp. 10-11; also, Benjamin Leiberman,. “’How Much 

Worse It Is Than Massacre!’: Turkey, Russia, Serbia, and Macedonia, 1914-1918” 

(Chapter 3) in Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, 

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), pp. 80-117. 

60 P.J. Proudhon. What is Property? (1840). An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and 

Government. Translated by B.R. Tucker, 1876, (New York: Humbold, 1890; New 

York: Dover, 1970; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994). 

84
thinking of generations of anti-capitalists, his own thinking was 

channeled by existing formal definitions of property -- the codes of 

mid-19th century France that gave the concept rigidity and tied it to the 

interests of a small minority of owners.61 Proudhon was not informed 

or not impressed by the revolutionary nature of land surveying and 

marketing that was well under way in the United States.62 Rights in 

land nearing the complete “fee simple absolute” were being sold at 

auction at low prices to whoever had the gumption to homestead or 

speculate. Also, just as Marx had not envisioned the spread ownership 

of common stock, or of trade union bargaining power, Proudhon was 

obviously not engaged by the history of free stock companies that first 

settled New England, and did not foresee the complex and flexible 

interpretations of rights delineated in relation to every kind of thing. 

Much less could he have envisioned the breadth of claims and causes 

that have been successfully championed under property theories, or the 

reach and detail of markets for property rights. Proudhon, however, 

wrote at a time before universal acceptance of the idea that humans 

should be owners, but not themselves property. 

 

61 In Proudhon’s writing, for instance, “The Roman law defined property as the right 

to use and abuse one's own within the limits of the law -- jus utendi et abutendi re 

suâ, guatenus juris ratio patitur. A justification of the word abuse has been 

attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral abuse, but only 

absolute domain. Vain distinction! invented as an excuse for property, and powerless 

against the frenzy of possession, which it neither prevents nor represses. The 

proprietor may, if he chooses, allow his crops to rot under foot; sow his field with 

salt; milk his cows on the sand; change his vineyard into a desert, and use his 

vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not? In the matter of 

property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable. According to the 

Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the Constitution of '93, property is 

"the right to enjoy and dispose at will of one's goods, one's income, and the fruit of 

one's labor and industry. Code Napoléon, article 544: "Property is the right to enjoy 

and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the 

limits prescribed by the laws and regulations Ibid. at p. 43 (electronic text version 

from the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, 

<http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu ." Proudhon, a master of circular argument, defines 

property in such a way as to find it unacceptable. 62 See generally, Andro Linklater, supra note 28. 

85
Nicolas sums up the slave’s position in this way: Being 

endowed with reason...he was inevitably a peculiar 

thing and could, for example, acquire rights for his 

master. But he himself had no rights: he was merely an 

object of rights, like an animal. It was not until the first 

and second centuries AD that any attempt was made to 

regulate the master’s treatment of his slave, and such 

regulation as there was took the same form as our 

regulation for the protection of animals.63

Property’s Roman roots and its principle advocates suffered or 

apologized for the “peculiar” institution of slavery, and so the word 

itself carried subliminally an unspoken and irreconcilable association. 

 When, in recent decades, international defense of human rights 

was targeted at Soviet treatment of its citizens, the elemental 

philosophical differences between the American and Russian 

revolutions were newly bared. A Soviet treatise on international law 

written by Soviet jurist and Marxist ideologue G. I. Tunkin in the early 

1970s is exemplary.64 It was presented as the official Soviet academic 

statement on the principles of international law. Many sections of 

Tunkin’s tome expose ownership as a fundamental sin, and are 

ironically betray the seeds of the Soviet demise. For instance, Tunkin’s 

explanations of the right to self-determination seem tailor-made as 

arguments for the various republics to separate themselves from the 

Soviet Union. More to the point are references to the Soviet theoretic 

understanding of the relationship of the Soviet, as a central 

government, to the rights of its citizens. "Conventions on human rights 

do not grant rights directly to individuals, but establish mutual 

obligations of states to grant such rights to individuals."65 The drift of 

 

63 Peter Birks, New Perspectives on the Roman Law of Property, (Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1989), p. 61, citing Barry Nicolas, Introduction to Roman Law, 3rd. edn., 

Cambridge, 1972, p. 133. 

64 G. I. Tunkin, Theory of International Law translated by William E. Butler, 

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974). 65 Ibid., p. 83.

86
Tunkin’s description, with its rejection of natural rights, exposes the 

Soviet citizen as part of national sovereignty in the same way that cattle 

belong to ranch land. The US Constitution, on the other hand, does not 

grant the citizens of the United States rights. That document is 

intended to protect the citizens of the United States from denial and 

violation of natural rights, including and especially denials and 

violations by the government. To be sure, the Soviet citizen exercised 

rights, even rights recognizable as use and possessory rights in real 

estate, but the Soviet citizen was simultaneously considered an object 

of property rights to be exercised by the State.66

 There is nothing new to the observation that systems of 

ownership can incrementally approach the state of slavery. If we are 

the full owners of our land, we can do what we please on it, including 

speak as we please, worship as we please, or leave. The importance of 

the right to leave property is so obvious when referring to domestic 

property rights that it is disregarded unless forced under pedantic 

analysis. Even a prisoner holds some property rights in "his cell," but it 

would clearly be more valuable to him as property if he could come and 

go as he wished. Internationally, we have seen the value of this right 

reflected in the desperation of peoples whose poverty in the ownership 

of their native lands has led them to dare dangerous escapes. 

 Tunkin’s expression of the Soviet relationship of the individual 

to the state suggests how we can treat human rights in property terms, 

but the link between individual liberties and property rights is already 

scarred into the American cultural experience. Nothing more clearly 

proves the point than the agonizing debate of man as chattel that led to 

 

66 The Chinese are today struggling with similar issues, and seem to be seeking an uncommunist path. See generally, Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One 

Hundred Eighth Congress, First Session, Ownership With Chinese Characteristics: 

Private Property Rights and Land Reform in the People’s Republic of China, 

(Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003); Li Li, “China entering 

era of enlightenment for property rights,” Beijing Portal, online at 

<http://www.beijingportal.com.cn/7838/2005/07/25/210; Cao Desheng, “Court Rules 

on Property rights,” China Daily, online at 

<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/25/c. 

87
the American Civil War. Few understood better than Abraham Lincoln 

the continuous weave of property and human rights. Lincoln himself 

equivocated over interpretation of the constitution’s respect for private 

property and the "peculiar institution" that allowed treatment as 

property of beings supposedly endowed by the creator with the right to 

liberty.67 It is useful to remember that black slaves were held often 

enough by other Blacks or by Indians.68 More than a historical 

curiosity, ownership of Blacks by other Blacks shows that the 

acceptance of property rights as defined by the regime of property laws 

had consumed recognition of human rights as argued by the nature of 

humanity. The point is that civil or human rights have often been 

organized and understood intuitively as property. Basic human rights 

concepts can be placed on the same plane of analysis as other rights 

associated with ownership. The historical references are not 

comfortable ones, but it is instructive in some situations to highlight 

human status in property terms. The 14th Amendment to the United 

States Constitution, ratified in 1868, not only prohibits that any State 

"deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of 

 

67 See Noah Brooks, Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American 

Slavery (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1898). "Not at once did he throw in 

his fortunes with those who were to be the leaders of the new Free Soil party. 

He always moved slowly and with deliberation that deceived many and 

annoyed not a few. They thought him too slow, over-cautious, even waiting 

to see which was to be the winning side.. . . But the time came when he took 

his final stand and declared that he must thenceforth be the champion of 

freedom against slavery..." Ibid., 152; See also Robert W. Johannsen, 

Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge, 

Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). 68 See Annie Heloise Abel, The American Indian as American Slaveholder 

and Secessionist, (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clarke Company, 1914). "With 

them (Indians who had been transplanted to lands south of the Mason-Dixon 

line) it had been a familiar institution long before the time of their exile. In 

their native haunts they had had negro slaves as had had the whites and 

removal had made no difference to them in that particular. Since the 

beginning of the century refuge to fugitives and confusion of ownership had 

been occasions for frequent quarrel between them and the citizens of the 

Southern states." Ibid, p.22.

88
law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of 

the laws," the writers of the amendment felt it necessary to specify that 

financial claims for the loss or emancipation of any slave were illegal 

and void. 

 

 The subject of human rights is omnipresent in US foreign 

policy. It invites constant accusation of hypocrisy and challenges the 

comfort of consistency. In one form or another, United States foreign 

policy has always been conducted in light of or in spite of a hefty 

measure of human rights content. Winston Churchill, anticipating the 

entry of the United States into WWII and appreciating Roosevelt’s 

efforts to support Britain logistically, states the case: 

...[I]n the long run—believe me , for I know—the 

action of the United States will be dictated, not by 

methodical calculations of profit and loss, but by moral 

sentiment, and by that gleaming flash of resolve which 

lifts the hearts of men and nations, and springs from the 

spiritual foundations of human life itself.69

Specific use of the term "human rights," and integration of the term into 

policy has been more recent phenomena. Property rights have not seen 

such a fashion. The moral complaints of communist theorists 

precluded and sullied discussion of rights in property terms. 

 It is safe to say that human rights performance has always 

figured as an element of the United States’ relationships with other 

lands. Violations of human rights most decried by our government, or 

by private citizens working through non-governmental organizations, 

include lack of habeas corpus, torture, organized rape, extrajudicial 

execution, forced exile, disenfranchisement, and genocide. Less 

heinous, but more typically practiced abuses abound, and these can be 

usefully described in property terms. An exclusionary government 

 

69 Winston Churchill, The Great Republic: A History of America, (New York: 

Random House, 2000) p. 599. 

89
might exercise property ownership in disregard of what should be the 

ownership rights of populations within its geographic reach. A 

government can represent the ownership arrogance of the majority of 

citizens against a minority population or against another nation. In 

other cases the government is unable or unwilling to enforce the 

property rights of citizens that do identify with it. The combinations of 

dysfunction are many, and each can be detailed in terms of three 

elements: 1, lack of acceptable evidence delineating rights, duties and 

the identity of owners; 2, incapacity of owners (or claimants) and the 

government to act on conclusions drawn from the evidence; and 3, 

exclusionary conditions in the basic rules delimiting the social contract. 

Any situation involving the violation of human rights could be 

expressed in ownership terms, but with reference to the most serious 

violations, the use of property terminology might sterilize descriptions. 

At that point, the utility of a property-based description of events, 

conflicts and institutional shortcomings might be exceeded. What is 

perhaps most important in defending broad attention to property rights 

in the analysis of national and international security affairs is 

observation of the close linkage between denied property rights and 

evolution of basic human rights abuses. That said, and if an easy 

distinction between human rights and property rights is comforting, it 

seems that in general people accept the proposition that the protection 

of a property right be made to depend on expression of the right in a 

document. A human right should not require expression in a document. 

 Concern about human rights inspires or modifies United States 

foreign policy almost daily. The human rights performance of a small 

country’s government may come to decide the likelihood of United 

States financial, diplomatic or military assistance. Violations of rights, 

duly publicized, can become the most important reason for involvement 

of American forces in areas otherwise lacking strategic interest for the 

United States. Within this context of moral luxury, the failure to 

acknowledge powerful relationships between human rights and 

property ownership forces human rights abuse into a category of 

interest apart from standard policy. Not all violations of human rights 

are as morally gripping as governmentally-sponsored mass rape or the 

90
organized disappearance of dissidents. The right to do business on 

equal terms, or to expect that the natural environment will not be 

abused, or a patent respected are all ownership rights. They do not 

have the same psychological urgency as rights associated with the 

physical integrity of a person. Like all rights, they are associated for 

policy purposes with geographies, group identities, and systems of 

ownership rules. The United States government created policy 

positions on the treatment of dissidents "in the Soviet Union," or the 

alleged abuse of Palestinians "in Israel," or the cause of majority rule 

"in South Africa." Policy, and any military force imputed to back it, 

will have a geographic reference, and usually an explicit or implicit 

reference to owner groups. They will also be made in the context of 

some kind of system of ownership rules (also at times explicit, at times 

not). Observers can find what appear as inconsistencies, partiality, or 

even hypocrisy in the application of human rights standards in many 

countries’ foreign policies. But when we define basic human rights 

together with rights more commonly interpreted as property rights, we 

can more easily identify and reconcile strategic priorities. Perhaps 

more importantly, human rights abuses, like international wars, can all 

be traced back to property conflicts. If we establish the system for 

settling property conflicts we will go a long way toward obviating the 

course taken toward violence. 

 Agreeing with Teddy Roosevelt that human rights and property 

rights are fundamentally and in the long run, identical, and that 

property belongs to man and not man to property, I believe a practical, 

operational difference will become clearer and clearer. In successful 

societies, there is no valuable tangible property without a written 

instrument. That is the result of the statutes of fraud and their rejection 

of oral evidence. If the evidence is not perfected to the satisfaction of 

whatever type of court exists, the right barely exists in practical terms. 

That is the logical consequence of the right being a product of the 

social contract. Meanwhile, there are some rights, at least according to 

those streams of philosophy arguing natural or God-given rights, that 

don’t stem from human agreement, or that at least do not depend on the 

existence of any written evidence (a fact that would require a human 

91
agreement). The difference can be sorely tested at the edges of 

semantic logic, but as a practical matter, and for the assertion of this 

book, preferential rights in land require formal evidence. The 

individual right to physical integrity does not. 

Violence and Peace 

So why is the legalistic organization of real estate ever a 

military concern? Answering this question is tricky, given that the 

connection is at once unintuitive and obvious. Taking and holding 

terrain is an essential vocation of the military commander about which 

no convincing is needed. At the same time, the existence of cadastral 

records presupposes the rule of law, while military operations are, in 

the ideal, conducted beyond the confines of domestic law. Therein lays 

the nub of the matter. When the soldier is called upon to confront 

something less than the raw taking of terrain from a uniformed foreign 

enemy, there is always a bit of an identity problem. He is being asked 

to delve into matters of a police nature, or within that band of 

incomplete governance where society is not quite policed, and where 

the enemy is hard to define, and so is the law. The soldier will be torn 

between a desire to define his environment in such a way that his supralegal mission and training are more applicable (to close with and 

destroy an enemy, and to take and hold terrain for that purpose) or to 

create the conditions of governability that would make his services no 

longer necessary. Enroute to the condition of the rule of law, which 

would allow the soldier to retire from the field, is development of a set 

of civilizing institutions. The property regime is so fundamental an 

institution that not creating it means never to supersede the condition 

that makes the presence of the soldier necessary. Bluntly, in a place 

such as Iraq or Haiti, if the occupying forces do not establish Westernstyle property regimes, those forces will not be able to leave without 

the polity devolving back toward warlordism and tyranny. The military 

commander easily handles the notion that he build roads and run 

hospitals during his occupation, but this owes as much as anything to 

the presence of engineers and doctors within his command. A savvier 

92
leader sees the central importance of establishing property courts and 

the evidence they must have in order to function well. Providentially, 

the evidence that the property court needs in order to function as a 

conflict resolution mechanism can also provide some of the best 

intelligence for defeating the kind of armed foe that bedevils the 

military in insurgency-type environments. 

At the time these paragraphs were being written, the 

international news media reported the arrest of Dorothy Stang, a 

catholic nun and naturalized Brazilian of American birth working for 

years in support of indigenous rights in the Amazon region.70 As the 

news media put it, she had complained that the Brazilian government 

was not doing enough to stop land-related violence. Sister Stang was 

apparently murdered for having been a partisan activist in an on-going 

land dispute. According to the reports, Brazilian troops were being sent 

to the region to help track down the missionary's killers. Meanwhile, in 

Plateau State, Nigeria, in a clash between Muslims and Christians (in 

which tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands 

displaced) the visible and inciting questions of ethnicity and religion 

are secondary. The central object of this violence, grown well beyond 

the possibilities of police control, has been real estate.71 A look at the 

Muslim-Christian conflict in Mindanao shows similar land disputes at 

the source of the conflict, although in Mindanao land acquisition and 

denial may be more of a strategy in service to ethnic conflict.72 From 

the US Department of State Background Note on Lebanon we find the 

following: 

“Palestinian refugees, predominantly Sunni 

Muslims, whose numbers are estimated at between 

 

70 BBC News World Edition, “Brazil charges nun murder suspect,” Monday, 21 

February, 2005 at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4280919.stm. 

71 Mark Doyle, “Poverty behind Nigeria’s violence,” BBC News World Edition, May 

19, 2004 online at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3730109.stm. 72 See, for instance, Keith Bacongco, “Mindanao Land Dispute: Lumad selling 

CLOSAs to recruit more allies,” Cyberdyaryo, online at 

<http://www.cyberdyaryo.com/features/f2001_0801_02.htm.

93
200,000-400,000, are not active on the domestic 

political scene. Nonetheless, they constitute an 

important minority whose naturalization/settlement in 

Lebanon is vigorously opposed by most Lebanese, who 

see them as a threat to Lebanon's delicate confessional 

balance. During 2002, parliament enacted legislation 

banning Palestinians from owning property in 

Lebanon.”73

It doesn’t take five minutes research to find real property at the 

center of conflict almost anywhere, from the scale of a single murdered 

woman to the scope of national constitutions. It is usually easy to 

understand the why of violence, once details regarding the distribution 

of property rights are known. So it should be a wonder why any leader 

assigned the task of dealing in any way with almost any human conflict 

would not want to be appraised of the details of land disputes. Those 

details are best understood where the evidence of property ownership 

has been carefully compiled and exposed. 

Violence can be usefully studied through a property lens, 

divided into parts that match the three streams of inquiry regarding the 

quality of the property system, or regime (evidence, capacity to act on 

the evidence, and basic rules of participation). One stream attempts to 

match claimant identities as closely as possible with the specific rights 

and duties over which violence occurs, another considers the practical 

exercise of ownership rights and the reasons why violence was deemed 

by someone necessary or preferable; and the third considers the basic 

rules of ownership bearing on the violence and its outcome.74

 

73 US Department of State, Background Note: Lebanon, online at 

<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35833.htm. 

74 To an extent, this formula is inspired by a standard law school class material dating 

back at least to the writings of Yale Property Professor Wesley Hohfeld. See, in this 

regard, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied to 

Judicial Reasoning, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919) reissued 1964. Also 

reprinted in Edward Allen Kent, ed. Law and Philosophy: Readings in Legal 

Philosophy (New York: Meridith Corporation, 1970). See, however, J. W. Harris, 

94
 Comments in the literature about the relationship between 

ownership regimes and conflict run the cultural gamut.75 Of special 

note is University of Colorado Economist John Powelson’s The Story 

of Land.

76 Powelson surveyed the history of land tenure and reform, 

and proffers the hypothesis that, 

“customary land tenure, non-literate society, trend 

migrations, slavery, and continuous warfare (conflicts 

not expected to be resolved) all go together; they 

contrast with fixed tenure (land registration), literacy 

(written contract) settled existence, free wage labor, 

periodic peace, and the expectation that contracts will 

end.”77

Powelson has been under-recognized, considering the originality of his 

research, its careful exposition, and, coming as it did in 1988, the 

intellectual self-confidence of championing property as an ally of 

civilization and peace. His observation, modestly presented by a 

scholar not familiar with military strategy or the practice of property 

law, need not have been so timid except perhaps for the ideological 

norms of the day. His exposition of historical correlation between 

formal property regimes and periods of peace matches the original 

purposes of property creation, and the obvious logic of possession by 

force vs. occupation by rule of law. Admittedly, there is somewhat of a 

leap from Powelson’s carefully disclaimed “bold hypothesis” that 

peace correlates with fixed tenure, to the assertion that without formal 

property peace cannot last. But the implications of the assertion 

 

Property and Justice, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p. 120 for a critique of 

Hohfeldian analysis. 

75 On this point see, Rose, Carol M. Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, 

Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. 

76 John P. Powelson, The Story of Land: A World History of Land Tenure 

and Agrarian Reform, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land 

Policy, 1988).

77 Ibid, p. 308. 

95
demand further investigation into the correlation that Powelson 

announced. As well, the experience of domestic property law as a 

conflict resolution enterprise, and the constant outbreaks of land 

struggles in countries suffering internal violence and war suggest that 

the correlation be presumed – that the burden of proof be shifted to 

those who might name any large group of people having lived in 

democratic peace without formal property. 

 Powelson further hypothesizes that, “negotiation and 

compromise are a last resort, to be employed only when war and 

conquest have failed over centuries and only when land shortage 

prevents enemies from escaping each other any more....”78 To this 

observation something must be added: The amount of land in the 

world may be all but fixed, but the amount of property worldwide, 

brought about mainly by innovation, is constantly increasing. Real 

property, understood as the set of rights and duties associated with 

places, is constantly rearranged and re-divided. Moreover, as new 

discoveries are made, the monetary value of different parts of the 

natural environment changes. Until molybdenum was a useful 

mineral, it was not a contested natural resource, and the places of its 

extraction not the object of conflict. Inventions, and the increase in 

property they entail, are as much a cause of conflict as are shortages of 

foodstuffs or farmland. Powelson’s hypothesis about land shortage is 

made in the context of an historical survey, mostly of rural land 

questions. But technological change has a marked effect on the relative 

value of one piece of land vs. another, such changes invariably bringing 

new conflict that must be resolved. A small community of 

developmental economists has begun to identify the powerful nexus 

between underdeveloped property and failing prospects for peace.79 

 

78 Ibid, p. 310. 

79 Leading this group is Karol Boudreaux, “What's Missing in the Darfur Debate: 

Addressing Property Rights Could Help Bring Peace,” IREN Newsletter, Nairobi, 

Kenya, September, 2004, online at 

< http://www.mercatus.org/article.php/877.html; “Property rights: a key to 

development,” Moneyweb, June 15, 2005, online at 

<http://www.mercatus.org/article.php/1407.html;“Property holds Africa’s answer,” 

96
 In Colombia, tension has existed for centuries between smallextension agriculturalists and great landowners.80 Meanwhile, more 

violent competitions over comercializable natural resources erupted in 

relation to inventions and fashions taking place outside Colombia, 

unrelated to population pressures inside it. This point in no way 

opposes Powelson’s broader hypothesis. A formalized property system 

offers a better chance of resolving conflicts brought on by land 

shortages, as well as those brought on by technological change. 

 Powelson makes another hypothesis that is relevant here: 

...that economic development requires a culture in 

which individuals and corporate bodies are clearly 

bounded and identified; in which rights, duties, and 

obligations with respect to property, also well defined, 

are clearly assigned to those individuals and corporate 

bodies, including the state; and where the distribution of 

rights and resources is not unduly concentrated in any of 

these bodies, including the state.81

 Avoiding the excessive concentration of power (supposing that 

power and property have an especially rigid correlation) was a purpose 

of the authors of the US constitution, and a column of America’s 

democratic heritage.82 Excessive concentration of power is also a 

constant critique made against developing societies where political 

violence is commonplace. It is out of fashion to rate cultures as more 

 

Moneyweb, September 23, 2005, online at 

<http://www.mercatus.org/article.php/1408.html; Karol Boudreaux is a Senior Fellow 

at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

80 On this point see generally Catherine LeGrand, Frontier expansion and peasant 

protest in Colombia, 1850-1936, (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 

1986). 

81 Ibid, p. 312. 

82 The term democracy is found in three of the eighty-five essays making up the 

famed Federalist Papers; property is mentioned and discussed in twenty-four.

97
or less primitive or advanced, but the cultural progress to which 

Powelson refers is a degree of civilization. Civilizations are advanced 

that order and protect property rights, and that devise against 

concentrations of power. To remain civilized, and to remain in being, 

the regime of property ownership must be able to cope with changes 

brought about by three simultaneous and interrelated trends. The first 

two are environmental change and population growth, and the third is 

technological advancement. The importance of all three lies in the 

stress put on the ability of regimes of property ownership to peacefully 

reconcile competing claims. The linkages between property and peace, 

furthermore, are not macro only, but have thousands of specific, 

palpable and realizable tactical expressions known intimately by the 

county judge, local police officer, residential developer, town mayor or 

property attorney. Clearing the underbrush of social conflict is the 

aggregate accomplishment of all these players. It is a routine in 

successful societies, lubricated by the stable evidence of millions of 

property records allowing liberal democracies to function peacefully. It 

is a routine grown from necessity, aided by jurisprudential heritage. 

The heritage, however, is often drawn upon only after economic 

necessity tests the quality of law in the realm of raw property 

competition. Few economic studies deal directly with the relationship 

of real estate and violence. One relevant exception is a study of the 

California Gold Rush. From his study of that history economist John 

Umbeck concluded that... 

“Whenever a group of individuals agrees to some 

system by which exclusive rights to scarce resources 

will be rationed, they are implicitly agreeing not to use 

violence. Yet this contract must provide for the use of 

violence to punish any member who does not follow the 

rules and maintain the rights of members against attacks 

from nonmembers. If the group is not willing or able to 

use violence in either of these two situations, their 

property rights over resources will be lost to those who 

are. Ultimately, all exclusive rights are based on the 

threat or the use of violence. [italicized original] Even 

98
the individual who has the exclusive rights to coconuts 

because he is the only one who can climb the tree may 

lose these rights if he cannot keep others from chopping 

down the tree for firewood. 

 This unique characteristic of violence places an 

important constraint upon individuals who enter into a 

contract that specifies the initial distribution of property 

rights. No individual would be willing to accept a 

contract in which he was assigned property rights of less 

value than he could obtain by personal violence.”83

 In this book’s appendix we offer a design for measuring the 

relative quality of real property regimes in places around the world. 

This is not the same as comparing the market value of real estate, 

although we might suppose that the quality of the property system 

would correlate positively with market value. Nevertheless, so as to 

not put the cart before the horse, we don’t look to the value (or the 

prices) of land as a measure of the quality of the property regime. 

Instead, we disregard briefly the factor of physical location and look 

more carefully at the rules and mechanisms, the institutions that serve 

to distribute rights and duties associated with land and permanent 

fixtures we know as real estate. In a sense, we are looking to compare 

institutions to the extent they serve to optimize the value of property, 

given whatever geophysical advantages or disadvantages a place might 

boast or lament. Umbeck’s conclusion that “no individual would be 

willing to accept a contract in which he was assigned property rights of 

less value than he could obtain by personal violence” may be an 

exaggeration of human willingness to resort to the use of force. Still, it 

is possible to measure the overall social contract regarding real estate, 

the real property regime, to see whether or not a given polity is 

continuously traipsing along that line of values that flirts with violence. 

 

83 Umbeck, John R. A Theory of Property Rights: With Application to the California 

Gold Rush, (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1981). 

99
 Within our domestic experience, we know that the price of a 

Kansan’s home is influenced by the physical characteristics of location 

(how many square feet, how far from the school); the rights and duties 

sold and purchased; and the regime of rules guiding what can be bought 

and sold, and in what manner. Since the rules channel and shape the 

market of rights, and since the regimes of ownership rules are delimited 

geographically, we are back to location. Countries with advanced 

regimes of property rules will have more valuable locations. 

Simultaneously, to the extent a country establishes precise, transparent, 

comprehensive evidence of shared and private rights; and goes about 

applying that evidence to resolve quotidian claims, that country is more 

likely to prosper in a democratic and peaceful context. Eventually we 

may be able to assess and compare systems of property rights and 

duties country-by-country. With such an index we may be able to 

better prescribe improvements.84 After all, property systems can be 

improved more easily than the geophysical environment or human 

nature, even while these latter two may tell us a great deal about a 

given conflict. Although improving social contracts by formalizing 

property (and thereby increasing prospects of social peace) is an 

attractive notion, remember how the operant assertion is framed: 

Places that do not have formal property do not enjoy peace. Attractive 

as a course of action or not, improving the property regime may be a 

necessity if there is to be any long-term success in building social peace 

in a given country. Sadly, we do not know enough about the property 

regimes of foreign lands. 

Are there dangers close by? 

 

84 Since the writing of this text, the Property Rights Alliance 

http://www.proertyrightsalliance.org published its International Property Rights Index

(IPRI), <http://www.internationalpropertyrightsindex.org>, rating seventy countries 

according to a study methodology prepared by Alexandra Horst in 2006. This is a 

tremendous step forward, and while it is not aimed directly at an understanding of the 

relationship of property regimes to the likelihood and control of internal violence, it is 

sure to accelerate the kind of research proposed herein.

100
"I should warn, however, that the philosophy that 

sovereignty is not so important is in fashion, that what 

they call democracy and human rights is more 

important, as if there could be democracy and human 

rights without independence and without sovereignty." 

 Fidel Castro 

Cuban upheaval 

Is Cuba a threat to the United States? No, it is not, but 

respecting Yogi Berra’s wisdom that it is difficult to make predictions, 

especially when talking about the future, we are on safe ground to 

predict that change is coming to Cuba, and that the change could upend 

the American political applecart.85 Cuba is not a threat, at least not in a 

military sense. Almost any period of violent instability the island 

would attract thousands of US citizens and residents intensely 

interested in steering the outcome, and any official United States 

intervention would be conducted in a muddled citizenship environment. 

It should not be lost on anyone who doubts the importance of this 

problem that actions of the US government in detaining Cubans have 

already invited legal challenge.86 Courthouses will have a direct effect 

on any missions and orders. Because parties to any Cuban conflict will 

have access to mainline US news media and to US courts, the link 

between legality and legitimacy of government actions will be 

constantly and quickly tested and changed. 

 Castro’s Cuba hangs a well-recognized weight over US 

electioneering. Lobbying exercises by the intensely Cuba-focused can 

warp and radicalize politics in Florida and elsewhere in the United 

 

85 Calling wolf about Cuba is perennial stuff, however. See Edward Gonzalez and 

David Ronfeld, Storm Warnings for Cuba (Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1994). 

86 Andres Viglucci, "Repatriation of Rafters Is Blocked," Miami Herald (26 October 

1994): 1A, 5A. 

101
States -- increasingly as the Castro brothers’ control finally begins to 

come undone. US politicians and their handlers will perceive a need to 

play every episode in that unraveling to their electoral advantage. 

Little in that play, however, will facilitate reasoned policy promoting a 

peaceful, free and prosperous Cuba. Office winners will be left without 

control over Cuba-related issues once elections are decided. Massive 

human migration throughout the Caribbean will be more than a 

bothersome phenomenon. Worse, a Cuban transition could devolve 

into violence on the Cuban islands and beyond.87 

Any impending upheaval in Cuba also poses a threat to US 

foreign policy construction and implementation. A Cuba crisis would 

absorb a disproportionate amount of executive attention, and would be 

the object of much gratuitous international criticism regardless of what 

policies or actions the US government might take. If only in view of 

these two likelihoods (the deleterious and unpredictable effect Cuban 

upheaval could have on domestic electioneering and the anti-American 

opportunism sure to transpire in the international ambit) any option of 

outsourcing the Cuba question might be carefully considered. 

Cuba’s future presents an array of palpable, dominant property 

issues. Latent real estate claims overshadow the return of exiled antiCastroites, and competition for pieces of post-Castro Cuba will be 

awash with partial, overlapping identities and outlaw agendas. 

Transnational organized crime, the criminalization of ex-soldiers, black 

market commercialization of excess military hardware, racial and 

religious superimpositions, talent draining, and every form of fraud and 

demagoguery will blossom. Troubles there will be covered vigorously, 

if superficially, by both US and foreign news media. For the 

interrelation of destabilizing and threatening phenomena to be 

understood, however, they can be viewed as ownership struggles, even 

 

87 For analysis tying together news of Fidel Castro’s health, Cuba’s transition and the 

prospect of violence see for instance, William M. LeoGrande, “Fidel's Swoon and 

Other News From Havana” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2001 Part M, p. 1, online at 

Lexis-Nexis Academic, < http://american.edu/faculty/leogrande/Cuba-swoon-LAT7-

15-01.htm. 

102
where the property involved is more subtle or intangible than 

possession of real estate. Without question, Cuban property 

competitions will transmute into future human rights violations if no 

legitimate system of reconciliation is available during Cuba's coming 

change. 

 Former President Jimmy Carter’s 2002 trip to the island 

reawakened an interest for many of us who perennially announced an 

impending collapse of the Castro regime and the beginning of the longawaited ‘transition.’88 Mr. Carter was adamant on the human rights 

 

88 For a compendium of reports on the visit see, 

<http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/carter-cuba.htm; In 1994 Edward Gonzalez 

and David Ronfeldt outlined some of what seemed then to be alternative possibilities 

for the unfolding of possible endgames for the Castro regime. More than ten years 

later their assessment seems to have made sense, but are we still waiting for the 

endgame to start, or did option I already occur? 

* Endgame I. The Castro regime survives over the 

short to medium term by means of the current 

transitional model. [retaining totalitarian control, 

but creating a dual model economy with an 

external foreign exchange producing sector.] 

* Endgame II. Over the short to medium term, the 

regime adopts major economic reforms and 

muddles through with an authoritarian marketoriented model--most likely a Cuban-Chinese 

hybrid based on "market-Leninism." 

* Endgame III. In the short or medium term, the 

regime begins to lose control and Castro halts all 

reform (regardless of the model); stasis and heavy 

repression follow. 

* Endgame IV. In the short or medium term, 

popular resistance increases, Castro leaves the 

picture, pro-reform factions in the regime 

regroup, and nonviolent change takes place from 

above and below. This sequence leads to a new 

coalition-type government with elements of the 

internal opposition, possibly ushered in with 

elections and including some former exiles. 

* Endgame V. In the short or medium term, 

violent change from below occurs as widespread 

103
issue, and serving President Bush followed up with a mild surprise, 

hardening rather than softening US policy toward the Cuban regime. 

Nevertheless, Fidel Castro’s public appearances, as well as Internet 

audio of the Cuban leader talking on the phone with Mexican President 

Vicente Fox, revealed a still wily but aging king.89 Since then, Fidel 

Castro has shown further signs of physical weakening, but the Castro 

brothers have hardened their dictatorship (along with anti-US identity) 

and have shored-up alliances with populist demagogues, especially 

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Due to the support and compatible 

aspirations of the latter, it may very well be that the principle features 

of the transition are already visible, with the revolution surviving in the 

persons of second-tier managers engaged in international capitalism 

alongside repressive domestic socialism.90 In 2005, the question of 

human rights continued to reign as various countries posture and waffle 

in the unsightly diplomatic dance that is the annual process of human 

rights certifications and condemnations.91 

 popular unrest erupts, leading to civil war, the 

downfall of the Castro regime, and a seizure of 

power by a new set of (dictatorial? democratic?) 

leaders." 

Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, Storm Warnings Over Cuba (Santa Monica, 

California: RAND, 1994), p. xi. 

89 Valley Multimedia Corp, “Conversación telefónica Castro-Fox revela mentiras y 

contradicciones,” (Castro-Fox telephone conversation reveals lies and contradictions) 

audio and transcript in Spanish online at 

http://www.elclamor.com/contradicciones.htm 

90 On the issue of a transition that already happened, see, for instance, Blanche 

Petrich “Ricardo Alarcon: ‘Ya ocurrió en Cuba la esperada transición post Fidel 

Castro’” (Ricardo Alarcon: ‘The awaited post-Fidel Castro transition in Cuba already 

happened’) La Jornada (Mexican in Spanish) Viernes 6 de julio 2001 p. 1 & 6; 

Ricardo Santa Maria, “Los sucesores de Fidel”(Fidel’s Successors) Semana 

(Colombian in Spanish) Julio 9 - Julio 16 2001 edition 1001, p. 58 

91 Richard Waddington, “UN Body Keeps Pressure on Cuba,” Reuters online at 

Yahoo! News < 

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050414/wl_nm/rights_cuba_dc; 

U.S. Department of State, “United States Hails U.N. Resolution on Human Rights in 

Cuba” USINFO.STATE.GOV online at 

<http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2005/Apr/15-666219.html.

104
Whoever manages Cuba’s political change will either place the 

question of property at the center of transition planning, or the question 

will go there on its own. “Property” will immediately displace almost 

all other considerations as far as United States-based interests are 

concerned. The Castro revolution, after all (more even than socialist 

revolutions of Europe), changed the property regime, giving to the 

central government whole-fee ownership of almost all real estate, urban 

and rural. In no other transition from socialism (if transition from 

socialism is in fact the future) will there have been involved such a 

prominent, vocal, emotionally invested and financially capable 

community of dispossessed. 

 Mention of dispossession leads us to a bifurcation. In one sense 

when we speak of the Cuban property problem we speak of actual 

claims to existing pieces of real estate and other tangible quantities of 

wealth.92 In other words, the property question is one of clarifying 

claims created as a result of expropriations by the revolutionary 

government. There are 5,911 claims by US citizens and business 

entities with a total value of about 1.8 billion dollars as registered in the 

U.S Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC).93 Add to this an 

unknown number (but many times greater) of claims by exiled Cubans 

and their heirs and assigns. Finally there is in addition an unknown 

quantity of claims likely to be levied against the state by Cubans still 

resident on the Island whose property was expropriated by the 

government.94 But having recited the nature of anticipatable property 

 

92 The issue of the resolution of property claims is expertly summarized in a chapter 

titled ‘Property” in Mark Falkoff, Cuba: The Morning After: Confronting Castro’s 

Legacy (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 2003), pp. 72-96. 

93 Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States report online at 

<http://www.usdoj.gov/fcsc/annrep03.htm#3a5b. 

94 For an outline of possible privatization steps that would deliver restitution to many 

claimants see Matias Travieso-Díaz and Alejandro Ferraré, “Legal Foundations for a 

successful privatization program in Cuba,” Cuba Transition Workshop Internal and 

External Factors in Cuba{s Economic Transition (Washington, D.C.: Shaw Pittman, 

Potts & Trowbridge and the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, March 

25, 1999)

105
claims, the more important question in terms of creating the conditions 

for peace is what form the property system will take during and after 

the transition period. The first question, about claims, bears on the 

second, especially as it relates to credibility in re-creating the rule of 

law. If, however, the property regime is not radically and quickly 

changed, there is little hope for a satisfactory settlement of extant 

claims -- or for the Cuban future. 

 Transition toward a property regime conducive to peace and 

prosperity in Cuba is a more important question than is the settlement 

of existing claims to real estate. Nevertheless, it is difficult to envision 

how such a transition might occur without resolution of the real estate 

claims present in the conflict calculus, so some discussion of the 

possibilities for resolution is obligatory. Two excellent points are made 

by Gary Maybarduk, that action will be best taken quickly, and that the 

quieting of titles be a main objective, an objective to which acts of 

compensation should be subordinated. He states, 

Sorting out property cases has been a problem in most 

ex-socialist countries, but in Cuba—perhaps more than 

any other economy in transition—the need to move 

quickly will be imperative. Justice to the owners will be 

hard to achieve, but the danger of the case-by-case 

approach is that it will do serious injustice to Cubans in 

Cuba who will be looking for and deserve rapid 

economic growth. Separating the decision as to who 

gains title from the question of compensation may 

provide a solution. At a minimum any solution must 

give high priority to establishing property titles.95

 

95 Gary H. Maybarduk, “The Post Fidel Transition: Mitigating the Inevitable 

Disaster” in Cuba in Transition: Volume XI, Papers and Proceedings of the Eleventh 

Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) 

Miami, Florida 

August 2-4, 2001, 164-171 at 167 online at 

http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume11/maybarduk2.pdf 

106
The specific property disputes in Cuba can be easily resolvable. We 

must suppose that the central government (now and through whatever 

period of transition might be envisioned) is in effective possession of a 

great deal of real estate not under former claim, or easily compensable 

without restitution. That nationally-owned real estate is the necessary 

startup capital for Cuba’s future. While the world, and especially the 

world of Cubans, needs to know the exact dimensions and relative 

market values of Cuba’s real estate holdings, it may be more than 

enough to satisfy claims, distribute wealth to the dispossessed, leverage 

the development of infrastructure and impel a vigorous marketplace. 

 A great deal is made in the Cuban-American literature of 

Cuba’s rural agricultural lands and industries, either because the 

agricultural patrimony has been mismanaged by socialism, because it is 

somehow essential to root Cuban identity, or because of personal 

emotional ties to lost estates. Whatever the case, the marketplace, with 

some restraints, is the best mechanism for determining the future 

demographic balance rural-to-urban, as well as the mix of land uses. It 

could be mostly through the creative alienation of rural lands that a 

transition government would discover the capacity to pay debts, resolve 

conflicts and attract investments. Currently, however, it appears that 

preferential rights in many tracts have already been assigned as a way 

of maintaining revolutionary loyalty, or as a method of creating golden 

parachutes to carry leading revolutionaries into the next phase. 

“On the other hand, this control of a great part of the 

agricultural production may follow under-handed plans 

to constitute the high commands as business entities, 

thus, directly by way of government concessions, 

arriving at the kind of “Great Piñata” that occurred in 

Nicaragua.96

 

96 Arturo Pino Navarro, “La Propiedad en Cuba... Medidas Urgentes’ (Property in 

Cuba...Urgent Measures) Municipio de Camagüey en el Exilio, undated, online at 

<http://www.municipio-de-camaguey.com/page32.html article in Spanish, extract 

translated by author.

107
 The property concerns of exiled Cubans may be dwarfed by 

complaints of Cubans who stayed in Cuba and were nevertheless 

victims of uncompensated expropriations. Worse still might be a 

phenomenon that is rarely mentioned. When urban development, 

especially in the Havana area, begins to accelerate, apartment dwellers 

(let’s say those whose rights could be appreciated and solidified by 

ownership documents such as condominium deeds) could find that their 

buildings are nearly worthless. As such, any transition to a market 

economy would probably have to be softened for many apartment 

dwellers. Those in less favorable building locations might be offered 

subsidized exchanges. Meanwhile the greater problem may involve 

buildings in especially favorable locations. These will beg for 

demolition and replacement under the pressure of profitability, forcing 

apartment dwellers to move. If building deeds are given by the regime 

under a “piñata” plan to create landlords out of favored revolutionary 

leaders, then the dwellers in these buildings will have been greatly 

cheated. These are but examples of transition problems, and if a Cuban 

transition is to go well, the evidence of all claims to real estate must be 

made precise, comprehensive, and transparent – and quickly, or every 

intention toward reconciliation will be dashed and new injustices 

impossible to follow or rectify. 

 Some claimants will be non-Cubans attempting to take recourse 

in the system of international business law to capture equity from 

previously owned properties. For many commentators this question of 

pre-revolutionary business holdings is at the forefront of the Cuba 

problem, but attempts at a pre-collapse property grab by the communist 

insiders will be a far more exacerbating aspect. The Nicaraguan 

experience after the election of President Violeta Chamorro provides a 

hint regarding the potential for violence between pre-revolutionary 

claims against confiscated property and communist party seizures.97 

 

97. Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour, p. 324. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista Army 

was able to maintain its political identity and physical integrity in spite of the Violeta 

Chamorro election. This fact provided a coercive backstop allowing the Nicaraguan 

communists to resist claims of pre-revolution owners. A similar environment could 

exist in a post-Castro Cuba; Tim Johnson, "Property disputes cloud Nicaragua's 

108
As in Nicaragua and some of the East European countries, the 

impending ruin of the communist ownership system caused the 

dictators to redistribute and formalize lucrative real estate interests. 

The Castros will have vested key security force leaders with ownership 

slices that, if they can be translated or leveraged into equivalent rights 

within a capitalist framework, constitute the golden parachute. First, 

the give away shores up support for the regime within armed 

institutions. Second, the move offers a means to resist the political 

consequences of having key real estate, and the power that 

accompanies it, fall under control of a zealous opposition. Third, 

whatever the nature of the transition, a transformation of property 

ownership protocols can preserve political power and wealth for the 

communist party elite. With important properties (transportation, water 

works, power generation, beach fronts) under possession of an armed 

organization, any demand for reconciliation of old claims might invite a 

violent defense.98 Yet another property strategy seems to be the sale of 

partner shares to foreign companies, thus vesting future foreign allies in 

claims that, even if not secured completely, promise to establish a base 

for court arguments in whatever system ultimately arrives. The piñata 

problem (a give-away to friends) is hardly intractable, however, 

requiring the same analysis regarding what rights carry what prices that 

any quiet-title action might demand. Title can always escheat or revert 

to the State. 

 

economic future," The Miami Herald (12 March 1993) . "Many people are upset at 

offer of substitute property being offered for property taken by Sandinistas after the 

Sandinistas lost the 1990 elections. They quickly gave away 11000 houses farms and 

lots--to Sandinistas." 

98. See Kenneth Freed, "National Agenda; Cuba's Army Becoming More Important 

Than Party; The Military Commands the Economy as Communists Lose Credibility. 

But Fidel Castro Seems Safe for Now." Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1994. (from 

The Xinhua News Agency). Freed, aside from reporting that the Cuban Army was 

running department stores, travel agencies, construction companies and farms, 

suggested that this was because the army had more professional capability and public 

credibility than the Cuban Communist Party.

109
Some crisis predictions foresee violence.99 If violence becomes 

widespread or acute, the United States government, alone or with 

international partners, might be obligated to intervene to stabilize, ease 

or fashion Cuba's change. Other organizations based in the United 

States, or with significant American membership, might intervene as 

well. The Cuba problem could simultaneously become a growth 

industry for all manner of opportunist from baseball scout to cocaine 

distributor to religious missionary to foreign spy. 

Cuba is not and will not be a military threat, but a poor US 

response to societal change in Cuba will be diplomatically and fiscally 

costly, and will be politically costly to some contenders in US domestic 

politics. More importantly, the transition of Cuba, hopefully to the 

First World, represents an opportunity of the highest caliber, one that 

can easily be missed. 

 The future of Cuba is mentioned here in the discussion of 

globalized trespass for several reasons. A simple announcement of 

threats would be an incomplete presentation of the foreign challenges 

facing the United States. There exists another kind of cost -- lost 

opportunity, which is grave to our national purpose if not our safety. 

This is so because the test of a better Cuba is a test of the relative worth 

of our own country; because the conditions of the ‘third world’ are not 

inevitable; because the United States will be stronger for having a 

 

99. See generally Transition in Cuba: New Challenges for U.S. Policy. Miami: 

Florida International University, 1993. This is a good place to enter the writings on 

Cuban Transition that have been produced since the end of the Cold War. The 

product of a research project sponsored by the Office of Research, U.S. Department 

of State's Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean and the U.S. Agency for 

International Development, it was undertaken by the Cuban Research Institute of the 

Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. It has had a 

significant impact on U.S. government planning regarding Cuba's future. The study 

posed nine possible scenarios for Cuban change. The first set a baseline, 

characterizing the responses of Cuba’s government and people. It needs to be noted 

that several of the possible scenarios posited mid- to long-term survival of a 

communist government without a violent crisis. 

110
stronger, healthier neighbor; because to have a healthy polity on our 

southern border means a more secure border; and finally because 

Cuban-Americans exiled from the Island of Cuba cannot be disregarded 

as strident or emotionally disqualified for having maintained fervent 

opposition to a dictator. They are citizens of the United States and 

deserve particular attention regarding the recovery and healing of their 

homeland. In every aspect of this reasoning, analysis of the conditions 

in Cuba, and design of a way ahead involve careful consideration of 

property rights, both in their palpable form as existing rights to real 

estate, and in the design of the social contract. 

So far from God 

Is immigration from Mexican a threat to the United States? The 

answer is as easy and emphatic as that related to Cuba. No, Mexican 

emigration is not a threat to the United States. Still, the calculus of 

migration, and we might highlight the legal component of that calculus, 

provides a favorable context for the contraband of illegal goods, 

movement of violent organized criminals and terrorists, etc. Again 

obeying the obvious geographic fact of distance, the ownership 

environments of Mexico and the United States are distinct but 

intertwined. The practical effect on United States territory of any 

Mexican instability is a matter of record. Instability in Mexico and 

illegal migration to the United States are related almost as the readout 

on a car's tachometer is related to that of its speedometer. As RPM on 

the tachometer go up, speed increases, albeit after a short time lag. 

When instability in Mexico worsens, migration to the U.S. increases. 

Every breakdown in Mexican law and order invigorates cross-border 

activity. The most disruptive and damaging effect of Mexican political 

violence, if it were prolonged, could be guerrilla warfare within the 

borders of the United States. That being a worst-case view, the 

approach the United States has taken toward the migration of Mexicans 

into the United States has two lesser strategic ill-effects. One is a lost 

opportunity to engage the migrant population in security-favorable 

behaviors, and the second is to create cover for a range of illicit 

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activities that in turn provide cover for the dangers we fear most. 

These things can be changed, and a property-oriented vision of the 

challenge will reveal the specific methods. 

There is much about the Mexican national indoctrination and 

self-concept that has not been favorable to anyone’s security. Alan 

Riding’s translation of a harangue by nineteenth century revolutionary 

Miguel Hidalgo still has active emotional content: 

"My children...a new dispensation comes to us this day. Are 

you ready to receive it? Will you be free? Will you make the 

effort to recover from the hated Spaniards the lands stolen from 

your forefathers three hundred years ago?...Mexicans, Long 

Live Mexico! Death to the Gachupines!"100

Therein lies a good deal of what scares some Americans, especially in 

the southwest of the United States, regarding the psychological 

substrata of Mexican migratory intention. Hidalgo was addressing a 

mostly indigenous crowd, riling them against the Spaniards. Gringos 

have replaced Gachupines quite nicely in the Mexican psyche. This 

popular and (at least until recently) officially approved anti-American 

Mexican catechism allows greater intellectual and psychological 

freedom to commit illegal activities, the negative effects of which are 

felt mostly in the United States. Gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha will 

continue to appear, with US, Mexican and other foreign authorities 

continuing to suppress them, but along the way 

there will be instances of at lease low-level government officials in 

Mexico helping the gangs.101

 

100 Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans (New York: Vintage 

Books, 1986) p. 46. 

101 On Mexican criminal gangs including Mara Salvatrucha see Kevin Freese, “The 

Death Cult of the Drug Lords Mexico’s Patron Saint of Crime,” Criminals, and the 

Dispossessed, Foreign Military Studies Office online at 

<http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Santa-Muerte/santa-muerte.htm.

112
 One of the most important cultural distinctions formerly 

separating Mexico from the United States, language, almost no longer 

exists. Mexicans find it possible to remain indefinitely in United States 

territory without the necessity of learning English. Widespread use of 

the Spanish language combines in some locales with public deference 

to Mexican national symbols to a degree that it is offensive to some 

English speakers who have a strong emotional connection to US 

symbols. Trouble is to be predicted. In various towns and counties in 

the Southwest, native Spanish speakers represent a formidable political 

block, and it can be expected that, unless current trends change, native 

Spanish speakers (of predominantly Mexican origin) will outnumber 

English speakers in an increasing number of jurisdictions. The 

language shift will carry along with it a shift in symbolism and cultural 

identities that can change the balance of group cohesiveness. Changes 

in musical selections at official functions, the raising or displaying of 

Mexican flags, progressive changes in the content of school texts, and 

widened promotion of bi-lingual education in public schools are other 

common occurrences. Not only do none of these things constitute 

illegalities, no one of them might ever cause a spark capable of igniting 

armed conflict. However, at some point the identity of common 

ownership will have shifted to the point of threatening existing 

ownership rules and relationships. Incremental reactions against the 

culture shift will earn rebuke in the opinion media as being intolerant or 

as offenses against the rights of free speech and expression. 

If the ignition of internal conflict is Anglo-American or BlackAmerican reaction against Mexicanness (perhaps even from multiplegeneration Mexican-Americans) the United States government may at 

some point be obliged to take the next steps leading toward armed 

violence. The federal government will more than likely intervene to 

protect the rights of immigrants. Many organized armed groups of 

disaffected citizens could take federal intervention on behalf of 

immigrants as evidence that the government is not the legitimate 

protector of citizens’ rights, particularly property rights. Their reaction 

will not be spontaneous, irrational or novel. It will be a critical 

milestone in what is already a budding grass-roots movement of 

113
rebellious expression. In the American west and Southwest, groups are 

already organized, and while their strategy of action is yet undefined, 

their dissatisfaction with the role of the federal government (focusing 

on property rights in most cases) provides a latent purpose.102 The 

symbolism favored by these groups is evocative of both patriotism and 

territorial ferocity. The federal government can unwittingly unify these 

armed organizations, which might easily redouble violence against 

Mexicans, which in turn could provide both provocation and 

justification for guerrilla activity within the United States. 

The Southwest of the United States has always displayed a 

Mexican cultural flavor that is perceived in much of the rest of the 

country as benign and enjoyable, exotic, even resplendent. The idea 

that a dangerous threat to national security is brewing as a result of 

Mexican nationalism might not impress Americans from other parts of 

the United States whose direct property interests are not affected. 

Oddly, those Mexicans most likely to promote an aggressive expression 

of national identity at the cost of Uncle Sam will be able to count on 

spiritual solidarity, if not material support, from throughout the 

Western Hemisphere, including from within the United States. In fact, 

an opportunity to promote the kind of internal disorder in the United 

States (that the U.S. has for so long derided in Latin American 

countries) may be irresistible. News of such a predicament would be 

agreeable shadenfraude[[ in many corners of the world. 

Slumping real estate values, exodus of labor able to seek 

options elsewhere, increasing insurance rates, disruptions in public 

services, collapse of municipal bond ratings, depression in tourist 

revenues--the list of symptoms is well known. What may not be 

understood is that a guerrilla movement capable of causing a property 

 

102 See, for instance, Brock N. Meeks, “Crackdown on southwest border begins,” 

MSNBC March 30, 2005 

online at <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7340214/;Jon Dougherty, “’Border militia' 

critic gets cold feet: Pro-immigrant activist fails to follow through on promise of 

confrontation,” WorldNetDaily.com, May 28, 2003 online at 

<ttp://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32782.

114
disaster can be haphazard, poorly led, without concrete or consistent 

ideological foundation, in want of an achievable strategic goal, and 

with support from only a small fraction of the total population. It does 

not have to move in accordance with any military concept of strategy, 

even though the movement may enjoy international supporters with 

great-power strategy in mind. It can be improvised, rag-tag, 

intermittent, multiply led, irrational and still be effective. All the more 

so if it enjoys an engaging set of symbols, like the recovery of ancestral 

lands, retribution for violence committed, anti-racism, obvious 

economic disparities, and a cohesive owner identity associated with a 

place that promises to provide sanctuary. With these attributes, an 

effective insurgent movement can survive for decades--to give sport if 

nothing else. 

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, a number of factors could worsen 

conditions in the United States still further. Many Mexicans would 

take pleasure in the internal difficulties unfolding in the United States, 

even if this enjoyment competes for mental space with the logical 

desire for economic success. The fact that the majority of Mexicans do 

not think in such an Anti-American competitive way will be of not 

particular comfort. Some will be enthusiastic supporters of American 

trouble and will find ways to fund or otherwise encourage guerrilla 

activity inside United States territory. In addition, one of the 

consequences of a transition of political power in Cuba may be another 

mass migration into Mexico similar to the exodus of the Spanish 

Republicans after the Spanish Civil War. Like the wave of Cuban 

migrants that arrived in Miami decades ago, the new wave to Mexico 

may include a slice of leftist rancor combined with mafia style 

loyalties. Some will occupy themselves with political party activities 

flavored by a robust anti-Americanism. Resentment toward the United 

States will be a strong enough emotional quantity that direct action to 

punish the U.S. could be a staple release. 

The answer to all these admittedly alarmist possibilities is not 

rejection of things Mexican, but a much greater development of 

contractual and ownership formality between US entities and those 

115
sectors of Mexican society wanting and needing a healthy and 

productive relationship. This includes respecting immigrant rights, and 

creating formal stakeholders of Mexican nationals seeking greater 

stability for their families and assets within the United States. 

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez

 Is Hugo Chavez’ regime in Venezuela a threat to the United 

States? Looking at the question within the confines of the theme of this 

book, that is to say, the relationship of property to peace and how 

systems of property bear on the prospects that places might foster 

dangerous behaviors, the answer is emphatically yes. We noted about 

Cuba that the shape of anticipated change there hinges in some measure 

on a realization that the current basic law of Cuba, what is called the 

‘Cuban Constitution,’ is an accurate reflection of the social contract 

there. That document reposes rights to make decisions regarding 

occupation, use, preservation, profit, and alienation of land almost 

entirely in the hands of the centralized State, and those hands are very 

few. The future of Cuba’s social contract (Will Cuba is proceed apace 

to the ranks of the first world or rise only to the half-failing condition 

typical of Latin America?) depends on revision of how ‘property’ is 

treated in the basic legal documents that guide and restrict. Cuba is an 

opportunity, a chance for change in the right direction, toward a formal, 

liberal property regime. Hugo Chavez, meanwhile, is leading 

Venezuela in the opposite direction, centralizing real estate ownership 

in the State.103 The nature of property is a central theme in Chávez’ 

 

103 This is patent in even a cursory review of the Venezuelan media. See for instance, 

Ministry of Communication and Information, “JUSTICIA: Guerra al Latifundio 

(JUSTICE: War on the Latifundio [Great Landholding]), Bolivarian Republic of 

Venezuela June 5, 2005, 

http://www.mci.gob.ve/noticiasnuev.asp?numn=6719; 

English.el Universal.com, “Government Continues to Confiscate Estates” English.el 

Universal.com, September 17, 2005, 

http://english.eluniversal.com/2005/09/17/en_pol_art_17A611731.shtml; 

116
ideology. Since taking power (democratically), Hugo Chavez has 

changed the basic law, the denominated ‘Constitution,’ to do for his 

regime what the Cuban constitution does for the Castro brothers. 

 So the question will be put: What difference does it make how 

the Venezuelan government, the leader of which was elected openly, 

decides to divvy up Venezuelan land, or what powers over land its 

constitution reposes in the executive? If the reader needs the answer at 

this point, you fail the quiz! If the social contract in Venezuela 

devolves away from formal, liberal property (and the speed of change 

appears greater than what ‘devolve’ connotes) the geography we call 

Venezuela will be the locus of economic failure, tyranny, corruption 

and violence. It will be a threat to its neighbors whose land and 

economic intercourse are cheek-by-jowl with Venezuela. The Chavez 

regime will be forced to seek aggressive external options for survival. 

It will collude with, harbor and encourage outlaw groups whose amoral 

pragmatism can be influenced by disposable income and a 

psychological justification for disrespecting the property of others. So 

consideration of the obvious is made unnecessary -- never mind that 

President Chavez self-proclaims as an enemy of the United States, that 

he is acridly critical of Colombia or that the FARC finds sanctuary with 

the borders of Venezuela. Just looking from the perspective of a 

property-based analysis, prospects are that Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela 

will be an increasing security challenge for the United States. The 

flexible power that oil-revenue disposable income gives the Chavez 

regime, and ties it has or has been trying to make with other autocratic 

regimes bring the challenge closer in time. 

 

dfrente.com. “Sentenció el Presidente Chávez Guerra contra el latifundio” (President 

Chávez declares war on the latifundio [large land-holding]), dfrente.com, September 

20, 2005, http://www.dfrente.com/noticia.php?IDN=24908; 

Gustavo Azocar Alcala, “(INTI) Burning Plains,” English.el Universal.com, 

September 24, 2005, 

http://english.eluniversal.com/2005/09/24/en_eco_art_24A613879.shtml; 

El Universal.com, “400 properties in Maracaibo may pass into State hands,” El 

Universal.com, September 27, 2005, 

http://www.eluniversal.com/2005/09/27/pol_art_27109C.shtml 

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 Of all the deleterious effects that Hugo Chavez’ personal 

success might have on America’s future, however, his interest in 

preserving the Castro revolution in Cuba may be transcendent. Hugo 

Chavez may bankroll survival of a property regime that provides safety, 

prosperity and liberty for a small nomenclatura, blocking Cuba’s 

passage to the First World for decades. 

Venezuelans are the newest wave of political immigrant to 

Miami, and like Cubans and others before them are grateful that there is 

a place to go. At the same time they are similarly exasperated at the 

relative indifference of the US nation to events transpiring so close by 

the United States. Their country is undergoing a transformation of 

property such as that undergone by Cuba after the Castroite take-over. 

The government of Hugo Chavez is dismantling the property regime in 

Venezuela, doing exactly the opposite of what this book describes as 

the steps necessary for long-term conflict resolution and material 

prosperity.104 This is not to say that the property regime in Venezuela 

was correctly formed or that all the actions taken by the Chavez 

government will prove harmful. To some degree the property regime 

may have had to be scourged in order that it be rebuilt on a proper 

foundation. But that is going to be hard to measure or describe as 

Venezuela closes to any investigation regarding the distribution of 

rights, duties and power. If we follow the property ball in Venezuela 

we can see the route toward dictatorship. It is a route that extends a 

covetous eye on its Caribbean neighbors as well. It is not an 

amorphous threat of influences, propositions and common ideological 

agendas. It is the purchase and bullying of specific rights and duties 

related to critical industries and terrain, in most cases associated with 

energy sources. It is painted as anti-hegemonic or pan-indigenous or 

Bolivarian, but it is worthy of concern. It welcomes anything and 

everything that confounds the web of civilizing laws on which defense 

against dangerous transnational behavior depends. Harboring fugitives, 

proliferating the component elements of dangerous weapons, protecting 

 

104 Typical of news coming out of Venezuela is Jose de Cordoba [[ “Farms Are Latest 

Target In Venezuelan Upheaval: Co-ops of City Dwellers On Seized Acreage Are 

Mostly a Bust So Far,” The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, May , 1u, p. 1. 

118
illegal accounts or the contraband and counterfeiting of national 

monies. They are hard to see on a map of geophysical features and 

national boundaries, but they are trespasses--globalized. 

119
120
Chapter Three: The Colombia Case 

The calculus of violence ............................................. 122

Noble revolution ............................................... 124

Four ownership plans ...................................... 128

The object of organized conflict ................................ 133

ELN, AUC, FARC ........................................... 133

Doubloon at rest ............................................... 140

Colombia’s property legacy ...................................... 151

Law as legitimacy ............................................ 152

The resulting cadastres and registries .............. 155

Un-property strategy ................................................. 161

Putumayo and Ploesti ....................................... 162

Giving property away ....................................... 167

Harvest of amputees ......................................... 175

Can the war be won militarily? ................................ 179

Crossing Lines of Communication .................. 181 

Taking property away ...................................... 192

Can the war be won politically? ............................... 194

The shape of the problem ................................. 194

Bigger troubles ................................................. 199

Deserving to win ......................................................... 200

 

Chapter Three: The Colombia Case 

“Lo que en este momento tiene lugar en Colombia es 

una lucha por la dominación territorial.”105

(What is taking place right now in Colombia is a 

struggle for territorial domination) 

Alvaro Valencia Tovar, retired army officer, author, journalist 

 

105 Alvaro Valencia Tovar. “Conflicto armado y territorio.” El País de Cali. 21 July, 

2003. online at <http://elpais-cali.terra.com.co/HOY/OPN/op5.html. 

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The calculus of violence

“Colombia necesita la fuerza brava de todos sus hijos 

para defenderla contra la avalancha del imperialismo. 

No hay otra solución para el problema de la tierra que 

la expropiación sin indemnización de todas aquellas que 

no se cultiven para entregarlas gratuitamente a quienes 

sí las cultiven. No ha de importarnos nada que nos 

llamen socialistas, porque nuestro credo consciente, 

meditado, pensado y estudiado es ése.”106

(Colombia needs the angry force of all its sons to defend 

it against the avalanche of imperialism. There is no 

other solution to the land problem than to expropriate 

without indemnity all those lands that are not being 

cultivated and give them for free to those who will

cultivate them. It should be of no importance to us 

whatever that they call us Socialists, because that is 

exactly our conscious belief – meditated, considered, 

studied.) 

 Jorge Eliézer Gaitan, 

 Colombian populist assassinated in 1948 

 Colombia is strategically located at the center of a part of the 

world in danger of regressing toward tyranny, and where breaches of 

basic human rights are more than occasional. It is one of the world’s 

leaders in murder rates, kidnappings and landmines, and its abundant 

agriculture supports production of most of the cocaine used in the US. 

It also exports a wide variety of desired and legal products and is a net 

energy exporter, although not in quantities like that of its oil-rich 

neighbor, Venezuela. Colombia is a country in which the United States 

has invested billions of dollars, and where US citizens are being held 

 

106 Jorge Eliézer Gaitán, Speech given in Bogotá, September 25, 1945 found in Luis 

H. Aristizábal, editor. “Diccionario Aristizábal de citas o frases colombianas”. Banco 

de la República online at <http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/diccio/dicg.htm#g04. 

122
hostage. It is also a country that experienced more years of valid 

electoral democracy in the twentieth century than did most of the 

countries of Europe, and with which the United States has a growing 

and indelible cultural and familial bond. It is, in short, an important 

place for U.S. foreign policy to succeed, but where success hangs in the 

balance.107 

In Colombia an imperfect property regime has enabled internal 

conflict. Property creation and formalization will contribute to longterm social peace; and property intelligence can speed an outcome 

favorable to the people of both Colombia and the United States. 

Understanding property is key to understanding the Colombian conflict, 

and improving the property system key to solving it. For these reasons, 

the Colombian case is offered here to place the theoretical in the 

context of stark reality. 

Colombia has a partially and unevenly developed property 

regime, but violence and internal warfare are not caused because the 

property regime is informal or because the rules of ownership illiberal. 

The complex calculus of Colombian violence involves the rapacity of 

human nature, Colombia’s compartmentalized physical geography, 

spectacular geophysical wealth in items for which there is commercial 

demand, competing ideological currents that bear on how wealth is 

distributed, and an insufficient of civilizing constraints in the practical 

organization of Colombia’s social contract. Of the derivatives in the 

formula just cited, the last is the most available for improvement. 

Informality of land ownership is not the cause of violence, but rights in 

land are the object of violence, and failure to civilize the manner of 

land ownership is the relevant omission of Colombian social 

 

107 Beginning in late 2001, the author led an investigation into the feasibility of 

creating a database of real property ownership in Colombia. In the course of the 

study, a picture was gained not only of the central position of real property in the 

calculus of Colombian violence, and of the overlooked (and still available) 

opportunity to change the direction of Colombia’s political history through property 

formalization.

123
organization. It is an omission that Colombians can and are attempting 

to fix. 

Noble Revolution 

 Some aspects of Colombia’s internal conflict are not so hard to 

understand, or not as hard to understand as they once might have been. 

There is no longer much room for ambivalence regarding the noble 

strivings of good revolutionaries whose aspirations to social justice 

provide them moral space in which to justify organized violence. The 

major surviving illegal armed insurgent groups, the Fuerzas Armadas 

Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Ejército de Liberación 

Nacional (ELN), both at one time impelled by ideological arguments 

about the defects and indignities of the reigning social contract, have 

devolved away from all but the most callous pretension of worthy 

motive. A third major illegal challenger, the come-lately and currently 

disbanding Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) barely defined an 

ideology beyond opposition to the aforementioned ELN and FARC. 

All three finance themselves through illicit drug trade, kidnapping, 

smuggling, counterfeiting, extortion and other predation.108

 

108 See Jeremy McDermott “Colombian report shows FARC is world's richest 

insurgent group” Jan Jane's Intelligence Review - September 01, 2005 posted 19 Aug, 

2005. Part of a balance sheet of FARC finances prepared ostensibly by the 

Colombian government includes the following detail on FARC income. 

INCOME USD % 

Trafficking of cocaine 617 million 45.49 

Extortion 560 million 41.30 

Kidnapping 91.6 million 6.75 

Earnings from investments 41.2 million 3.04 

Cattle rustling 18.8 million 1.39 

Theft of hydrocarbons 15 million 1.11 

Tax on coca base 7.2 million 0.53 

Taxes on illegal airstrips 2.55 million 0.19 

Bank robbery 992,000 0.07 

Protection of crystallizing drug labs 936,000 0.07 

Security for coca leaf 340,000 0.01 

Protection of coca base laboratories 316,000 - 0.1 

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 It is has been standard to disregard an exasperating fuzziness of 

sets and divide Colombia’s malefactors according to four broad 

categories – drug traffickers, guerrillas, paramilitaries, or corrupted 

officials.109 The resulting analyses, however game, bog down without 

inspiring recommendations beyond “improve human rights practices,” 

“relieve socio-economic conditions of the poor,” or “increase 

government presence in contested areas.” The analyses often lapse into 

polarized debate about the psycho-political motivations of the 

contenders, whether or not a military victory is possible, if the elite is 

committed, or if political settlement is the only solution. When, after 

digesting these analyses, one remembers the suspension of disbelief 

that was required in order to cleanly separate the offending identities, 

which in reality are terribly intermixed, it becomes apparent how 

difficult it is to know exactly against whom to fight, when success 

might be honestly claimed, if the causes have been sufficiently 

relieved, or the motivations for homicidal behavior negated. 

If, on the other hand, we take Colombia’s history as a dynamic, 

continuing fight over property, especially real property, and we demote 

the particular labels of contestant categories to secondary importance, 

then the nation’s geography itself tells us something about the soul of 

the violence. Colombians have forever fought over key terrain, the 

value of the most contested lands being tied to the profitability and 

taxability of an export product.110 Coal, coca, coffee, emeralds, 

 Security of coca fields 193,000 - 0.1 

Material captured 54,000 - 0.1 

Extortion of territorial entities: no figures available 

Smuggling: no figures available 

TOTAL ... [$]1.36 billion 

109 See, for instance, Marcella, Gabriel and Schulz, Donald. Colombia’s Three Wars: 

U.S. Strategy at the Crossroads. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

1999;González, Manuel et. al. Una Mirada Argentina sobre Colombia. Buenos Aires: 

Instituto de Investigación sobre Seguridad y Crimen Oranizado (ISCO), 1999. 110 On the history of agricultural and extractive products as a factor in Colombian 

conflict see, for instance, Frank Safford and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented 

125
quinine, ink, feathers, fur, flowers, gold, oil, poppy, sugar, cattle – all 

these saleable items and many others have specific geographic 

references.111 Their profitability is influenced by exigencies of 

transport, vulnerability to taxation (both legal and illegal) and control 

of the labor required for resource exploitation, said costs in turn 

correlating back to geographic conditions.112 Obviously, resources can 

be extracted and marketed without being a catalyst of armed violence. 

In Colombia, however, compartmented terrain makes centralized 

governance difficult, and highly marketable resources focus materialist 

genious. Natural rapacity is all the more tempted by the promise of 

easy profit and difficult governance. Possession by force has been the 

natural consequence of human territoriality unchecked by civilizing 

structure. 

 

Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Indalecio 

Lievano Aguirre, Los grandes conflictos sociales y económicos de nuestra historia

[The great social and economic conflicts of our history] (Bogotá: Círculo de Lectores, 

2002). 

111 The list of Colombian items susceptible to smuggling is seemingly endless. It 

easily includes ink, leather, edible rodents, hardwoods, African palm oil, cigarettes, 

quinine, counterfeit monies, music CDs, bananas, etc. The smuggling of tobacco 

cigarettes is a major industry. On this point, see Center for Public Integrity, “El lado 

oscuro,” Semana, 5 March 2001, pp. 40-48. 112 The theme of conflict over cash products and their geography is not at odds with 

another common thread in the literature of Colombian conflict -- the struggle for 

control of labor. Historically, Colombian labor, whether of indigenous populations, 

imported slaves or otherwise, has been variously courted and abused for the purposes 

of exploiting a natural resource, or controlling terrain for the same ultimate purpose. 

Thus the two themes (resources and labor) are interwoven and complementary. 

Political assumptions and preferences of Colombian authors toward this phenomenon 

show a marked ideological tendency, those focusing on abuse of labor generally 

favoring socialist solutions. See, for instance, María Clemencia Ramírez, Entre el 

estado y la guerrilla: identidad y ciudadanía en el movimiento de los campesinos del 

Putumayo [Between the state and the guerrilla: identity and citizenship in the 

campesino movement in Putumayo] (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e 

Historia, 2002); Orlando Fals Borda, Historia de la cuestión agraria en Colombia

[History of the agrarian question in Colombia] (Bogotá: Carlos Valencia Editores, 

1982); Margarita González, El resguardo en el nuevo reino de Granada [Defense in 

the new kingdom of Granada] (Bogotá: El Áncora Editores, 1992). 

126
Colombia’s most powerful outlaw organizations directly and 

indirectly sap the value of Colombia’s bounty using a variety of tactics 

and strategies. Some are specific to certain products and locations, 

while other aspects of their modus operandi, such as bribery, are 

perfectly generalized. (See Figure 3, Colombian Resource Predation) In 

almost every Colombian locale that deals in some way with the 

extraction, cultivation, processing or transport of a natural resource 

(and by no means just coca and oil), armed criminality has a direct 

effect on the value of real estate, the quantity of human confidence, of 

positive aspiration, and of positive social ethic. To be sure, these 

values, save positive social ethic, are increased, often dramatically, for 

some enterprises and persons favored by the illicit exploitation. 

However, generalized insecurity and violence reduce market value for 

most landowners, and good times are short-lived in areas where 

organized armed criminals fight for advantage. Organized criminality 

weighs constantly on the quality and enjoyment of citizens’ rights. The 

effect is especially visible in rural land, and is double-edged: Illegal 

behavior, especially as it concerns real property, undermines market 

value. Conversely and concurrently, failure of the society to clarify and 

stabilize property rights in rural areas encourages that illegal 

behavior.113 If one is looking for a single essential political 

shortcoming tying natural bounty to violent conflict, in Colombia that 

shortcoming is the absence or under-development of formalized 

property. Rights and duties related to land have not been expressed in 

detail so that the essential social contract might be readily fulfilled. We 

can anticipate that Colombia’s abrupt terrain will ameliorate only in 

 

113 Semana, "Necesitamos una respuesta inmediata del Estado" (We need an 

immediate response from the State) Semana (weekly news journal)interview with 

José Félix Lafourie, 26 Sep, 2005, 

<http://semana2.terra.com.co/opencms/opencms/Semana/articulo.html?id=89992 

Lafouri is President of a Colombian national cattlemen’s association and former 

director of the ministry that stewards the properties registry. Mr. Lafourie argues 

forcefully in this interview that the absence of State presence to protect small and 

medium size ranchers leaves them vulnerable to predation by outlaw organizations, 

particularly the guerrilla. One clear suggestion from the interviewee -- that in the 

absence of assistance from the State, formation of paramilitary groups for self-defense 

is a natural consequence. 

127
geologic time, that marketable resources will continue to abound, and 

that human base instincts will change little. Colombia can, however, 

improve the practical supports to the social contract that check and 

discipline territorial instinct. In the short term, the same ordering of 

rights and duties in land provides the Colombian government with a 

powerful forensic tool with which to find and deny wealth and power 

of Colombia’s illegal armed groups. 

Four Ownership Plans 

Creating a better social contract in order to limit violence is no 

new idea in Colombia, or that the social contract and the regime of real 

property ownership were intimately joined. Violent competition in 

Colombia did not begin last month or forty years ago either. Since the 

arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors in the early 16th century, four 

dominant and intermingling intellectual-ideological currents have 

changed and fed the Colombian land fight. Each has had its particular 

imprint on the manner in which ownership rights have been evidenced 

and conflicts resolved. The first of these currents was conquest and 

evangelization -- a straightforward expression of imperial arrogance 

and dominating spirit, easily understood by both conquered and 

conqueror: Subdue by force, take the land, self-justify and domesticate. 

Spanish conquest and evangelizing created the immediate, obvious and 

urgent need for the crown to delineate boundaries, to the extent 

practical at the time, among conquistadors -- and by conquistadores 

among their lieutenants.114 Likewise the Catholic Church demanded 

and received great tracts of land for various purposes of the church 

mission. 

The second current, beginning around the turn of the 18th and 

19th centuries, was that of federalism/anti-federalism. This is perhaps 

 

114 Principal among these was Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, who some say was the 

model for Cervantes’ don Quixote. The first major conquistador intramural in 

northern South America involved Jiménez de Quesada, Sebastián Belacázar and 

Nicolas Federmann meeting in Bogotá. 

128
the most “Colombian” of the violence-propelling intellectual streams in 

that it seems to fit both the terrain and national disposition. Even 

though it depended for its destructive energy on a polarized 

interpretation of the North American revolutionary experiment, it 

matched Colombia’s exotic geography, giving accidents of terrain 

political meaning. How far from the capital can or should the central 

government hold sway? What is the proper balance of individual 

freedom and power with that of the State? The civil wars of the 19th 

century were guided by this question (or by cynical reference to the 

question in order to clothe simple arrogation) up through at least the 

disastrous War of a Thousand Days at the turn of the 19th and 20th

centuries.115 No serious student of Colombian history, of any 

ideological bent, can separate land from violence or from everconflicting schemes to stabilize ownership rights, or to realign them or 

redistribute them. Most of these schemes I place in the category of 

federalism-anti-federalism because the associated arguments expend 

most of their energy on the play between geographic distance and 

varying authority to tax. 

In the middle of Colombia’s nineteenth century melee to decide 

the matter of civilizing arrogation came the news of European 

socialism. This third current might be described as imported class 

struggle. One can make the argument that the Comuneros uprising in 

the late 18th century was a forbearer of later class revolt, and perhaps 

socialist revolution can further trace its roots to conflicts of squatters 

against speculators in the late 19th century, or to dissidence on 

haciendas, or indigenous rebelliousness and land invasions of the 1920s 

and 1930s.116 Many in Colombia today will point back to the 

assassination in 1948 of Jorge Eliécer Gaitan, quoted at the start of this 

section, as the birth of the current socialist revolutionary movement. 

Regardless, the federalist/anti-federalist debate remained the powerful 

 

115 On the War of the Thousand Days, see Geoffrey Demarest. “War of the Thousand 

Days” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Spring 2001, pp. 1-30. 116 Regarding land conflict during the second half of the 19th century and beginning of 

the 20th, see generally, Catherine LeGrand, Frontier expansion and peasant protest in 

Colombia, 1850-1936, (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1986).

129
undercurrent, manifested and dominated from the mid-19th century 

until recently through the two principal political parties, Liberal and 

Conservative, and now through illegal armed groups. 

There has always been a demand for greater social justice in 

Colombia, but class, race and religion have not provided popular 

representative identities to pursue it -- through violence or otherwise. 

On the other hand, there is little question that social and economic 

inequities have contributed to recruitment potential for rebellion. 

Traditionally, however, the rural agriculturalists were conservative 

Catholics tied to paternalist dependency and party loyalty. The 

Marxist-Leninist argument more often did not inspire them, and 

succeeded most when overlaying better-rooted determinants of 

competition, almost always territorial and familial. While 

revolutionary writers may claim that the Violencia of the 1950s was 

class-revolutionary in nature and the seedbed of the current crop of 

Colombia’s leftist guerrillas, it is also argued that the Violencia owed 

much more to the old federalist/anti-federalist polemic, and to the twoparty loyalties engendered by it.117 After the Violencia, the radicalizing 

effect of revolutionary thinking and its opposites increased--spurred by 

organized efforts at concientization, foreign intervention, and by 

growing ideological dissipation and ambivalence within the Liberal and 

Conservative parties. Explicit collaboration between those parties in 

the late 1950s and 1960s, in what is known as the National Front, 

served to calm the federalist/anti-federalist polemic on which the 

Violencia had thrived. It also presented a common target (a single 

oligarchic concept) against which the new stream of communist 

revolutionary organizations could argue their moral purpose and justify 

violence. Paradoxically, compromise inside and between the most 

effective competitive identities (Liberal and Conservative parties) in 

the federalist/anti-federalist contract battle gave the socialistrevolutionary idea an opportunity to sustain itself. 

 

117 Among the more intriguing histories of the Violencia is Ramsey, Russell W. 

Guerrilleros y Soldados. Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1981. 

130
 The fourth intellectual (or perhaps counter-intellectual) stream, 

particularly noxious and currently reigning, is unrepentant gangsterism. 

The notion is still one of taxation and its avoidance, and of changing 

the balance of individual rights with those of the government and 

society. There has always been an admixture of purely mercenary 

criminality in Colombian organized violence. Smuggling has been a 

science in Colombia for almost five centuries, but the violence today is 

not the same as in the past. Some insidious methods, such as 

widespread kidnapping, are new, as is the indifferent sowing of 

inexpensive, easily deployed explosives. Abandonment of moral 

motivation in favor of material expediency became commonplace 

rather than exceptional – the moral asymmetry described in Chapter 

Two. This or that gangster might make a convenient argument about 

local territorial identity or representing workers, but the volume of their 

insincerities owes to illicit disposable income. Maintaining that income 

encourages further justifications for opposing established standards of 

morality. In this vicious syndrome of challenged norms, ruthless 

criminal organizations set about to establish their own taxing authority 

and tax territories. Thus the Colombian fight slouches back both to 

justification of pure conquest and to its polarized federalist/antifederalist self -- all of it territorial and homicidal.118

Four historic catalytic currents favoring violence were just 

listed: conquest and evangelization, federalism and anti-federalism, 

revolutionary socialism, and gangsterism. Regardless of the measure or 

mix, the object of conflict and the frontline geography of violence in 

Colombia has been real estate and its product. All of the four currents 

 

118 As to the causes of violence in Colombia, quite a literature exists, especially by 

Colombian authors. To summarize in a few paragraphs what remains unexplained in 

hundreds of titles is not a conceit the author will risk here. Outstanding among the 

explanations favored by the author is that of retired Colombian General Alvaro 

Valencia Tovar, one of the most widely respected and most prolific writers on the 

nature of Colombian violence. General Valencia stresses individual human faults as 

root causes of Colombian violence (ambition, caudillo-ism and power hunger). See, 

for instance, Alvaro Valencia Tovar, Inseguridad y Violencia en Colombia. Bogotá: 

Universidad Sergio Arboleda, 1997. Regardless, the object of these spiritual failings, 

is almost always territorial or has powerful territorial correlations. 

131
are strategic ownership plans. None have been conducive to long-term 

peace because they do not contemplate property as a social contract 

with just peace as its purpose, or that itself required maintenance. 

Figure 2. Special Colombian land-use challenges 

 

This image of the ‘Middle Magdalena’ region of Colombia 

was prepared from various open sources by the GIS Team 

of the Foreign Military Studies Office. It was part of an 

attempt to test correlations between coca crops (yellow 

dots) hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation 

concessions, transportation infrastructure and land mine 

fields. 

132
The object of organized conflict 

¡Vamos a buscar este indio dorado! 

(We’re going to go look for this golden Indian!) 

 Sebastian de Belalcázar, Conquistador 

ELN, AUC, FARC119

The following examination of the ELN, FARC and AUC is 

from a prominent Colombian commercial lawyer. It is based on 

number of local sources and is included here as a summary not only of 

the evolution of the three principal illegal armed groups, but as an apt 

 

119 FARC-EP is the acroynm for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia 

- Ejército del Pueblo (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army), 

ELN is the acroymn for the Ejército Nacional de Liberación (National Liberation 

Army). Roots of these two communist guerrilla groups reach back to at least the 

early 1960's. See, on the history of the Colombian guerrillas, Michael Radu, Violence 

and the Latin American Revolutionaries (New Brunswick, 1988); Russell W. 

Ramsey, Guerrilleros y Soldados, Segunda Edición (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, 

2000); Cordillera Editores, Historia de las Fuerzas Militares de Colombia: Ejército, 

Tomo III (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana, 1993) pp.124-141; Eduardo Pizarro 

Leongómez, Las FARC: 1949-1966 (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1992); Carlos Medina 

Gallego, ELN: Una historia de los orígenes (Bogotá: Rodriguez Quito, 2001); AUC is 

the acronym for the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self Defense Forces 

of Colombia), another illegal, armed irregular force popularly described as 

‘paramilitary’ and as ‘right wing,’ although it has made few ideological statements 

beyond opposition to the communist guerrillas. For more on this organization, see 

David Spencer, Colombia’s Paramilitaries: Criminals or Political Force? (Carlisle, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2001); Maurico Aranguren 

Molina, Mi Confesión: Carlos Castaño revela sus secretos (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja 

Negra, 2001); ‘Place’ as used here alludes to a body of theory in the study of 

geography, a centerpiece of which is called ‘central place theory,’ that considers 

competitive weeding-out and survival of businesses. Associated normally with urban 

economics and geography, place theory has obvious application in Colombia. See in 

this regard, <http://geography.about.com/cs/centralplace/ 

133
description of their equivalent, territorial, strategic and mercenary 

nature. 

 “Although [the FARC] arose by the middle of 

the 60's, its growth is verified mainly starting from the 

80's, coinciding with the expansion of the coca 

cultivations and the escalation of kidnapping. In 1982, 

when president Betancour’s administration began, there 

were 16 fronts with nearly 1,300 men. Two years later, 

in 1984, the figure increased to 27 fronts and around 

1,700 men. In 1987, when during the Barco 

administration the peace agreements broke, there were 

already 39 fronts and 4,300 men. In the decade of the 

90's the growth didn't stop. In 1991, year of the Army’s 

offensive into the FARC headquarters at Uribe, Meta, to 

evict the FARC from Casa Verde, there were already 49 

fronts and 8,500 men. In 1995 at the beginning of the 

Samper administration, it increased to 58 fronts and 

10,000 men. And in 2000 there were already 66 fronts 

and 16,000 men. In 2001 and 2002 the fronts and the 

men didn't increase notably, but it is necessary to note 

that multiple columns and mobile companies were 

created that modified FARC’s military activity, passing 

from the war of guerrillas to the war of movement, with 

significant attacks on military bases. ... 

 In the 60's and 70's ELN located its combat 

fronts in the Middle Magdalena River valley. A very 

mineral and cattle rich environment; likewise they had 

presence in urban areas like Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, 

Bucaramanga and Barrancabermeja. They were 

strengthened starting from 1983 through extortions of 

the foreign companies, as in the case of the 

manufacturer of the pipeline of Occidental Petroleum 

and through Kidnapping. The numbers of men and 

fronts corroborate this situation. While in 1987 there 

134
were only three fronts and sixty men, in 1983 it passed 

to five fronts and 150 men and in 1987 went to 14 fronts 

and 1200 men. In 1994/5 there were already 26 fronts 

and 2,454 men in arms. Their growth slowed down in 

the second half of the decade. Today, most ELN fronts 

have been overrun by either FARC, or AUC. ... 

AUC was born in the Middle Magdalena Valley 

in the early 70 ́s as a response to FARC and ELN 

penetration of the rich cattle and oil producing areas. In 

general, they can be described as groups formed or 

supported by land owners, that sought by means of 

armed confrontation to maintain the status quo and to 

weaken the insurgency, assuming the double task of not 

allowing the expansion of the guerrillas and on the other 

hand penetrating the areas where these organizations had 

their most stable sources of financing. Although they 

have the support of varied groups affected by the 

guerrillas, among them farmers, merchants, peasants and 

other, their expansion in the 80 ́s has been associated to 

the drug traffic. ... 

The current self-defense forces were established 

in the 1980's, when drug barons bought a millions of 

hectares of land in rural areas, according to Defense 

Ministry estimates. Drug dealers acquired cheap cattle 

farms in the Middle Magdalena valley, in the plains of 

Meta and mainly in Córdoba, Antioquia and Sucre, in 

the northwest of the country. These areas had been 

under guerrilla siege and influence. Routinely FARC 

demanded money in exchange for protection. The drug 

dealers counteracted these demands, organizing militias 

that evolved as the self-defenses. According to author 

Alberto Valencia, between 1986 and 1988 armed groups 

at the service of drug dealers that had acquired 

enormous extensions in the Ariari (Center south of the 

135
country) undertook a regional war against the FARC, 

and were able to expel them from some municipalities 

like San Martin, Granada and Vista Hermosa, in Meta. 

In Caquetá, the presence of these groups was smaller, 

due to the dominant power of the FARC. By the end of 

the 80's, for a short time, between two and three hundred 

men of Gonzalo Rodríguez (also known as The 

Mexican) tried to take control from the FARC in areas 

like El Recreo, Yaguara II, Las Sombras, Los Pozos, Las 

Delicias, with the purpose of depriving them of the 

strategic corridor between the Region of the Cagúan, the 

Lozada and the Macarena.120

The trend toward pure profit motivation is a latest phase in the 

long history of Colombian territorial competitions. It is no surprise that 

violence occurs in positive geographic correlation with the sources of 

profit and their movement routes. 

 

120 From Ernesto Villamizar Cajiao, “Terrorism in Colombia,” presented in 

Williamsburg VA, 26 May, 2004, at a conference hosted by the US Army Training & 

Doctrine Command. Mr. Villamizar, Fulbright scholar and managing partner of 

Villamizar Abogados Asociados, has also served as a criminal attorney in high profile 

human rights cases. 

136
Figure 3. Colombian Resource Predation 

Unlawful/ 

unethical 

Behavior 

Implicated 

Actors 

Major 

Resources 

Affected 

Consequences 

Principle 

Geographic 

Locations 

CounterMeasures 

Extortion, 

including 

support 

violence 

FARC, ELN, 

AUC, DTOs 

(DTO=Drug 

Trafficking 

Orgs) 

Oil, natural, 

natural gas, 

coal, electric 

power, water, 

coffee, other 

transport, 

other 

Strengthened outlaws; 

government programs, 

business profitability, 

resource exploration all 

diminished; murders, 

bombs and general 

mayhem 

Norte de 

Santander, 

Boyacá, 

Arauca, Sucre, 

Nariño, Cauca, 

Huila, other 

Destroy 

outlaw 

leadership, 

improve 

personal 

security, 

audits, 

transparency, 

legal system, 

other 

Illicit crop 

cultivation, 

processing 

and transport 

FARC, 

AUC, DTOs, 

ELN, others 

Natural 

habitat, 

protected 

species, licit 

agriculture, 

licit extractive 

industries 

Strengthened outlaws; 

Production of illicit drugs 

for export, loss of 

habitat/species, 

population displacement, 

loss of tourism, increased 

energy exploitation costs 

Putumayo, 

Caquetá, 

Guaviare, 

Bolívar, Nariño, 

Cauca 

Eradicate 

crops, interdict 

transport, 

pursue and 

eliminate 

outlaw 

leaders, 

formalize 

property, 

strengthen 

forfeiture laws 

Theft 

AUC, 

FARC, ELN, 

others 

Gasoline, 

various 

agricultural 

products 

Strengthened outlaws; 

higher domestic energy 

costs/ weakened 

economy; lower 

government revenues 

Middle 

Magdalena 

between 

Baracabermeja 

and Salgar Port

Regain 

territorial 

control, antifencing 

measures, 

technology, 

destroy outlaw 

forces 

Bribery 

FARC, ELN, 

AUC, others

All Environmental protection 

and enforcement regimes 

weakened, energy 

exploitation regimes 

Select, resource 

rich 

municipalities 

Sting ops, 

amnesties, 

confidential 

comms, audits, 

etc. 

Territorial 

control 

FARC, 

AUC, ELN, 

factions 

within 

Lines of 

communicatio

n, gas 

pipelines, 

illicit drug 

cultivation 

areas 

Government programs 

stopped, legal regime for 

environmental protection 

compromised, resource 

allocation shifted 

AUC: Uraba 

ELN: Parts of 

Cesar, 

Antioquia 

FARC: 

Venezuela 

border, part of 

Ecuador border

Destroy 

outlaw forces, 

terrain and 

property 

intelligence, 

owner 

strategies, 

property 

formalization 

137
Landmine 

emplacement 

FARC, 

AUC, ELN 

Oil, natural, 

natural gas, 

coal, electric 

power, water, 

coffee, other 

transport, 

other 

Civilian maiming, 

depressed land values, 

generalized fear, resource 

exploitation cost increase

Approx 50% of 

counties 

affected, about 

5% severely 

Destroy 

outlaw forces, 

increase 

funding to 

protect 

infrastructure, 

mining 

deactivation 

Highway 

robbery 

FARC, ELN, 

AUC, lesser 

known 

criminals 

All Strengthened outlaws, 

resource exploitation cost 

increases, depressed 

tourism, generalized fear 

Road network Destroy 

outlaw forces, 

increase 

checkpoints, 

detachments, 

convoy, 

escorts, 

Kidnapping 

FARC, ELN, 

AUC, others

All Strengthened outlaws, 

Resource cost increases, 

facilitated extortions 

Select urban 

areas and roads

Destroy 

outlaw 

leadership, 

personal 

protective 

measures 

Population 

displacement 

AUC, 

FARC, ELN, 

government 

Farmland, 

forests and 

woodlands 

Exploitation cost 

increases, depressed land 

values, social care costs 

Areas of 

conflict among 

illegal armed 

groups 

Destroy 

outlaw 

leadership, 

formalization 

of property 

Embezzleme

nt 

Government 

functionaries

All All All Corruption 

regulations 

and practices 

Poaching 

and 

smuggling 

Cross-border 

actors; 

unknown 

Flora and 

fauna 

Loss of species/ loss of 

viable sustainable 

development options 

NA Patrolling, 

checkpoints, 

international 

agreements 

Abuse of 

legal process 

Unknown All industries, 

specifically 

power 

companies, 

mining 

operations 

Increased costs, 

bankruptcy, encourages 

violent action 

NA, but recent 

efforts against 

gold industry 

Facilitated 

procedures 

against abuse 

of process 

International 

strategy 

Foreign 

government 

officials 

All Strengthened outlaws, 

increase in contraband, 

border tensions 

Venezuela International 

pressure, other 

138
Figure 4. 16th century gold coin of Charles I at the Prado Museum, 

Madrid. 

 

A legend heard by the author in Spain (maybe one of 

those ‘urban’ legends, e.g. spurious, but nevertheless 

entertaining) holds that this pristine gold coin, recently 

obtained by the Prado Museum in Madrid, was illegally 

possessed for almost all of the first four hundred and 

fifty years of its existence. 

139
Doubloon at rest 

Compartmentalized geography, geophysical wealth, predatory 

human nature, and the mix of contentious philosophies have together 

furthered Colombian violence. To state that this or that has been the 

single cause of violence would be to foist questionable logic. The 

determinants are scarcely subject to independent treatment. The 

weakness of the social contract that civilizes the interaction of these 

other variables, however, is a condition that can be improved. The 

most directly relevant of the civilizing institutions of a successful social 

contract is a transparent, precise and stable property regime. This last 

variable in the equation of violence, inadequacy of civilizing 

institutions, can be dramatically and favorably improved by improving 

the property regime. 

 Violent territoriality and illegal arrogation of real estate in 

Colombia today correlates generally to business factors involving the 

processing, warehousing, delivery and sale of an illicit commodity; 

fenceablity of a legal but stolen commodity; or risk-benefit calculations 

regarding human targets potentially paying extortions or ransom. Each 

parasitic activity-type has a specific geographic reference. Because a 

parasitic behavior matches a portion of the logistical web of the illegal 

armed group, and marks an important line of communication, the best 

military understanding of key terrain in Colombia is informed by the 

commercial value of given set of places, as much as by their classic 

military characteristics. 

 Colombia’s internal conflict centers geographically on resource 

extraction areas, processing points or movement routes, in accordance 

with their importance to profitability.121 The favorite natural resources 

 

121 During the early stages of the on-going leftist insurgency, the greatest violence 

was centered geographically on newly colonized lands and marginalized populations, 

rather than on a specific natural resource. See, for instance, Eduardo Pizarro 

Leongómez, Las FARC: 1949-1966 (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1992). Looking at 

Pizarro’s map figures, such as those on pages 129 and 190, both the limited 

geographic extent of guerrilla territorial influence, as well as the non-correlation with 

140
targets for illegal armed groups are hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas, coal 

and refined products), illicit drugs (the products of coca and poppy 

plants, cocaine and heroin respectively), electric energy, water and 

minerals (especially gold). There are many lesser resources spurring 

armed violence, not the least of which are bananas, coffee and African 

palm.122 Admitting many commonalities, each of these products is 

associated with a certain criminal modus operandi due to geographic 

concentration and peculiarities of the product. As expressed in Figure 

3, the parasitic method of Colombia’s illegal armed groups includes 

extortion and bribery; illicit drug trafficking; theft; guerrilla assaults; 

outlaw territorial control; landmine emplacement; highway robbery; 

kidnapping; population displacement; embezzling; poaching and 

smuggling; abuse of legal processes; and international strategy. Some 

towns and small cities have suffered generalized extortion, in which 

any enterprise irrespective of product, is subject to forced illegal 

taxation, a condition typical of locations where mafia-style presence 

becomes dominance. 

Underground and placer mining activities, especially for gold 

and emeralds, but also for lesser gems and minerals, are the more 

traditional objects of internal discord.123 Before the arrival of the 

Spanish conquistadors, pre-Colombian tribes living in mountainous 

northern South America prized these elements and fought over them. 

 

natural resources are notable. While the geography of armed political conflict in 

Colombia was centered on remote areas with communist-influenced populations 

rather than on commercial resources, this is not to say conflicts were not propertybased, even at the historical roots of revolutionary organization and violence. Pizarro 

points out early in the text how much revolutionary violence, and Colombian violence 

in general, are connected with tenancy and ownership. 

122 “Aumenta en Colombia la piratería de videos, libros, música y muchas mercancías 

más” [Piracy of videos, books, music and many other goods is increases in 

Colombia], El Tiempo (Bogotá) 28 January 2003, online at 

<http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/judi/2003-01-29/ARTICULO-WEBNOTA_INTERIOR-262989.html. Colombia has become a world leader in the piracy 

of almost everything. 

123 For a review in Spanish of Colombian gold history see Juan José Hoyos, El oro y 

la sangre [Gold and blood] (Bogotá, Editorial Planeta 1994). 

141
Not, however, with the dedication and organizational bent of the 

Spanish. Beginning in the 16th century these items (along with lesser 

mentioned resources such as ink and animal pelts) became focal points 

for geographic dominance, then the motivation of taxation schemes and 

the smuggling routines and practices to avoid taxation. Colombia’s 

social-revolutionary tradition is rooted directly in opposition to 

oppressive taxation, and the geographic flashpoints of revolution were 

often places associated with mining activities.124 A culture of criminal 

extraction, clandestine transport and outright theft had been firmly 

established well before national independence in the 19th century. 

Today most gold extraction, transportation and exchange are still 

accomplished outside the legal mechanisms intended to regulate them. 

This failure begins at the base ownership rights of access and 

extraction. Subsurface resources belong initially to the federal State. 

Exploration licenses and extraction licenses are issued, and mining 

conducted with small regard for the holders of mere surface rights. The 

extent the government can monitor, inspect and enforce the legal 

balance of rights determines the level of conflict resolution, or of waste 

and trespass associated with mining claims. Historically, little has been 

done by the State to secure the rights of licensees, or surface owners, or 

to establish an efficient mechanism of conflict resolution based on clear 

evidence of the rights contested. This has forever opened the door to 

resolution by force. 

 As old as the history of gold conflict is in Colombia, its ups and 

downs have clear historic, often transnational, details, even recently. In 

1971, the President of the United States announced the suspension of 

convertibility of dollars into gold, and in 1974 American citizens could 

 

124 See, for instance, accounts of the late 18th Century “Comuneros” uprising in 

Aguirre, Indalecio Liévano, “La Revolución de los comuneros” in Los Grandes 

Conflictos Sociales y Económicos de Nuestra Historia (Bogotá: Intermedio, 2002 pp. 

381-404; Henao, Jesus María y Arrubla, Gerardo, Historia de Colombia: Tomo 1, 

(Bogotá: Plaza y Janes, 1984), p. 315; Gutierrez, Javier V. Historia de Colombia y 

educación cívica (Medellín: Editorial Bedout, 1975), p. 95.

142
once again legally hold gold coins and bullion.125 In 1975 and 1976, 

the US Treasury and the International Monetary Fund began sales of 

gold reserves. Gold purchases, especially from the Middle East, caused 

the market price of gold to rise from what had been 35- 45 dollars a 

troy once in the early 1970s to over eight hundred dollars a troy once in 

1980. This change coincides with social upheaval in the gold mining 

areas in Colombia, and in particular in southern Bolivar Department. 

In 1980, the ELN moved into the southern Bolivar mining counties to 

take advantage of an increasingly violent dispute between established 

residents and itinerant prospectors from neighboring Boyacá and 

Santander departments who were attracted by the rise in prices.126 The 

town of Simití became the geographic focal point of an ELN effort to 

leverage its ‘mediation’ of the conflict into tax concessions on gold 

mining, concessions that soon amounted to effective control of the 

mines, since absence of government authority in the region created 

impunity for extortion. Gold was the natural resource object, and the 

gold region, with its unsettled population and stressed economy, 

became the geographic locus of violent conflict and organized outlaw 

exploitation of that conflict. It is not that property was not created in 

the gold region, but that the authority for dispute resolution was outlaw 

and non-transparent.

 In obedience to the notion that one bad thing leads to another, 

the history of Southern Bolivar in the last two decades links natural 

bounty to violent competitions of all kinds. Besides the nearby gold, it 

is a concentration area for coca cultivation and for the suite of parasitic 

activities associated with hydrocarbons. Southern Bolivar, more 

broadly the ‘Middle Magdalena’ (middle reaches of the Magdalena 

 

125 Earle B. Amey, “Significant Events Affecting US Gold Prices since 1958,” Gold

in Commodity Statistics and Information, online at 

<http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/300798.pdf. 

126 Norbey Quevedo Hernández, “El tesoro de las autodefensas” [Treasure of the selfdefense forces], El Espectador, 26 November 2000 online at 

<http://www.elespectador.com/2002/20020728/periodismo_inv/2000/noviembre/ 

nota2.htm; see also “Las aventuras de los paramilitares en San Lucas” [Adventures of 

the paramilitaries in San Lucas], eln-voces.com, 2001 online at <http://www.elnvoces.com/ultno/un_minavieja.htm. 

143
River valley), is a natural hub for oil and gas transport infrastructure. 

Extortion targeted at the oil industry had become the preferred modus 

operandi of the ELN, doubtless in obedience to the quick submission of 

the industry and the propagandistic advantages of ‘taking from the 

rich.’ Geographic proximity to the Bolivar gold region made 

imposition in the gold fields a natural step, followed by exploitation of 

an ideal coca-growing zone, also contiguous.127

 Gold mining, however, retained a central role in shaping the 

contest over natural resources, a role disproportionate in terms of the 

total value of disposable income generated for outlaw groups when 

compared to drug or hydrocarbon-related parasitism. Around 1997, the 

AUC began to invade Southern Bolivar and the middle Magdalena 

valley, taking over extortion contracts, physically occupying territory 

and denying the ELN the ability to collect in a wider area that 

eventually included the hub city of Barrancabermeja, just east of the 

Magdalena River. Local geographic differences in the gold fields also 

contributed to violence, as have Colombian government gold policies. 

“En el sur de Bolívar según el Ejército hombres al 

mando de alias Montañez y de alias Julián han 

desplazado a los guerrilleros del ELN en el control de 

las minas de oro. Allí no solo controlan la minería 

illegal sino que exigen ‘contribuciones’ a quienes tienen 

títulos legales de explotación.” 

English translation: “According to the Army, in southern 

Bolívar (Department) men under the command of 

Montañez and Julián [aliases] have displaced the ELN 

guerrillas for control of the gold mines. They not only 

control the illegal mining there, but also require 

‘contributions’ from those who have legal mining titles.” 

 

127 On the clearance zones, see Geoffrey Demarest, “In Colombia: A 

Guerrilla Sanctuary?” Military Review, March-April 2002,. pp. 48-50; also online at 

<http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/search/LessonsLearned/LatinAm/colombia

.htm. 

144
Globalization, and in particular the movement toward 

extraterritoriality of legal jurisdiction, especially in human rights cases, 

has, along with active participation of international NGOs, made the 

competition over gold all the more complex and difficult to decipher. 

El Sindicato de Trabajadores de Minería Colombiana (Colombian 

Mine Workers’ Union, SINTRAMINERCOL), a miners’ union active 

in Southern Bolivar and, entered a case in the US Federal Court for 

Northern Alabama against multinational corporations for human rights 

abuses against its members, alleging, moreover, collusion with 

paramilitaries. Since the parties in this and related cases seem to align 

themselves perfectly with competing outlaw groups, one is led to 

speculate that the ELN feigned a role of innocent victim in part because 

it had control of organizational and legal/propagandistic assets that its 

competitors did not. In any case, the presentation of the conflict in 

Colombia as a war over natural resources is clear: 

“There are people [“The US and the great world 

powers... {and} multinational corporations in league 

with the Pentagon”] responsible for this War, with 

names and clear interests. It is our duty to remove their 

masks and the blanket of impunity that covers them. In 

Colombia the war against SINTRAEMCALI and the 

communities of the Atlantic Coast is called privatisation, 

handing over public and state resources such as Water, 

Electrical Energy and Telecommunications to the 

multinationals. The war against the Oil Workers Union 

Unión Sindical Obrera USO and against the U'WA 

indigenous people is because of OIL. The War against 

mineworkers union SINTRAMINERCOL is based on 

GOLD. The War on the workers of DRUMMOND is 

because of COAL.”128 

 

128 Berenice Celeyta, “Humanity’s Ethical Duty,” Nadir.org, 15 February 2003, online 

at <http://www.nadir.org/ 

145
Emerald smuggling is another traditional illegal activity in 

Colombia, and one that has very specific geographic identity, most 

recently in the municipios of La Palma, Yacopí and other municipios of 

northern Cundinamarca Department and southern Boyacá 

Department.129 La Palma is the unofficial capital of the headwaters 

area of the river Rionegro, which flows into the Magdalena. It is a 

central location, not too far north of the nation’s capital, or south of the 

strategically essential middle Magdalena valley, yet its difficult terrain 

makes it remote in the sense of military pursuit. It is fought over by all 

major terrorist organizations. The area has become one of the 

country’s most frequent battlefields, an area over-sown with 

improvised landmines, and a favorite hiding place for kidnapping 

victims. 

The links between emeralds and the current conflict include 

coincidence of difficult terrain, experience in the growth of criminal 

organizations and their private armies, smuggling routes and fencing 

apparatus, and a broader agenda of aversion toward the government and 

application of violence to create impunity. Here again, it would be too 

much to say that a quick improvement in the condition of property 

records, the creation of property courts, professionalizing of the real 

estate profession or any improvement in the property regime in Boyacá 

department would have a noticeable short-term impact on the violence 

there. However, just as discipline in policing the misdemeanors of 

graffiti and window breaking has the effect of interrupting devolution 

toward felonious violence, so too will an expectation of enforcement of 

the rule of law regarding the details of property have an ameliorating 

 

nadir/initiativ/agp/free/colombia/txt/2003/021415FEB_Colombia.htm. The FARC has 

had the greatest leverage over mining industries in Colombia; the quoted assertion is 

from an organization sympathetic to the FARC.

129 See María Victoria Uribe Alarcón, Limpiar la tierra: guerra y poder entre 

esmeralderos (Clean the land: war and power among emerald men) (Bogotá: CINEP, 

1992), p. 74; Jineth Bedoya Lima, “La Guerra del Rionegro,” El Tiempo (Bogotá), 15 

July 2003, pp. 1-4. 

146
effect on the illegal organizational impulse toward territorial violence. 

That this is not mere speculation lies in the immediate uses to which 

property records can be put in order to identify ownership associations, 

anomalies of land-use, and questionable tax-paying events. Until 

property records are available that expose interests and associations, 

there is no comprehensive way of establishing the actual battle-lines of 

violence there. Entering into this geographic area with the intention of 

imposing the rule of law, or of bringing felons to justice, but without an 

understanding of who owns what and with whom, is shortsighted and 

inconsequential. Paraphrasing for our own purposes the quotation used 

above, “There are people ... responsible for this War, with names and 

clear interests. It is our duty to remove their masks and the blanket of 

impunity that covers them. 

In Colombia, oil infrastructure depredation has also been 

extensive along Colombia’s northern border area, especially in Arauca 

Department. Oil pipeline attacks have been especially costly to the 

local and national economy and are visibly detrimental to the 

environment. Extortion and bribery require less technical expertise and 

physical risk than outright theft, and do not require post-act logistic 

preparation for product movement and fencing.130

...[T]he department of Arauca receives 80,000 million 

pesos [approximately 28 million dollars] annually 

royalties. Of this amount authorities estimate that between 

10 and 15 percent goes to the coffers of the guerrillas, 

 

130 Some of the most publicized environmental insults of the conflict have been 

attacks by the ELN or the FARC against the Caño Limon-Coveñas oil pipeline. 

“Presidente Álvaro Uribe gobernará por tres días desde Arauca” [President Álvaro 

Uribe will govern for three days from Arauca], El Tiempo (Bogotá), 14 July 

2003, online at 

<http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/noticias/ARTICULO-WEB-

_NOTA_INTERIOR-1177394.html. Guerrilla bombings of oil infrastructure 

have spilled three million barrels of oil--more than ten times the amount of oil caused 

by the Exxon Valdez disaster. Semana, “El nuevo narcotráfico” [The new 

narcotraffic], Semana, 23-30 September 2002 No. 1,064 p. 27.

147
FARC and ELN, the product of direct extortion. In 16 

years, Arauca has received 1.2 billion dollars in royalties. 

It is estimated that of this amount, 180 million dollars has 

ended up in the hands of the guerillas.131 

Guerrilla violence in Colombia has evolved to the point that 

every Colombian understands the seriousness of guerrilla threats and 

the matter-of-fact ruthlessness with which the illegal organizations 

prove their strength of will. The specific fund-raising activities of the 

major illegal armed groups cover the entire range of parasitism, and 

resemble as much as anything else the extortionist activities of the 

American mafias of the 1930s, but aided by computer literacy and 

heavier weapons. In areas where resource extraction industries 

proceed, the illegal armed groups extort money “downstream” by 

taking a cut of royalties from local government officials. They also 

extort “upstream” by instructing exploration, extraction and support 

contractors. 

The diversion of official budget monies toward the 

guerrillas is almost always accomplished by means of the 

protection insurance racket targeted at contractors. 

Occasionally it is city hall itself that acts as the middleman, 

keeping a percentage itself.... City Hall would kept a 

percentage of the contract: One of the most common forms 

that the guerrilla has in order to control county budgets in 

the various zones of the country, particularly in Arauca, is 

to infiltrate the mayor’s offices and intervene directly in the 

adjudication of contracts, especially the public contracts. 

Only those contractors that have the authorization of the 

subversives, and that pay a percentage of the official 

contracts, are able to execute the works without 

difficulty.132

 

131 Semana, “El Nuevo Narcotráfico” Ibid.; see also “El otro cartel” [The other cartel], 

Semana, 17-24 June 2002, p. 52. 132 “¿Cómo intervienen las Farc en los presupuestos municipales en Arauca?” [How is 

the FARC intervening in the municipal budgets in Arauca?], El Tiempo (Bogotá), 30 

148
 Foreign investors almost always have a strict policy against 

paying these illegal armed groups, claiming that they would be 

propagating the problem. Instead, they devote money to social 

programs (schools, agricultural projects, etc.) and rely on defense by 

the community. Some companies also provide training to help 

community leaders identify funds within their own government 

structure to pay for programs and augment those funds with their own 

donations. However, the contractors and sub-contractors of these 

companies are often left with no choice but to pay outlaw taxes. All 

movement is subject to illegal fines or forced contributions, and nearly 

all transportation for foreign companies is contracted out to locals. 

Company executives know this well, and so transportation costs are 

understood to include necessary pay-off overhead. The coal industry, 

for instance, is effectively subdued by extortionist groups, which have 

occasionally blown up a coal train along the route southwest from the 

Guajira peninsula mining areas in northeast Colombia. Tolerable 

arrangements appear to have been reached after only a few such 

attacks. The major coal companies, as in other industries, profess to 

never negotiate with the illegal armed groups. Nevertheless, security 

managers and energy executives report that their subcontractors could 

not complete their contracts successfully without factoring in 

transportation costs that include arrangements for placating 

extortionists. 

Theft of refined gas is prevalent especially in Cesar Department 

and in several counties in the middle reaches of the Magdalena River 

valley where long, vulnerable stretches of Colombia’s gasoline pipeline 

infrastructure run. According to information from the Empresa 

Colombiana de Petróleos, (Colombian Government Petroleum 

Company, ECOPETROL), some 37.5 million gallons of gasoline were 

stolen in the first four months of 2003, and of 1,387 illegal valves 

found on the gasoline pipelines during 2002, 238 were found in the 

 

January 2003 online at <http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/noticias/ARTICULOWEB-NOTA_INTERIOR-263747.html.

149
Barrancabermeja area alone.133 Conversely, natural gas theft is unusual 

because it requires too much technical preparation and investment to 

avoid self-inflicted injury. The theft of refined gas, however, cost the 

government a reported four and a half million dollars a month in 

2002.134 Most of the value of illicit profit gained by illegal armed 

groups from this gas theft appears to be converted into combat and 

coercive power in order to protect the illicit activity, mostly from other 

outlaws. The relationship of this particular natural resource to internal 

conflict is clear and uncomplicated. The natural resource is vulnerable 

and attracts attention. A powerful criminal organization such as the 

FARC or AUC can easily make the initial technical investment and 

provide local security to steal the gas. The net income can be 

enormous, especially if the armed group can control territory inside 

which they can insist that citizens buy stolen gas, a common practice. 

An armed group will buy or exchange (if able to transport the gasoline 

with sufficient impunity) for armaments so that it can maintain its 

revenue source not just in the face of government law enforcement, but 

more immediately in the face of other, competing outlaw predators on 

their territory. 

 Direct theft of crude oil in large quantities is a newer 

phenomenon than the theft of natural gas.135 Most parasitism targeted 

against crude oil infrastructure had been in the form of extortion of 

companies backed by bombing of capital inputs or kidnapping 

personnel. This newer form of theft is revealing and challenging due to 

the category of buyers on the black market and the concentration of the 

theft geography. 

 The above litany of parasitic behavior is intended to show the 

relationship in detail of violence to geography, and the extent to which 

much of Colombia has been driven away from the rule of law. An 

 

133 Ecopetrol, “Crece el robo de gasolina” [Robbery of gasoline increases], El Tiempo

(Bogotá), 27 May 2003, p. 1. 

134 “El otro cartel” [The other cartel], Semana, 17-24 June 2002, p. 52. 135 Arturo Peñalosa Pinzón, “Mercado negro de crudo” [Black market of crude oil], El 

Tiempo (Bogotá), May 22, 2003, pp. 1-3.

150
observation that such bold acts of parasitism are distant from nuances 

in the property records, or from civil actions in property courts, would 

be gratuitous -- the State has been unable to bring effective kinetic 

firepower against illegal armed predators in many areas, much less 

prosecute them for trespass. Nevertheless, formal ownership allows a 

record of extortion and loss to be established, creates the possibility of 

insurance coverage and the establishment of bond values. Formalized 

ownership spreads and specifies responsibilities for vigilance and 

protection, and helps seal neighboring properties from illegal 

arrogations and direct extortion. There comes a moment when it is too 

late for the details of the rule of law, and so violent measures are 

engaged to force a return to that rule. In Colombia, in many 

jurisdictions, but not all, the rule of law has been overcome. It cannot 

be returned to the areas of predation by the physical presence of the 

State alone, but by the reestablishment of respect for the invisible lines 

of preferential ownership. 

Colombia’s property legacy 

El título de la propiedad en el Quindío lo dio el hacha del 

labriego que rompía la selva para establecer su casa rústica y 

su parcela.136

 

(The hatchet of the laborer, who broke the jungle to 

establish his rustic home and land parcel, is what gave 

title to property in Quindío.) 

 Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta, Colombian historian, diplomat 

 

136 Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta. Extract from María del Carmen Tafur, "Mensajes bajo 

un mismo cielo. Cartas de amor de Nieto Arteta", 1995, online at Banco de la 

República, <http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/diccio/dicn.htm#n02. 

151
Law as legitimacy 

 The history of property rights in Colombia is typical of many 

Latin American countries.137 The Spanish crown justified 

appropriation of “New World” lands within the context of Christian 

proselytizing affirmed by Roman ecclesiastical authority. Division of 

lands went to governors or captain-generals who swore allegiance to 

the crown and confessed their faith. The assignment of urban solares

or rural estancias correlated to the importance of the individual 

participant in a particular conquest expedition. Originally, a system of 

morada y labor was applied in which the receiver of lands had to stay 

resident on them for five years and work the land in order to gain 

permanent title. Later, under Bourbon reforms, the system was 

changed to that of conditional sale of royal holdings. The crown 

reserved to itself mining and subsurface rights. At first, indigenous 

people, while not considered property outright, were virtually chattel 

under a system of territorial encomiendas that gave managerial control 

over indigenous labor sources, these encomiendas being territorially 

demarcated. Later, when treatment of indigenous people as property 

was outlawed, blacks were introduced in the equivalent condition. 

 Colonial titles were clouded, and in cases remain so even today, 

in two principal ways, first by imprecise boundaries and secondly 

because many of the mercedes reales (royal grants or favors) were 

often not authorized by competent officials.138 Some property rights 

were claimed without the morada y labor having been fulfilled. The 

distinction between private and public property was often uncertain 

because the merced might be conceived of more as a royal tolerance 

and not as delivery of the fee simple. Also, there was often little 

 

137 Thanks and apologies to Professor Mauricio Rengifo Gardeazábal of the 

University of Los Andes. Much of the material on the history of the Colombian 

property regime is adopted and translated from his Los Derechos de Propiedad en 

Colombia: Una Interpretación Comprensiva (Property Rights in Colombia: A 

Comprehensive Interpretation). Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2003. 

138 For brief definitions of various historic real estate terms see, Jaime Sierra García, 

Diccionario Jurídico, (Bogotá: Librería Juridica Sanchez R. Ltda., 2001). 

152
distinction between the local functionary and the landowner, since 

many favored subjects of the crown exercised public and private roles 

simultaneously. Urban properties were relatively well marked, given 

that the Spanish urban planning system required rectilinear forms and 

generally standard sizes, but rural lands were often huge, irregular, and 

the terrain unknown. 

 Real property with documented ownership did not change hands 

often in colonial Colombia, but tended to stay within the same family 

group. Obstacles to the development a freely functioning market for 

even documented real estate included obligations known as décimos

and censos, the décimo being at first a ten percent ecclesiastical tax 

based on the value of land (generally undervalued by the possessors 

until the point of sale). In the first half of the 18th century these 

décimos were denied to the church, but continued in various forms in 

support of civil government until mid-century. The censos were a 

variety of mortgage types, often involving annual payments to an 

individual for life in exchange for basic possessory rights. Both these 

encumbrances made purchase and sale less attractive. Hording or 

setting aside of lands by the church, the doubtful character of many 

titles, slow processes of registration of encumbrances; unlawful 

expropriation of indigenous reservation lands; questionable paper 

transformation into real property of what had begun as indigenous labor 

control rights; state monopolies over the production of certain export 

commodities; and the abundance of royal patrimonial lands and their 

actual or fraudulent grants -- all had a dulling effect on market 

development. 

 Aside from market barriers related to direct encumbrances we 

can add debilitating aspects of Colombian jurisprudence. Many locally 

determined laws and regulations opposed norms unsuccessfully 

pronounced by the Spanish throne that were intended to protect the 

indigenous work force. The royal juridical system rarely even 

contemplated the growing condition of mestizaje (racial mixing), 

creating large gray areas and loopholes in the law. Most of the clergy 

also escaped regulation by the crown. 

153
 Colombia’s immediate post-colonial political reordering, 

influenced by the extreme nature of its geography, prolonged some 

idiosyncrasies of royal land policy. It also left regional divergence and 

disarticulation as Colombia lived a violent process of deciding the 

federalist debate. Eventually the whole range of western ownership 

rights including alienation, compensation and free marketability found 

expression in the Colombian civil code. Bureaucratic evolution 

competed mightily with juridical evolution, however. The property 

regime pertaining to subsurface resources and government open lands 

was built on a theory of government prerogatives fundamentally at 

odds with the guiding principles of the civil code. 

 In recent decades, contemporaneous with the above-mentioned 

current of ill-fitting revolutionary ideology, Colombian legislation has 

seen the advance of the concept of ‘social property.’ Tangible effects 

of the movement to deduce social property include regulations 

determining unit minimums of real property ownership (such as the 

agricultural familial unit which is an attempt to set the minimum 

amount of land needed for an agricultural family to survive), 

redistribution plans, and the organization of collective ownership 

entities. Social redistribution of real estate has been a political and 

academic favorite, implemented sporadically in the following forms: 

Voluntary negotiation, rural condemnation and taking, forfeiture for 

disuse or misuse, freezing of rents, urban expropriations, environmental 

expropriations, distribution of unused lands by petition, etc. The three 

major initiators of these processes of redistribution have been: the 

government under the auspices of established programs, class action 

lawsuits by claimants or dispossessed, and on occasion the private 

sector. In Colombia, a perpetual re-servicing of the theory that 

inequitable distribution of land is a primary cause of conflict tells us 

four things: One, that real estate is indeed important to Colombians; 

two, that redistribution efforts generally have not worked; three, that a 

fixation on the object of property has reigned without the necessary 

accompaniment of understanding of property as a social contract 

involving distinguishable and divisible rights; and four, a failure to 

154
perceive the determinants of land value as it is reflected in the market 

for rights. 

 The institutional history of land ownership in Colombia has 

unevenly and for the most part negatively affected the quality 

Colombia’s property regime. The quality of evidence delineating rights 

and the identity of owners often has been purposefully debased; 

marketing rights in land has been awkward or impossible. Protection 

from trespass has been nonexistent or ineffective, and the basic rules 

delimiting the social contract – who can be owners and what rights they 

might claim – has been illiberal. 

The resulting cadastres and registries 

 While the history of the development of the property regime is 

in many ways unfortunate, millions of Colombians nevertheless claim 

ownership of land parcels recognized in one of the five cadastres and 

the national land registry. Tenancy conditions are highly varied from 

one part of the country to another, even within a single department. 

Quality of land ownership in southwestern Nariño department, for 

instance, is typically varied, as a thematic map of tenancy there 

indicates.139 The Colombian cadastres have existed more or less in 

their present form since 1940, and they include mostly rural and urban 

claims from the eastern mountains west. Aside from their central role 

in tax appraisal, the Colombian cadastres are today recognized as a 

fundamental source of information for growth and conservation 

planning.140 The cadastres and the registry, however, are not 

 

139 See, Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi, Análisis geográficos: Aspectos 

geográficos del sector Andino Nariñense (Bogotá: Instituto Geográfico Agustín 

Codazzi, 1982) p. 26. 

140 Yovanny Arturo Martinez & Nyrian Angelica Ubáque, El catastro del nuevo 

milenio (Bogotá: Instituto Geográfico Augustín Codazzi, 2001) p.1.; See also, Ernesto 

Parra Lleras,. Apuntes de Catastro (Notes about the Cadastre). Bogotá: Universidad 

Externado de Colombia, 2002. 

155
reconciled. The cadastres are not up-to-date, sufficiently digitized, and 

are woefully incomplete in many of the municipios most effected by 

violence. Perhaps most important of all, they are not transparent. That 

is to say, the data that represents the social contract of rights and duties 

related to Colombia’s precious geography are not readily available for 

public inspection and are therefore subject to every type of instability 

and corruption. Rural Colombians almost always can produce some 

kind of writing indicating ownership, even in the most remote and 

marginalized areas. But to the degree these documents are not 

validated by the government and made representable to the market, 

they are correspondingly vulnerable to the modus operandi of the 

armed gangs. 

 The cadastral offices are responsible for appraising land values 

as the basis for taxation.141 They are charged to keep records of the 

size, location, use, potential use and tax currency of all properties. In 

order to fulfill all the requirements of Colombian administrative law, a 

seller must produce certification from the cadastral offices to show the 

boundaried description and location of land to be sold, as well as any 

tax debt. This process seems to be followed as an exception, however, 

in many rural areas, and often in the city. The cadastral offices are not 

the official record of ownership of a property. That function belongs to 

the registry offices of a separate ministry, the Superintendency of 

Notaries and Registries.142 In the course of many land transactions, 

 

141 The tax rates vary as a percentage of market value and no general figure for the 

relationship between the appraised value and market value would be broadly accurate. 

According to many familiar with the system of appraisals and the market for real 

property, an appraisal of around fifty percent of market value would be typical. 

142 Real property registrars are named to all of the departmental capitals and to a 

number of other cities. Registrars to the departmental capitals are named directly by 

the President of the Republic. Registrars are subordinate administratively to the 

Superintendency of Notaries and Registries (Superintendencia de Notarios y 

Registros) and those registrars named to non-departmental capitals are generally 

named by the Superintendent, who is in turn appointed by the President. The 

Superintendency is subordinate to the Ministry of Law and Justice (Ministerio de 

Justicia y Derecho). The registrars direct the registry offices, known as Offices of the 

Registry of Public Instruments (Oficinas de Registro de Instrumentos Públicos), 

156
new owners often consider it sufficient to register using a bill of sale in 

the registry without consulting the cadastral office or having received a 

certificate of description and assessment from the seller. Therefore, the 

cadastral records, while determinant of the location, shape, size and tax 

value of a piece of land, are not legally sufficient to establish definitive 

ownership. Historically, the cadastral office records have not been 

compatible with the registry files, or at least, no comprehensive 

comparison has been made to measure the match. Today there is at 

least a technical intention and a technical method for reconciling the 

cadastres and registries. 

The Colombian national cadastral office is a directorate of the 

national geographic institute, The Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi 

(IGAC), which is a dependency of the Ministry of Interior and Public 

Credit (Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público). The office is 

pursuing a process, supported in part by international loans, to digitize 

the property lines found on the analog cadastral maps, and IGAC 

recently signed a contract with a Colombian GIS firm to modernize its 

file system.143 A potential for greater transparency and, therefore, 

stability of ownership evidence does exist. 

 In addition to the national cadastral office there are four 

autonomous cadastral offices -- the Federal District of Bogotá, 

Antioquia, Medellín and Cali.144 The existence of these independent 

 

which are organized into what are called Registry Circles (Círculos Registrales) and 

into which may fall several to many counties (municipios). That is to say, only about 

one in ten counties has a registry office.

143 The current process of vector-digitizing is labor intensive, requiring laborious 

tracing of the property lines using a mouse. The process, often termed “live 

digitizating,” produces vector images as opposed to raster images, the vector images 

being subject to a different type of value assignments and mathematic manipulation. 

The importance of this technical point is only that full use of cadastral files in the 

context of current information science requires some investment. 

144 Cadastral information for the Federal District of Bogotá is almost entirely digital, 

aggregated in an ArcInfo® database. The district is divided for cadastral purposes into 

just over 1,100 cadastral sectors and 41 separate layers of information. These layers 

157
offices is directly related to historic anti-federalism. While the offices 

are politically, administratively and fiscally autonomous, they take 

technical guidance from the national cadastral office and theoretically 

follow the same technical protocols 

 The Federal District of Bogotá has one of the four independent 

cadastral offices, with over 250 employees. The office is well-funded 

and well-led.145 Bogota is one of the safest areas of the country, and 

while there are many other factors to which credit is due, the existence 

of a functional and increasingly formal property regime is not to be 

dismissed. 

 Medellín also has a modern cadastral and registry process. The 

Medellín office coordinates some appraisal activities with the other 

counties that make up the Valle de Aburrá, or the greater metropolitan 

area.146 In 2003, Medellín suffered a severe outbreak of organized 

armed violence as units of the FARC, AUC and ELN vied over select 

neighborhoods considered essential to maintain control of smuggling 

and re-supply routes through the city. Medellín lies across a vital line 

of communication between the western lowlands and the interior of 

Colombia. It would be a stretch to suggest that better developed urban 

property and records would have prevented this violence. While 

Medellín has made strides to formalize property, it is in areas of the 

 

are available for sale to the public and are priced by virtual map sheet (most at 

1:2,000 scale) and by layer. The cost of the layers per map sheet area ranges from 

about six to fifty dollars. Almost the entire digital map, in the form of ArcInfo® files 

with all 1,100 sectors and all correlative data layers can be purchased retail. 145 Cadastral information for the Federal District of Bogotá is almost entirely digital, 

aggregated in an ArcInfo®

 database. The district is divided for cadastral purposes into 

over 1,100 sectors and 41 separate layers of information. These layers are available 

for sale to the public and reasonable prices. 

146 The Antioquia departmental cadastral office is not as complete as that of the city of 

Medellín, but enjoys some technical cooperation and guidance from the Medellín 

office. Antioquia department has 127 municipios (counties), about 40% of which 

now have digitized cadastral information on 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scale base maps. 

Antioquia used AutoCad® software, which is compatible with the Intergaph® and 

ArcGIS® products. 

158
least formal property ownership that much of the fighting broke out.147 

More than Bogotá, Medellín also pays a cost for the weaknesses of the 

region as a whole, and southeastern Antioquia Department is one of the 

most violence stricken rural areas in the country. (The condition of 

property records for this area is not known to the author.) As an 

interesting side note, Colombian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, was 

captured in Medellín, in part through the use of property files. 

 Cali Colombia is a center of lawlessness in southwestern 

Colombia. Approximately the same size as Medellín, Cali has been 

less successful economically. It has a much less formal property 

regime, and according to various informed Colombians this condition 

reflects an outright decision on the part of the Cali municipal 

government to not have a current, accurate and transparent cadastral 

record.148 The most likely reasons for maiming the cadastral office are 

to disable their obvious forensic utility; appease special interests that do 

not want the tax assessments to reflect true values or identify their 

properties for taxation. In service of these first two reasons, the office 

had been purposefully overstaffed with unqualified political pawns 

 

147 Recognizing the economic, social and fiscal advantages of formalized property 

ownership, Medellín’s city government has in the past several years legalized more 

than 8,000 lots in economically disadvantaged areas. City officers believe the process 

of cadastral formation has contributed to positive evolution of several neighborhoods. 

Some zones that are considered high-risk for environmental reasons have a low

priority for formalization. As many as 150,000 of the 650,000 lots mapped by the 

office remained un-legalized in 2003. 

148 Organized similarly to that in Bogotá, the cadastral office in Cali has four divisions 

-- Cadastral Formation, Conservation, Cartography and Systems. At the time of the 

field study in 2002 the office had records on 505,000 urban plots and about 16,000 

rural plots. It was in possession of a digital plan based on 1993 aerial photography 

and completed in 1995. The plan includes 35 urban data layers and 25 rural layers in 

ArcView®

 format, and it covers 37,000 urban hectares and 30,000 rural hectares. 

However, the Cali cadastral office had no employees who knew how to work the 

digital plan software, and while the city planning office apparently had a current ESRI 

license, the Cadastral Office did not. The 1995 plan has not been updated. From Jan 

1, 1982 until December 31, 1995, the office had 235 employees, from Jan 1, 1996 to 

Jun 30, 2001 it had 90 employees, and from July 1, 2001 until mid 2002 it had 25 

persons. 

159
(reportedly including dozens of wholly illiterate persons) so that a 

subsequent radical reduction in personnel became broadly accepted as a 

reasonable efficiency measure. 

The effect of the reduction was perfectly understood by 

technicians in the cadastral office who remained. Millions of dollars in 

tax revenue are forgone in Cali by the failure to update appraisals. 

Meanwhile, tax rates have been rising to make up needed income. 

Forensic uses for both criminal and civilian courts are stymied. Landuse planning is made unreliable and many opportunity costs are 

incurred by city services. Cali, more than Bogotá or Medellín, is a 

metropolitan area not guided by the rule of law, where the negative 

isms of a failing society are more prevalent. In the confusion and 

violence of cronyism, paternalism, and bullying populism, drug mafias 

are more likely to thrive and guerrillas to find safe harbor. Thug 

leaders, who have arrogated power and gained impunity in Cali’s slums 

for bomb-making or storage of kidnap victim, are able to reach out into 

other neighborhoods of the city. As it stands now, Cali is unlikely to 

find a successful outcome to a major outbreak of urban violence such 

as that which occurred in Medellín. Cali’s property values are on the 

decline and its general prospects for economic health are declining 

commensurately. Those seeking an answer to what appears to be a 

vicious economic down-spiral might claim a failure of social services, 

but they would be mistaken. They need look no further than the city’s 

cadastral office. The government in that city decided emphatically to 

not be equitable in observing the rights of Cali ́s citizens in their 

residences and businesses. In the most favorable light, they pressed for 

greater redistribution of “social property.” The result has been support 

to political elements most able to win a game of possession by force, 

aiding those elements by allowing anonymity and impunity. It is a 

perfect formula for strategic reduction of the value of property, the 

value of rights.149

 

149 Not everything is going badly in Cali in terms of property, and it is by no means 

beyond hope of peaceful return to a path of broad economic prosperity. The real 

property registry (as opposed to the cadastral office) is in pretty good shape. The Cali 

registry maintains more than 700,000 files iincluding those for surrounding counties. 

160
 

The above description of property records in Colombia paints a 

mixed condition of the general property regime across the country. 

Records are excellent in some offices, a disaster in others. We will not 

find a perfect correlation between local conditions of property regimes 

and the incidence of violence with any degree of accuracy, but the 

anecdotal evidence of such a correlation is intriguing, the logic 

compelling, and it is hard to imagine that violent competition over 

urban or rural territory would have unfolded as it has if ownership 

rights had been more clearly recorded, transparent, and protected earlier 

during the evolution of predatory behavior on the part of the illegal 

armed groups. 

Un-property strategy 

As a matter of Administration policy, we will not support 

Colombian counterinsurgency efforts. ...This 

Administration remains convinced that the ultimate 

solution to Colombia’s long-standing civil conflict is 

through a successful peace process, not a decisive 

military victory, and believes that counterdrug progress 

will contribute to progress towards peace.

150

 President William Clinton, 2000 

 We look below at three specific phenomena of the Colombian 

conflict: aerial eradication of coca plants, Colombian negotiations with 

the FARC (on which the former Colombian government under 

President Andres Pastrana rested its security strategy), and landmines. 

These three do not paint the entire canvas of the Colombian conflict, 

 

Eighty percent of the information managed by the registry is digitally systematized, 

but it is not transparent to the public, and without a reconciled, matching cadastral 

system, it is very difficult to use for forensic purposes. 

150 Presidential Decision Directive/NSC 73, August 3, 2000. 

161
but they each serve in a different way to connect conflict strategy with 

the issue of property development. 

 

Putumayo and Ploesti 

 Plan Colombia’s Putumayo aerial eradication is a bit like the 

WWII raid on Ploesti.151 Few spray planes are shot down, but the 

 

151In 1943, WWII allied war planners felt a decisive raid on the Romanian oil fields 

around Ploesti could be a knock-out blow to German war-making capacity and so 

shorten the course of WWII in Europe. Churchill called the Ploesti fields, producing 

more than half the crude oil imported into Germany, the taproot of the Nazi war 

machine. An ensuing operation on August 1, 1943 was costly -- 54 of 177 of the B24 Liberators sent on the raid did not return, giving the raid its nickname, Black 

Sunday. There was no knockout blow at Ploesti; the immediate results were 

insubstantial, and, in terms of the overall outcome of WWII, the effectiveness of the 

raids is still debated. A resilient, determined enemy took countermeasures and found 

alternatives. Eventually, Nazi use of Romanian oil had been reduced by as much as 

85% by the time the Russians occupied the fields in 1945. Hurting the Nazi resource 

base was a good idea, and the oil bombing campaigns did speed the end of the war. 

The Battle of the Bulge, in which the final German offense stalled for lack of fuel, is 

an oft-cited proof. However, starving the Nazi war machine of Romanian oil was as 

effectively accomplished by railhead interdiction and destroying rolling stock as it 

was by bombing production facilities in the oil fields themselves. (Except perhaps 

later in the war, when a comprehensive, near simultaneous campaign against 

production facilities within Germany had a devastating effect on supply. Therein, 

too, may lie an important lesson. Eradication will be more successful in hurting 

guerrilla finances to the extent it can be done massively and simultaneously 

throughout the county. This may be practically impossible until the expanse of crop 

areas and the complexity of the outlaw logistics routes is reduced.) The overall air 

effort in Europe can be said to have been most effective when it supported major 

allied ground operations by interdicting Wehrmacht operational reserves. The air 

campaigns had to be part of a broad effort that correctly identified various critical 

vulnerabilities and attacked as many as possible. For Nazi Germany to be defeated, 

the Allies had to close with and destroy the Wehrmacht on the ground. See Michael 

Hill, Black Sunday: Ploesti (London: Schiffer Publishing, 2001); See also Hart, B. H. 

Liddell, History of the Second World War, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970) 

pp. 607-608.; United States Air Force Museum, WWII Combat Europe, Ploesti, 

Rumania Mission Details online at 

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/ce10.htm. 

162
strategies are analogous in that massive aerial attack against the dense 

and extensive Putumayo coca crop was supposed to cause grave harm 

to the FARC’s cocaine-based financial health -- just as the raid on 

Ploesti was to deprive the Nazi war machine of its supposed lifeblood. 

The strategy identified Putumayo, hardly the geographic center of 

gravity of the war in the traditional military sense, as the locus of a 

significant amount of the FARC’s overall war-making strength. The 

long-term value of eradication spraying will, like the Ploesti raid, be 

ambiguous. Spraying achieves the immediately visible result of 

knocking out a lot of commercially valuable vegetation. The extent to 

which the outlaws shifted to other income sources, protected other crop 

areas, dispersed cultivation, replanted, improved the species 

genetically, shipped from storage, increased kidnapping and oil 

extortion, exerted political pressure to end the spray, or took other 

countermeasures is yet to be precisely calculated.152 Aerial eradication 

makes it a little more difficult for the FARC, the ELN and the AUC to 

fund their respective wars, but they will do so. 

 Neither the raid on Ploesti nor Putumayo eradication were 

abject failures, even if they were not decisive blows. The costly 

experience at Ploesti led to better planned and executed follow-on 

operations that evolved with the broader counter-oil strategy. Like 

Ploesti, the coca field targeting may have been the result of the 

obvious. That is to say, oil field infrastructure in the WWII case, and 

coca plants in the Colombia case, stuck out in aerial photos, prompting 

a planning momentum too impatient for the painstaking identification 

 

152 These responses also show that eradication is having an effect, and more than mere 

annoyance. Still, the effect could be worse than the cure. See, for example Juan 

Londoño M., “Violencia, peor que la broca,” (Violence, worse than the blight) El 

Tiempo, December 5, 2001. Describing the effect of the war on the traditional coffee 

growing region, the eje cafetero, Londoño reports on an increase in violence, 

including the robbery of whole shipments of coffee beans by the guerrillas. Such acts 

may be compensatory means of reacting to diminished coca revenues. They raise a 

question about fencing. In order to convert coffee beans to cash, the guerrilla 

organization must have in place the correct set of owned or extorted businesses, 

and/or the right array of government bribes. 

163
of less dramatic and more disperse transportation nodes and 

infrastructure. Had there been a methodology in place able to precisely 

scale the relative economic-military value of European terrain, then 

perhaps the Ploesti fields themselves might never have been rated as an 

optimal target as compared, say, to railheads. In Colombia, while drug 

traffickers will use all means at their disposal for product shipment, 

cost constraints have them employ roads and rivers, probably in a 

measure consistent with the carrying capacity of the route. 

 The Putumayo eradication strategy recognized a place in 

Colombia as particularly valuable economically to the outlaw enemy, 

and therefore a valuable military target. Fortunately, the eradication 

plan also assisted the government in compromising a major enemy 

LOC. Unfortunately, the Putumayo spray plan, like the Ploesti 

bombing raid, was not based on a sufficient understanding of the 

relative economic value of terrain as a targeting guide. Nothing had 

been done, upon looking at the crop extension blobs, to find out in 

detail who owned the land on which those blobs appeared. When 

shown the crop extension plotting on government maps, we asked who 

owned the land where the coca was being grown. The question was 

met with incredulity. In fairness, it was also met with sufficient 

funding to determine the feasibility of answering the question. But US 

planners had incorrectly assumed that all the land was no-man’s land, 

or that knowledge of personal ownership was unavailable or would be 

inherently unreliable. Furthermore, the Putumayo plan neglected to 

identify terrain that might have been more important in the overall 

value of the product than the fields themselves. It was not based on 

geographic visualization of natural resources to include transportation 

routes as of equal or greater importance as source locations. The 

importance of the coca plant itself was perhaps over-rated as a factor in 

the commercial value of cocaine. Consider another widely available 

product on which there can be some physical dependency -- water. 

Bottled water is an extremely lucrative offering in the United States, 

and, as some note with chagrin, bottled water can sell for more money 

than the soft drink on the shelf next to it, even though the water was 

drawn untreated right from a municipal water service. This might 

164
make one question the value of sugar, but neither should we be fooled 

into thinking the price is associated with the quality of the H2O. The 

plastic in the bottle is not worth much either. If we wish to choke off 

water-profits from some ill-doing water-trafficker, we might try drying 

up the sources of water, perhaps because we can identify an offending 

lake or water main. Still, that strategy seems unlikely to succeed. It 

would be more efficient to knock off the truck on the way to the store. 

Where is the most valuable geography in the bottled-water industry? It 

is not the lake, but the bottling plant or some point on the road to the 

convenience store, or maybe the shelf in that store. The value of 

bottled water is the fact that it is found in a portable form in the 

convenience store, not that it is water. While this analogy is soon 

overdrawn, the question it highlights regarding relative geographic 

value -- route vs. ingredient source -- is valid. The coca fields are not 

as important as they appear in an aerial photo. They are more 

replaceable than other parts of the product-market geography. This 

question of relative geographic value is much more easily understood 

when land is considered as property. 

 Counter-terror has now displaced counternarcotics at center 

stage of official US policy toward Colombia.153 Not long after 

9/11/2001, the Pastrana government’s negotiations with the FARC 

collapsed, and a new government, with a different approach to the 

conflict, was voted into power. Current Colombian President Alvaro 

Uribe Velez set Colombia on a more martial course toward defeating 

the FARC, ELN and the AUC. The Uribe government, generally 

compatible ideologically with the US Republican administration of 

President George W. Bush, and sensing a mandate from Colombian 

citizens to act aggressively toward Colombia’s illegal armed groups, 

sought a change in US policy. The fictitious pre-9/11 dichotomy of 

counter-narcotics and counter-terror ended. Accordingly, one would 

 

153For a more recent US government statement regarding the Colombian situation, 

except in counter-terrorism terms, see United States Department of State, Patterns of 

Global Terrorism, Department of State Publication 10940 (Washington: Office of the 

Secretary of State, 2002) pp. 45-47. 

165
suppose that the principal US military objective in Colombia was no 

longer reduction of the amount of illicit drugs leaving the country. It 

would be to establish the security conditions for development of a 

regional ally where liberty and property are protected, material progress 

is a reasonable expectation for the majority, and, most of all (but hand 

in hand with these other goals), that Colombia not become a haven for 

growth and empowerment of terrorist organizations. If this does not 

misrepresent US policy, it means the US is assisting a Latin American 

ally to improve internal security that is threatened by organized armed 

foes. Whether or not these foes deserve the label insurgents is a 

question apart. The US and Europe have settled on defining them as 

terrorists. Countering illicit drugs became a subordinate mission, but 

remained a key objective. The illogic that caused Putumayo to be the 

geographic locus of US military assistance and aerial eradication to be 

the principal method had all but disappeared, but bureaucratic inertia 

retained their positions at the center of US efforts. According to some 

observers, operations and priorities at the US embassy were changing 

very slowly. If a shift had been ordered toward greater US support of 

Uribe’s effort to destroy the terrorist organizations and away from 

counternarcotics, the change would be implemented slowly. 

It was not an irrational approach to make aerial coca eradication 

the centerpiece of US counternarcotics assistance, given the constraint 

of the counternarcotics-counterinsurgency dichotomy. However, the 

impact of aerial eradication efforts will diminish over time in 

accordance with outlaw reaction. Eradication programs can, however, 

increase in effectiveness within the right strategic context and 

supported by the right kinds of knowledge. The selection of what and 

when to eradicate can be better informed, and the logic made more 

transparent. Aerial eradication, especially to the extent it is identified 

with the United States, should be armored against criticism of targeting 

decisions by incorporating absolute detail regarding land ownership, 

along with public transparency regarding the targeting decisions. It is 

now practicable to establish a matrix of use, ownership quality and 

applicable law that can indicate the most appropriate method and 

timing for eradication of illicit crops, even in areas where minifundios

166
(very small land holdings) dominate. Such data can also be used to 

reveal anomalies in market prices, ownership interests by outlaw 

organizations and hidden political or familial associations, the 

ignorance of which might warp eradication decisions. It also provides 

legal and technical justification for taxation policy. Much of the 

information can be obtained now, although basic cartography, 

surveying and registry will have to be accomplished in many areas 

where illicit cultivation is pronounced. Such an approach is more 

compatible with heroin poppy cultivation because poppy is grown in 

the midst of other, licit crops; is grown on sloped terrain at higher 

altitude where spraying is more difficult; and is prevalent in areas of 

small land plots. 

Giving Property Away 

In 1999, to find a way out of what the Colombian government 

claimed was an impasse, Colombian President Andrés Pastrana agreed 

to concede to the FARC a piece of Colombian territory the size of 

Switzerland. The government withdrew forces from the area as an 

assurance of security in order to resume another round of peace 

negotiations. The results were dubious: in three years the FARC gave 

up nothing, and in the meantime exploited the natural military 

advantages of safely occupying a huge zone situated in the heart of the 

country.154

 

154 The natural military advantages the FARC gained by occupying the despeje

included interior lines, rear area security, protected lines of communication, protected 

financial resource bases, marshaling areas, training areas, and faster access to 

strategic corridors (including into the federal district of Bogotá). The propagandistic 

value cannot be understated, either, propaganda and operational strategy being at 

some point linked. The FARC had long made explicit arguments in favor of 

belligerent status under international law. See, for instance, “Beligerancia,” FARCEP Documentos at http://www.farc-ep.org/. As the FARC pointed out, application of 

the conventions (and with it a strengthened argument for separate and legitimate 

international identity) includes a requirement that the dissident armed force ‘exercise 

such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and 

concerted military operations ....’ More important still is the very fact of participating 

in a peace process while carrying on its violent activities. Sitting at a peace 

167
 Protected interior lines allowed the FARC to increase its 

effective presence in areas around the zone, expanding the territory 

under its control. The despeje and the Pastrana peace process were so 

linked, that elimination of the despeje meant the end of the process and 

the political benefits to the FARC that went with it. It especially helped 

secure the FARC’s southern line of communication out of Colombia 

into Ecuador and Peru. Within the despeje (clearing) as the area was 

called, the FARC was able to hide and manage its inventory of 

hostages, accelerate terrorist training and manufacture bombs and 

mines. Three Irish Republican Army (IRA) members were captured in 

Colombia after having been accused of providing training to FARC 

members there.155

 By 2001, as it became obvious that the land concession to the 

FARC was a perfect failure, President Pastrana prepared to give an 

even more valuable zone to the smaller ELN.156 Aside from 

dominating the most important transportation route in the country, the 

proposed zone, commonly known as the Magdalena Medio (Middle 

Magdalena), included a major coca crop concentration, as well as oilindustry infrastructure. Asked by a newsperson about his decision, 

Pastrana answered “The country needs to understand that the ELN is 

prepared to make peace, but if it doesn’t happen, it is prepared to make 

 

negotiation lent the FARC both legitimacy and media profile, especially overseas. 

Without the peace process, the FARC image diminished. See Armando Borrero 

Mansilla, “La importancia militar de la zona del despeje,” El Tiempo, 19 October 

2001, online at http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/19-10-2001/prip118531.html 

155 “Colombia details fresh IRA link to guerrillas,” Financial Times, September 17, 

2001, online at <http://ft.com. See also “IRA denies sending trio to Colombia,” 

Agence France Presse, Wednesday, 19 September 2001, online at 

<http://www.prairienet.org/clm/clmnews_files/010919AFP01.html. The longstanding issue of Cuban government sponsorship of Colombian subversive groups 

should regain currency. See, for instance, Ninoska Pérez Castellón, “The Cuban 

Connection,” Latin American Special Report Vol.12, No.11, 30 Sep 01, p. 1. 156 “Mi única prioridad no es la paz.” Interview with President Andrés Pastrana, 

Semana, February 26, 2001, p 30. 

168
war. And it has a great terrorist capacity.”157 In a nutshell, a national 

president stated that his countrymen must simply resign themselves to 

the fact that if he did not offer up the most important corner of land in 

the country to a group of outlaws, that group would hurt them. 

 The Magdalena River runs generally south to north between 

Colombia’s central and eastern mountain ranges to the Atlantic coast. 

It is the single most important transportation corridor in Colombia and 

an essential artery to Bogotá. The middle reaches of the Magdalena 

have always been of particular strategic value, and are more so today 

because of a concentration of oil industry infrastructure. The southern 

bulb of Bolivar Department is home to a huge coca crop concentration. 

In recent years, the area became a battleground between the AUC and 

the ELN, with the AUC having gained the upper hand. Governmentceded control of the area would have been doubly advantageous. The 

area lies across vital lines of communication for Colombian economy. 

Impunity in the zone would have allowed uncontested access to the 

favorite object of extortion for that group: petroleum infrastructure. 

Proximity to taxable coca harvests, as well as major transportation 

routes make it a near-perfect staging area for taxation and kidnapping 

sorties. Physical dominion in the zone would also have given the ELN 

a spatial advantage in terms of attacking into the heartland area of the 

AUC to the west. Incredibly, and in light of no appreciable benefit to 

the nation from the experiment with the FARC’s despeje, President 

Pastrana pushed to concede three counties to the ELN, two in the 

southernmost tip of Bolivar department and one in Antioquia just to the 

south of the others.158 A militarily more valuable piece of ground 

 

157 Ibid. 158 These counties are Yondó, Antioquia, Cantagallo, Bolivar and San Pablo, Bolivar. 

The Magdalena River itself was not to be included and, according to President 

Pastrana, the time would be limited to nine months. For a detailed description of 

outlaw competition for the area, including a series of maps describing Magdalena 

Medio, see Vicepresidencia de la República, Programa actual del Magdalena Medio

(Current Program on the Middle Magdalena) online at 

http://www.derechoshumanos.gov.co/observatorio/04_publicaciones/04_03_regiones/

magdalenamedio/index.htm; For a chronology of the Pastrana government’s policy 

regarding the ELN, see also, Departamento de Comunicaciones, Oficina del Alto 

Comisionado de paz, Santa fé de Bogotá, Colombia, Hechos de Paz (Peace Facts) 

169
could hardly have been chosen. The Colombian government plan to 

concede the area was blocked by protests from local residents, 

government could not deliver possession to the ELN, in good measure 

because of the AUC, which began to exert physical dominance in the 

zone. A public perception shift against the guerrillas created by the 

World Trade Center attacks later in the year contributed to killing the 

idea.

and the 

 

159 Perhaps because many Colombians saw the AUC as the only 

force effectively defending key Colombian territory, that illegal group 

gained significantly in political confidence and recruiting ability. The 

Pastrana government, meanwhile, verged on demoralization. 

 The ‘Middle Magdalena’ has been prized territory for hundreds 

of years.160 Assuring that the reaches of the Middle Magdalena are 

strategically denied to the enemy is one of the basic elements of 

Colombian military history, whoever the contestants. Trying to give it 

away is a bizarre exception. The Colombian government’s move to 

engage the ELN in peace talks by way of ceding such a militarily 

critical place is hard to fathom. One is led to suppose that President 

Pastrana and his advisors assigned more power and terrorist capacity to 

the ELN than it actually had, were overly committed to the concept of 

negotiation, were under some unspoken duress, sympathized with the 

guerrillas or simply did not understand. Accepting that the AUC is a 

drug trafficking, terrorist organization that the government is obliged to 

defeat and not help, it may have been strategically fortuitous for the 

government that the AUC rejected ELN occupation of the Middle 

Magdalena. 

online at 

http://www.hechosdepaz.gov.co/es/load.php/uid=0/leng=es/5/cronologia_eln00.htm 

159 Vicepresidencia de la República, Ibid. 160 Thrusts to seize control of the big river mark most of Colombia’s civil wars. 

Typical was an early incursion by Liberal (rebel) forces at the outset of the War of the 

Thousand Days. On October 24, 1899 at a mid-river turn called Los Obispos, a group 

of rebels led by Barranquilla doctor Julio Vengoechea sank one of their own 

paddleboats and watched the government gunboat Hercules sink the rest. The rebel 

plan to wrest the Middle Magdalena was well-conceived, but botched. See Geoffrey 

Demarest “War of the Thousand Days,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 12, No. 1 

(Spring 2001), p. 7. 

170
 Comprehending the value and ownership of land as a function 

of divisible rights, rather than simple location, could offer a unique 

perspective on President Pastrana’s policy. If the world had a map 

detailing particularized ownership interests in the Middle Magdalena, a 

whole new realm of understanding might attend the Pastrana position. 

If it were possible to view the whole picture of preferential rights in 

land that would have been transferred or jeopardized by a concession to 

the ELN, a better understanding might emerge of what was at stake. 

Most of the land in the region is privately owned and has been 

appraised.161 Why there is an isolated blob of coca cultivation and how 

that cultivation relates geographically to oil industry licenses and 

concessions should be of particular interest. These questions are not 

posed out of historical curiosity. The land remains under coca, and is 

still under outlaw dominance. 

 A president giving land away to outlaws in huge chunks is a 

rare occurrence. More common is programmatic give-away. Land 

reform, and especially agrarian reform, has been a staple of 

developmental and redistributive campaigns in Colombia for decades. 

Since 1962 more than 1,700,000 hectares of land ceded to, bought or 

expropriated by the national government has been turned over to 

campesinos and tribal peoples.162 More than 18,000,000 acres of 

 

161 Knowledge of ownership by plat in southern Bolivar Department would not likely 

point directly to those responsible for drug cultivation (although it might indeed). It 

is more likely that ownership information such as residency of absentee owners, or 

hometowns of mortgage banks might tend to prove or disprove territorial theories 

concerning the lack of material progress in the area. One popular hypothesis holds 

that the departmental capital is simple too distant from the southern cone of Bolivar. 

It would be interesting to see, by way of the property ownership records, what the 

relative connection of the agriculturalists in the area is to the departmental capital of 

Cartagena on the Atlantic coast. See Orlando Fals Borda, Región e Historia: 

Elementos sobre ordenamiento y equilibrio regional en Colombia (Bogota: Tercer 

Mundo, 1996) p. 9. 

162 Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria – Incora, Colombia Tierra y Paz: 

Experiencias y caminos para la reforma agraria, alternativas para el siglo XXI, 1961-

2001, (Bogotá: Incora, 2002) p.174, 175. This work contains several essays relating 

the agrarian reform efforts of Incora to social problems, including violence, facing 

171
government open land has also been redistributed.163 Curiously, while 

this seems to be a great deal of land, officials from the national agrarian 

reform institute (Incora), stated that the distribution of land ownership 

in Colombia remains radically inequitable.164 The validity of the 

observation may be the subject of considerable economic and social 

debate, but it is a debate conducted in the absence of needed data 

regarding what happened to all the redistributed land. Incora [now 

Incoder (Colombian Rural Development Institute)], claimed to be able 

to show every acre of land distributed to whom and when. What it 

apparently cannot show, at least for redistributions done until the last 

several years, is where. The Incora mandate was to redistribute, but not 

to keep track of redistributed land. For that reason, most Incora records 

indicate a precision of location only down to the county (municipio). 

Apparently there has also not been any systematic effort done to 

determine the consequences of ownership or divestment during more 

than forty years of redistributive activity. 

 Without asserting that Colombian government land 

redistribution has been a total failure or has contributed to violence, it is 

at least fair to say that all analyses of the effect of programmed 

redistributions in Colombia are anecdotal or speculative. Today, it is 

technically possible, using commercially available software, to match 

the Incora database with cadastral and registry information to determine 

the ownership results of the Incora programs and, more interestingly, to 

expose any geographic correlation of redistribution programs with the 

incidence of violence. It appears that some of the Incora land has to 

have been redistributed more than once, especially in lawless areas. 

 

Colombia. The essays should be compared to those in an earlier Incora publication, 

Marta Rojas, editor, Tierra, Economía, y Sociedad (Bogota: Incora ,1993). 163 Ibid p. 187. 164 Author interview of Colombian government officials who requested anonymity. 

Incora is the acronym of the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (Colombian 

Institute for Agrarian Reform). Incora was liquidated and replaced by Incoder, 

Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural (Colombian Rural Development Institute). 

The name change reflects economic theory and ideology held by national leadership, 

but not one necessarily shared by the rank-and-file of that bureaucracy. 

172
 When the Colombian army reentered San Vicente Caguán in the 

former clearance zone in February 2002, it found that fleeing FARC 

units destroyed government offices, with the exception of the land 

registry office.165 The records of land ownership did not show a rash of 

takings by the guerrillas and, apparently, land values had not changed 

appreciably (although they were extremely low to begin with). In 

Puerto Leguísamo, the local FARC commander demanded and 

accepted letters of introduction from the office of the Presidency to 

permit workers of the cartographic institute to complete cadastral 

formation for hundreds of agricultural properties in the area under its 

immediate control. One has to ask why the FARC would be willing to 

have the government formalize property ownership. The answer is 

troubling, considering the implication of accessorial behavior by the 

Colombian government. If the FARC has control of the occupiers, it 

can enforce a sharecropping relationship, force sale or mortgage, tax, 

etc., all while using government-provided records to facilitate and 

legitimatize its actions. It also acquires options if the area is overtaken 

by government troops or by another outlaw entity. In case of some 

interim or final negotiated settlement, the outlaw leadership has put in 

place the basis of legally controlling population and territory, the 

population controlled by feudal connections to the land, and the land 

controlled by a client population. The guerrilla leader thereby succeeds 

in becoming a great landowner, or terrateniente.

166 This circumstance 

was made more frustrating by a parallel legalistic movement to make 

land ownership databases unavailable to the public, to decrease 

transparency under a theory of privacy. Brigands gained governmentapproved access to the evidence of the social contract, while lawful 

users were denied it. It is not a civilizing formula. Brigands were, and 

to an extent still are, succeeding in a strategy to preserve their own 

anonymity and impunity while gaining the power of control that 

 

165 On the clearance zone or ‘despeje’ see Geoffrey Demarest, “In Colombia: A 

Guerrilla Sanctuary?,” Military Review March-April, 2002, pp. 48-50.

173
property records convey. In essence, they gain control of the social 

contract and become the de-facto government. It is with the brigand 

that the occupier then settles his corner of a debased social contract. 

 Land appeasement has been discarded as a strategy in 

Colombia, probably for good. So has blind obedience to the simple 

categorization of malfactors as drugtrafficker, terrorist, subversive or 

insurgent. Both errors, appeasement and semantic diffidence, offer 

powerful arguments for the formalization of property as a long-term 

foundation for Colombian peace. Any government so detached from 

the social contract, so indifferent to its responsibility under the 

agreement regarding agreements, that it could simply forfeit huge tracts 

of land to a criminal organization, without even a nominative 

intervention on the part of the courts, is simply not a democratic 

government in the Western sense. Imagine the Leavenworth County 

commissioners attempting to cut a deal with a gang of criminals by 

giving them a section or two of the county, oblivious of the rights of 

the affected landowners. As for defining the enemy, the government’s 

strategic design does not have to depend on any particular taxonomy 

beyond that which helps locate lawbreakers on the ground. Except as it 

helps to order forensic and military predictions, it does not matter 

whether they are drug traffickers, kidnappers, murderers or thieves. 

They have surnames and addresses, and their relatives have addresses. 

And they all covet places. Transparency in knowing what persons are 

connected to what places is a strategic fact that can be created in order 

to protect the civilized from the predators. 

Harvest of amputees 

 It would be an unresponsive oversight to touch on the military 

situation in Colombia in a book about property without addressing the 

poignant ecological disaster of land mines. In Colombia, the presence 

 

166 The translated denotation of the word terrateniente is landowner, but the 

connotation for some, especially in Colombia, is of an arrogant holder of more land 

than justice should permit. 

174
of landmines (or improvised explosive devises, IED, to use the more 

generalized term) may actually be expanding as a result of government 

success against its guerrilla enemies in the past few years, and 

decisions of the latter to resort to the use of these inexpensive 

weapons.167 According to local authorities, it costs the guerillas, who 

plant the vast majority of explosive artifacts, about 2 to 4 dollars per 

mine, while it costs the government between $4,500 and $8,000 to 

remove one and repair the damage caused. As the Colombian army 

advances out into more remote areas in attempts to pursue the guerrilla, 

the relative advantage of costs favors the guerrilla even more. One in 

three of the deaths that the FARC inflicts on government soldiers is by 

way of landmine detonations. Meanwhile, landmine injuries are most 

often suffered exactly in those parts of the country where the rule of 

law and the presence of the state is weakest. Conversely, it is more 

costly to implement formal property regimes in some corners of 

Colombia where it is most needed, due to the presence of landmines. 

 While landmines have been strewn at one time or another in 30 

of the 32 Colombian departments, they are present today in about half 

of the 1098 municipios (counties), and between 40 and 50 of these 

municipios suffer an alarming density related to tactical or strategic 

value in the context of the internal war. (See figure5) These 40-50 

municipios can be seen as the geographic center of armed conflict in 

Colombia, and there is hardly a need to argue the negative effect that 

the presence of antipersonnel mines have on the market value of a piece 

of farmland. Still, in the context of reoccurring combat and the 

impositions of competing armed forces, the fact of landmines descends 

to being just another dimension of the violence. The numbers for 

victims of landmines are not as immediately alarming as those for 

kidnapping and murder. “Only” about 2,600 victims (about a third 

civilians) have fallen in Colombia to landmines in the last decade, but 

the direct effect on land and security is enormous. It is by no means 

clear that the economic and social assistance programs directed at 

 

167 See, for instance Jineth Bedoya Lima, “Minas: se creció la amenaza” (Mines: the 

threat increased) El Tiempo 7 Mar 2004, p. 1,2. 

175
Figure 5 Colombian minefields 

Composed from two data sources: The private Resource Center for the Study of 

Conflict (CERAC) and the Colombian Government Minefields Observatory.

176
 Colombia as a country in conflict have had the geographic precision 

that the landmines have. In other words, it seems, from comparative 

georeferencing of land mines and aid programs, that the municipios

most affected by the war are not those in which the programs have been 

attempted. The reasons may be entirely valid; it is difficult to send a 

Peace Corp volunteer out to build a fishpond if it would be 

irresponsible risk to his or her life. But a more geographically rational 

application of aid and government presence is undoubtedly possible 

and would include an initial respect for the need to maximize the 

quality of property in and around (or perhaps first around and then in) 

the most affected conflict locales. 

 Landmines are arguably the worst ecological blight currently 

faced by Colombia, and are inseparably connected to the conflict. They 

are to an extent correlated to high-concentration natural resource 

locations, processing zones and movement corridors, but such 

correlation can be misleading because the mines are also planted on 

terrain that has specific value in the context of competitive military 

maneuvering and tactics (especially escape routes). As a result, the 

presence of landmines affects the value of Colombian land generally as 

well as specifically. 

 Landmines have been used to a limited extent by the 

government of Colombia to protect military bases and fixed pieces of 

strategically valuable infrastructure. However, the use of landmines by 

criminal groups has been far more extensive, undisciplined, cruel and 

environmentally destructive, especially as it affects less concentrated 

natural resources such as agriculture. Illegal armed groups plant mines 

in the context of three principle tactics: to hamper access to fixed 

locations of value such as a cocaine base laboratory, a gas siphoning 

point, a logistics cache or a base camp; to slow government pursuit 

during a withdrawal; and for offensive ambushes against enemy forces. 

These uses almost never entail recovery of the mines by the illegal 

groups. They make records of the locations of emplaced mines only 

when they plan to return quickly to the same locale. The result is an 

insidious danger civilian populations. 

177
 The Colombian landmine environmental challenge appears to 

be solvable, but at the present time, given the ongoing conflict and the 

continued sowing of landmines by outlaw groups, there does not appear 

to be much near-term prospect of solving the frightening imposition of 

these artifacts.168

Out of a total of 1,097 Colombian municipalities, 140, in 

22 of the 31 departments, were the scene of accidents or 

incidents involving landmines during the ten first 

months of 2001. In other words, there are anti-personnel 

mines scattered in 12.8 per cent of Colombia’s 

municipalities. The department worst hit is undoubtedly 

Arauca. Not only has the highest number of victims 

been recorded there, but five out of its seven 

municipalities (71.4 percent) have seen accidents or 

incidents associated with anti-personnel mines. In 

Antioquia the number of municipalities affected is 34, 

most of them in the east and south of the department, on 

a geographical zone stretching into the departments of 

Santander and Norte de Santander, where accidents or 

incidents have taken place in 13 and 11 municipalities 

respectively.169

 In Colombia the terrain calculus is immensely intricate and 

local, each hectare presenting its own mix of military and economic 

value. Reconciling the two (what we might call the maneuver view of 

terrain and the economic view) for the purpose of shaping strategy is 

 

168 See, for instance, “Objectivo: mutilar” (Objective: mutilate), El Tiempo. May 31, 

2004, p. 234. 

169 “Geography of Anti-personnel Mines in Colombia,” in Anti-Personnel Mines in 

Colombia (Bogotá: Presidential Program for Human Rights and International 

Humanitarian Law, 2001), p. 7., online at 

<http://www.derechoshumanos.gov.co/observatorio/04_publicaciones/04_02_temas/

minas/minasingles.pdf.

178
crucial. The government of Colombia, with US assistance, could 

produce a comprehensive, detailed database of Colombian land use, 

relative value and ownership. As Chapter One argued, the most 

important determinant of the market value of real property may be the 

mix of theoretical rights associated with the land, along with the 

practical effect government enforcement gives to those rights. This is 

not an abstract comment on political philosophy. The market price of a 

piece of land in Colombia is closely correlated to the basket of rights 

attendant to it. The farm’s longitude and latitude are important, but not 

as important as the mix of rights associated with it. Just listing and 

formalizing the understanding of those rights, however, is not enough 

to give them their entire value. If the police cannot or will not prevent 

the use of an empty lot as a place where drug dealers convene, the 

market value of the houses nearby may plummet. Likewise, if potential 

buyers of Juan Valdez’ farm cannot travel the road to his farm without 

being assaulted or kidnapped, the farm’s market value will be almost 

nil. And if it is seeded with landmines, the value might be less than nil. 

Can the war be won militarily? 

“The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.”170

 J. Paul Getty 

 Whether or not an insurgency can be won military is one of 

those recurring, vapid debate questions. Can Colombia’s internal war 

be concluded by military means? The military part can, although there 

are many ifs that qualify a yes answer from the government point of 

view. It is a bizarre world in which an illegal armed organization can 

march thousands of uniformed soldiers around in a country, mount 

artillery attacks against government installations and resistant towns, 

move millions of dollars of materiel along thousands of miles of 

logistics routes, maneuver battalions, assert that it will take power by 

 

170 Attributed, see 

http://quotes.telemanage.ca/quotes.nsf/quotes/1e76651eda7247098525697f008307b4 

179
force--and still successfully finesse an argument to an international 

audience that there is no way for anyone to win the war militarily. 

“Resistance is futile.” The vast majority of Colombians is fed up with 

the leftist guerrillas and their ‘paramilitary’ opponents, and lately 

became willing to make sacrifices to physically eliminate these groups. 

At the time of this writing, the Colombian government was attempting 

to translate this willingness into action. Upon coming to office in 2002, 

President Alvaro Uribe, rejecting defeatist analyses, set out to make 

peace negotiations something desperately needed by the illegal armed 

groups, rather than something hopelessly sought after by the 

government. The results have been significant. 

Analysis of our new, 16-year dataset on the Colombian 

civil war finds under Uribe: guerrilla and paramilitary 

attacks dropping sharply to long-run averages since 

1988, lower for April- December, 2003; governmentguerrilla clashes at all-time highs, exceeding guerrilla 

attacks; civilian killings dropping sharply and 

continuously to all-time lows, mainly from decreased 

paramilitary attacks; combatant killings rising sharply to 

all-time highs; guerrilla tactics shifting toward 

indiscriminate attacking, forcing civilian injuries to 

long-run highs; government-to guerrilla casualty ratios 

in clashes falling; government-paramilitary clashes 

increasing but still uncommon; paramilitary 

performance in clashes poor and worsening; guerrillaparamilitary clashes dropping sharply; the ELN 

seriously weakened, mounting few attacks.171

 

171 Jorge Restrepo and Michael Spagat. The Colombian Conflict: Uribe’s First 17 

Months. London: Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2004; For a Latin 

American analysis of the Colombian government conduct of the war, see César 

Bartolomé, Mariano. La Evolución del Conflicto Colombiano durante la Presidencia 

de Álvaro Uribe. Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios Estratégicos, 2004ñ For the 

Colombian government statistics on violence in Colombia visit Casa de Nariño, 

Presidencia de la Repúbica Colombiana, online at 

<http://www.presidencia.gov.co/documentos/documentos.htm.

180
Respecting the above-noted success, if the government of Colombia 

does not win militarily, efforts to formalize property in service of longterm peace are shortchanged. As long as organized elements wield 

sufficient power to disregard the law at all levels, reform of the law 

itself will matter little. Debate about the possibility or efficacy of 

military victory can be discarded out-of-hand. Promoting the rule of 

law through formal property means establishing a way to avoid the 

condition of possession by force. The existence of multiple, large, 

organized, competing armed claimants within the same geographic 

space defines a condition of forceful competition for possession. The 

only property agreement in which the illegal armed groups have shown 

interest is that they have more. The Colombian government is in the 

process of building and improving a liberal property regime, but as part 

of that very contract it must defang armed trespassers. 

Crossing Lines of Communication 

Colombia's extravagant geography guides decision-making more than 

in most other countries. As noted earlier, the history of Colombian 

conflict is a record of competition for control of lands and movement 

routes related to export products or their taxation.172 Rebels, pirates 

and their hybrids, arrayed against the Colombian state and each other, 

have forever fought over control of product sources, transportation 

routes, taxation and fiscal policies bearing on Colombia’s natural 

bounty. 

 The author does not cite illicit drug profits as the characteristic 

distinguishing the current struggle from those of Colombia’s past, 

 

172 On the history of agricultural and extractive products as a factor in Colombian 

see, for instance, Frank Safford & Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, 

Divided Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); See also, generally, 

Indalecio Lievano Aguirre, Los Grandes Conflictos Sociales y Economicos de 

Nuestra Historia (Bogotá: Círculo de Lectores, 2002). 

181
although this is clearly important to the scale of the problem. Rather, 

the key difference between today’s civil conflict and its predecessors is 

the imported nature of the ideological base of the rebel (FARC and 

ELN) projects. The ostensible argument of the guerrillas is not rooted 

in the traditional Colombian federalist – anti-federalist debate, but 

rather in class struggle. It may be that the un-Colombian nature of the 

argument is part of the reason that the guerrilla has seemed to loose 

ideological compass. Interestingly, there is a new and growing body of 

political literature in Colombia that emphasizes regional and territorial 

issues, advocating the reshuffling of administrative political units of the 

state. Even those writings inspired by socialism seem less taken by 

class-consciousness than by the traditional Colombian centrifugal 

quarrel.

 While the current civil conflict differs in significant ways from 

those of the past, the correlation of outlaw strategies to agricultural and 

mineral geography is the same, often exactly the same.173 Leaders of 

today’s FARC, ELN and AUC are intimately aware of the effects that 

the control of ‘place’ has on profit and on prospects for their long-term 

organizational health. Like the classic combat commanders, the 

Alexanders and Napoleons, a successful outlaw strategist recognizes 

the critical advantage of choosing favorable fighting terrain, protecting 

his lines of communication (LOCs) and compromising those of his 

enemy. In Colombia, he must also be sensitive to the relative 

 

173 See, for instance, ‘Conflicto, Autonomia Regional y Socialismo Ecológico,’ 

(Conflict, Regional Autonomy and Ecological Socialism) or ‘Descentralizar para 

Pacificar’ (Decentralize to Pacify) in Agenda Ciudadana, Las claves territoriales de la 

guerra y la paz, desarrollo regional, participación ciudadana y agenda de paz (The 

territorial clues to the war and peace, regional development, citizen participation and 

the peace agenda) (Bogotá: Agenda Ciudadana y Cátedra para la Paz, 2000); Jaime 

Castro, La Question Territorial (Bogotá, Oveja Negra, 2002); and Orlando Fals 

Borda, Kaziyadu: Registro del Reciente Despertar Territorial en Colombia (Kaziyadu: 

Record of the recent territorial awakening in Colombia) (Bogotá: Ediciones desde 

abajo, 2001); Alejo Vargas, "La guerra por el control territorial," (The war for 

territorial control) El Espectadorain , 17 Nov, 1998, p. 4A; “Guerrilla exigirá derecho 

a gobernar territorios” (The guerrillas will demand right to govern territories) El 

Espectador, 16 Nov, 1998, p. 6A. 

182
commercial and industrial value of property and movement routes. 

Likewise, any winning government strategy seeking to defeat the 

outlaw, or for that matter, to establish long-term social peace in 

Colombia, must discover and respect the essential worth of land. 

Colombia’s terrain cannot be considered only in terms of physical 

defense and attack, but also according to its material value. This marks 

a difference between internal armed conflict and international war. 

Especially in Colombia, land is not only a space over which materiel 

moves, or where firefights occur, it is an engine of disposable wealth 

and wellspring of the war-making strength of all the contending 

forces.174 Moreover, the performance grade given to Colombia’s 

national armed forces always includes a human rights component, yet it 

is failure on the part of the State to give meaning to property rights that 

leads to human rights violations. If the Colombian State is ever to 

clarify the human rights issue touching their armed forces, it must 

better understand and improve the contract between citizens and 

government that is called ‘property.’ 

The Colombian FARC opted decades ago for wide dispersion of 

its subordinate units.175 This was done not only for reasons related to 

the autonomous, obstreperous nature of guerrilla commanders, but also 

as a method to deny the Colombian army the opportunity for battles of 

annihilation. For the sixty-odd FARC fronts, organized into seven 

 

174 For a brief description of Colombia’s current ‘contending forces,’ their methods 

and goals, see generally Max G. Manwaring, Nonstate Actors in Colombia: Threat 

and Response (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 

2002). 

175 Numerous unclassified maps of FARC dispositions have been published in recent 

years. Among the best see Alvaro Valencia Tovar, “Ubicación Cuadrillas FARC,” in 

Inseguridad y Violencia en Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Sergio Arboleda, 1997) p. 

126; “Localización de los frentes guerrilleros (1995),” in Jesus Antonio Bejarano 

Avila, Colombia: Inseguridad, violencia y desempeño económico en las areas rurales, 

ibid. p. 119; Angel Rabasa & Peter Chalk, “Figure 4.3, Areas of Expansion of FARC 

Activity1996-1997,” in Colombian Labyrinth: The Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency 

and Its Implications for Regional Stability (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001) p. 49.; a 

map image is also available only from “The Center for International Policy’s 

Colombia Project,” at <http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/farcmap.htm.

183
blocks, logistics has been a primary occupation. For some fronts the 

most lucrative activity may be taxation of coca farmers, but in others 

perhaps the control of kidnapping contractors, or movement of 

weapons is more important. The fronts are also encouraged toward the 

FARC’s strategic objective of controlling urban centers. To achieve 

this, FARC fronts work toward systematically influencing and 

eventually controlling movement corridors (lines of communication) 

into assigned cities.176 Some cities, such as Medellín in Antioquia 

Department, are susceptible to being choked and extorted because their 

mountainous environs so constrict access.177 Much of the combat 

responsibility, as well as maintenance of discipline among the fronts, 

falls to mobile columns, which have a wider geographic range. 

 In order to maximize security and for economy of force, the 

FARC created networks of movement corridors within the blocks, and 

mobility corridors between the blocks. Some of these routes follow 

standard road and river transportation infrastructure and are used to 

move large quantities of illicit product. Secondary routes are more 

often used for the movement of units and materiel. In mountainous 

areas it is common that the routes follow ridgelines. The FARC has 

worked to control owners and ownership of properties all along the 

movement and mobility corridors (it is suspected that this is especially 

true along remote ridge line routes), thus helping to assure operational 

 

176 See Thomas Marks, Colombian Adaptation to FARC Insurgency, (Carlisle, 

Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002) p. 16. 

177 A 1961 US Army field manual on irregular war states, “Surface lines of 

communication which have proved particularly vulnerable to attack and sabotage 

should be abandoned, at least temporarily, if at all possible. Long surface lines of 

communication cannot be completely protected against a determined irregular force 

without committing an excessive number of troops.” Department of the Army Field 

Manual, FM31-15, Operations Against Irregular Forces (Washington: Headquarters, 

Department of the Army: 1961) p. 23. However sound this advice might have been in 

the context of the conflicts contemplated by the authors at the time, this would be 

disastrous advice for the Colombian situation, and is rejected here. Colombia’s urban 

centers are dependent on a limited number of long-haul road routes. Colombia has 

the material wherewithal to not abandon legal commerce to its fate on the nations 

major highways. 

184
security. Lately, the FARC is known to have assisted in the 

formalization of property holdings by peasants under their direct 

control in active drug cultivation areas, one being the Puerto 

Leguísamo area in Putumayo.178 Additionally, there have been 

repeated rumors that the guerrillas have effectively purchased mineral 

mines. Labor tactics, selective extortion and bribery can be supported 

by using cutouts to gain control of licenses or by surrounding publicly 

owned mineral extraction sites with peasant clients and then 

formalizing the ownership of those properties.179

 The FARC does not enjoy widespread mass support in the 

Colombian population, even in rural areas. It has, however, carefully 

proselytized or terrorized in select locales related to its nation-wide, 

logistics-based strategy. Meanwhile, the AUC, a newer force, appears 

to have a varied popular support base greatly exceeding that of the 

FARC -- but less so along many of the movement corridors for which 

the AUC and guerrillas fight. Apposite with the property discussion is 

AUC heritage, that organization having been born of the frustration of 

ranchers at the failure of the government to protect their rural properties 

from the FARC. A difficult political issue was born once the illegal 

character of the AUC became evident and less tolerable to the 

government: how to confront that kind of outlaw force as compared to 

the traditional guerrilla groups. The spawning of the anti-guerrilla 

paramilitary was an outgrowth of the failure or inability of the state to 

meet an obligation to protect persons and property from predation. It 

can be cogently argued that a local paramilitary defense structures is, if 

not a requirement for winning an irregular war, at least an historically 

 

178 Personal interview of the author in February, 2002 with government officials who 

requested anonymity. 

179 Colombia’s outlaws have property-awareness. They know what property is most 

valuable and they know that property is a relationship between land, people and 

government. They know further that accurate records help govern. Outlaw leaders, 

especially guerrilla, understand property as a contract between government and 

people -- but they want that contract to exist between Colombia’s countrymen and 

themselves, not the democratically constituted government the US supports. 

185
successful element.180 From the American historical perspective, it is 

also something honored and protected constitutionally. The legitimacy, 

establishment, or discipline of community defense organizations, of 

militia, are beyond the purposes of this essay; nevertheless, the debate 

rarely proceeds except in total ignorance regarding on-the-ground land 

ownership facts. Until recently this ignorance permeated debate about 

what kind of strategy to apply in Colombia’s war. The Colombian 

government has moved in the direction of strategic property 

knowledge. 

 The observation that guerrilla forces, at the sight of potential 

government victories, can slouch back into a latency of civilian garb 

and popular protection impels an argument for community 

organizations that can spot and will report guerrilla presence. Having 

said that, an apparently grassroots movement of resistance to guerrilla 

violence bloomed in a few areas, and this phenomenon may present a 

vehicle for local organized resistance to outlaws in select areas.181 The 

question, therefore, of local militias has not disappeared, and US 

posture regarding their creation could be better informed by facts on the 

ground. 

 The appearance of the AUC is attributable in some measure to 

the failure of the Colombian government to establish effective 

discipline and to crisply delineate the authority and range of initiative 

accorded to civil defense groups. The juridical turn in Colombia 

against legal establishment of militias can be blamed on excesses in 

militia vigilantism, to put it mildly, as well as to the fact that the 

paramilitaries were effective in opposing the leftist guerrilla, this 

effectiveness not setting well with elements within the State apparatus 

 

180 See, for instance, Spencer, supra. note 4; 181 See Susannah A. Nesmith, “Colombian Rebels Face New Adversary,” Associated 

Press, Thursday, 3 January 2002, online at 

<http://www.prairienet.org/clm/clmnews_files/020103AP01.html; “Rebeldes con 

causa,” Semana, Noviember19-26, 2001, No. 1,020, p. 32; “La Resistencia,” Semana, 

Noviembere19-26, 2001, No. 1,020, p. 54. 

186
sympathetic to the guerrilla.. Moreover, the virulence of the selfdefense movement can be associated more broadly with two factors. 

One is the failure of the Colombian state to defeat and remove the 

guerrillas, which became the raison d’etre [[of the AUC. The second is 

the lack of commitment to destroy the illicit drug industry, which 

provides autonomous financial power to groups like the AUC and 

corrupts the enforcement regime. Had the government of Colombia 

reformed the controls and linkages over the several types of authorized 

militias, and maintained a participation in their existence and discipline, 

it is less likely they would have turned into the drug trafficking mafias 

that they have. Because many in and outside Colombia consider the 

establishment of a militia system to be an effective and legitimate part 

of counter-guerrilla strategy, it behooves US planners to be informed 

about the home communities and memberships of future militias and 

vigilante groups. Such information can be optimally gleaned from 

census, cadastral and land registry records. Naturally, when the Uribe 

government entered into peace negotiations with the AUC, that 

organization sought to stabilize and legalize possession of lands it had 

extorted.182 All of a sudden knowing where the relevant properties 

were located and who were the rightful owners became a significant 

question. 

 Conceivably, the historical and geographic bases of the struggle 

between the FARC and the AUC could be painted using existing 

cadastral maps by tracing back to relevant ranch properties. 

Furthermore, the property-based origins and purposes of the AUC 

logically drive it to augment formal ownership of land in areas it 

considers strategically important. This is not true of rural areas only. 

Recent urban combat among the FARC, AUC, ELN and lesser groups 

in the city of Medellín seem to attest to the selective importance of 

commercial property and its relationship to rural terrain. Combat 

between outlaw groups in Medellín broke out over control of the major 

land route to the Urabá Gulf and Atrato River Valley lowlands to the 

 

182 See, for instance, “Los senores de la tierra,” Semana. #1,152, May 31. This is one 

of the most significant articles published on the conflict in Colombia In recent years. 

187
northwest.183 The Urubá/Atrato area represents a major illicit logistics 

corridor. If the corridor were better controlled by the government, the 

fighting in Medellín would logically not have occurred. Contest of the 

route between outlaw groups would be mooted if control were already 

lost to the government in the rural region to the northwest. To attain 

control, the government will have to pursue a strategy that recognizes 

land ownership as a key element. Formal, visible and protected 

property rights be the foundation of long-term government presence in 

the area of Colombia facing Panama. Until that is achieved the area 

will be outlaw in all respects, and Medellín will continue to suffer 

periodic violent eruptions. People of the Urubá/Atrato lowlands are 

likely to continue suffering forced displacements and mass killings.184

 Along the same general axis in Antioquia, a secondary network 

of rural transportation routes runs through the Dabeiba, Peque and 

Ituango municipalities to the west of the Cauca River. It is a major 

confrontation area between the AUC and the guerrillas. Warfare 

imposed and suffered in this mountainous sub-region encapsulates the 

nature of the conflict in Colombia. Almost all combat, human rights 

cases and criminal encounters relate to the dominance of passage routes 

used for illicit purposes. Putting a stop to intra-outlaw combat in the 

area will require a greater presence of government military force in 

order to physically deny use of the zone’s passes for illicit product 

shipment. To pacify the region in the long-term, however, may require 

a change in the mix and quality of real property ownership. There are 

few proven treatments for the kind of social poisoning that years of 

ruthless competition for the control of land causes. One antidote is to 

redistribute populations and property ownership. The Colombian 

 

183 “Milicias se pelean a Medellín,” El Tiempo, 23 May 2002, p.1, 2. 184 The Atrato area has been an especially unfortunate victim of mass civilian 

suffering and death. One of the worst human rights offenses of the war occurred in 

late April, 2002 at Bojayá in Chocó Department. In the context of a battle with the 

AUC for control of the area (the same general confrontation as that in Medellín) the 

FARC launched a gas cylinder mortar/rocket that detonated in a packed church killing 

at least 110 persons outright. See “Crece la pesadilla en Bojaya,” El Tiempo, Bogotá, 

May 8, 2002, p.1. 

188
government may decide to embark on programs changing ownership of 

land in local areas most affected by the violence, perhaps by 

empowering ethnic communities and better securing communal land 

rights, or perhaps by encouraging private ownership by persons and 

organizations more likely and capable of resisting outlaw incursions. 

Regardless of the details, any land-oriented part of a solution will 

depend for integrity on precise, electronically available, complete 

records of ownership interests at key locations. Precision lends 

juridical strength to the documentation, as well as future market 

confidence. Electronic availability (transparency) helps proof the 

ownership documentation against fraud and corruption, and allows 

individuals and non-governmental organizations to monitor land 

policies. 

 The value of terrain for illicit uses is heightened in many 

locales, like the Peque-Ituango passes; nevertheless, many properties 

will be abandoned or subject to forfeiture. These need to be identified 

in detail, but visible at a strategic level so that the evolution of 

ownership serves a peace-intending initiative of the government rather 

than outlaw competitiveness. If the government does not mount a 

national property strategy that helps placate the cycle of violence, 

property strategies mounted by outlaw groups will continue to catalyze 

it. 

 The notion of moving the illegal armed groups off the local 

beat, that is, identifying individual municipios where outlaw presence 

has been the norm and then concentrating on the civilizing of those 

counties is not an obvious or necessarily effective strategy. A counter 

argument may be, extrapolating from arguments about illicit drug 

cultivation, that moving the illegal armed groups out of one municipio

only causes the effect of moving it to another. Within some range of 

geographic possibilities this may contain some truth, but it is limited by 

the relative strategic importance and military advantages of the 

geographies themselves. The reasons that a particular municipio is 

hotly contested generally derive from an advantage of movement or 

protection due to isolation, routes of escape, logistical lines of 

189
communication, etc. The municipios of Florida and Pantera in southern 

Valle de Cauca Department are being proposed by the FARC (summer 

2007) as suitable areas for renewed exchange agreements with the 

government and that those counties be cleared of government military 

presence. No wonder, since, as many government military analysts will 

point out, the two counties are hubs of outlaw clandestine lines of 

communication. Much of the calculus of geographic importance is 

founded on economics and business principles related to both legal and 

illegal activities. As noted earlier, Colombians have forever fought 

over exportable or comercializable natural resources and the routes 

products and input materials must follow to market and from supplier. 

Labor often features as an input that causes difficult and complex 

competition but still has clear geographic referents. (As an aside, but 

one that bears on the understanding of the relation of property and 

strategy, it is a shame that outlaw leaders and their apologists have been 

able to convince the legitimate government that it is a good idea to 

provide government service infrastructure to populations of coca 

pickers in areas of the country where there had not previously been a 

population.) 

Another set of variables influencing the strategic value of 

terrain in Colombia is that set imposed by the warfare itself. 

Maneuvering, supplying and discipline of forces displays a geographic 

imprint that, while intimately related to the other variables of terrain 

value, is not exactly the same. Some of the geographic consequences 

and their relation to the question of property are discussed a bit further 

on, but immediately relevant is the following, Yogi Berra-like point: 

The next best places for outlaw survival -- once they are moved out of 

the best places for them to survive -- are not as good! In predictable 

increments it takes them longer to supply, is harder for them to 

communicate, harder to escape a government pursuit, more difficult to 

collect rents and extortion payments, more difficult to fulfill delivery 

contracts, more difficult to pay debts, kidnap victims, etc. Eventually, 

failure to hold the best terrain is tantamount to defeat, and in Colombia, 

because of the exaggerated accidents of terrain, the next-best terrain, 

militarily speaking, is often much worse than the best. For this reason 

190
the Colombian government ultimately decided on a security strategy 

designed to cut of guerrilla supply lines. 

“Por primera vez en la historia del país todos sus 

municipios tienen Policía. Se trata también de cortar el 

paso en 12 zonas que antes eran dominio de grupos 

armadas.”185

 

(For the first time in the history of the country all of its 

counties have police. That also cuts movement in 12 

zones that before had been the domain of armed groups.) 

 

Compare the above headline to the following from an article in Semana

magazine about forced land sales and extortions: 

 “La presión de los paramilitares también se ha 

dado en Antioquia. Por ejemplo, en las áreas aledañas al 

túnel de occidente y del Nuevo trazado de la vía al mar 

los lugareños aseguran que ha habido una active 

compraventa de tierras asociada, en varios casos, a 

situaciones de desalojo o negocios bajo presión de 

miembros de estos grupos que operan en esta parte 

occidente del departamento.”186

The pressure of the paramilitaries has also been felt in 

Antioquia. For example, in areas surrounding the 

western tunnel of the new stretch of the road to the sea, 

the locals assure that buying and selling of land has been 

active, this associated in several cases to situations of 

eviction or negotiations under the pressure of these 

groups that operate in the western part of the 

department. 

 

185 “Bloqueo a corredores de Farc” (FARC Corridors Blocked) El Tiempo March 4, 

2004, p. 1-2. 

186 “Los senores de la tierra,” Semana, supra note 78 at p. 227.

191
 For outlaw groups, dominating special areas is not simply a 

matter of mastering military aspects of terrain, although these factors 

still matter. More important in the context of internal war and 

territorial competition among illegal armed groups is the control of 

rights associated with particular pieces of land. Whether extorted 

purchase, planned squatting, or more legalistic methods, criminal 

groups gain much of their control using the social and legal 

mechanisms in existence. Likewise, organized violence can be traced 

even if the records and property standards are not perfectly formalized. 

Taking property away 

 The whole array of Colombia’s ills cannot all be explained as a 

failure to develop a civilizing property regime. The assertions made at 

the outset of Chapter One, however, are reinforced and amplified by 

reference to almost every facet of disorder and violence there. One of 

those assertions extolled the power of property information for its 

forensic value. Looking at the cocaine industry, one can see how real 

property records quickly become “actionable” intelligence. 

“Después de la extradición, si algo temen los grandes 

narcotraficantes es la confiscación de sus propiedades. 

Más que la fumigación de cultivos ilícitos, que se 

pueden resembrar; la destrucción de laboratorios, que se 

pueden reconstruir, o el decomiso de un cargamento 

mientras otros 'coronan', lo que golpea de modo más 

rotundo al narcotráfico es que el producto de sus 

fortunas mal habidas pase a manos del Estado.”187

 

187 El Tiempo, “Las incautaciones de propiedades son golpes que duelen a los 

narcotraficantes.” El Tiempo online April 20, 2004 at 

<http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/opinion/reda/2004-04-20/ARTICULOWEB-_NOTA_INTERIOR-1588716.html. 

192
(Next to extradition, if there is something that the big 

drug traffickers fear it is the confiscation of their 

properties. More than fumigation of illicit crops, which 

can be replanted; destruction of drug labs, which can be 

rebuilt; or capture of shipments while others make up 

the difference, what hits the drug trafficker hardest is 

that the product of his ill gotten gains passes into the 

hands of the state.) 

The above paragraph began a recent editorial in El Tiempo, Bogotá’s 

leading newspaper regarding a sea change in progress that occurred in 

just the past year or so. According to the article, between 1996 and 

2000 only fourteen successful forfeitures of property against major 

drug dealers occurred, while in 2002 and 2003 one hundred eighteen 

were completed, moving almost 2,800 real estate locations into 

government hands. Just two years ago the forfeiture law in Colombia 

was all but toothless and in doubt, but suddenly the war against drug 

dealing in Colombia seems to have improved on an immensely 

effective weapon. Asset forfeitures, which obviously depend on 

ownership data, quickly come to mind as a law enforcement advantage 

of a modern property system, but there are other forensic applications. 

In Colombia, the possibilities are mixed, and reflect the varied and 

incomplete nature of the property regime in that country. 

 The immediacy and deadliness of violence make reflection on 

the benefits of civilized records seem a luxurious impertinence in a 

place like Colombia. But the actions made available by formal records 

include the legal forfeiture of property belonging to guerrilla, 

paramilitary and drug cartel leaders. Relationships and affinities can be 

determined that expose the structure of illegal organizations, or even to 

anticipate whereabouts, leading to arrest or destruction. How this can 

be done -- where information is made available on a precise, 

comprehensive basis -- is suggested by the results of the experiment 

described by the series of images below. The same kind of linking 

sequence, if played out at the regional or national scale, would be able 

to expose criminal affinities, real property wealth of known criminal 

193
organizations, geographic strategies of outlaw organizations, or 

aberrations in market prices that often indicate money laundering or 

extortions. It would also aid in prioritizing illicit crop eradication, or in 

identifying optimal targets for police questioning. These are not 

speculative uses. Cadastral data is already a staple source of forensic 

information in jurisdictions in the United States where property is 

already formalized and information is readily available. 

Can the war be won politically? 

Los señores de la tierra: Grupos paramilitares se están 

apoderando, a sangre y fuego, de las tierras más 

valiosas del país. Las víctimas están desesperadas y no 

tienen quien le devuelva su patrimonio.188

(The landlords: Paramilitary groups are grabbing, by 

gunfire and bloodletting, the most valuable landholdings 

in the country. The victims are desperate and can look 

to no to return their inheritance to them.) 

 Semana

The shape of the problem 

Above is the title of the cover story of Semana magazine for 

early June 2004. It is an old story in Colombia. Many landowners 

across a broad gamut of economic means fold or die under the extortion 

of armed groups. A wave of forced sales was the work of armed 

militias whose claimed ideological position was anti-communist. This 

is to say they can be identified as not the guerrilla groups traditionally 

identified with armed leftist social revolution. Not too much more can 

be stated regarding any ideological or political color they might take. 

They simply take. The political left in Colombia clamors to accuse and 

demand redress, but they do not claim it is something the leftist 

 

188 “Los señores de la tierra,” Semana, supra note 78 at p. 224. 

194
guerrillas have not also done, and would do more of if it weren’t for the 

physical will of the paramilitaries to prevent them. Many Colombians 

look at the situation and bleat, or shrug fatalisms and cynicisms, not 

able to imagine a course in which the power of the civilized state will 

reach all parts of their compartmentalized and federalized country. 

This Semana article is a watershed piece, however. It suggests, 

between the lines, the possibility of new vision. It brings to the 

forefront the possibilities for civilizing Colombia that the historic 

juncture of modern science, law and developmental theory offer. 

SEMANA consulto archivos del Incoder (Instituto 

Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural), donde también se 

guarda la memoria del antiguo Incora; los de la Red de 

Solidaridad, los del Instituto Geográfico Agustín 

Codazzi (Igac), los de las oficinas de Notariado y 

Registro, y los de la Fiscalia. La información conjunta 

que hay en todos estos no permite elaborar un mapa 

nacional o una estadística general sobre la cantidad de 

hectáreas de tierra que han sido expropiadas a la fuerza 

en los últimos anos.189

(SEMANA the files of Incoder (Colombian Rural 

Development Institute), where they also guard the 

memory of the former Incora; the Solidarity Network, 

Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute (IGAC), offices of 

the Notary & Registry, and the Treasury. The combined 

information of all of these did not permit the elaboration 

of a national map or a general statistic on the number of 

hectares of land that has been expropriated by force in 

recent years.) 

Colombian government records don’t yet permit the creation of 

good enough maps to serve as evidence necessary to protect rights. We 

cannot see the evidence of the obligations in the social contract that a 

 

189 Ibid. 

195
democratic government is to fulfill. It is not just a question of the 

physical condition of individual records. Reconciliation is needed of 

registration documents that show base ownership and cadastral records 

that show parcel boundaries and values. Regulations requiring speedy 

registration of sales and other alienation could be considered; or that 

qualified notaries witness lease signatures, or that contact information 

of owners be surrendered to the government. In other words, that all 

real estate related information be transparent and continuously updated. 

Were this already the standard, then special allowances could be made 

for conflictive areas or areas where it appeared that extortions were 

being conducted. These could include any number of measures 

including special reviews of sales, moratoria, payment escrows, etc. If 

the market for rural real property were vigorous and transparent, with 

multiple listing services and an active agency profession, the pace of 

rural markets and any anomalies would be readily apparent. Massive 

extortions and population displacements would become much more 

difficult. Instead, the debate about the privacy of cadastral and registry 

information continues to embed anonymity and impunity as columns of 

jurisprudence in Colombia. Consequences of the disingenuous privacy 

argument about land and land records include what the Colombian 

countryside is experiencing this go-around with the paramilitaries. It is 

especially unfortunate in light of the fact that new technologies, as well 

as the current wave of De Soto-esque developmental thinking, makes 

creation of a comprehensive, accurate, transparent, and therefore stable 

and protected, property regime practicable. 

 The land records in Colombia can be used to trace ownership to 

national identification numbers and then to passports, telephone bills, 

etc. This application of land information for cross-referencing 

databases is doubly attractive to law enforcement because land records 

have inherent stability and reliability. People do cheat the records, 

often to avoid taxes, but such cheating is self-limiting, and can actually 

be helpful to the detective. The special stability of land records resides 

in the ultimate need of an owner ultimately to prove his identity 

(perhaps in a quiet-title court action) or risk losing ownership. Since 

property is a contract with the state for the recognition and support of 

196
specific preferential rights, an ostensible owner cannot pretend he is 

someone else for very long, or indeed his ownership preference will 

disappear. At any rate, the use of cutouts or dummy-owners is a red 

flag for the smart cop. There is rarely a legitimate reason to pretend 

someone else is the owner of your land. Nevertheless, the proposed use 

of property records for forensic database cross-referencing and mining 

has become a sensitive political and social issue. Colombians involved 

in illicit activities logically are opposed to the loss of anonymity, and 

therefore, impunity. More worthy of our sympathy are the many law 

abiding Colombian landowners who see public revelation of their 

property data as an invitation to predation by the mafias. ‘Big Brother’ 

records-keeping is one of those concepts that in the aggregate seems to 

Colombians a good idea for application of the rule of law, but from 

many individual perspectives is a patently dangerous proposition in the 

context of a dangerous land.190 In addition, it is obvious that the 

process of reconciling records, monumenting the borders of plots, and 

investigating titles would surface additional conflicts--that stirring up 

the dust of land records is not necessarily a peaceful tactic, even while 

a requirement of a peace strategy. How Colombians decide this 

jurisprudential dilemma is one of the most critical that bear upon the 

promise of peace in the long term. 

 So can the war be won politically? The political part can be. 

Electoral democracy is an important and valued tradition in Colombia. 

The thing is, both questions -- Can the war be won militarily? and Can 

the war be won politically? -- miss the mark. The powerful question is 

not about the celebrity headiness of politics and elections, or is it about 

the glory and risk of combat. Conflict resolution (and civilization) is 

found in the boring details of civil administration. The answer is found 

in the statutes of fraud that require written evidence of duties and rights 

 

190 See Yamid Amat Ruiz, “Reajustan los avalúos catastrales entre 35 y 50 por ciento” 

Interview with Iván Darío Gómez, director of the Augustin Codazzi Cartographic 

Institute (IGAC), repository and managing agency for the Colombian national 

cadastre. In this interview, IGAC Director Gómez provides outlines of a concerted 

governmental effort to improve and expand the cadastral system. Yamid Amat blog 

http://www.yamidamat.com.co/Contenido/contenido.asp?Entrevista=177 

197
in order to ease administration of justice and services. Boring, perhaps, 

like the study of property, but there is the key. Can the war in 

Colombia be won administratively? Let’s hope so. 

 The developmental importance of cadastral mapping is not lost 

on Colombians in a position to know. The chief of the cadastral office 

of the Colombian geographic institute wrote a 2001 essay outlining the 

long-range goals of his office and asserting the importance of his 

organization’s mission.191 The InterAmerican Development Bank, in 

turn, has supported the government of Colombia, although haltingly, 

with loans. Work on the modernization of the cadastre has proceeded, 

but at an inadequate rate. The Colombian government is attempting to 

formalize land ownership throughout the country and to digitize the 

related data.192 A major titling program aimed to legalize some seven 

hundred thousand informally owned parcels is underway. As it stands, 

benefits of that effort will not be realized for several years at best. 

Moreover, there is a strong possibility that the resulting data will not be 

made transparent, or not made available in a timely and comprehensive 

manner. A multi-agency program of assistance can be implemented to 

accelerate the Colombian government property program, foster and 

monitor transparency and gain timely use of digitized and digitally 

mapped description, ownership, use and value data for property 

throughout Colombia. Most of this data would be necessarily 

unclassified, openly obtainable and could be made available to the full 

range of participating agencies and interested scholars. 

 

191 Yovanny Arturo Martinez, Ibid., note 10.

192 Cadastral maps and data do not constitute all the government property data readily 

available in Colombia. Several ministries, government and non-government 

enterprises maintain geographically referenced data. For instance, ECOPETROL, the 

national petroleum company, keeps GIS data layers of pipeline easements, 

exploration licenses, areas of geologic promise, etc. INGEOMINAS, the national 

mining and mineralogical institute, has similar map data on valuable minerals. Other 

agencies maintain ecological and agricultural data, and the National Police keeps a 

massive geographically coded database of incidents that could be displayed on a 

common map with the property information using software such as ESRI ArcGIS. 

198
Bigger troubles 

 Colombia has another property problem, however, one that is 

quickly surpassing and overshadowing all others. The current 

leadership of neighbor Venezuela has radicalized that county’s 

constitution in a direction contrary not only to private property 

ownership, but away from the transparency of records. The 

philosophical and intellectual motivations of the Hugo Chavez regime 

are the inverse of what the liberal government of Colombia is 

attempting in terms of property. Socialist revolutionary initiatives in 

Venezuela present a danger to improving the property regime in 

Colombia. The border between the two countries is not definite any 

more than the distinction of families and businesses along that border. 

There is no way that a liberal property regime can maintain health 

alongside one in which ownership resides in a personalist dictator. For 

one thing, people will be leaving Venezuela, escaping to Colombia. 

We can expect to see the Hugo Chavez regime increasingly encourage 

the Colombian FARC to confound Colombia’s progress toward formal 

and liberal property ownership. Colombia will suffer the poisonous 

formula of a brigand organization with huge amounts of disposable 

income allied to a anti-liberal State government, also with a great deal 

of disposable income. The FARC and the Venezuelan regime share 

with the FARC an attitude of automatic opposition toward Colombia’s 

most important foreign ally, the United States. The strategic prospects 

for Colombia are challenging. To understand the challenge, however, 

the government of Colombia and its principle ally need to know all the 

details pertaining to the wealth of their opponents. This means 

understanding oil and gas revenues, coca production and distribution, 

foreign bank accounts, exploration licenses etc. It also means knowing 

in perfect detail what rights and duties are assigned and exercised 

pertaining to real estate. The lines of communication, and especially 

the routes to sanctuary of FARC elements will increasingly lead into 

and through Venezuela. 

199
Deserving to win 

No one can feel as the owner of the country and no one can 

feel excluded from the right of property. We must all suffer 

Colombia.193

 Alvaro Uribe Velez, President of Colombia 

The United Nation’s 2003 human development report for 

Colombia deals extensively with the conflict there.194 The report 

weakly addresses the critical issue of land and property, and does not 

orient on or encourage victory over the illegal armed groups. These are 

critical flaws of the UN document, and of similar suggested strategies. 

On one count, the United States policies and programs in Colombia 

have suffered a common flaw -- in not bringing the question of formal 

property creation to the forefront and doing something about it. On the 

second question of physical confrontation with illegal armed groups, 

the United States has been a more effective ally, helping the Colombian 

government reduce the influence of its internal armed enemies. Until 

after September 11, 2001, US assistance under plan Colombia was 

hamstrung and contorted by a policy that reflected a current of US 

foreign policy thinking still partially sympathetic to the armed 

opposition or at least not ready to embrace a Latin American 

government in counterinsurgency. The World Trade Center attack 

changed the balance of attitudes toward the guerrillas. At the same 

time the lack a property-based understanding of the problem, or of the 

 

193 Brainyquote.com, “Alvaro Uribe Velez Quotes,” 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alvarourib178540.html. 

194 The United Nations Development Programme. El Conflicto, callejón con salida: 

Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano Colombia – 2003. Bogotá: Panamericana 

Formas e Impresas, 2003. The report contains one of the largest collections available 

of geographically oriented data and analyses. Much of that data relies in turn on 

Colombian government maps and statistics, especially from the human rights office of 

the vice-presidency or from the national cartographic institute. These two Colombian 

institutions have produced volumes of credible data (most of which is in some way 

coded and referenced geographically) as well as detailed analyses. Their presence, 

currency, dimension and relevance oblige some consideration of their findings. 

200
importance of property as a conflict resolution institution, or of the 

forensic value of property information, continues to hamper appropriate 

foreign assistance to Colombia, even in the purely military sense of 

applying kinetic energy against a known enemy. There are three key 

aspects of the war with which the government of Colombia has had to 

contend – the ability of the enemy of the State to dissolve into the 

population and even into the government itself; an enemy strategy 

careful to avoid decisive combat with superior government forces; and 

an ever advancing requirement that the government conduct itself in 

accordance with the law. (A forth aspect might be the scale of 

disposable income available to the insurgent as a result of parasitic 

activity, particularly the cocaine trade.) Not constrained to law and in 

obedience to the essential dictates of guerrilla strategy, the guerrillas 

have two modus operandi that are especially confounding: use of the 

landmine and kidnapping. 

Colombia’s geography, while blessed with unique bounty, is 

compartmentalized and restrictive, always making Colombia difficult 

to govern. A political culture of local territorial independence and 

armed defiance against central authority, in part the result of difficult 

terrain, deepens the sense of territoriality. Meanwhile, the commercial 

attractiveness of marketable resources makes internal conflict that 

much more acute.195 Colombia’s diversity of saleable natural resources 

assures that no government strategy based solely on defending one or 

two of those resources will solve the problem of parasitism or order the 

country for peaceful and sustainable exploitation. For peace to be 

achieved, it is imperative in the near term to break the existing predator 

organizations, and simultaneously to formalize property ownership and 

 

195 For an especially penetrating analysis regarding the effect of coca on the morale 

and strategy of the guerrilla in Colombia, see Joaquín Villalobos “Por qué las FARC 

está perdiendo la guerra” [Why the FARC is losing the war], Semana, 7 July 2003, 

pp. 22-28; but see also Vicente Torrijos, “¿Por qué no conviene cantar victoria ante 

las Farc? Respuesta a Joaquín Villalobos” [Why isn’t it suitable to sing victory before 

the FARC? Response to Joaquín Villalobos], Semana.terra.com online at 

<http://semana.terra.com.co/opencms/opencms/Semana/ 

articulo.html?id=71555. 

201
environmental protection. Today, the most notable exports that US 

policymakers associate with Colombian violence are oil and cocaine, 

and certainly these two play a foremost role in the calculus of 

organized violence as the US promotes exploitation of hydrocarbons 

and battles against cultivation of the coca leaf. Granted their relative 

importance, oil and coca must be placed in the context of other 

Colombian products, the focus of repressive attention going to 

predatory behavior, and to the environmental effects of illegal behavior 

as compared to normal, peaceful exploitation. 

 The evolution of rational property law designed to provide the 

State with adequate property information and to promote social peace is 

not something that can be purchased quickly with the creation of georeferenced lines. A regulated real estate sales profession and the 

development of institutions such as title insurance are longer-term and 

dependent on developments over which foreign influence cannot easily 

or quickly be brought to bear. Nevertheless, while it is the whole 

strength of the property regime that lends importance and power to the 

property records, development of the records will be an important 

inducement toward development of the whole regime. Property 

records, even when incomplete due to unreported leaseholds and other 

tenancies and encumbrances, allow the development of specific 

questions regarding anomalies of use and ownership. Those questions 

can lead to formalization of records. The process is likely to generate 

wider observance of the law and wider appreciation for the effect that 

appropriate ownership laws can have. 

The American revolutionary innovators knew property as 

power, and so to succeed, their experiment had to protect individual 

liberty and property. Somehow, caught by the polarizing effect of the 

federalist, anti-federalist argument, Colombians failed to seize on a 

central point of the American revolution -- avoidance of excessive 

concentration of power that could impose itself on property. In the 

popular mind, participatory elections, rather than being just a visible 

expression of freedom and tool for its protection, later supplanted 

protection of property in the popular imagination as the central purpose 

202
of the social contract. The moral governor of the federalist -- antifederalist debate was a shared understanding of the need to balance 

individual liberties with social discipline. In Colombia, the debate 

became increasingly, and especially at times of violent spasms, only a 

question of how to divide the taxation pie. What is the relationship 

historically of the American political revolution to what has taken place 

in Colombia? The development of property could have been the 

backbone of the Western argument in opposition to communist 

revolutionary theory and its justification for violence, but it was not. 

Open elections and civilian control of the military became the 

dominating mantras. Admirable, neither of these went to the point. 

Neither flatten the debate about federalism/anti-federalism. Neither 

clarified the debate about common as opposed to private property that 

was contained within socialist revolutionary thinking, and, worst 

perhaps, neither provided the least amount of protection against 

organized criminality. 

 Among the uses of real property information touched-upon so 

far are asset forfeiture or denial; precision eradication of illicit crops; 

prediction and prevention of human rights violations; corruption 

limitation, long-term capital creation, alternative development contract 

monitoring; improved understanding and expression regarding the 

economic effects of aid projects; and support to territorial military 

strategies. Other uses include money-laundering tip-off, avoidance of 

collateral damage in military operations, improved disaster relief 

planning, support to ecological protection strategies and equitable tax 

assessment practices. Of all the uses of property data, however, 

perhaps the most profound and radical derives from the ability to map 

market values. The value of land speaks volumes about the degree to 

which rights are established, recorded and enforced. The market for 

property describes in detail what an internal war does to the essential 

contract between government and the population.196 That contract is 

 

196 See, for instance, Jesus Antonio Bejarano Avila (Director of Research), Colombia: 

Inseguridad, violencia y desempeño económico en las areas rurales, (Bogotá: 

Universidad Externado de Colombia 1997) p. 225. This work includes extensive 

203
supposed to be one in which the government creates the possibility of 

property. In other words, when the contract is in practical effect, 

people can obtain a set of preferential rights, enforceable by the 

government, and associated with a specific place. When the contract is 

not functioning, property is reduced by degree to the base state of 

possession by force. To understand if a society is winning or losing an 

internal war, one need only trace the value of property over time—not 

just in places such as Bogotá (or Baghdad or Manila) where the war 

might be hidden and ignored, but across the country. If there is a 

general increase in land values in the countryside, it is a good sign 

some sort of internal peace is extant. If there are anomalies, 

exaggerations, collapses in real estate values, it invariably reflects 

something more dangerous. 

 Tourism is another property indicia of success or failure in 

counterinsurgency. When people travel for other than business reasons, 

whether to a local park the other side of the country or the other side of 

the world, they are making an important judgment with their spare time 

and money regarding the comfort and safety of a place other than their 

own home, as well as the routes the routes to and from. Colombians 

understand this intuitively and directly, having had access to much of 

their country taken away from them by the internal violence. As more 

and more places return to the market of pleasurable travel, the 

geography of growing human security in Colombia can be clearly and 

distinctly mapped. That map of security is precisely measured in the 

increments of property values. 

Colombia suffers acute political disorder in which real estate 

matters a great deal. Having precise, transparent, comprehensive 

property records -- along with a legal regime that gives those records 

their full import -- would help Colombia and the United States achieve 

both countries’ goals of security and prosperity. Property creation and 

 

presentation of the relationship between violence and rural land use and markets in 

Colombia (Spanish). 

204
formalization should be raised as a principal column of US policy 

towards Colombia, and that policy should seek fundamental expression 

in plans and programs. In line with this book’s principle assertion, 

however, improving the Colombian property regime will not secure 

peace. Rather, to not improve Colombia’s property regime will 

consign to failure other efforts to secure peace and security there. 

In Colombia, the development of property has helped in the 

short run with the most palpable goals of law enforcement – to kill or 

capture criminals, take their ill-gotten wealth, repress the growth of 

their power. The military part of the conflict can and must be won by 

the government, and formalized property has helped. It is becoming a 

regular occurrence to read of a FARC or AUC commander who has had 

the backbone of his line of communication broken through the 

confiscation of real properties. Moreover, in the long run, development 

of the property regime can redress and eliminate much of what is valid 

in the revolutionary argument, and it can close space to the unchecked 

action of would-be terrorists. With better property, Colombia will be a 

more prosperous trading partner, a more stable and stronger military 

ally, will suffer fewer violations of human rights, and will export lesser 

quantities of illicit drugs. Furthermore, if Colombia’s property regime 

is not improved, the likelihood of achieving long-term internal peace is 

minimal. There is no other democratic option. Property, as an area of 

academic investigation, links law to physical geography and physical 

geography to economics. Without stretching a syllogism too far, it is 

safe to say that property is geography in legal detail; conflict and 

geography in Colombia are intimately connected, and further 

investigation into the condition of property in Colombia is likely to 

offer insights into details of the conflict. In any event, Colombia’s 

conflict should be addressed in terms of law, land, and economics. 

Without detailed facts about who owns what land and how much each 

piece is worth, most analysis is speculation. 

The Uribe administration has been, in fact, attempting to apply 

a property understanding, and to evolve the Colombian property regime 

through several programs. A recent Colombian study claiming that as 

205
much as four million hectares of land have been abandoned by persons 

displaced by violence (usually extortion, simple direct threat to life, or 

impossibility of commerce) has captured the attention of the executive 

and lawmakers.197 An unrelated effort is underway to title and 

formalize some 700 thousand informal residences, this in line with the 

De Soto observation regarding capital creation.198 These kinds of 

measures, in the author’s view, are the right path. Colombia appears to 

be winning its internal war.199 It is harder and harder for the insurgents 

to hide within the population and still be able to maintain any degree of 

wealth. The Colombian armed forces have been making it continually 

harder for the insurgents to avoid combat, and government forces have 

been increasingly disciplined in observance of the law. As a result, 

indices regarding the two most difficult modus operandi to solve, 

landmines and kidnappings, have shown a sharp decline. Colombia’s 

elite and the engaged elements of Colombia’s governing institutions 

appear to want to deserve to win. 

 

197 See, Ramiro Bejarano Guzmán, “Proyecto para-inmueble,”

colombia.indymedia.org, Oct. 1, 2005 online at

<http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/31525.php; El Tiempo, “Procurador 

alerta sobre tierras de desplazados que están hoy en manos de 'paras' y 

narcotraficantes,” eltiempo.com, October 2, 2005 online at 

<http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/judi/2005-10-03/ARTICULO-WEB-

_NOTA_INTERIOR-2554156.html. 

198 El Tiempo, “700 mil familias colombianas que viven en predios que no son suyos 

podrán legalizarlos” (700 Thousand families that live on lots that are not theirs will be 

able to legalize them), eltiempo.com, October 15, 2005 online at 

< http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/economia/2005-10-13/ARTICULO-WEB-

_NOTA_INTERIOR-2567675.html.

199 See, as an expression of this view, Guardian Unlimited, ‘The Rebirth of a Nation’ 

at http://business.guardian.co.uk/insidecolombia/story/0,,2095249,00.html 

206
Chapter Four: Hohfeld versus Haushofer 

 

 

National Security Strategy of the United States ...... 208

Geopolitics ....................................................... 211 

Plate tectonics .................................................. 229

United States military strategy ................................. 239

Right war, right knowledge .............................. 241

A general whose road homeward is cut is 

ruined ............................................................... 251

Appropriate organization and weapons ........... 255

 People and real estate: countering urban violence 

 .......................................................................... 259

Developmental strategy ............................................. 264

Land reform ...................................................... 264

Fixing Cuba ...................................................... 274

Knowledge strategy .................................................... 281

The relevant things worth knowing .................. 281

Indiana Jones and direct sensing ..................... 287

GIS ................................................................... 291 

Property Strategy ....................................................... 293 

Measuring property .......................................... 297

Chapter Four: Hohfeld versus Haushofer 

"Do not be narrow-minded, but think in large terms of 

great spaces, in continents and oceans, and thereby 

direct your course with that of our Fuhrer."200

Karl Haushofer, Nazi Geopolitician 

 

200 James Trapier Lowe, Geopolitics and War: Mackinder's Philosophy of Power

(Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), p.5. citing Edmund A. 

Walsh, Total Power (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1948), 6 and 45. 

207
National Security Strategy of the United States 

"Our Nation's cause has always been larger than our 

Nation's defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just 

peace—a peace that favors liberty. We will defend the 

peace against the threats from terrorists and tyrants. We 

will preserve the peace by building good relations 

among the great powers. And we will extend the peace 

by encouraging free and open societies on every 

continent."201 

 President George W. Bush 

 Chapter One outlined property theory; Chapter Two described 

the environment of dangers in property terms; and Chapter Three 

presented a case study of an important country where property issues 

are obviously at the heart of internal conflict. This chapter examines the 

change in national security strategy that the book’s overall thesis hopes 

to provoke. How does ‘property’ fit into or against the dominant 

expressions of US national and military strategy? Why would 

incorporation of ‘property’ improve that body of understanding, and 

what would property-security doctrine and strategy look like? The 

rationale of this chapter is built from the principle assertion of the book 

that without formalized property a society’s prospects of internal peace 

are dim. Lands where violent internal conflict lingers, or where 

tyranny takes hold -- where freedom, safety and prosperity do not reign 

-- are places correspondingly likely to spawn and propagate behaviors 

that threaten the rest of the world. Today, the question of other 

peoples’ social condition is all the more critical given the phenomena 

encapsulated in Chapter Two as the Globalization of Trespass. It is no 

longer an option that we isolate ourselves from the insufficiencies that 

 

201 George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, 

D.C.: The White House, 2005, online at <http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss1.html. 

208
hamper human flourishing in other societies, and so part of the upshot 

this book is a call to infuse property concepts into explicit national 

security and national intelligence strategies – and not just those aimed 

at economic development. Property-based knowledge, theory and 

praxis can also contribute to resolve current conflicts and to defeat 

violent enemies. 

 This book calls for specific improvements in national security, 

military and intelligence strategies. The thesis is simple: US national 

security strategy could more effectively respond to the changed nature 

of the global environment by more fully incorporating property rights 

knowledge, concepts and imperatives. As expressed in Chapter Two, 

the global changes in question are the particularization of power, the 

projection of legal regimes worldwide and moral asymmetry. Human 

political culture has evolved in such a way that the map of discrete 

sovereign entities is insufficient to represent the volatile interests in 

play. Adjusting our understanding of national security strategy toward 

divisible property and away from discrete state sovereignty invites 

some predictable consequences. The broad observations and country 

power-balancing of the geopolitician are forced to give ground to the 

incremental market consciousness of the real estate agent, litigious 

calculating of the plaintiff’s attorney and scrupulous mapping of the 

county clerk. Such an approach does not lament or revel in the global 

particularization of power, but rather maps, measures and civilizes it. 

Explaining how the approach fits into or against existing national 

security, military and intelligence strategy is the chore of this chapter. 

 The cause of the book, as stated at the outset, is to convince, on 

both the theoretical and practical levels, why the advancement of 

property regimes in foreign lands should become a principal column of 

plans for a secure and peaceful world. To see how that column might 

fit, we take a brief look at how the current plans came about. In other 

words, at the determinants of the strategy writings, national documents 

that historically have paid deference to specific currents of strategic 

theory. 

209
 It is difficult to discuss strategy without falling prey to the same 

kind of academic jealousies and semantic quicksand that lurk in the 

word property. The word strategy carries a wide-ranging set of 

formally accepted denotations. I confine myself here to two broad 

areas of understanding: The first use of the term applies to the 

provision of security before, after or beyond the condition of warfare -- 

decisions made on a broad scope that are intended to protect and 

acquire rights without the necessity or consequence of organized 

violence. These decisions are often developmental, economic or 

diplomatic in nature, and are taken for the most part, in the American 

context, by civilian rather than military leaders. 

The second understanding takes strategy to be a set of decisions 

generated by military leadership in order to fix and destroy or capture 

an enemy. ‘Enemy’ can be defined for convenience as an individual or 

organization the behavior of which cannot be peaceably changed soon 

enough to prevent it from doing our friends or us grave harm. This 

latter, military strategy -- strategy that manages violence against an 

enemy -- optimally comprises decisions taken to increase the 

probability of success of subordinate commanders in battle. 

Purposefully absent in this discussion of the above two 

categories of strategy is any challenge to the hierarchies of terms that 

habitually appear in treatments of the subject. Within those hierarchies, 

the terms ‘vision,’ ‘policy,’ ‘geo-strategy,’ ‘grand strategy,’ 

‘operational art’ and ‘tactics’ typically appear. Strategy, for the 

purposes of this chapter, however, is the trump term -- something 

greater and more important than whatever other label of purposeful 

competitive thought finds itself in the same sentence, and which guides 

whatever else it is that needs guidance. 

 I believe that strategy (when used as a synonym for planning) is 

best designed upon conscious reconciliation of objectives, methods, 

and resources, and that it has an imperative relationship to its inferiors. 

That is to say, an excellent tactical move can rarely save a poor 

strategy, but a correct strategy can suffer considerable tactical error. In 

210
that regard we also nod to the generally accepted notion that an 

understanding of the basic sources of power is necessary if we are to 

succeed in strategizing -- supposing that, in any setting, accurate insight 

into the nature and source of power is helpful if we are to determine 

reasonable objectives and rational means of achieving them. As for the 

place of property theory and knowledge in the formulation of security 

and military strategy: an absence of detailed knowledge of property 

ownership is presumptive evidence of ignorance regarding the details 

of power. In the sections that follow, the text will criticize the 

established strategic power measurements and will propose a propertybased approach to measuring power that matches a property approach 

to analysis of conflict. 

Geopolitics 

 Among the currents of strategy theory that has most influenced 

US strategic writing is geopolitics. While geopolitics is yet another 

term at times used in place of strategy or as something bigger, here it 

represents a phenomenon in academic history, an academic subdiscipline that for many decades served as the mental bridge between 

geography and strategy; was, to some extent, synonymous with 

strategy. For some readers, geopolitics conjures up a worldview at 

odds with human rights -- one that still carries unpopular connotations 

as a vindicating pseudo-science for national arrogance. As a school of 

strategic thought it was, as its name implies, a cross of geography and 

politics, but its dominant scholastic parent is Geography rather than 

Political Science. It serves us here because it informed the writers of 

US national security documents well beyond its prime as a recognized 

approach to security thinking, and across the full ideological range of 

US administrations. It is also a useful referent in that the shortcomings 

of the geopolitical view of conflict and violence contrast most sharply 

with the advantages of a property-based view. One attraction of 

geopolitics seems to have been its confident explanation of security 

questions on the basis of visible geographic evidence and supposedly 

immutable physical laws. Property analysis of conflict (or ‘Hohfeldian 

211
analysis’ as the chapter title alludes, or what this author pretentiously 

calls Geoproperty) is more tedious. The necessary evidence is detailed 

and complicated, the laws myriad, mundane, and never immutable. 

With its shortcomings, however, property analysis can give a more 

precise and useable view of today’s violent human competition. 

 The United States was born into a world of sovereignty, 

wherein the sovereignty-based construct for dividing the political and 

diplomatic earth was in the process of consolidation. Nevertheless, 

formed on the basis of revolutionary perspectives regarding the 

relationship between the individual and the state, the new American 

nation began successfully to export principles and create cultural norms 

that have since continually eroded sovereignty’s dominion as the 

organizing principle of global power. Every step in the direction of 

free trade, constitutional social contracts, decentralized elections -- not 

to mention the spread of technologies giving voice and privacy to 

individuals and groups independent of central governments -- has 

worked against the relative power of those governments. With the 

basket of post-Soviet phenomena we call, the corrosive effect on the 

power-monopoly of central governments (with some glaring 

exceptions) has accelerated. Meanwhile, the international strategy of 

the United States government, evolved to fit the world of contrived 

nation-states drawn on the world map, and eventually as analyzed 

through a geopolitics lens, has not adjusted to fit the new power 

divisions. Just at the time in the late 1800s that the United States began 

to see itself as a global power, as it took its first competitive steps at the 

end of the age of classic imperialism, the notions of modern geopolitics 

were coming into fashion. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, 

geopolitics, a child of Geography, imprinted itself on the minds of 

American strategists. Strategy, geography, history and politics were 

intertwined in geopolitics, as was, to a considerable degree, 

propaganda. 

After WWII, Geography waned in the United States as a 

departmental academic discipline, replaced in time by Area Studies, 

International Studies, Anthropology or other bits and pieces of the 

212
social sciences. It appears that Geography was made to pay a price for 

having spawned the geopolitics that inspired the sort of assertion that 

the Haushofer quote at the beginning of the chapter exemplifies. 

Irrespective of this shunning of Geography on campus, the makers of 

post WWII US national strategy gave inertial afterlife to the pre-war 

geopolitics. Superpower competition against the Soviet Union after 

WWII lengthened the historical relevance of the established, if 

questionable, geopolitical concepts against which American diplomacy 

and military might were shaped. This was so even while expressions of 

the vision of American national purpose were increasingly at odds with 

a geopolitical understanding of the world. Some understanding of 

where geopolitics came from, and why it survives, helps feed the 

argument for change. 

Nineteenth-century German geographer Freidrich Ratzel is 

considered the father of modern human or political geography. 202 

Ratzel presented his creative theories of political organization in terms 

of "laws" related to space and location. He stressed space as of 

extreme importance to national power, and concentrated much of his 

study on the United States, which he felt would become a 20th century 

world leader. Nevertheless, Swede Rudolf Kjellen is more often 

credited as inventor of geopolitics (Geopolitik) as is Karl Haushofer for 

warping geopolitics to the advantage of Nazi dogma.203 Early in the 

 

202 See generally, Harriet Wanklyn, Friedrich Ratzel: A Biographical Memoir and 

Bibliography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1961). It is at least 

entertaining to note that one of Ratzel’s most influential works, Anthropogeographie

(2 vols., 1882-1891; Human Geography) established his reputation as an 

anthropologist.

203Arild Holt-Jensen, Ibid., p. 32; Note the following from a post-WWII textbook on 

political geography: "Before and during WWII, German geopolitics (Geopolitic) was 

used to blueprint world conquest, and the Nazi creed incorporated those portions of 

political geography that served to justify German expansion. The natural result has 

been an attempt by some scholars to divorce the discipline of political geography 

from geopolitics. In the words of Karl Haushofer, 'Political Geography views the state 

from the standpoint of space, while Geopolitics views space from the standpoint of 

the state.' In the final analysis the difference is one of emphasis..." N. Marbury 

Efimenco, ed., World Political Geography: Second Edition (New York: Thomas Y. 

Crowell Company, 1957), p. 5.

213
20th Century, Britisher Halford Mackinder built on Ratzel’s notion of 

continental power, and attributed preeminence to the Eurasian continent 

in what became his Heartland Theory. Mackinder is considered a 

determinist in that he stressed basic geography as the dominant 

influence over the fate of a country. Determinism, (environmental 

determinism, or environmentalism) caused a post-World War I reaction 

among geographers that was referred to as possibilism, a term 

apparently invented by French historian Lucien Febvre. The 

possibilists stressed the power of human choice rather than 

environmental limitations to it. Although Mackinder himself swung 

toward the possibilists in his later thinking, the German translation of 

his Heartland Theory had great impact on German territorial 

acquisitiveness and then on arguments that would bring the United 

States into the Second World War. The theory, published in 1919 in a 

study titled "Democratic Ideals and Reality," is summarized by 

MacKinder’s famous phrase: "Who rules East Europe commands the 

Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island: Who 

rules the World Island commands the World."204 With this he 

intimated that if the Germans or the Russians were to control east 

Europe and Russia (the Eurasian heartland), they would be in a natural 

position to control the world. Given the orientation of his theory on the 

world-controlling importance of central Europe (i.e., Germany, Poland, 

Russia), speculation turned toward the effect physical control of these 

areas might have on possibilities for world domination. This became 

the intellectual baseline for drawing the United States into a European 

war. 

Geopolitics is a twentieth century instruction, Geography itself 

being fairly young as institutionalized academic disciplines go. The 

first English and American university geography departments and 

 

204 Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: W.W. Norton & 

Company, 1962), 150. There is some debate about when exactly the term Heartland 

was coined. Mackinder had delivered an influential lecture in 1904 titled "The 

Geographical Pivot of History" in which the term appears and in which the essence of 

his theory is propounded. See James Trapier Lowe, Geopolitics and War: Mackinder's 

Philosophy of Power (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), p.5. 

214
textbooks date back only to the latter half of the 19th Century.205 

Geopolitics was one of geography's early progenies. Because it was 

born in an epoch of high imperialist pretensions, and given its 

undeniable Germanic ancestry, geopolitics was destined for dishonor 

by entanglement with Nazi racism, and perhaps by Hegelian and von 

Moltkean love of war as a crucible of human and national character. 

The term has survived because it finesses a determinant connection 

between physical geography, strategy and therefore international 

diplomacy. Its pre-WWII abusers are little remembered. Geopolitics, 

ugly still for some, is a valid term to describe the theoretical parameters 

within which much military thinking about strategy still resides. This 

was as true for United States strategists in the late 20th Century as it 

was at its beginning. While many military planners may be unaware of 

the intellectual and historical baggage that geopolitics lugs with it, they 

are generally content that the term represents a more worthy engine for 

national decision making than does, say, human rights theory. For 

others, human rights concepts are attractive for perhaps the same 

reasons that led the Post WWI possibilists to reject the suspicious 

environmental determinism of geopolitics. It is no wonder that postWWII American academe might move away from study in service of 

strengthening the State, and toward the study of the State’s role in 

improving the environmental space. Regardless, geopolitical theory has 

had a transcendent effect on the U.S. security outlook, beginning with 

the influences not of the Germans, but of Mackinder. 

That geopolitics has been a dominant intellectual influence in 

contemporary United States foreign policy is a point that strategic 

historian Geoffrey Sloan expertly argued.206 Sloan weaved together 

American geopolitical theorizing, geopolitical expressions in U.S. 

policy, and the geopolitical determinants of other policy traditions. He 

pointed out a remarkable intuition displayed by America’s best known 

 

205 German geography was established as a separate academic discipline about a half 

century earlier. See Arild Holt-Jensen, Geography: History and Concepts (Totowa, 

New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1988), p. 3.

206 Geoffrey R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, 1890-1987 (New 

York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. 

215
geopolitical theorist, Nicholas Spykman. As a geopolitician, Spykman 

claimed that the power of a state was strongly related to its location and 

its physical features. His geographic focus, and what distinguished his 

work from Mackinder’s, was what he called the ‘Rimland of Eurasia.’ 

Playing on Mackinder’s Heartland theory, Spykman asserted "who 

controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the 

destinies of the world."207 Spykman’s observation may seem 

gratuitous coming as it did in 1941. Anyone might have stumbled

across a threatening power or two on the outer edges of the Eurasian 

landmass. But what Spykman stated as the consequence of this 

geographic observation set in motion what is an example of the impact 

pure theory can have on strategy. Spykman stated that the rimland 

powers of Japan and Germany would, after the end of the war, beco

allies of the United States to counter Russian expansion.

me 

 the 

ts 

e 

 appeal to the strategy-oriented. 

 

208 He had 

maintained that Soviet foreign policy aims, as Russia’s before, were to 

break out of the heartland to warm water ports, and ultimately to 

dominate the world. Understandably, his predictions were not 

universally well received in 1941. Spykman died in 1943, and as

coming end of the war exposed the need to reappraise strategic threa

in a changed world order, Spykman’s geopolitics quickly gained 

influential weight even as the labels of geography and geopolitics wer

swept out of view. His observations were stated in the context of 

power-balancing within the state system. In this calculus world 

domination was a viable end in a zero-sum game of dominators -- all 

of which had a natural

Sloan points out that Spykman’s reputation nevertheless 

suffered vilification as the "American Haushofer."209 The conclusions 

Spykman asserted or implied in his interpretation of geography--that 

the United States should not seek to destroy Germany and Japan, but 

207 Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, edited by Helen R. Nicholl 

(United States: Archon Books, 1969). See also David Wilkinson, "Spykman and 

Geopolitics" in On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear edited by Ciro Zoppo and 

Charles Zorgbibe (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985). 

208 Sloan, Geopolitics, p. 19. 

209 Ibid. 

216
only to change regimes and preserve the countries intact as allies--

appeared for some to be in amoral if not immoral consonance with 

disgraced enemies, and using their same discredited bag of theory. 

Consequently, neither Spykman nor geopolitics would enjoy the open 

recognition during the early years of containment strategy.210 Along 

with them slumped the welcome and fortunes of geography as an 

academic discipline. Sloan notes that Henry Kissinger called for an 

explicit geopolitics, but that he did not mean a theory of spatial and 

historical causation. He meant power equilibrium. Geopolitik morphed 

into Realpolitic. Of course, treatment of states and regions as discreet 

geographic entities among which power could be balanced was always 

both precondition for and effect of geopolitical and well as realpolitical 

thinking. 

Skipping over a few decades of Cold War to 1986, we note that 

the United States Congress passed The Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act (the Goldwater Nichols Act). It stipulates that the 

President of the United States annually send to Congress a 

comprehensive report on the country’s national security strategy.211 

The act orders that the annual report include a description and 

discussion of the following: 

 

210 Actually, Spykman called Haushofer's writing "metaphysical nonsense." Spykman 

was also adamant about not assigning too much weight to simple geography as a 

guide to policy. "The formation of policy is not to be simplified into one all-inclusive 

generality like geography. They are many; they are permanent and temporary, 

obvious and hidden; they include, besides geography, population density, the 

economic structure of the country, the ethnic composition of the people, the form of 

government, the complexes and pet prejudices of foreign ministers, and the ideals and 

values held by the people." Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, p. 7. Spykman's 

conception of power is still rigidly framed by the official action of states in a state 

system and only casually tries to incorporate technological change. 

211 United States Congress, Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act of 1986, PL 99-433, 1 October 1986, Section 104. 

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(1) The worldwide interests, goals, and objectives of the 

United States that are vital to the national security of the 

United States. 

(2) The foreign policy, worldwide commitments, and 

national defense capabilities of the United States 

necessary to deter aggression and to implement the 

strategy. 

(3) The proposed short and long-term uses of the 

political, economic, military, and other elements of the 

national power to protect or promote national interests 

and achieve goals and objectives. 

(4) The adequacy of the capabilities of the United States 

to carry out the national security strategy, including an 

evaluation of the balance among the capabilities of all 

elements of the national power to support 

implementation of the strategy. 

(5) Such other information as may be necessary to help 

inform Congress on matters relating to the national 

security strategy of the United States. 

Earliest versions of the official National Security Strategy of the 

United States, the document prepared annually by the president to 

comply with the aforementioned act, show the influence of geopolitical 

thinking in the explanation, if not the construction, of U.S. foreign 

policy. In 1988, the essential "objectives" of the United States were 

summed as peace, security, and freedom. The report stated that the... 

first historical dimension of our strategy is relatively 

simple, clear-cut, and immensely sensible. It is the 

conviction that the United States’ most basic 

national security interests would be endangered if a 

hostile state or group of states were to dominate the 

Eurasian landmass--that area of the globe often 

referred to as the world’s heartland. We fought two 

world wars to prevent this from occurring. And 

since 1945, we have sought to prevent the Soviet 

218
Union from capitalizing on its geostrategic 

advantage to dominate its neighbors in Western 

Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and thereby 

fundamentally alter the global balance of power to 

our disadvantage. ... The national strategy to achieve 

this objective has been containment, in the broadest 

sense of that term.212

The continuity apparent in the 1988 strategy with past national 

goals and policies ratified the Mackinder geopolitical slice of foreign 

affairs scholarship. Also in introductory paragraphs, national "values," 

(human dignity, personal freedom, individual rights, the pursuit of 

happiness, peace and prosperity) were tied logically to "an international 

order that encourages self-determination, democratic institutions, 

economic development, and human rights. A good sense of US 

national strategy emerges. Starting with the constitution as the guide, 

the US government states that Americans should be safe, free and 

prosperous and, looking at the rest of the world, concludes that it would 

be advantageous if other peoples were prosperous, safe and free as 

well. Though not always observed in the specifics, this has been a 

durable element of national identity and the wellspring of considerable 

power. These statements are nevertheless at odds logically with 

theoretical determinants that view the value of geographies 

independently of the conditions of ownership rights within them. 

In addition to the required annual National Security Strategy, 

another major strategy document was published in 1988, the report of 

The Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy.213 The 

commission was co-chaired by Fred Ikle and Albert Wohlstetter. First, 

it recommended that the United States emphasize a wider range of 

threats than the two that had dominated policy and force planning for 

 

212 Ronald Reagan, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, 

D.C.: The White House, 1988), p. 1. 

213 The Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Discriminate Deterrence

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988). 

219
decades prior.214 Instead of concentrating on the extreme cases of a 

massive Communist attack through Central Europe or all-out nuclear 

war, the commission called for the ability to make discriminate military 

responses to lesser, but still major confrontations in other areas. The 

primary defense strategy documents in 1988 followed through on a 

course that had been set near the beginning of the Reagan presidency. 

They announced a long-term policy of technological, all-level, allplaces competition against the Soviet Union. The resulting particulars 

were clear. The United States was officially dedicated to fighting and 

winning the Cold War, and Mackinder’s geopolitics still fit. 

How is it that Mackinder’s geopolitics enjoyed such longevity 

on the back of a theory that originally claimed that whoever held the 

heartland of Europe would control the world? Americans were 

unwittingly co-opted to internalize the protection of Western Europe as 

essential to United States national security. Therein lay one attraction 

to British statesmen, if not British geographers (Mackinder was a 

member of the British Parliament), of theories holding that nobody 

should be allowed to get hold of the biggest chunk of Europe. Halford 

Mackinder’s Heartland Theory was less and more than it appeared. 

More than scientific observation, it was also an intellectual device 

managed in the service of great power politics. It was for Britain an 

exportable fear and a simultaneously popular hope for Germans. 

Mackinder’s was a theory promoted in part, even if only intuitively, to 

aid in involving the United States in the event of European continental 

war. The British applied political geography to a specific end, as did 

the Nazis. The Heartland Theory presented a nexus between control of 

central Europe and the security of the United States, and it made a 

subliminal appeal to American identity. That identity included 

solidarity both with Europe as a whole and with the English-speaking 

 

214 The commission report gives an excellent summary of U.S. Cold War strategy--

"The strategy can be stated quite simply: forward deployment of American forces, 

assigned to oppose invading armies and backed by strong reserves and a capability to 

use nuclear weapons if necessary." The report notes that the strategy had had 

considerable success and asserted that the commission did not propose that the 

strategy be replaced, only that it be revised. Ibid., p. 5.

220
British in particular. The theory may have proposed that specific 

territorial space was the principal determinant of world domination, but 

the political message was that ‘they’ (Russians or Germans) were in an 

important property competition against ‘us’ (British and Americans).215 

In retrospect, it hardly mattered one iota what nation controlled the 

heartland of Europe as far as American security was concerned. After 

all, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, U.S. wealth and security 

depended immeasurably more on how America controlled its own land 

than on what nation controlled the heartland of Europe. How a Europecontrolling regime would deal with people and with ownership did

matter. But geopolitics is almost oblivious to how land is owned, or to 

any ownership below that of the collective nation-State, and at the time 

all ability to project organized destructive power was believed to reside 

in the State. The Heartland Theory continued to be cited past the Great 

War, past WWII and throughout the Cold War, but by that time it was 

the presence and range of nuclear missiles that made the Soviet Union a 

direct threat--not political control of the Eurasian heartland. If the 

Soviets were ever to have possessed all of Germany, they would have 

gained about 5 percent more land and about 15 percent more people. 

Without ICBMs, rule of the Eurasian heartland would have meant rule 

of the Eurasian heartland. Likewise, he who controls Kansas...controls 

Kansas. The Heartland optic can be taken as a self-centered European 

 

215 According to Mackinder's theory, control of the heartland, or central region, 

threatened the "sea powers" meaning first Britain, and then the United States. N. J. 

Spykman (American Strategy in World Politics, 1942) picked up on the idea, but with 

a different thrust. He visualized the "rimland" countries as being more important. 

These included Japan, Britain, India, and the Mideast countries. He speculated that 

United States security depended on preventing the formation of an enemy coalition of 

rimland powers, or domination of rimland areas by the heartland (Russia). Necessity 

is the mother of invention, and Mackinder was as much innovative politician as 

innovative theorist. He sensed the strategic moment of the Heartland argument. 

Spykman, much less the politician, nevertheless recognized the durability of 

Mackinder's Heartland theory and anticipated the American need for a post-war 

strategic vision. This, together with the intercontinental range of missiles, made the 

heartland theory a survivor. John E. Kieffer (Realities of World Power, 1952) picked 

up the geopolitical ball, explaining the East-West polarization using a power belt 

theory. Though equally as logical or illogical, Kieffer was nowhere as influential. 

221
a priori, continental control and world domination billed as one-in-thesame. 

President Ronald Reagan’s 1988 report, written just before the 

close of the Cold War, presents an enlightening contrast to President 

George H. Bush’s 1993 report. Writing the National Security Strategy 

in 1993 was a different challenge than in 1988, since Cold War 

containment of and competition with the communist empire could no 

longer serve as an azimuth. The 1993 document featured arms control 

and limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, control of illicit drug 

trafficking, halting environmental degradation, advancement of free 

market global economics, fostering democracy worldwide, responding 

to straightforward aggressions, and building coalitions with allies to 

achieve all of the other goals.216 The Russians were not yet entirely off 

the scope. They still held the ability to destroy America, had not left 

Cuba completely, or had they withdrawn troops from much of the 

former Soviet empire. The US national strategy document reflected on 

the possibility of a resurgent Russia, but the direction was one of 

greater specificity in describing the actions to be included in the 

government’s strategy to provide for the general welfare and secure the 

common defense. At the outset of the first term of President William 

Clinton, differences of vision between the Departments of Defense and 

the Department of State delayed internal administration acceptance of a 

unified strategy document.217 The Department of State oriented on the 

use of diplomacy to address human rights and environmental concerns 

while the Department of Defense sought to retain a geopolitical 

construct. As in the first Bush administration, the geopolitical 

perspective tended to overly simplify classification of foreign lands 

 

216 George Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, (Washington, D.C.: 

The White House, 1993). On the question of coalitions, however, a statement was 

included: “Foremost, the United States must ensure its security as a free and 

independent nation, and the protection of its fundamental values, institutions, and 

people. This is a sovereign responsibility which we will not abdicate to any other 

nation or collective organization.” Ibid, p. 3. 

217. The first Clinton administration national security strategy document was finally 

published in July 1994. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of 

Engagement and Enlargement (Washington: The White House, 1994). 

222
according to physical geographical aspects. Oil, distance in terms of 

missile ranges, jet engine minerals, or sea-lane choke points led 

analyses. Many of these geopolitical standards are related to a 

hypothetical condition of international war. Thus, places gained 

importance and priority because of their contribution in the exceptional 

case of a global conflagration. Within these analyses, especially 

geopolitical in nature, priorities for the prevention of global conflict can 

be overlooked.218

Although one might remark on the strategy differences taken by 

the Reagan and Bush administrations, or on the differences of vision 

between the Bush and Clinton administrations, the strategy documents 

indicate more continuity than change. A concluding paragraph from the 

report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy in 1988 is 

enlightening. "We live in a world whose nations are increasingly 

connected by their economies, cultures, and politics--sometimes 

explosively connected as in the repeated vast migrations since WWII of 

refugees escaping political, religious, and racial persecution. It is a 

 

218 Not just with regard to the United Sates do we see the difficulty of distinguishing 

abstract concepts in the formulation of national strategy. The Brazilians, for instance, 

have formally defined their national objectives as "interests and aspirations, vital and 

optional, that in a given phase of its historic-cultural evolution, the nation seeks to 

satisfy." Vital national interests that are expected to endure throughout the period of 

Brazilian history are termed "Permanent National Objectives." Superior War School, 

Basic Manual (Brazil: Escola Superior de Guerra, 1992), p. 24. Of these Permanent 

National Objectives there are six--Democracy, National Integration, Integrity of the 

National Patrimony, Social Peace, Progress, and Sovereignty. Integrity of National 

Patrimony, for example, is defined as "Territorial integrity inherited from our 

forefathers and enlarged by those increments resulting from the evolution of 

technology or international law, examples being the territorial seas or airspace; 

integrity of the public lands, natural resources and the natural environment to be 

preserved against predation; integrity of the cultural-historical patrimony, represented 

in language customs and traditions, to wit, preserving the national identity." Ibid., p. 

27. Sovereignty refers to "maintenance of national intangibles, assuring the capacity 

of self-determination and to live together with other nations in terms of equality of 

rights, not acceding to any form of intervention in internal affairs, nor participating in 

like processes in relation to other nations. In essence, it is the search for its own 

destiny; and as well sovereignty signifies supremacy of the juridical order of the State 

throughout its territory." Ibid., p.28. 

223
world in which military as well as economic power will be more and 

more widely distributed and in which the United States must continue 

to expect some nations to be deeply hostile to its purposes." These 

words could have as easily been written by administration strategy 

writers in 1974, 1984, 1994 or in 2004. 

The basic elements of national strategy found in the major 

United States strategy documents can be usefully considered in 

property terms. For instance, outlines in President Clinton’s A 

National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement about what 

the United States should do--about the need to enlarge the community 

of democratic nations, protect the environment and promote economic 

integration--are easy to express in property terms. We would simply 

say that the United States seeks to expand acceptance of its ideology 

regarding rules of ownership, ensure that other possessors meet 

ownership duties (according to the accepted rules), and increase the 

value of property through open trade. There is an evident efficiency in 

so stating the problem, even while the ideological challenge is blatant. 

In the examples used above, we note that simple categorization of items 

as of ‘national interest’ may often proves unconstructive in terms of 

conflict resolution. By addressing other elements of the ownership 

environment, such as attitudes about the collective identity of owners, 

we can more easily define the points of potential disagreement. 

Mackinder’s was a limited determinism in that he always left a 

hint that human initiative was available to change the basic 

geographical space. In a submission to the march of history, 

Mackinder adjusted the measure of his theory, saying toward the end 

his life in 1943 that the human influence was a more important element 

in the future of a nation than was territorial endowment. The property 

approach, which crosses law, economics and physical geography, seeks 

understanding of contractual agreements expressed according to place. 

It is the same, but the opposite of geopolitics. Both point to the map 

and say, “This place has a competitive advantage.” Within property 

analyses, however, human capacity to order the details of competition 

over territory is a civilizing ingredient, and a key determinant of the 

224
relative economic value of land. These two characteristics of human 

input: the civilizing of human interaction and the establishment of 

relative value, are obviated by the bare geophysical assertions of 

geopolitics. Geopolitics ignores the importance of the social contract, 

the innovation of divisibility of rights and duties, or the market for 

rights, as well as innovations to reconcile conflicts over land. 

Geopolitics ignores the possibility of increasing the whole power of a 

people as a result of the way in which conflict is resolved and the value 

of land increased. 

Geopolitics presumes a struggle for the fee simple, and gives 

little weight to the strength that might accrue to a person, family, NGO, 

gang, business, people or a nation due to the way in which rights in 

land and other are ordered and evidenced. For this reason, geopolitics 

has to be constantly re-thought to explain why this or that place is 

advantaged by physical geography. Geopolitics is a mental construct 

born of another, sovereignty. It is still the guiding mental construct for 

strategists, confines our understanding and is something we need to 

escape. It does not fit globalization, does not adjust quickly enough to 

technological change, is not precise enough to help us see the new 

enemies, and will not lead to victory over terrorism, over brigandage or 

over poverty.

Geopolitical perspectives start from characteristics of the land, 

not ownership rights. However, digging at the substrata of geopolitics, 

one can uncover fascinating evidence of the universality of man's 

attitudes toward land. Ratzel, presented his theories of political 

organization in terms of "laws" related to space and location. He 

conceived of the state as a type of biological organism with spiritual 

and moral character derived from the ties which men shared due to 

common presence on a definable piece of ground. The spiritual 

dimension of the relationship between man and land reflected the 

antecedent and ever-nationalist writings of philosophers such as Kant 

and Hegel. These expressions, while not shared universally, are not far 

removed from other peoples' conclusions regarding their political and 

spiritual relationship to land. Consider the following expression of the 

225
importance of land to the American Indians in face of the privations 

bestowed upon them by the White man in America: 

Land, moreover, has many meanings for the Indian. The 

relationship of a tribe to its land defines that tribe: its 

identity, its culture, its way of life, its fundamental 

rights, its methods of adaptation, its pattern of survival. 

Land also defines the Indians' enemies-those who covet 

the land and desire to expropriate it for their own use. 

Because Indian land is, or may be, of value, it has been, 

and remains, the source of almost every major conflict 

and every ongoing controversy between the Indian and 

the white man. Indian land is synonymous with Indian 

existence. A tribe's title to land often proves to be its 

death warrant.219

With changes only in the group identities, this assertion could have 

been safely attributed to German geopoliticians. At the level of rights 

associated with land, differences in belief systems are not so great as is 

often claimed. Geopolitics responds to atavistic ties between man and 

place. However, especially in its most abrasive forms, geopolitics does 

not deal well with multiple dimensions of ownership.220 Emphasis on 

space and location is the Ratzelian heritage of geopolitics. Intuition 

about domestic real estate tells us that space and location are indeed 

principal determinants of land value in fiscal terms, but the body of 

rights obtained in the acquisition of land also has a close relationship to 

its price. Geopolitical analyses are poorly conformable to multiple, 

 

219 Edgar S. Cahn and David W. Hearne, eds., Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in 

White America (New York: New American Library, 1970), p. 68. 220 An indigenous, or ‘Fourth World,’ movement is afoot that seeks to build solidarity 

among indigenous peoples of the world in order to promote similar if not common 

interests. One might suppose that this movement would find common cause with 

environmental protectionists. Greenpeace, for instance, played a sympathetic 

observer role in the context of Mexico’s Zapatista uprising, which purported a 

significant indigenous claims dimension. Still, activists for indigenous rights just as 

often find their agendas at odds with the goals of environmental protection activists, 

especially when the bottom line is land use and ownership.

226
occasionally shared, changeable rights in land held by overlapping 

owner groups that only sometimes can be delineated according to 

nationality. The more distant a problem gets from competition by 

nation-states over the fee simple of demarcated land, the less useful 

geopolitics becomes. As legal and economic innovation sneaks up on 

space to divide it over and over, and to create overlapping owner 

identities associated with every overlapping slice, geopolitics is further 

and further relegated. 

Another significant weakness of geopolitics is its failure to 

receive technological change. Geopolitical interpretations of national 

interest can be seen as lagging reflections of technological history. 

Much in US national strategy, geopolitically-based, has been built 

around control of natural resources, such as oil.221 This is an indirect 

response to technological change. Strategic minerals and oil are 

geologically noteworthy because of the technologies that lend them 

commercial value. Geopoliticians, observing the demand for these 

natural resources, imbue with a correlated value the places where the 

resources can be found. The weakness is obvious. Many technologies 

are not well defined geologically, but nevertheless create changes in the 

value of places. Widespread use of the automobile, or the development 

of the jet engine were ultimately reflected in geopolitical analysis. Use 

of the Internet, electronic banking, or DNA labeling, however, are less 

likely to be incorporated into geopolitical viewpoints because the 

varying changes that they make to the value of places is not 

geologically, or geophysically, visible. In this century the most hotly 

contested natural resource is not likely to be some hydrocarbon with a 

physical geographic manifestation. It is more likely to be the 

incidence, concentration and preparation of high-end math minds.222 

Geopolitics is hard pressed to comprehend a geographic advantage for 

such a resource. 

 

221 See generally Ronnie D. Lipschutz, When Nations Clash. 222 On this point see Geoffrey Demarest, “Organized Brigandage and the Structure of 

Life: The Top Ten Threats to America” at Foreign Military Studies Office http://leavwww.army.mil/fmso/documents/topten.htm

227
Even less physically visible are the relative commercial values 

of places owing to the varying mix of rights and duties attendant there. 

It is difficult to imagine the geopolitician painting a place as more 

significant strategically because its people have long expected that their 

rights to peaceful use and enjoyment of land was secure. This again is 

because geopolitics does not begin from an integral theory about what 

makes a spot on the surface of the earth relatively valuable. We would 

suppose that any theory capable of explaining the value of places must 

incorporate technological change. Geoproperty does that, not looking 

simply at location or the geophysical qualities of a place, but seeking its 

relative value in relation to all potential claimant identities and in 

consideration of all the practicable divisions of rights and duties. To 

the extent a polity is market-guided, the value of rights and duties is 

automatically responsive to new technologies -- whether they be 

physical, such as an aircraft that might overfly (or land on) a given 

place, or an organizational technology, such as a digital system that 

makes the borders of that same land visible online. 

 Specifically, property analysis demands as its kindling all 

knowledge exposing rights to the use of a place or thing (which we can 

also call wealth), and especially all evidence that ties owners in some 

way to a time and place. The logic of a property-based security 

analysis is simple: wealth, power and the capacity to manifest ill intent 

are all closely related; ‘property’ is a universally encountered form of 

agreement regarding preferential wealth; records of that wealth can be 

found almost everywhere, or created. Once this information tying 

persons to places is amassed, the job of presenting the data in a 

digestible form is made practicable by the new technologies of 

geographic information systems (GIS). GIS is but an elegant, civilian 

extension of what military planners have called the Intelligence 

Preparation of the Battlefield, or IPB. This bigger, better IPB reveals 

the exact places where bad guys must be if they are human enough to 

eat or sleep or evacuate, or to visit their relatives, inspect their farms, or 

check their bank accounts. On a much larger scale the same analytical 

starting point leads to why a country has more strategic potential, not 

irrespective of the country’s environmental bounty or geophysical 

228
placement, but rather explicitly cognizant of important determinants of 

power-- determinants that are more possibilist than determinist. 

Plate Tectonics 

“We have said that by power we mean the power of man over the 

minds and actions of other men, a phenomenon to be found whenever 

human beings live in social contact with one another."223 We can 

reconcile this statement made by Hans Morgenthau with the John 

Adams quotation above, but it appears Adams understood power better 

than did Morgenthau, and Adams also understood the societal 

consequence of the American Revolution, even then. Defense policy 

specialist Colin Gray’s optic can be placed closer to Morganthau’s -- 

that the essence of power is simply influence over behavior. "From a 

strategic viewpoint, military, economic, or cultural power can all be 

reduced to the common currency of greater or lesser control over 

behavior."224 Following a property-based analysis, power can mean the 

ability to gain or protect property rights. Strategic power for a country 

means the ability to protect or gain ownership rights inside and outside 

its borders.225 If a nation can take possession of a piece of distant 

 

223 Hans J. Morgenthau, Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics Among Nations: the 

Struggle for Power and Peace, Sixth Edition (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1973), p. 117. 

"We have spoken of the "power of a nation" or of "national power' as though the 

concept were self-evident and sufficiently explained by what we have said about 

power in general. Yet, while it can be easily understood that individuals seek power, 

how are we to explain the aspirations for power in the collectivities called nations? 

What is a nation? What do we mean when we attribute to a nation aspirations and 

actions?... when we speak in empirical terms of the power or of the foreign policy of a 

certain nation, we can only mean the power or the foreign policy of certain 

individuals who belong to the same nation." Ibid. 

224 Colin S. Gray, "Strategic Sense, Strategic Nonsense," The National Interest, Fall 

1992, p.11. 

225 The adjective "strategic" should not be given more credit than it is due. We often 

suppose "strategic" to have some logical relationship to the noun "strategy," and thus 

a national strategy is related to a nation's strategic power. There is a usage problem 

disjoining the two terms, however. Military strategists try to enforce some semantic 

discipline, but do so somewhat arbitrarily. An armored division may be designated as 

229
territory and hold on to it indefinitely against opposition, it seems to 

have great strategic power in the classic sense. The British showed as 

much in 1982 when they acted to repossess the Falkland/Malvinas 

Islands from Argentina and hold on to them. That event offers us a 

concise example of relative strategic military power. Consider the 

distance, the amount of geography disputed, the time it takes to gain 

physical control of the geography, and the amount of time total 

ownership can be upheld after taking possession. Within six weeks of 

the Argentines having possessed, the British moved an attack force 

8,000 miles, repossessed 12,170 square kilometers of territory within 

four more weeks and maintained possession indefinitely against a 

hostile claim. Britain demonstrated greater classic strategic power 

relative to Argentina. The British traveled farther, repossessed, and 

then retained possession indefinitely. Does this type of strategic power 

have to be measured in relative terms? Does the measure of strategic 

military power always require competition? According to Morgenthau, 

apparently so – at least during the Cold war. 

 

a tactical unit and a tank army as strategic--but it all depends on the context. The 

military staffs of some smaller countries may refer to a given battalion as "strategic" 

because it can be committed throughout the national territory, is released at the 

national staff level, or is capable of making decisive changes in the course of combat 

actions. In U.S. Army parlance, a third term, "operational," is inserted between 

tactical and strategic. It is another difficult term because "operation" and all of its 

derivatives--like "operations," "operative," "operational" or "operating" all have a 

variety of military meanings depending on the context of their use. Since the Second 

World War, "operational" has gained honored space in the hierarchy of terms as it 

refers to a level of military art or knowledge. At the operational level, maneuvers are 

planned and executed that achieve or support strategic goals and that involve multiple 

units at the tactical level. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force has become disenchanted 

with the adjective "strategic." The Persian Gulf War saw the B-52 strategic bombers 

flying tactical support missions while tactical fighters were doing strategic bombing. 

At the heart of its universal usage, "strategic" carries the connotation of 

comprehensiveness-- of being more than just military or local or short-term. For the 

U.S. military, strategy does not lie atop the pyramid of decision-making. Above it is 

policy, a term reserved in professional subordination for the leadership expressions of 

the highest government officials. Outside military vernacular, strategy may still be 

found in the middle of the hierarchies used to describe decision-making. 

Vision/strategy/projects/tactics is a typical ordering.

230
When we refer to the power of a nation by 

saying that this nation is very powerful and that that 

nation is weak, we always imply a comparison. In other 

words, the concept of power is always a relative one. 

When we say that the United States is at the present one 

of the two most powerful nations on earth, what we are 

actually saying is that if we compare the power of the 

United States with the power of all other nations, as they 

exist at present, we find that the United States is more 

powerful than all others save one.226

The relativity of national power is evident in many situations, 

but insistence on the relativity of power can produce a false logic for at 

least two reasons. The first reason concerns the diminishing marginal 

utility of many kinds of power. While we can always measure one 

person or firm to be wealthier or poorer than another in financial terms, 

there comes a practical point where additional personal wealth cannot 

provide much greater comfort, safety or fulfillment. In other words, as 

people come to realize, stating wealth in relative terms can perpetuate 

false logic regarding the possible application of wealth. One can have a 

cat as good as the king’s. Likewise, a nation can achieve liberty, 

security and economic progress without aggregating power for the 

purpose of controlling other lands. Nations often gain wealth without 

relative reference to the power of other nations and can claim great 

national power--great because it is sufficient to achieve security and 

prosperity. More than one people can maximize their power without 

the imperative that they have great or even relative ability to influence 

the behavior of others. In fact, accumulations of the instruments that 

seem able to change the relative balance of power often add little to the 

practical well-being of a nation. While the power to resist the 

aggressive behavior of other nations may indeed be necessary, it is 

generally far less power than needed to project physical control outside 

the nation. We needn’t suspend our disbelief regarding the goodness of 

the species. The point is not a denial of the competitive and 

 

226 Hans J. Morgenthau, Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics Among Nations, p. 117. 

231
dominance-seeking nature of man. It regards only the parameters of 

logic about military and diplomatic power used internationally. 

Unfortunately, when power is defined in terms of the relative ability to 

influence others, there follows (by intuition if not by logical 

imperative) a corollary that well-being depends on the ability to control 

other nations. False though this reasoning is in many international 

relationships, it has motivated much strategic thinking. 

“[W]e must know that the territorial imperative—just 

one, it is true, of the evolutionary forces playing on our 

lives—is the biological law on which we have founded 

our edifices of human morality. Our capacities for 

sacrifice, for altruism, for sympathy, for trust, for 

responsibilities to other than self-interest, for honesty, 

for charity, for friendship and love, for social amity and 

mutual interdependence have evolved just as surely as 

the flatness of our feet, the muscularity of our buttocks, 

and the enlargement of our brains, out of the encounter 

on ancient savannahs between the primate potential and 

the hominid circumstance. Whether morality without 

territory is possible in man must remain our final, 

unanswerable question.”227

The second reason that insistence on the relativity of national power is 

a false logic has to do with the less tangible ingredients of power. 

Perceived power is often as important as real power, and national will--

the quantity we have portrayed earlier as national morale translated by 

leadership into resolve--is often as important as all other factors 

combined. It is no surprise that in many pure property contests, nations 

around the world are emboldened to challenge the United States. This 

is often because of the widespread knowledge that although the United 

States has tremendous potential national power, both real and 

perceived, it is power only equal to the measure of national will 

 

227 Ardrey, Robert. The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal 

Origins of Property and Nations. New York: Antheneum, 1966, p. 351. 

232
applicable to a given situation. In 1993, it at first made sense to the 

military leaders of Haiti to defy the military might of the United 

States.228 The U.S.S. Harlan County, carrying 193 U.S. and 25 

Canadian troops, had been ordered to dock in Port-au-Prince. As the 

ship drew near the landing, it was met by a chanting, armed crowd of 

about a hundred people. Several small craft blocked the dock so that 

the vessel could not unload. The crowd grew somewhat, threatening 

diplomats who had arrived by car. Armed thugs began firing into the 

air. The Harlan County was ordered to withdraw. Chances of success 

against the Harlan County were far greater than they would have been 

against smaller contingents any number of much less militarily capable 

countries. The example suggests that at times national power cannot be 

usefully compared away from the context of a specific situation. The 

clearest theoretic measures of power are presented within the confines 

of some artificial test situation-- often that of imagined all-out, winnertake-all war. In such a context, the United States generally wins. So 

what? 

 Adding things up in a different way, we can see that the United 

States is the most powerful country not because it might or might not 

prevail in an unconstrained war, or because it has relatively more 

power than any other individual country. What it has is more visible 

property claims in more places and against more claimants than any 

other country. The possibilities of getting mixed up in a property 

dispute are greater for the United States because its citizens claim more 

rights and more duties in more places than anybody else. These 

ownership claims don’t exist because of unilateral presumptions on the 

part of US citizens, though this is hardly unheard of. Mostly they are 

the result of evolved mutual or common understandings of rights and 

duties, contracts of one kind or another. Some of these contracts are 

specific and formal. Others are unwritten, binding because some 

current of public understanding accepts them intuitively. In cases that 

may seem strange to some and simple to others--like feeding a starving 

 

228 Donald E. Schulz and Gabriel Marcella, Reconciling The Irreconcilable:

The Troubled Outlook For U.S. Policy Toward Haiti, (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute, 1994) p. 1. 

233
population, many peoples expect the United States and a handful of 

Western allies to do something, as though the pitiable results of every 

failed system of ownership created a responsibility. Such expectations 

resonate because so many persons in the United States and other 

Western countries do admit a responsibility. How then are 

psychological components of national will such as this group 

conscience to be factored into national power? They can’t be 

correlated with access to strategic minerals, or control of ocean choke 

points. They can, however, be understood in a property context, given, 

as we have asserted, that property is a recognition of agreements 

entailing shared identities, rights and duties. 

 At the beginning of this section allusions were made to two 

specific strategic competitions, one small and one large. They were the 

war over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, and the global competition 

between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is worth noting that 

had the Argentines not attempted the use of military power to retake the 

Malvinas/Falkland Islands, and had instead pursued a strategy that 

protected property rights and values, grandfathering citizenship 

preferences, exempting military service and the like (in other words, 

had it addressed in detail the gamut of divisible rights and duties 

associated with the place and that might apply in the context of a 

change of sovereignty), it is likely in retrospect that the British would 

have conceded sovereignty of the islands to Argentina. As for the Cold 

War, it can hardly be said that the great military expenditures of the 

United States and the West did not play in the demise of the Soviet 

Union, but the observation is also valid that Soviet military power was 

inept to protect it from its own misunderstanding of the interplay of 

daily rights and duties. The balance between the corporate will to 

repress and the individual will to express finally favored the latter to an 

uncontrollable degree. 

In 1975, intelligence and national security expert Ray Cline 

wrote an analysis in which he explained why the balance of world 

power seemed for many to be slipping toward the totalitarian 

234
countries.229 The book was published at a moment when United States 

power was perceived to be unfocused and the nation confused after the 

debacle of Vietnam. Dr. Cline’s analysis featured a United States in 

apparent strategic decline faced by a "clear and present danger" of 

totalitarian assertiveness. Sir Halford Mackinder is admired in the 

book’s introduction for his prescience in portraying the Eurasian 

heartland as key to command of the world’s resources and peoples. 

While Dr. Cline was careful to reject adoption of the term 

"geopolitics," he set a geographical foundation for his strategic analysis 

and used the then novel theory of the movement of tectonic plates to 

propose a substitute term, "politectonics." The tectonic plate idea was 

evocative of the continental scale of bipolar competition--

intercontinental missiles and so forth--but the methodology was not an 

offspring of plate theory. Cline derived calculations of perceived 

power using a combination of mathematical formulae and subjective 

weightings of several power factors. His formula looked as follows: 

PP = (C+E+M)x(S+W) 

PP= Perceived Power 

C= Critical Mass= Population + Territory 

E= Economic Capability 

M= Military Capability 

S= Strategic Purpose 

W= Will to Pursue National Strategy

Without accusing Dr. Cline of perpetrating a statistical fraud, 

his mathematic was in some measure a Trojan horse to make a larger 

point about the importance of national will and coherent national 

strategy. The weights of the various factors are such that national 

strategy and will are the notably weak components in the United States 

rating for perceived power. The math seems to deliver a preplanned 

conclusion. Nevertheless, the particulars of the methodology deserve 

separate consideration, the real problem being the lack of a most 

important variable. Cline’s measurements of power did not incorporate 

consideration of the value of different pieces of geography as seen by 

 

229 Ray S. Cline, World Power Assessment (Boulder: Westview Press, 1975) 

235
different potential owners. They did not incorporate the essential 

question of how land is owned. His assessment of power also does not 

satisfy the basic question about the use of power. For the geopolitician, 

or great power theorist, power is the power to exert will over others. 

This definition, accepting it as true, still begs a question. While there is 

some pure pleasure in having control over others, the next question has 

to be asked--power to get others to do what? What do people want 

others to do when they gain power? The answer is that they want 

preferential rights, almost always over the uses of land, and often over 

the people on it. Unlike geopolitics, property analysis considers human 

conflict in terms of the subjective value of distinguishable rights 

associated with land and assesses power according to the ability to gain 

or protect these rights as they are divisible, and not necessarily as they 

are gained whole. Geopolitical analysis encourages consideration of 

pieces of geography taken whole, that is, taken with all the bundle of 

rights together (what in legal verbiage we refer to as the whole fee or 

the fee simple). 

In Games Nations Play, author John Spanier enters the same 

kind of analysis about national power as that suggested by Dr. Cline.230 

In a chapter entitled "The Ability to Play: Calculating Power," Spanier 

lists the components of national power as geography, population, 

natural resources, economic capacity, military strength, political 

systems and leadership, and national morale. Spanier also notes that 

power may exist only in the mind, and so the perception of power is 

measured as well. The type of reduction of national power exemplified 

by Spanier’s list is an ever-recurring axiomatic foundation in American 

military writings on strategy. It is not exactly wrong, but it is not so 

right that it deserves such pervasive acceptance. To begin with, the 

components could be organized into a variety of different taxonomies. 

The term Geography could subsume population and natural resources, 

if not the other everything else. Economic power, which some theorists 

might say is of ultimate importance, depends on the other factors, so 

 

230 John Spanier, Games Nations Play Eighth Edition (Washington: Congressional 

Quarterly, Inc., 1993). 

236
economic power could be the lead term and the others subordinate, etc. 

There is just nothing essential about the components of national power 

as they are often portrayed, and the proposed relationships are less 

essential still.231

Another, more important problem stalks the measurement of 

national power. The elements mislead when we take them as aggregate 

statistics whose influence is greater when their size is greater, instead 

of taking them as mere introductions to human dynamics. It is obvious 

that great population or extensive territory might lend potential power, 

so there is a tendency to presuppose that incremental increases in 

population or territory, or minor advantages in these factors, correlate 

to power advantages country-to-country. When we look at the 

countries of the world we see many with great populations, Bangladesh 

perhaps, with insignificant power. Adding a new increment to 

Bangladesh’s population does not make it more powerful; it probably 

makes it less so. The fact that the United States is a superpower is 

based in part on large territorial size and large population, but an 

increase in population or territory (isolated from accompanying factors) 

will not make the United States more powerful. National will is 

important, but, being completely situation-dependent, is a different type 

of quantity than population and territory. While the national population 

can be counted and reported at any given time regardless of other 

things, national will has to be measured in relation to a competitive 

issue of some kind. Not only is national will an intangible, it can’t 

exist apart from other situational elements. Economic power is 

important, but only if it can be corralled by national leadership and 

backed by national will. Formulae for comparing national power such 

 

231 Other mnemonic devices, or ‘laundry lists’ are fashionable as prompts for studying 

national power, and these same lists are sometimes offered up as analytical tools for 

conflict. Currently in fashion in American military schools is the acronym PMESII 

(Political Military Economic Social Information and Infrastructure). To this is 

sometimes added other letters, like L for Law, I for Information Warfare, and F for 

Financial actions. On this see, Small Wars Council “DImE, PMECII and now 

MIDLIFE” at <http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=67>. The 

authors seem to set the right tone. 

237
as those presented by Cline or Spanier cause confusion because of the 

long gamut of patterns of interaction, and also because they do not 

clearly comprehend what goes into the value of land – that not only 

does it matter what is on land, but how land is owned matters as well. 

Writings on strategy continually revisit the idea of elements of 

national power because strategists seek perspectives of relative 

strengths and weakness to predict outcomes in interstate competition. 

As author Geoffrey Blainey, in his study, The Causes of War, states, 

"...[I]t is the problem of accurately measuring the relative power of 

nations which goes far to explain why wars occur."232 Blainey cites 

sociologist Georg Simmel, who, in 1904 argued that the most effective 

way of preventing war was to possess exact knowledge of the 

comparative strength of the two opponents. Such knowledge, however, 

was generally attainable only by fighting the war. Blainey takes aim at 

theorists who have debated the importance of national power within the 

axiom that an imbalance of power promoted war and that a balance of 

power was an explanation for peace. According to Blainey, the balance 

of power theory of peace is not born out by the history of conflicts. 

Whether there have been seven major powers, or two, or one, the 

number and intensity of wars would vary according to other factors. A 

balance of power among major nations, according to Blainey, may be a 

formula for maintaining independence, but not necessarily peace. On 

the other hand, when power is understood, the relations between 

nations are less likely to lead to war than if the potential parties are 

mistaken as to their relative strengths and weaknesses.233 Generalizing 

 

232 Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 

Inc., 1973) p. 114. 

233 "Chapter 8, The Abacus of Power," Ibid., 108-124 passim. Blainey also writes, "In 

peace time the relations between two diplomats are like relations between two 

merchants. While the merchants trade in copper or transistors, the diplomats' 

transactions involve boundaries, spheres of influence, commercial concessions and a 

variety of other issues which they have in common. A foreign minister or diplomat is 

a merchant who bargains on behalf of his country. He is both buyer and seller, 

though he buys and sells privileges and obligations rather than commodities. The 

treaties he signs are simply more courteous versions of commercial contracts." Ibid., 

p. 115. 

238
about war aims, Blainey states that “the aims are simply varieties of 

power. The vanity of nationalism, the will to spread an ideology, the 

protection of kinsmen in an adjacent land, the desire for more territory 

or commerce, the avenging of a defeat or insult, the craving for greater 

national strength or independence, the wish to cement or impress allies-

-all these represent power in different wrappings.”234 Blainey correctly 

confuses power with property. Again, when asking what power is for, 

the logical answer is to gain and enforce preferential rights. The 

measurement of power is greatly complicated by the changing 

distribution, or diffusion, of power. 

United States Military Strategy 

“Once the reader understands...that before entering 

into battle a general must be most careful to secure his 

line or lines of retreat; he understands the leading 

principles of strategy, whether he can define the phrase 

to his satisfaction or not. He sees that a general whose 

road homeward or to his base is threatened or cut by a 

superior force must, if he loses a decisive battle, be 

ruined as well as defeated; while a general who has 

secured his line of communication will not be ruined 

even if defeated, but can fall back, procure recruits, 

replenish his waggons, and begin to fight again with a 

fair prospect of success.”235

 T. Miller Maguire, 

 British military historian, barrister and geographer 

 

 The above statement by T. Miller Maguire, extracted from a 

work titled Military Geography, should focus the mind of the military 

 

234 Blainey, p. 149. 235 T. Miller Maguire, Military Geography, London: C.J. Clay & Sons, 1899, p. 21. 

239
reader of the present work more than any of the other quotations used 

to adorn its sections. Maguire wrote these lines around 1898. He 

belonged to a school of doctrinal thinking he referred to as ‘imperialist’ 

as opposed to a ‘continental,’ but not imperialist in the sense of 

defending and admiring Britain’s territorial pretensions (although we 

can assume he did). He was a styled himself imperialist within the 

context of his concern for the study of military strategy and tactics. He 

juxtaposed his ‘imperial’ focus against that of the continentalist 

thinkers, who he described as obsessed with the time it might take to 

move an army from Metz to Paris. That is to say, Maguire looked out 

to the dozens of small wars, military commitments and challenges that 

Britain faced around the world (some not so small as small wars go -- 

the Boer War was contemporary to his writing), while the majority of 

his contemporaries concerned themselves with the conventional 

military challenges looming on the continent of Europe just a few 

leagues away. Maguire felt that not enough attention was being paid to 

the myriad engagements and fates presented by guerrilla as opposed to 

maneuver warfare. A reservist and a barrister, Maguire was a prolific 

writer and one of the great military theoretical writers of the day. That 

his name all but disappeared from the English-language military 

lexicon can be attributed to the great war in Europe swallowed whole 

his ruminations about lesser wars, and consigned his writings to the 

shadows. What is especially significant for the purposes of the present 

work is the open nature of Maguire’s use of terminology. 

Maguire does not offer a definition of ‘strategy’; he simply 

states its essence to a broader audience. It is a statement of essence that 

is as true for Napoleon and the battle of Austerlitz as it is for a guerrilla 

commander in Mindanao. Here it guides us to the essential military 

reason for studying property and for collecting and analyzing property 

information. It says between the lines that in order to defeat a guerrilla 

general we must block his line of retreat, deny him his sanctuary. If we 

do not succeed in this, the guerrilla general may live to fight again, no 

matter how many battle defeats he suffers. The paragraphs below 

recall some of the influences, currents and changes in American 

military strategic thinking, but the text will return to Maguire’s 

240
statement, underlining that in order to block his route of withdrawal, 

and to deny him sanctuary, the guerrilla’s lines of communication must 

be found. As simple as that sounds, it is a truth that is forever 

overlooked or diminished at the expense of efficient intelligence effort 

and rational military strategy. Recent official US army doctrine defines 

insurgency as a protracted affair.236 What an unfortunate result of 

forgetting strategy. Insurgent wars are not protracted by their nature. 

The insurgent general, careful to protect his way home, protracts them. 

Right war, right knowledge 

American military theory has drawn from an eclectic mix of 

thinkers such as Antoine-Henri Jomini, Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred 

Thayer Mahan, Emory Upton, Guilio Douhet, William Mitchell, Basil 

Liddell Hart and others. Jomini, for example, was influential for his 

structured, geometric approach to organizing a battlefield. Clausewitz 

proffered psychological aspects of war and the concepts of war as an 

instrument of policy. Clausewitz, a nineteenth century strategist who 

died before his famous On War was first published, became especially 

influential in American military thought after the Vietnam War. 

Mahan, an Annapolis graduate of 1859, promoted sea power to assure 

open maritime commerce.237 He applied Jomini’s concepts of 

concentration, interior lines and logistics to naval deployments. Major 

General Emory Upton argued, at the turn of the century, that civilian 

government should not interfere with operations of the army in the 

field. His admiration of German staff organization and professional 

schooling also had a lasting impact. Giulio Douhet, an Italian General 

 

236 See, for instance, Department of the Army, FMI 3-07.22 Counterinsurgency 

Operations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 2004) p. 1-1. 237 English naval strategist and historian Julian Corbett has been making a comeback 

in the minds of American strategic thinkers. See James Goldrick and John B. 

Hattendorf eds., Mahan is Not Enough: The Proceedings of a Conference on the 

Works of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, (Newport, RI: Naval 

War College Press, 1993); Corbett, Julian S., Some Principles of Maritime Strategy,

(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911).

241
of the 1930s, advocated massed bombing against enemy centers of 

industry and population, and outlined the three-dimensional aspect of 

air war. He argued that air power alone could win wars--a view that has 

seen some recent adherents. U.S. General William Mitchell taught 

centralized control of air assets to take advantage of the fundamental 

nature of air warfare. British officer and historian Liddell Hart (critical 

of Clausewitz) suggested an indirect approach to victory on the 

battlefield. Of all these, Clausewitz has been the most touted and 

debated in recent years, at least among the military population.238

As the Vietnam War drew to a close, the 1973 Arab-Israeli 

conflict offered a war fought to what seemed to be Clausewitzian 

specifications. It provided a basis for recapturing traditional military 

doctrine that had been obscured during the Vietnam decade. It was a 

refreshing example of maneuver by mobile, armored columns 

unhampered by the confusion of part-time combatants, civilian 

populations, urban complexity, or for that matter, foliage. In 1976 a 

new English translation of Von Clausewitz' On War rekindled interest 

in the fundamentals of strategy. On War quickly became a bible for 

tank and cavalry commanders predisposed to weighing description of 

the military problem in terms that celebrated the predominance of their 

role.239

 Reinvigorated was a strong interest in the design and conduct 

of campaigns and large operations (operational art) and a conviction 

among U.S. military planners about the efficacy of overwhelming force 

to achieve strategic objectives. As Clausewitz said, "..war is an act of 

force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force."240 

 

238 See Peter Paret, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear 

Age (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986); See also Arthur F. 

Lykke, Jr., ed., Military Strategy: Theory and Application (Carlisle Barracks, 

Pennsylvania, U.S. Army War College, 1989). 

239 Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. used Clausewitz' principles of war to frame a 

critical analysis of U.S. policy in Vietnam. Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: The 

Vietnam War in Context (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1981). 240 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, p. 77. 

242
Not only did the absence of the Vietnam distraction allow U.S. military 

professionals the freedom to refocus on a preferred calculus of open 

warfare, Vietnam itself offered important strategic lessons. Slow 

escalation in the application of force, failure to fix the enemy, failure to 

secure support at home, failure to achieve the strategic offensive--these 

became Vietnam lessons to be avoided in future contests. But the postVietnam rebirth of operational art must be identified together with its 

earlier European roots; it not only boasted a German guru in 

Clausewitz, but also a Germanic hubris that arrived hand-in-hand with 

geopolitics. 

This hubris can be explained by reference to another, less wellknown German strategic thinker named Hans Delbruck.241 Delbruck 

was not a military professional, but a civilian historian. During his 

lifetime, Delbruck's scholarship and methodology were dismissed by 

most military officers in Germany. Strategic wisdom in the late 

nineteenth century was the property of the German General Staff and 

the Prussian General Staff College. There, strategy professors adulated 

Frederick the Great. An author and philosopher, Frederick had also 

been a military strategist whom the General Staff looked upon as a 

paragon.

242 Modern day historian Arden Bucholz also attributes to the 

mainstream German military thinking of the day a one-sided 

interpretation of Carl von Clausewitz. "To that generation Clausewitz 

seemed to have captured the essence of the wars of unification: war 

was an act of violence carried to the utmost bounds. The destruction of 

the enemy fighting force by battle was the only valid goal."243 This 

supposedly Clauswitzian reading of Frederick's Military Testament was 

interpreted to support the Prussian School approach of annihilation 

battles, but Delbruck alone noted a completely different lesson in 

Frederick's writing. "Frederick had always regarded battle as an evil to 

be undertaken only in necessity, as Clausewitz himself had pointed 

 

241 See Arden Bucholz, Hans Delbruck and The German Military Establishment: War 

Images in Conflict (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1985). 242 Ibid, p. 4. 243 Ibid., p. 6. 

243
out."244 Delbruck felt that Frederick's strategy had to be understood in 

terms of the social and technological conditions prevailing in 

Frederick's day. Delbruck suggested an attrition strategy that would 

wear Germany's enemies down and allow its leaders to leverage 

advantage in political negotiations. His inglorious advice was to not 

look for a decisive victory, thereby avoiding decisive defeat or the loss 

of resources.245 German failure in World War I would be debated in 

reference to Delbruck's attrition option to the German General Staff's 

 

244 Ibid., p. 9. 245 The history of Soviet military thinking includes a similar debate. Marshal Mikhail 

Tukhachevskii best represents the decisive battle school of Russian military thinking 

that reached its apex during the interwar period of this century. For Tukhachevskii 

and his followers, the future of war was mobility and firepower. Defense was deemed 

senseless as one could not defend against the new weapons of future war. The 

objective had to be destruction of the enemy forces by a series of strikes into enemy 

territory (Germany in mind). On the other side was General-Major Alexandr Svechin. 

For Svechin, attrition strategies were sensible and perhaps the only path to victory. A 

resolute attack could consume incalculable resources and, as a rule, would not be 

justified by operational gains. Attacking troops run the risk of having lines of 

communication interdicted or of suffering flank attacks. Therefore, in the opening 

phase of a war it is more expedient to keep on the strategic defensive. War can be 

waged at the same time on economic and political fronts while gradual, favorable 

change is sought in the relationship of military forces. Of course, Svechin was 

looking from a Russian perspective, Delbruck a German one. Svechin taught a 

flexible generality about attrition and annihilation strategies. For him they were 

debatable, adjustable, and blendable quantities whose relative measure depended on 

the situation at hand. The balancing of strategies became part of "operational art." 

See Jacob W. Kipp, "General Major A.A. Svechin and Modern Warfare" in Alexandr 

Andreevich Svechin. Strategy edited by Kent D. Lee, Minneapolis: East View Press, 

1992). Dr. Kipp argues persuasively, inter alia, that the American military strategy in 

the 1990 Gulf War fit the strategic model that Svechin called attrition. But this is 

almost the opposite application of the term attrition that this author seeks. It can, after 

all, be argued that the Gulf War exemplified the decisive battle philosophy of a 

Tukhachevskii. Strategy has been delimited as a blending of ways, means and 

objectives. The objective from the outset of the Gulf War campaign, the resources 

mustered to accomplish the objective, and the methods chosen were all geared toward 

decisively destroying the Iraqi Army and physically removing it from Kuwait. 

Whatever the mixing of diplomacy and economic leverage, it is difficult to assign the 

English word attrition to such a military undertaking.

244
obsession with seeking the decisive battle. While many Germans 

agreed during the interwar period with Delbruck's "I told you so," the 

German penchant would prevail. And where in Delbruck’s pallid 

criticism was there sufficient room for the dark Hegelian esteem of war 

for its own sake? 

For the United States, the Delbruckian lesson is not so much 

that the United States should today seek attrition rather than decisive 

strategies in military confrontations. The lesson is that the United 

States will not be given many opportunities to apply the favored 

Clausewitzian strategies because most opponents will take Delbruck's 

advice. Smart foes will not seek victory in open, decisive battle against 

the Americans. They will apply violence to erode resolve, constantly 

leveraging ruthlessness against weariness, fear, and moral selfconstraint. In this way attrition becomes synonymous with 

interminable extortion. A strategy of permanent violence appears in 

which no final uniformed, tanked, maneuver battle is offered to the 

Americans. It is terrorist guerrilla war generalized. If American 

impatience and anger draws U.S. military might out of its holster, it 

will not find a final objective, or least that is the theory. Supposedly 

either there will be no Baghdad to go to, or if a target seems to exist 

that promises a satisfying military closure, it will be too distant given 

the confines of the same American impatience and moral selfconstraint. Wealth and value will be extracted violently and piecemeal 

from a United States that is hoping for that situation where American 

military-capital advantages are insuperable. Worst of all, at some 

point, the whittling away at US warring strength, and a smart enemy’s 

ability to recognize its proper occasion, might make traditional defeat 

of an American force an attractive possibility. 

U.S. military manuals soon incorporated much of the 

experience of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, especially the notion that to 

win efficiently the U.S. must apply decisive force in simultaneous 

245
attack throughout the entire battle space.246 In other words, instead of 

just a synchronized set of events and maneuvers, attacks against the 

enemy will be mounted in priority, all over, as much as possible, in a 

furious overlapping rhythm. This improvement (made possible by new 

technology) on the tried-and-true Germanic basics is appropriate in 

view of the large force-on-force battles that might yet have to be 

fought. It has nevertheless been partially mocked by the transformation 

in the strategic environment. Peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, 

nation assistance, counterinsurgency and the like have been harder for 

the US military to embrace within its doctrine.247 These tasks are 

treated as extraordinary--even as they have become the everyday 

challenge and occupation. 

 

246 For example, see Department of the Air Force, Air Force Manual 1-1, Basic 

Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force (Washington: Department of the 

Air Force, 1992, Volumes I and II). "One way a commander can exercise operational 

art is through a strategic air campaign that directly attacks an enemy's centers of 

gravity. Providing these centers are accurately identified and can be struck effectively 

at a tempo that maximizes psychological shock, the campaign may be decisive 

through air action alone." Ibid., Vol. II, p. 129; "The principal means for the 

application of military force is combat--violence in the form of armed conflict." 

Department of the Navy, Fleet Marine Force Field Manual (FMFM) 1, Warfighting

(Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1989), p. 20;"We must be 

ruthlessly opportunistic, actively seeking out signs of weakness, against which we 

will direct all available combat power. And when the decisive opportunity arrives, we 

must exploit it fully and aggressively, committing every ounce of combat power we 

can muster and pushing ourselves to the limits of exhaustion." Ibid., p. 61; "The 

objective [of a campaign] is the employment of overwhelming military force designed 

to wrest the initiative from opponents and defeat them in detail." Chairman, Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 1, Joint Warfare of the U.S. Armed Forces

(Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1991), p. 47 

247 Only in the 1993 version of Operations were "operations other than war" given a 

chapter at the end of the manual--but with a different set of principles. 

Overwhelming force and decisiveness gave way to perseverance and restraint. The 

tendency in Joint and service doctrine is to treat low intensity conflict (more recently 

operations other than war) as a thing apart from "normal" or traditional warfare; but 

commanders would use force structure designed for conventional war to support 

unique tasks such as nation assistance, countering illicit drug trafficking, and 

peacekeeping.

246
Soon after the immensely successful application of U.S. 

military power in 1991, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General 

Colin Powell offered a proposal for a twenty-five percent defense 

spending downturn to a "Base Force" level as a hedge against 

Congressional demands for more dramatic expenditure reductions. One 

critic of the Base Force was Congressman Les Aspin, who considered 

the proposed reduction as too timid and out of touch with the changed 

world.248 With the subsequent change from the Bush to the Clinton 

Administration in January 1992, newly appointed Secretary of Defense 

Les Aspin began a "Bottom-Up Review" to assess the threats to the 

nation and to determine military force structure. The review was 

designed in good part "to rationalize reductions in the $120 billion 

range over the Bush Administration's defense spending plans for 1995-

99."249 The result was a force structure design that would purportedly 

deter nuclear attack and meet the needs of prosecuting two major 

regional conflicts (MRC) nearly simultaneously. The same collection 

of general purpose forces needed for two MRCs would provide the 

military resources for smaller-scale conflicts or crises. 

Other challenges to US national security were beginning to 

become more visible with the Soviet bogyman gone -- black market 

trading of nuclear material, weapons proliferation in all its dimensions 

(including weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states, 

terrorists and organized criminals), conflict over scarce resources and 

environmental values, ethnic and religious conflict, spread of 

uncontrollable viruses and other diseases, the transnational linkages of 

crime, drug trafficking and its stormy marriages with terrorism and 

insurgency, illicit electronic capital movement, migration and illegal 

immigration, famine, mob violence and spontaneous ungovernability. 

 

248 Harry E. Rothmann, Forging a new National Military Strategy in a Post-Cold War 

World: A Perspective from the Joint Staff (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies 

Institute, 1992); See also, Dennis M. Drew, "Recasting the Flawed Downsizing 

Debate," Parameters, Spring 1993, p. 39. 

249. Colin S. Gray, "Off the Map: Defense Planning After the Soviet Threat," 

Strategic Review, Spring 1994, p. 33. 

247
Unrestrained by borders and the traditional protocols of the 

international system, these dangers threaten a nation-state system 

poorly prepared to deal with non-governmental global dynamics. 

United States military doctrine and force structure was designed almost 

exclusively around traditional concepts of overwhelming conventional 

force to achieve decisive Clausewitzian victory--an unlikely formula 

for success against most of the emerging threats. Yet the changes 

proposed were related to the opportunity to reduce conventional forces, 

not a restructuring to face the emerging set of new threats. 

The long list, just summarized, of "other" dangers invites 

another list. Typical military tasks in what the U.S. Army briefly took 

to calling Operations Other than War (OOTW) include surveillance and 

investigation; intelligence gathering, reporting, and analysis; 

negotiation and mediation; patrolling, traffic control, monitoring 

transportation of goods, local security, search and seizure of 

contraband; medical care, supervision of internees and prisoners of war, 

humanitarian aid, evacuation and relocation of refugees, warding of 

undocumented migrants; engineer construction, mine clearing or other 

ordnance disposal, route maintenance, force security; and, still, combat. 

If the list resonates of police more than military responsibilities, it 

should come as no surprise that most of the tasks present themselves in 

conflicts for which no decisive battle-annihilation strategy seems 

reasonable and attrition strategy illogical as well, since it is so often 

impossible to be sure what there might be to attrite. 

Has there been inconsistency between the dangers presented 

and military strategy (the resources, methods and objectives) 

established for meeting the dangers? Les Aspin's bottom up review 

stated, 

 

...our emphasis on engagement, prevention, and 

partnership means that, in this new era, U.S. military 

forces are more likely to be involved in operations short 

of declared or intense warfare. Events of the past few 

years have already borne this out, as our armed forces 

248
have been involved in a wide range of so-called 

"intervention" operations, from aiding typhoon victims 

in Bangladesh during Operation Sea Angel, to delivering 

humanitarian relief to the former Soviet Union under 

Operation Provide Hope, to conducting the emergency 

evacuation of U.S. citizens from Liberia during 

Operation Sharp Edge, to restoring order and aiding the 

victims of the civil war in Somalia during Operation 

Restore Hope.250

 It sounded as though the new military operational environment 

was seen clearly. After the 1991 Gulf War, and the coincidental end of 

the Cold War, the US defense establishment made sounds leading some 

to doubt that it recognized the panorama of new threats or that it was 

reorganizing to address it. Admiration of the “military technical 

revolution" (which soon became interchangeable with “revolution in 

military affairs”) provided observations about the relationship of new 

technologies to the future of U.S. security challenges. 251 We can 

define technical revolution as a fundamental advance in technology, 

doctrine, or organization rendering existing methods of conducting 

warfare obsolete. The question is, has the technical revolution 

addressed forms of warfare that the US had never mastered, and that 

have not become obsolete. Some theorists seemed to be trying to take 

the technical revolution in the direction of threats that were understood, 

and away from those that were more likely. Treatment of irregular 

warfare seemed to betray a stubborn institutional preference for large 

military technical systems. Leading security theorists described a 

revolution in information, sensing, and precision strike technologies, 

but not everyone was impressed. In a potent critique, A.C. Bacevich 

jabbed that "however handsomely packaged, institutional advocacy of 

 

250 Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review (Washington: U.S. Department of 

Defense, 1993), pp. 8-9 

251 For instance, in April, 1994, the US Army War College held a conference titled 

The Revolution in Military Affairs: Defining an Army for the 21st Century. 

249
change almost invariably conceals a defense of orthodoxy." Bacevich 

stated: 

In truth, as currently touted by soldiers, the very concept 

of a Military Revolution is profoundly reactionary. Its 

true aim is to roll back the two genuine revolutions that 

have shaped war in the modern age, revolutions for 

which military professionals never devised an adequate 

response. The first of those revolutions was the advent 

of total war, culminating in the creation of nuclear 

weapons. The second--in large measure stimulated by 

the first--was the proliferation of conflict at the opposite 

end of the spectrum: terror, subversion, insurgency, and 

"peoples war."252

Critics of the establishment revolution could also scoff at the military’s 

once again wanting to re-fight the last war. The technologies of the 

insiders’ revolution were those that would have been applied with even 

greater effect had they been available in the 1991 Gulf War, and 

eventually, in the 2003 Iraq war, they were. The conventional 

revolution also serviced another goal, support of a professionally 

technified, ergo smaller, military. The second Iraq war seems to have 

justified much of the conventional revolution’s precepts. Nevertheless, 

if America’s strategic habit did not serve with distinction in the two 

forms of twentieth-century war that Bacevich mentions, why expect 

this conventionalism to meet the challenge presented by 

unconventional forms of twenty-first-century struggle? More kinetic 

precision, more capital, and more information paid off in taking out the 

Iraqi regime, as did, to be fair, more psychological preparation of the 

battlefield. 

 

252 A.C. Bacevich ,”Preserving the Well-Bred Horse,” National Interest , Fall 1994. 

250
A general whose road homeward is cut, is ruined 

The Maguire quotation that began this section compels 

attention. It says to us that however different an insurgency is from 

conventional style maneuver warfare, there is an essence to strategy 

that supersedes the differences. The enemy leader has to be concerned 

for his escape route, his route home, and it does not matter that he is the 

leader of a German Army encircled at Stalingrad or Saddam Hussein 

caught in a dirt hole. Once his route home is blocked, the leader will 

not just suffer defeat in battle at the hands of a superior force, he will 

be done, ruined. Even if a leader looses a half million men on the 

frozen march away from Moscow, however, he might have the chance 

to reconstitute a force and threaten Europe again -- if he can escape his 

confinement. If this lesson is indeed the essence of understanding 

military strategy, regardless of how we attempt to define the term (and I 

believe it is), then it leads us to what we can do to win an insurgent 

war, or at least what will keep us from winning it. It also throws a 

wrench into the debate between our Prussian general staff and the 

historian Delbruck. If we cannot identify the enemy general’s route of 

escape, or at least reasonably anticipate it, or establish likely choices, 

then we cannot act on Maguire’s observation. We cannot block his 

route of escape or deny him sanctuary if we can’t find his line of 

communication home. 

 In an insurgency there is going to be a system of leaders and 

leadership. Some activities of a population may be nearly spontaneous, 

driven by an understood common agenda and an occasion to act to a 

generalized call to action. Such phenomena are rare or sidelights, or 

unmemorable (with some significant exceptions such as the Tiananmen 

Square defiance). What we know about the application and 

management of force is that it is dangerous and effective in relation to 

the quality of leadership. What we know of the history of insurgencies 

is that they are successful when led by effective leaders and when those 

effective leaders are killed or captured, the insurgency is 

correspondingly weakened or dead. Once Gonzalo is captured, 

Sendero Luminoso all but ceases to exist, and when captured leaders 

251
sing to interrogators, even their most able subordinates are vulnerable 

and can be rendered impotent. 

 Knowing that, whatever the nature of the conflict, the opponent 

force has leaders who eat, sleep and defecate, we can apply our system 

of property logic and data to identify where. If we do not have such a 

system, then we cannot apply a military strategy cognizant of or 

obedient to the essence of military strategy. Our strategy will have to 

be reactive, or one of hope, but it will not close with and eliminate the 

enemy by planned initiative. But the question is still begged: how do 

we create, in economic time, a system of intelligence that can find the 

lines of communication, and particularly the lines of retreat of an 

intelligent enemy insurgent leader (who is well aware of the essence of 

strategy -- since it is stuck so intimately to his skin)? The answer is 

formalized property. It is what almost every sheriff uses to find a 

perpetrator, fugitive or witness, but depending on property requires that 

the environment be shaped administratively to provide detailed 

information about the connections between individual habits and 

precise locations. This means that the military attempt what for 

civilians is commonplace -- to create a carefully drawn census, impose 

a system of individual identification cards for everyone, and map 

exactly who owns what and with whom, who is resident where, what 

the tenancy and debt relations are, the marriages and business 

associations, the descriptions of the cars or mules. It means street signs 

and phone books. With the availability of GIS technologies, the 

locations and linkages are exposed almost instantaneously, once the 

data is input. Will there be gaps, will people try to hide their assets and 

identities? Yes, but that is far beside the point. More important is that 

such systems are used in so many places today that it is surprising that 

no similar ones were timely emplaced in Haiti. When ownership rights 

are specifically assigned, not only do the owners have a stake in 

protecting preferential rights, but also it becomes easier to identify 

outsiders, to find the right candidates for interrogation and to precisely 

orient surveillance assets of all kinds. If this smacks of Big Brother, let 

there be no doubt. Population control is created on the basis of records, 

not batons. If a person wants to create impunity for his actions he is 

252
generally obliged to maintain anonymity for himself and his wealth. 

Once the authorities know the particulars of his motorcycle, phone or 

apartment, it is harder to act outside the law without consequence. It is 

difficult even to stand distant from home without that fact being 

apparent. 

 As long as no system of institutional knowledge regarding 

individual identity and wealth is created, other social, cultural and 

geophysical data about an environment is rendered less valuable for the 

capture of enemy leaders. If the lines of communication, and especially 

the lines of retreat and sanctuary of enemy leadership are not identified, 

military success against that enemy is not likely. In order to identify 

the finely drawn placement geography of insurgents, as opposed to the 

LOC of an army corps, maps must be drawn on the basis of individual 

identities linked to places and wealth individually and jointly owned. 

That wealth exists everywhere in the form of preferential rights to the 

use of places and things. These preferential rights are what we have 

come to call property, and records of such rights either exist or can be 

created everyplace. Once a system of laws and administrative and 

technical capacity are married in such a way as to enable the mapping 

of property rights, then control of a population is, if not easy, 

practicable. So maybe Morganthau is right about power, that it is 

simply influence over behavior. Influence over the behavior of a 

population lies in the condition and use of mundane public records. 

What has or has not been done in Iraq is not the purview of this book, 

but if a census has not been done, the population not thoroughly IDcarded and comprehensive property registries not emplaced, then 

finding lines of communication of insurgents and strangers has got to 

be a difficult proposition. In addition, the same administrative actions, 

and especially the creation of formal systems of real property 

registration, are so essential to material prosperity (particularly among 

the poor) that to not implement such systems would seem doubly 

troublesome. 

 Pat of military strategy in counterinsurgency, then, is simplified 

and clarified. One goal is to capture the insurgent leaders; to do so we 

253
can block their routes of escape and close their sanctuaries; to do this 

we identify the routes and sanctuaries geographically with sufficient 

precision that we can act on the information. It is a short distance from 

simple to simplistic, so to defend against accusation of the latter, I 

throw in some disclaimers. None of this insistence on geographic lines 

of insurgent communication suggests that psychologically appropriate 

messages to sway behavior might not be helpful, or that all kinds of 

other cultural information don’t add to the useful mix of knowledge or 

that other actions to protect the friendly force or diminish the 

capabilities of the enemy are not valid. Every piece of cultural 

knowledge becomes increasingly valuable, however, once we orient on 

the tasks of identifying the LOCs. If we know of an important local 

holiday, a specific dish of food eaten on a given date, the favorite 

colors of a local sports team, the psychological profile of persons likely 

to render useful information, it can almost all be mapped and add to the 

refinement of understanding of time and space regarding the likely 

whereabouts of an individual or group. Property theory challenges the 

military leader to determine what belongs to whom. It says that in our 

civilian contexts, in developed societies, lawyers and judges and 

policemen every day use detailed knowledge about preferential 

property (even if only from the phone book) and cultural habits to 

forecast the locations of individuals and groups. It is not always 

possible to serve a summons on an unwilling defendant, but it almost 

always happens. It happens because the system of laws and the natural 

habit of people to order their lives according to preferential use of land 

has prepared the terrain for identification of personal placement. 

 If it is not possible to replicate this condition of a developed 

society in a given geography, it is at least possible to move in the right 

direction. Closing a line of communication or an escape route does not 

necessarily mean a physical blockade. It may mean that movement and 

whereabouts is betrayed by citizens or members of the insurgent group, 

that the insurgent has too little time to prepare security or move 

furtively, or that other conditions of life require the presence of the 

leader in unsafe places. Maguire’s ‘essence’ is not a geometric 

contemplation. The blockage of a route of escape is a matter of factors 

254
that make capture or elimination possible because all leaders have 

human needs, and all organizations must be maintained through some 

sort of supply, communication and discipline. 

 The paragraphs immediately above concern a narrow 

understanding of military strategy, aimed at a dangerous enemy, within 

a country suffering some form of internal conflict. As noted earlier in 

the text, the geopolitical or power-balancing school of strategic thought 

is naturally guided by the boundaries that make up the modern 

community of countries. Many of the most dangerous threats to the 

United States and globally, however, are transnational and paramilitary. 

The same arguments about the utility of property information and its 

construction apply to international and transnational organizations, 

lawful and unlawful. The geography of their wealth crosses political 

borders, but can be mapped. Sanctuaries and ‘routes home’ that cross 

and defy formal borders can also be mapped on the basis of property 

information. 

Appropriate organization and weapons 

Military strategy is more than action, comprehending also the 

organization and equipment with which action is to be achieved. Army 

strategist William Mendel wrote that the warfighting structure of the 

United States has been good for what it is good for--fighting and 

winning maneuver wars. Mendel pointed out, however, that the 

dominant doctrine of annihilation warfare left little tolerance among top 

military leaders for the idea of expanding the specialized force structure 

that deals with missions that are not maneuver war.253 US military 

leaders insisted that "these capabilities [missions] could be provided by 

the same collection of general purpose forces needed for MRCs (major 

regional contingencies), so long as the forces had the appropriate 

training"254 

 

253 See generally William W. Mendel A Joint Command for Engagement Policy (Ft. 

Leavenworth Kansas: Foreign Military Studies Office, 1994). 

254 Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review p. 29. 

255
 In 1994, the Rwanda humanitarian crisis operation, a Haiti 

intervention, and a Cuban refugee surge came nearly simultaneously. 

"The Americans came in full of plans and promises to put everything 

right, and as soon as they came in, they started talking about getting 

out," said a senior relief official about Rwanda.255 One could not help 

but impact on the others. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John 

Shalikashvili, expressed a common military attitude: "My fear is we're 

becoming mesmerized by operations other than war and we'll take our 

mind off what we're all about, to fight and win our nation's wars."256

Civilian defense leadership was showing its frustration as well. 

Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said, "My job is managing an 

army, not a Salvation Army."257 Irrespective of these complaints, the 

United States continued to apply military resources to resolve or at least 

influence violent struggles that did not reach the military leaders’ idea 

of the status of one of the "nation's wars." 

In spite of repeated and continuing use by US national 

leadership of conventional force structure (and doctrine) to accomplish 

police-type missions, results are mixed, but as the US defense 

establishment warms to the idea that special operating forces are 

becoming the key unit of employment, and that a full-time 

expeditionary-constabulary force may be inevitable, the kind of 

intelligence promoted by this book will gain in currency. Such forces 

are more likely to covet, seek and employ the kind of information that 

property formalization generates. 

As asserted in Chapter One, every right that constitutes property 

is ultimately related to some form of enforcement or is subject to 

physical loss. The gap between protection of select rights in land and 

 

255 R. Jeffrey Smith, "Spooked by the Shadow of Somalia, the Pentagon is Ready to 

Pull Out of Rwanda After Delivering Much Less Than the U.S. Promised," The 

Washington Post National Weekly Edition, September 12-18, 1994, p. 16. 256 Ibid. 257 Ibid.

256
protection of the whole basket of rights (the fee) is one way of 

distinguishing police from military activities. Police forces are 

designed, equipped and trained for the purpose of defeating threats to 

rights that are less comprehensive than loss of the whole ownership, 

less than the entire sovereignty. This is reflected in the difference in 

weaponry and organization. There is a firepower gap, narrowing 

perhaps, between police and military weapons. Although there is no 

exact line between the two, it appears to fall somewhere around the use 

of the crew-served machine gun and certainly begins at the point of 

indirect fire weapons and bombs. This difference is a corollary to the 

difference in the reign of legality within most nation-states as opposed 

to among them. To the extent that the rule of law within a polity breaks 

down, the gap between the use of weapons appropriate for police 

purposes and those suited to military purposes often seems to close. 

When military forces occupy an area, but their mission is not to take 

and hold terrain, their weapon set may be inappropriate to a task that is 

more akin to police work. In other words, military weapons are more 

likely to be used even when inappropriate or excessive in relation to the 

rights and duties being enforced or challenged. The professional 

military forces are subject to committing actions that liken themselves 

to the acts of moral asymmetry about which the guerrilla or brigand 

forces are generally accused. This leads us back to the role of 

international law and jurist, and the question of proscribed weaponry. 

International conventions against the use of specified types of weapons 

have seen mixed obedience, but their influence on military practices 

should not be discounted.

The majority of explosive devices in many battle areas are of 

local manufacture, at least partially. Their use has a most direct 

relationship to rights in land. Landmines are regularly employed as a 

technological strategy for denying free use and access. In one typical 

use of the weapon, a guerrilla might cover a withdrawal route with 

explosives after having assaulted a town, a bridge, or a military outpost. 

The mines delay the pursuit by government forces, allowing the 

guerrilla to escape. Often the use of the mine supports a more strategic 

calculation. In order to leverage unspecific political concessions, or 

257
simply to lower government morale and tighten recruitment, guerrilla 

leaders may decide to inflict continuous casualties on government (or 

occupation) security forces. In order to do so, the guerrilla plots routes 

along which landmines can be best employed, then conducts an assault 

on a town or a bridge or a military outpost as an inducement for enemy 

regular forces to pursue the guerrilla and fall prey to the mines. In such 

cases the government casualty is the intermediate physical goal of the 

operation and the ultimate goal is attrition of government military 

morale or of the will of the public to support the government’s 

counterinsurgency. So the landmine may be a weapon that supports an 

operation, or it may be the instrument whose employment is supported 

by the rest of the operation. Given the powerful relationship of this one 

weapon type to successful guerrilla strategies, both combat and 

psychological, the prospect of seeing an end to its use by guerrilla 

forces is dim. As noted earlier, the landmine is emblematic of moral 

asymmetry. Sadly, the number of geographies that are afflicted by the 

lingering presence of landmines is growing. 

Guerrillas aside, the United States still needs big units with 

tanks and bombers and aircraft carriers that can go out and defeat 

uniformed, well-led and well-equipped military enemies. As 

Machiavelli opined, 

“ those are able to maintain themselves who, from an 

abundance of men and money, can put a well appointed 

army into the field, and meet anyone in open battle that 

may attempt to attack them. And I esteem those as 

having need of the constant support of others who 

cannot meet their enemies in the field, but are under the 

necessity of taking refuge behind walls and keeping 

within them.”258

 

258 Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter X, translated by W. K. Marriott, online at 

http://www.the-prince-by-machiavelli.com/the-prince/the_prince_chapter_10.html 

The United States has one of about a dozen militaries in the world that maintain over 

400 thousand men and women in uniform.

258
The US needs to root terrorist and subversive organizations out of their 

sanctuaries, but it cannot abandon all of its heavy force structure or 

mobile, combined arms method of warfare, since it may still be called 

on to close with and destroy modern military formations, and to take 

the fee simple. This book is about the importance of formal property as 

an indispensable condition for long-term peace, and as a tool that can 

help win at war against select enemies. Nevertheless, the age of 

warfare has not ended because we wish it has, and in some realms of 

endeavor property rights are still a luxurious detail. There will 

continue to exist a need to be able to take by force what we have 

referred to here as the whole fee. Meanwhile, we cannot continue to 

use the forces, methods and knowledge appropriate to whole-fee 

warfare in the contexts of internal conflict. 

People and real estate: countering urban violence 

 The American military does not like fighting in the city. There 

are too many buildings and too many people. 

"A major difficulty...is the deeply entrenched military 

opinion, that goes back many centuries, that cities are 

places where battles should not be fought. 

Consequently, when it occurred in urban areas, conflict 

tended to be regarded as an unfortunate aberration to 

be avoided in the future, rather than an example to be 

analyzed so that lessons for the future could be 

drawn."259 G.J. Ashworth

 

259 G.J. Ashworth, War and the City, (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 92. Ashworth 

cites Yi-Fu Tuan, Landscapes of Fear (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), p. 112. "It is 

difficult to draw a clear distinction between defense against external threats and that 

against internal insurgency. Such distinctions have rarely been drawn in history. City 

walls were intended as much to keep citizens in, and accounted for, as to keep 

enemies out. The wall had a practical, as well as symbolic, jurisdictional purpose, 

enabling the urban authorities to exercise a control over the movement of goods and 

people, and thus served police, customs, fiscal and immigration purposes (as such 

flows could be channeled through the limited number of gates which would be 

opened and guarded at specific times). Thus the distinction between police and 

259
 It should seem natural that information detailing the 

associations connecting real estate to its users would be key to 

population control, protection, and exposure of violent actors in urban 

areas. This, however, appears to be a more obvious conclusion within 

police intelligence culture, or even business culture, than for military 

intelligence. Existing military literature addresses the question of 

urban violence in terms of conventional combat, or of insurgency.260 

In conventional urban warfare doctrine the population is treated as 

either a physical obstacle or an annoyance, and stability or security

the population is considered a rear-area issue. Existing counterinsurgency literature also portrays urban environments as unique 

principally because of the nature of the terrain.

 of 

e 

each other. 

 

261 It fails to stress th

world of records and signs that link the built environment to persons 

and persons to 

The direction of the best urban counterviolence can be expected 

to follow architecture as well as law. Architectural technology has 

proven successful in containing rioters and to limit the options of 

military structures was generally blurred, with the same forces being called upon to 

perform both functions. Indeed, the only distinction between the modern situation--

especially in countries with the Anglo-American aversion to paramilitary police 

forces--and that which prevailed in most countries until the last century, is that the 

military now operate "in support of the civil power', whereas previously they were 

frequently the only effective instrument of that power." Ibid. 

260 Jennifer Morrison Taw and Bruce Hoffman, The Urbanization of Insurgency

(Santa Monica, California: RAND Arroyo Center, 1994). 

261 See, for instance, Bard E. O`Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism, (Washington, D.C.: 

Potomac Books, 2005), p.61; Anthony James Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History 

and Politics of Counterinsurgency, (Lexington, KY, The University Press of 

Kentucky, 2004) p. 20; and Ian F. W. Beckett, “The Transition to Urban Insurgency” 

in Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and their Opponents 

since 1750, (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 151-217. In none of these books does the 

word property appear in the index. The analyses of the reasons why urban guerrillas 

fail do not hit on the essential facts tha anonymity works in favor of the would-be 

informant, that public records cause strangers to be highlighted, and that the need to 

create a support base cannot be reconciled against the need of that support base to 

register wealth somewhere with the government. 

260
opposing groups intent on managing mob behavior. We can expect 

defense planners to survey urban landscapes using a methodology that 

keys on architectural phenomenon both to anticipate violence and to 

control it. In most of the world, architectural control strategies will not 

resemble the massive capital investment made by Los Angeles 

businesses to immunize their downtown area after the Watts riots, but 

they will reflect existing conditions of urbanization.262 For instance, in 

many cities, the form and dynamics of the public transportation system 

guide the development of any impending mass demonstration. Security 

forces not only monitor and adjust aspects of the transportation system, 

they can create temporary architectures that restrict, canalize, diffuse or 

otherwise confound potentially violent congregating. Similar methods 

can be used to protect legally formed congregations against terrorist 

acts. 

If we were to look at the evolution of organization and 

equipment of a standard US Army engineer battalion, we find that it 

changed little for a half century. Although this same half century saw 

incredible urbanization throughout the world, few urban-oriented 

changes occurred in how the Army organized its engineers. If we were 

to look at the standard requirements expected of a military police or 

military intelligence unit we would discover something parallel -- that 

they did not include conducting a census, building a cadastre, 

establishing an ID system that tagged everyone to a place of residence 

and work or building precise social labeling of places (such as the 

creation of street names and assignment of business addresses). In 

other words, the two aspects that make urban urban -- people and 

architecture -- were not until very recently reflected in military 

organization, equipment and doctrine. As far as the revealing linkages 

between people and place in the city, it goes without saying that it has 

been overlooked. The closeness of shantytowns to target crime areas, 

to high value real estate, or to vulnerable public service nodes can all 

be analyzed according to courses of action available to anti-state actors 

 

262 See generally Davis, Mike. Urban Control: The Ecology of Fear. Westfield, New 

Jersey: The Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, 1994. 

261
and their containment. In addition, the specifics of property ownership, 

as detailed in land title registries and other ownership instruments, can 

be studied. This may suggest assignments of financial responsibility 

for strategic defense costs, provide information about the value and 

vulnerability of target areas, and reveal outlaw profit motivations. As 

urban violence evolves, so do the measures for countering it. 

Architects may become, in the urban context, the new military 

engineers--modern counterparts to the designers of the fortified cities of 

the early Seventeenth Century.263 

Some will argue that broad social programs aimed at the 

socioeconomic causes of economic marginalization offer a more sane 

and humane approach to the problem of urban violence than does 

control architecture and Big Brother records-keeping.. Security forces 

should indeed address the sociological phenomenon of the excluded 

populations. Governments can seek new means of opening 

shantytowns to the presence of the state. These should pay particular 

attention to such things as the psychology of the abandoned child, and 

intimidations by criminal organizations that dry up publicly provided 

information. In a book titled New Visions for Metropolitan America, 

Anthony Downs outlined some government policy strategies for large 

cities in the United States. Downs presented a full matrix of options 

that included such things as expanding minority membership in local 

 

263 Two studies in Spanish, Manual de Métodos Geográficos Para el Análisis Urbano, 

Chile (Manual of Geographical Methods of Analysis, Chile) (México, D.F.: Instituto 

Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Geografía, Comité de Geografiía 

Urbana, 1988); and Nelly Amalia Gray de Cerdan, Territorio y Urbanismo: Bases de 

Geografía Prospectiva (Territory and Urbanism: Bases of a predictive geography) 

(Mendoza, Argentina: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas, 

1987) are examples. In Manual de Métodos, mapping was done of Santiago, Chile 

that includes the type and age of construction, value of homes, and many other 

aspects of the urban terrain and properties. The style of analysis not only promises to 

show potentially conflictive areas and urban targets in broad graphic terms, but 

perhaps can predict the most probable unfolding of events in the case of violent 

crises. Territorio y Urbanismo also delves into the application of geography-based 

modeling for the description of urban social problems and the rational determination 

of social programs. 

262
police forces, decriminalizing the use of drugs, and expanding suburban 

school access to inner city children.264 Elements on the strategy matrix 

reflect the full range of government program-based thinking about how 

to tackle the problem of what may be a growing urban underclass. 

Taken together, the strategy suggested by Downs as a preventive to 

urban violence is reminiscent of some broad-based socioeconomic 

program approaches to rural counterinsurgency. As Downs points out, 

such program approaches require a substantial redistribution of wealth, 

a requirement often unsupported by political realities. Moreover, many 

argue that such social programs generally do not work, that they create 

an addiction to programs that entrench dependency on government, rob 

human dignity and instill resentments that fuel the culture of violence 

even further. Major ‘Third World’ cities can expect to muster less 

public program funding than cities in the United States, and so the 

supposedly enlightened control of violence by way of social 

engineering will remain an unrealized dream. 

As evidenced in the above discussion of urban conflict, one of 

the most useable aspects of a property vision of urban conflict is 

clarification of the overlapping frontier between what are military and 

non-military applications of power.265 It is the evolution of legal 

strictures that formally define the details of legitimacy of military 

efforts. Property is not just a question of records that tie places to 

people, although this forensic aspect is immensely important to 

effective military and police operations. The greater advantage to a 

property approach comes with the understanding that property is rights 

and duties, and that the legal constraints on law enforcement and 

military maneuver are embedded or part-and parcel of the terrain. The 

need to gain a wire tap warrant might be an extreme example only for a 

geography where property is better developed, but legal systems relate 

 

264 Anthony Downs, New Visions for Metropolitan America (Washington, D.C.: The 

Brookings Institute, 1994), p. 176. 

265 The intangible but profound distance between military and police mentality, and 

the organizational preparations that attend the difference, are perhaps best described 

by persons who are neither police nor military. One such description is Bob 

Shacochis' "The Immaculate Invasion," Harper's February 1995. 

263
the specific rights that people have wherever they stand sit or lay, and 

for a counterinsurgency force to be successful in the long run it must 

know these rights. Early in this decade the Colombian police found it 

impossible to serve a legal warrant in the slums of Medell[[in. The 

streets and shacks were so irregular that violent actors could confuse 

addresses and identities. Part of the solution was to apply best-practice 

street naming and numbering conventions, installation of durable street 

signs, and the assignment of fixed addresses to residents. 

Developmental Strategy 

"Many years of observation in the developing 

nations...have convinced me that in these vital areas the 

most important economic and political question is: who 

owns the land?"266

Chester Bowles, US diplomat and economist

Land reform 

Attention to property matters has not been wholly absent from 

U.S. strategic thinking. With regard to contexts that are describable as 

"low intensity" or "other than war," the most recurring property theme 

is land reform. As an adjunct to U.S. military land reform (or often 

"agrarian reform") strategy has come and gone during the twentieth 

century. One distasteful factor is that many land reform schemes have 

been promoted by the ideological left during a century in which so 

much geopolitical advantage has been associated with polarized 

ideologies. That is to say, land reform ideas have often been 

discredited as benefiting an ideological and strategic enemy. Land 

reform is a label given to a wide array of property-focused strategies 

for resolution of political struggles. The results have been mixed and 

 

266 Thomas Melville, Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership (New York: Free 

Press, 1971) p. xi. Chester Bowles was a former U.S. Ambassador to India. 

264
depend ultimately on subjective measures. Their history is obviously 

relevant to the current theme. However, land or agrarian reform as it 

has been historically stylized is not prescribed here as the key to 

strategy of any kind. Too many land reform notions have been bad 

ideas. Dissecting a typical land reform program according to all the 

affected rights and duties in land usually bares inefficient statist hubris 

and numerous unintended consequences.267

All strategies, and especially those aimed at attaining objectives 

beyond immediate physical possession, are land reform strategies in a 

sense. Their essential flaw has been a presumption that the land itself 

is the dominant source of wealth and therefore political power. Lost 

has been a full understanding of the nature of property. Property, even 

real property, is not the thing. Property is the concert of rights, 

associated with the thing, that regulates relationships between people. 

Strategies that begin with a complete understanding of the preferential 

rights and duties of all owner interests are more likely to succeed than 

any strategy that only envisages preferential occupancy of a delimited 

slice of land. It is safe to claim that every land reform project so far 

attempted in Latin America at least has suffered from unexpected and 

unintended affects of tinkering with forces and relationships that were 

incompletely understood. 

That political strategies can be based on property is difficult to 

question. A review of the history of Israel is enough to dispel doubt. 

The initial strategy of the Zionists was one of simple land purchase 

combined with efforts to make that land productive enough to support 

further settlement. 

 

267 This assertion depends, of course, on one’s point of view. For leadership 

interested in centralizing and securing state power, land reform has had a record of 

successes. Economic advantage, individual liberty and upward mobility have not 

fared as well. As Professor Powelson expressed, “The most disheartening 

conclusion...may be that whenever a reformer (such as a king, a government, or a 

revolutionary junta) has changed the land tenure system by fiat, he, she, or it has 

retained a substantial portion of the rights instead of yielding them to the peasant.” 

John Powelson, The Story of Land, p. x. 

265
The Zionist leadership concentrated energies and 

resources on the acquisition and settlement of land and 

the furtherance of agriculture. Much land was reclaimed 

from swamp or desert. Most of the lands acquired were 

purchased in large tracts from absentee private Arab 

proprietors. The mandatory administration itself 

controlled over a quarter of a million acres classed as 

state domain but it leased only a minute portion of this 

to Jewish agriculture. By the late `thirties Jews held a 

little over a quarter of a million cultivable acres, 

approximately twice the area they had owned in 1920. 

In 1939, about five percent of the total land area of the 

country was in Jewish ownership.268

As regards the creation of Israel, the other elements of the 

ownership environment were considered from the outset. National 

identity and cohesiveness were considered by the British sponsors. 

Underlying the British concept of the national home was 

the assumption that Jews and Arabs would become 

integrated within a broader Palestinian national identity. 

The British goal was to promote neither Jewish nor Arab 

sovereignty as such, but a polity of Palestinians. The 

Hebrew and Arabic languages, it was assumed, would 

afford the two peoples the means of separate cultural 

expression while the English language would provide a 

bridge for their political integration.269

The British understanding of the ownership possibilities was 

perhaps not well reasoned since Arab nationalism was inchoate while 

there existed an historical basis for a Palestinian identity among the 

Jews. The strength of a cohesive Jewish owner identity, associated 

 

268 Noah Lucas, The Modern History of Israel (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp. 

111,112. 

269 Ibid., p. 114. 

266
with the lands of Judea, in conjunction with the underdeveloped 

cohesiveness of Arab identities, led to the current condition of conflict-

-a conflict that is marked throughout by conspicuous property issues 

like homestead settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan, or 

autonomous rule in the Gaza Strip.270

The early Zionist strategy was a property strategy, but it is hard 

to fit it within the rubric of land reform. Nevertheless, 

misinterpretation of important elements of property ownership is a 

shared error in predicting effects. For instance, the concert of rights 

that constitutes land ownership includes the right to divest. This single 

characteristic of ownership can probably be blamed for half of the 

whole failure of land reforms in this century. If a peasant is given 

redistributed land, he will sell it unless he can afford to be the owner 

and wants to be. Therein lays the essential debility of a majority of 

land reform ideas. If a plan includes incentives for the peasant to stay 

on the land--seed credits, extension service advice, technical 

capitalization--the government is in effect entering the agricultural 

economy in a pervasive and very expensive way. Even with all 

necessary aid having been provided to the small farmer, there is little a 

government can do to assure the value of food staples. The next logical 

step is price support buying by the government, or other interventions 

into the market mechanism. Pressures build toward re-redistribution of 

ownership portions, either in new mortgages, resale to original owners, 

etc. In order to avoid the immediate frustration of the reapportionment, 

reform regulations tend to include tenure requirements such as 

residence during a fixed minimum number of harvests before the 

occupant receives title. In these cases, not only is part of the ownership 

retained by the government, the government has created a new form of 

serfdom. As with most government intrusions, the process is subject to 

corruption and to loopholes that allow the black market sale of quit 

claims, false appraisals, and so on. 

 

270 In 1997, Yasser Arafat publicly supported the death penalty for Arabs who sold 

land to Jews. See “Arafat defends death for sellers: Penalty for Arabs called response 

to Israeli land confiscation” 22 May 1997 Associated Press, 

<http://www.dallasnews.com/~dmnews/international-nf/int229.htm>.

267
In order to influence the lives of a large number of persons, 

agrarian reforms necessarily involve overarching central government 

control of prices and movement of labor. If successful on a large scale, 

agrarian reforms can slow a process of urbanization that, however 

painful, may be necessary to shift an economy away from subsistence 

farming. Having said the above, there have been occasions in which 

the forced reapportionment of rural terrain may be said to have 

supported strategic interests because of the changed property 

relationships. Accordingly, land reforms sometimes appear at the 

outset to be good ideas even to the anti-statist. A quote from the United 

States military governor of Korea in 1945 says everything: 

The program of Military Government included 

taking over all Japanese properties as rapidly as possible 

for the benefit of the Korean people, relieving labor 

from the conditions of absolute servitude under which it 

has existed for the last forty years, returning to the 

farmers the land which had been wrested from them by 

Japanese guile and treachery, and giving to the farmer a 

fair and just proportion of the fruit of his sweat and 

labor, restoring the principals of a free market, giving to 

every man, woman and child within the country equal 

opportunity to enjoy his fair and just share of the great 

wealth with which this beautiful nation has been 

endowed.271

In post-WWII Korea, land reform measures were taken by a 

military occupation force that followed another foreign occupier. 

Probably the most important policy impetus was a desire to undermine 

the appeal of socialist and communist arguments within a large rural 

 

271 Gary L. Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World Peasant: Land Reform in 

Asia and Latin America, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), p.42. 

268
population. In this case, large tracts of virtually ownerless properties 

were available for redistribution. 

In the case of the American occupation of Japan, the number of 

pure owner-cultivators was increased from 52.8 percent of the total 

farming households in 1946 to 61.8 percent of the total in 1950. Pure 

tenant households dropped from 28.7 percent to 5 percent.272 In the 

process, one million former landlords were dispossessed. Rights in 

land had been purchased by the central government by instruction of 

the Supreme Command Allied Powers. The plan had its roots partly in 

pre-war academic appreciations of a relationship between feudal tenure 

systems in Japan and the power of militarist elites. General 

Macarthur’s directive to the Japanese government stated in part: 

In order that the Imperial Japanese Government 

shall remove economic obstacles to the revival and 

strengthening of democratic tendencies, establish respect 

for the dignity of man, and destroy the economic 

bondage which has enslaved the Japanese farmer for 

centuries of feudal oppression, the Japanese Imperial 

Government is directed to take measures to insure that 

those who till the soil shall have a more equal 

opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor.273 

It is difficult to claim that these land reform efforts led to the 

economic successes of Korea or Japan. Many other factors weigh in. 

At least they did not prevent economic development, and perhaps the 

redistribution of wealth broadened the base of material expectations. 

The land programs in both countries seem to have had a direct effect on 

elections that favored pro-United States elements. One observation is 

essential: These reforms were imposed. In one case they were imposed 

on a defeated enemy. In the other they were imposed on a country that 

 

272 Ibid., p. 28. 273 Ibid., p. 24. 

269
had been previously occupied by a foreign army. The observation does 

not lead to a conclusion that such changes must be imposed, but it does 

discredit the offhand and often-heard pandering that changes must be 

indigenous or locally motivated, even while it might be preferable. 

In the states of southern Mexican, imperfections in collectivist 

land reform (finding their spiritual and bureaucratic roots in the history 

of the Mexican Revolution) are now showing their consequences. 

"Amid indecisive efforts to achieve a solution to the political-military 

conflict in this state (Chiapas), the struggle for land is heating up."274 

For some peasants the fight is over communal ejido land that was could 

be parceled out under a reform begun in 1992. Others complain about 

ejido land that was taken out of agricultural use to make a wilderness 

preserve. Nearby coffee plantations owned by foreign absentee owners 

are the object of armed squatting. "And in response to eviction threats 

from the government and the ranchers--who are calling for Army 

intervention--the peasants claim that the land belongs to them and they 

will not abandon it, 'even at the price of death.'"275 Land pressures can 

create a sense of desperation among rural residents who been 

encouraged to remain on the land and are unprepared to leave it. Add 

to this the contiguity of oil rich regions and hydroelectric infrastructure 

on which the greater Mexican economy depends. Add, too, the 

leadership energy of outsiders who know how to focus the peasants' 

desperation and leverage the threat of violence against the government. 

A formula for extensive organized violence is evident. 

Mexico's land reform has left an ironic legacy. Though 

intended to benefit the campesinos, the reform actually 

made the land of the beneficiaries less productive than 

that of the non-beneficiaries. To the Mexican nation, 

this is a serious setback. Half of the country's 

 

274 Alonso Urrutia, "Seized Estate's Mixed Population Cited" Mexico City La Jornada

in Spanish as translated in FBIS-LAT-94-240, p.25; see also Jose Gil Olmos and Elio 

Henriquez, "German Owners Criticized" as translated in FBIS-LAT-94-240, p.27; 

Julio Cesar Lopez, "Local Links Indicated" as translated in FBIS-LAT-94-240, p.29. 275 Ibid. 

270
agricultural land, which is in ejidatario hands cannot 

improve its productive capacity because ejidatarios

cannot efficiently utilize it and because productive nonejido farmers cannot acquire it.276

The above quote comes from a 1974 study on the political 

effects of land reform. The difficulty of which the author speaks was 

precisely the reason for the 1992 neo-liberal reform of the socialist 

revolutionary land reform. What was seen at least partially by the 

proponents of the 1992 effort (not discounting the involvement of 

particularized greed in some cases) is that land, though it maintains 

special emotional attachments, is a commodity subject to market forces. 

In fact, it is the separable rights associated with the land. Every 

disregard, defiance and ignorance of those forces will eventually charge 

a price. That is what has been happening in Chiapas, and it is why 

strategies, whether government, personal, corporate, military, insurgent 

or otherwise, should be determined as best as possible in accordance 

with the details of the ownership environment.277

 

276 Hung-Chao Tai, Land Reform and Politics: A Comparative Analysis (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1974), p. 475; For an apologetic survey from the same 

period see Peter Dorner, Land Reform & Economic Development(Kingsport, 

Tennessee: Kingsport Press Inc., 1972). 

277 A pair of relevant articles comes from a land disgraced by the 1930s land reforms 

of Joe Stalin. See, G. Nikolayev, "Why Can't Russia Feed Herself" and "Private land 

ownership is the pivotal problem of reform," New Times International no.18 April 

1993. The author may be speaking only for a pro-western minority, but his message 

is on-point if not universally accepted. According to Nikolayev, the problem of 

production has been a problem of ownership by farmers. In the 1990s, most peasants 

still worked on communist collective and other state farms. A growing minority 

owned their farms, but mortgages and capitalization was still out of reach for most 

would-be family farmers. The Mexican land reform that created tens of thousands of 

communal ejidos began shortly after the revolutions in 1917. That the neo-liberal 

counter-revolution moving peasant parcels back into the market economy began 

shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union is at least interesting. The scope and 

effects (both on individual lives and strategically) of the counter-revolution in 

Mexican land ownership is being carefully studied by a team from the University of 

Kansas led by five-time Fulbright scholar Dr. Peter Herlihy under the auspices of the 

271
 Developing a modern, formal land ownership regime is a larger, 

more challenging objective than that of obtaining property data. A 

modern property regime includes mechanisms for trust building and for 

market fluidity. These mechanisms include title insurance, a regulated 

brokerage profession, professional property inspectors and appraisers, 

statutorily specific “quiet title” actions, clearly delineated occasions for 

self-help in regaining possession, enforceable punishments for unlawful 

self-help, enforcement of restraining orders and eviction, transparency 

of ownership files, well-publicized statutes-of-fraud that require 

transactions in real estate to be in writing, signed, notarized and 

registered, requirement that mortgages and encumbrances of all kinds 

be recorded or be without state enforcement, and so on. This litany of 

needs is included to underline an important disclaimer: creating 

property data (even if is technically exact, judicially correct and 

accessible) is not equivalent to creating a property regime similar to 

that known in the United States. 

Nevertheless, the quality and utility of the data is highly 

dependent on the level of development of the property regime. 

Numerous developmental agencies from a variety of countries have 

contributed to modernizing the property regime in Colombia. To the 

extent these efforts have failed, it is due in part to the aid organizations’ 

not having insisted on their obtaining a product in the form of 

transparent, digital property data. Neither USAID nor the IADB (and 

this probably holds true for other aid organizations) can produce results 

of their efforts in the form of property data. This fact responds to the 

culture of the organizations and their core missions. No proof of result 

was demanded because these organizations deal in the construction of 

institutions, to include the creation of service bureaucracies, training of 

personnel, etc., but they are not equipped for or interested in gaining 

and analyzing information. To some extent, the strategic 

developmental goal of establishing a modern property regime must be 

 

American Geographical Society and assisted by scholars from the University of San 

Luis Potosí.

272
prompted, accelerated and audited by insistence on the lesser goal of 

obtaining the data. Western civilization is no so hard to understand in 

these terms: Rejection of oral evidence eventually means that contracts 

must have permanent stable evidence. The ‘rule of law’, the creation of 

an effective legal regime, the establishment of an equitable system of 

property ownership – all these are impossible until permanent 

trustworthy evidence of contracts is the norm. Fortunately, the 

technologies now available to improve the quality of evidence include 

positioning satellites, geographic placement software and the Internet. 

But they must be applied. In this area (the formalization of property) 

durable information is the ultimate goal, and so in a place like 

Colombia the objectives of developmental aid organizations and of 

intelligence agencies must be unified. Aid organizations will continue 

to distance themselves from ‘intelligence’ work and from active use of 

cadastral, land registry or other data in forensic and military matters. 

But they must not distance themselves from being able to prove the 

precision, transparency and comprehensiveness of the social contract, 

since that is the goal. Correspondingly, intelligence organizations must 

learn to work in the unclassified realm in such a way as to not 

compromise the developmental agencies’ cultures. They should assist 

developmental efforts financially in order that they formalize property 

in areas of greatest security interest, and technically to the extent of 

providing quality control and results back to the developmentalists. 

The question of property distribution is central to our American 

inheritance, to our Revolutionary understanding of the world. “...the 

most common and durable source of factions has been the various and 

unequal distribution of property."278

 

278 James Madison, "'Publius,'The Federalist X," Daily Advertiser (New 

York), November 22, 1787 reprinted in Bernard Bailyn, ed., The Debate on 

the Constitution, Part 1 (The Viking Press, 1992), p. 406; Madison's 

importance as an intellectual contributor to the American ideological 

revolution regarding property and the role of government is well established: 

"Madison's resolution of the conflict, real or apparent, between Jefferson and 

Locke adds up to a political doctrine that is so radically revolutionary that I 

do not believe it is possible to go beyond it. Many revolutions since the 

American rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century have failed or feared 

to go so far. Even the Russian Revolution, no matter how far-reaching its 

273
James Madison’s venerable words are to be tempered by the reminder 

that his idea of ‘property’ was not equivalent to ‘land.’ Land became 

property in the context of a functioning liberal social contract. 

Fixing Cuba 

Impending changes in Cuba were discussed in the Chapter Two, 

but it was emphasized that Cuba is not a threat in any traditional sense. 

It is included again here as the nearest example of a place in which 

property is absolutely critical to satisfactory practical understanding of 

the challenge, to any rational design for future engagement or for the 

architecture of Cuba’s success as a society and nation. The conditions 

brought to the Caribbean by the end of Castroite control on the Island 

of Cuba could be such that American national security resources will be 

diverted for one reason or another. Worse, if the processes of change in 

Cuba do not result in a property regime featuring comprehensive, 

precise, transparent evidence of ownership; along with mechanisms for 

effecting that evidence and a liberal understanding of who can own 

what, then an historic opportunity will be lost and a set of potential 

dangers invited. Cuba can be fixed -- quickly made free, safe and 

 

social and economic reforms, failed to take the final step that Madison said 

was imperative for the United States, that it 'equally respect the rights of 

property and the property in rights.' 

 The Soviets, in this century, have turned the first kind of property upside 

down, giving it to those who had nothing, taking it from those who had 

everything. There is a kind of simple justice in that, although economically 

it is dreadfully misguided. But no man's, woman's, or child's rights have 

been secure in the Soviet Union during this century, as they are mostly 

secure in Madison's country today. 

 To succeed in their revolution, the Soviets believed they had to abolish 

all private property. Perhaps they meant to abolish only the private property 

that Locke had claimed governments are instituted to protect. But they also 

abolished that other property, property in rights. Their revolution has 

therefore so far failed. It can succeed only when they understand and rectify 

this view." Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge: Past Present, and 

Future (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1991), p.227. 

274
prosperous, but only if the United States and others outside Cuba plan 

to act on behalf of Cubans to ensure that the property regime there is 

transformed. 

To forecast the details of the kind of political mess that people 

might enter and form in Cuba, we can begin by reducing Cuba’s 

ownership environment into the three streams of inquiry suggested by 

the definition of property in the introductory chapter regarding the 

quality of the evidence (clarity of allocation); the capacity to act on 

conclusions logically drawn from the evidence (ease of alienability and 

security from trespass); and conduciveness to peace of the basic rules 

delimiting the contract (liberality). 

clarity of allocation

 It appears that records exist and that they are in a moderate 

technical condition, and that they are not yet comprehensive. A 

surprising number or records that approach the nature of real estate 

ownership records exist in countries having experienced communist 

governments. Block censuses, agricultural quotas, vacation awards, 

and many other records may be found on which to build a cadastre and 

registry of property rights on the island. 

Related to real property titling are simple landlord-tenant 

disputes. These might be rated as exacerbating events of a relatively 

minor scale. However, change from a patron-communist system of 

tenancy rules, accompanied by an overturn of landlords and judges, 

will change the balance of perceived rights and duties. This will be 

especially true in Cuba as relatives from the United States bring with 

them different legal expectations and litigious energy. This is an area 

for which property disposition strategies can be prepared in advance--a 

preparation that could prove to be an important ameliorating effort. 

 The identities of claimants will be a more complicated math 

than a simple search for documents. Many claims will be based on 

failed pre-existing duties. For instance, Fidel Castro’s environmental 

legacy may prove as dismal as that of the other failed communist 

275
countries. 279 Potential clean-up sites like the Boyeros asbestos factory 

near Havana, the experimental nuclear waste reprocessing center at 

Arroyo Naranjo, or any of a number of fouled waterways suggest that a 

multitude of agencies and organizations will find a mission in a postCastro Cuba. Their rights and duties will conflict with those of other 

property claimants, and while the rights of foreign environmentalists 

may seem tenuous in a context of ambiguous sovereignty and system 

collapse, those rights will seem more valid as they become matched to 

political power generated in the United States and elsewhere. For this 

reason, and for the long-term benefit to Cuba, property interests 

expressed by environmental protection groups should be assigned due 

weight ahead of time. Under many plausible scenarios, effective 

control of key government lands will be lost. These properties could 

include large landholdings of the Cuban military such as the Ignacio 

Agramonte training area near Camaguey or the Siguanea training area 

on the Isle of Pines. Even if all Cuban military units were to divorce 

themselves from organized participation in any internal violence, much 

of the military land could be exposed to looters and squatters. It may 

be in the best interests of any follow-on government to insure the 

maintenance or orderly disposition of this land, especially if ecological 

recovery operations are needed. 

 

279 For an overview of possible ecological problem areas see Jose R. Oro, The 

Poisoning of Paradise: Environmental Pollution in the Republic of Cuba, (The 

Endowment for Cuban American Studies, Cuban American National Foundation, 

ISBN: 0-918901-87-1, 1992). 

276
ease of alienability and security from trespass

 Neither the capacity of the current government to exclude 

persons from terrain is to be doubted, nor is the resolve to do so. The 

incapacity of the residents to act on evidence of existing records, on the 

other hand, may be fairly complete. Given the lack of even a 

rudimentary real estate profession, any informality of land titles will 

invite conflicting claims and all kinds of blatant fraud schemes. These 

registry problems could be a tremendous source of violence, whether 

the subject is return of titles to pre-revolution landlords, patenting 

common property formerly owned by the state, preferences in the 

privatization of industries, or even reassignment to new government 

entities. Any judicial mechanism will be awash with claims and 

counter-claims. In order to lessen the violence that can easily 

accompany these cases, a system of courts could be pre-established, 

ready to accept cases as soon as possible. In addition, the regulatory 

framework and market incentives for the healthy growth of a real estate 

profession could be initiated. 

 Internal political convulsion and the attendant inability to 

conduct sophisticated police investigations will invigorate organized 

crime.280 Brigands understand the opportunities that under-supervised 

territory presents. They quickly impose ownership regimes, offer 

services to offended claimants, create loyalties and obligations, and 

sow fear. Legal political parties, rogue military units, and even 

traditional guerrilla bands don’t display the same efficiency and 

ruthlessness as does a criminal gang--or some hybrid. These groups 

directly and immediately focus on property rights. They deny 

opposition access to their safe havens, monopolize markets and small 

industries, and isolate transportation means. They cultivate exclusive 

 

280 "Former Eastern European communist security personnel have created 

organizations suspected of coercive actions and terrorist planning (for example, Red 

Fist in the former German Democratic Republic); the prospect of former DGI [Cuban 

intelligence] free-lance activities in an unsettled region must at least be considered." 

Graham H. Turbiville, "The Cuban 'threat' in the southern hemisphere: Goodbye to all 

that?," Military Review, December 1991, p. 87. 

277
territorial identities. Communist Cuba boasts an unattractive record of 

collaboration between state security organizations and transnational 

criminal enterprises. The formats, contacts and corruption ethic are in 

place, if not the criminal organizations themselves. When political 

changes do come to the island, key members of the failing Communist 

regime may already be under indictment in U.S. courts for narcotics 

trafficking and related charges.281

liberality

In this there is a great shortcoming. Most exiled Cubans cannot 

own in any way under the present system, and most Cubans not only 

cannot be owners of record, their rights are strictly delimited even as 

tenants. Life estates seem to be the norm for many agriculturalists, 

underground rights are not marketed to citizenry, and use rights even to 

include profit from farmland are closely controlled. Creation of a 

property regime in which everyday rights and duties are openly and 

formally expressed in comprehensive, detailed, precise, stable, 

transparent evidence is a good idea whatever the basic rules. Knowing 

in advance who is to be considered full owners and what divisibility of 

ownership will be allowed will be more critical to peace in the short 

run. This requires cognizance that the Cuban constitution must be 

changed to become a fundamental law securing the polity against any 

excessive concentration of power that would endanger the protection of 

property rights – not principally a formula for choosing leaders. 

Castro's revolution may survive for many more years or Cuba 

may slip from its communist revolutionary experience with an 

anticlimactic whimper. The very first steps taken after the incapacity 

of Castro brothers will probably be some form of constitutional 

convention in order to reconfirm or adjust the basic ownership rules. 

 

281 A proposed indictment of Raul Castro and the Cuban government on narcotics 

trafficking charges is reported in Jeff Leen and Andres Oppenheimer, "Clinton caught 

off guard by proposed Cuba charges," Miami Herald, 9 April 1993, p. 1A.; For a 

broad accusation regarding Cuban narcotics dealings of the Castro government see 

Castro and the Narcotics Connection (Washington, D.C.: Cuban American National 

Foundation, 1983). 

278
The results of such a convention are not likely to satisfy. The intensity 

of ill will by Cubans toward each other is difficult to measure, but some 

interested observers insist that a bloodbath is likely given the abuses of 

power and the personal atrocities committed by the communist regime. 

An environment of retribution could easily deteriorate into violence. 

Grave disorder is one anticipated result when the Castros and the 

repressive mechanisms of their personalist regime lose effective 

control. Many of the determinants of that disorder are already engaged, 

others await precipitating events. Whatever the scenario, however, the 

weave of Cuba's future social fabric can be envisioned in terms of who 

has what rights in what property, beginning with obvious property such 

as choice real estate and infrastructure, and membership in 

organizational bodies that control the rules of ownership. 

Perhaps most important, such a conceptualization can guide 

policy planning. In the face of property-rooted violence, it behooves 

planners to determine exactly who the owner-claimants are and what 

specific rights they might wish to defend in relation to exactly what 

locations. This will go a long way to finding hidden sponsors of 

violence, to finding areas of reconciliation and hidden wealth that can 

finance growth, or to deciding who might best pay for security 

measures. Without a complete appreciation of land ownership claims 

and of the competing systems in which the claims might be stabilized, 

there can be little practical expectation of long-term success in 

subduing potential armed conflict in Cuba. There can also be no 

reasonable expectation that the government of the United States would 

be able to retain strategic initiative in competition with non-state 

entities able and willing to identify and service the wide variety of 

owner-claimant identities. 

Political changes coming to Cuba may pose a threat of 

deleterious and unpredictable impact on US domestic electioneering, 

and of anti-American opportunism in the international ambit. The most 

important reason for highlighting Cuba’s transition, however, has 

nothing to do with threats, but rather the historic opportunity that the 

end of the Castro era presents to the American nation. It is in simplest 

279
terms a chance to revalidate America -- an opportunity to showcase and 

re-inspect the relative merits of the United States as a polity. Cuba’s 

transition can rebuild the image and substance of American 

exceptionalism currently being expended in the war against terrorism. 

Cuba offers, in short, a big test, one the United States as a nation 

should take -- should revel in taking. To pass the test, the United 

States, as a nation, may need to review its understanding of its own 

revolution, and consider how central to its success the concept of 

property is. Of all places on earth, Cuba; and among all predictable 

crises, Cuba’s transition, deserve to be framed as questions not of 

electoral democracy, but of protected property, of a social contract in 

which individuals and groups deal freely and confidently. If the 

development of answers to the problem of contested property becomes 

the basis for deriving correct political, developmental and diplomatic 

decisions associated with the Cuban people and the future of the island, 

it will be a positive milestone. Better still would be to design American 

politics, diplomacy and developmental programs in the service of 

creating a successful Cuban property regime. 

280
Knowledge Strategy 

If Marx were alive today, he might fairly call education 

the means of production.282

 Walter B. Wriston 

The relevant things worth knowing 

 The objectives, methods and resources of the overall 

intelligence apparatus of the United States government are hard to 

describe, and would remain so even without the veil of secrecy. Late in 

2005, to commemorate the six-month anniversary of the establishment 

of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, that office 

published a document titled The National Intelligence Strategy of the 

United States.

283 The publication is a general call to service stressing 

institutional relationships and individual qualification. It is 

understandably short on specific threats or methods of collection. To a 

degree, however, any intelligence strategy is going to orient on a set of 

 

282 Walter B. Wriston, The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution 

is Transforming Our World (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992) p. 108. 

Wriston identified technology as a culprit in the dispersion of power as well as a key 

to maintaining national wealth. "If we are to compete in the global marketplace, we 

must constantly build and renew our intellectual capital. We have little or no control 

over the natural resources within our borders, but we do have control over our 

educational and cultural environment." Wriston was optimistic, however, saying that 

the information revolution gives advantage to superior ideas, and that freedom has 

proved over and over to be a superior idea. When placed in an unrestricted open 

market by new technologies, good ideas hard are to restrict. Wriston also pointed out 

the competitive importance of encoding and decoding. A state that does not master 

codes in the information age is highly vulnerable. Wriston called this the single 

advantage in an information age that cannot be sacrificed. 283 John D. Negroponte, The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of 

America, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2005), 

http://www.dni.gov/NISOctober2005.pdf 

281
prioritized security concerns with the effort of investigation and 

analysis guided by some logic regarding geographic areas to be studied 

(Lake Victoria, France, the Great Outback, etc.) or bothersome 

phenomena (money laundering, terrorism, proliferation, beer, etc.) The 

major agencies (CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, NGA...) grew in a particular 

manner and under special historic conditions. After WWII and 

especially with implementation of the National Security Act of 1947, 

American intelligence took a course that guided it away from academe 

and the community of America’s scholars. This schism is still reflected 

between the lines of the National Intelligence Strategy, which is an 

institutional strategy aimed at the intelligence agencies and its 

members. It is not a national strategy to the extent that it barely 

mentions and does not engage the considerable information-gathering 

parts of the United States government outside the intelligence 

community, the data-thirsty American foreign business enterprise or the 

vast knowledge-creating universe of American academe and its foreign 

partners. 

 The observation made just above about the new capstone 

document of US Intelligence -- that it is inward looking -- is pertinent 

to the assertions of this book because most property knowledge is 

necessarily unclassified and publicly available, or should be. The best 

access to that information is by way of development programs, business 

information and most of all, independent scholarship. This brings us 

back to the nature of an intelligence strategy, something that a science 

professor might recognize as a research methodology, only sized-up 

and dumbed-down. A rationalized intelligence strategy or research 

methodology (or criminal investigation or business model) requires a 

sensible collection plan. That plan considers where useful information 

resides and can best be obtained, determines the various persons or 

agencies that might have the most practicable access, considers how 

those with access can be engaged to acquire the information, and 

determines how the information can be most practicably delivered to 

who need it most. As simple as that sounds, it is not what US 

government intelligence does. The US intelligence community has not 

discovered (or at least has not admitted discovering) that vast amounts 

282
of useable data reside in public administration, business, nongovernmental and academic information files all over the world. It has 

not estimated who has access to the information, who can turn it in to 

relevant knowledge or how it might be delivered. Little proof of this 

ugly criticism is necessary, and not because the intelligence community 

muffed the weapons of mass destruction question as to Iraq. Almost 

any informed observer (in or out of the intelligence business, American 

or otherwise, enemy or not) would agree that the whole quantity of 

relevant knowledge in the world is greater by quantum leaps than that 

which is drawn by way of classified means into government decisionmaking processes. Disdain for a universe of knowledge seems to have 

become a hallmark of the intelligence apparatus. There exists almost 

no statement of national effort to describe the body of openly available 

knowledge for the purpose of converting relevant parts of it in service 

of national security. 

 On December 7, 2004, the Congress of the United States 

passed and the President then signed the Intelligence Reform and 

Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The law states in relevant part the 

following: 

 (a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that-- 

 (1) the Director of National Intelligence should 

 establish an intelligence center for the purpose of 

 coordinating the collection, analysis, production, and 

 dissemination of open source intelligence to elements 

 of the intelligence community; 

 (2) open source intelligence is a valuable source 

 that must be integrated into the intelligence cycle to 

 ensure that United States policymakers are fully and 

 completely informed; and 

 (3) the intelligence center should ensure that each 

 element of the intelligence community uses open source 

intelligence consistent with the mission of such element. 

 (b) Requirement for Efficient Use by Intelligence 

Community of Open-source Intelligence.--The Director of 

283
National Intelligence shall ensure that the intelligence 

community makes efficient and effective use of open-source 

information and analysis.284

As part of the response to this statement of the sense of the Congress, a 

new office opened called the Open Source Center to collect and study 

information that's publicly available around the world.285 

Unfortunately, the tenor, focus, and more importantly, funding, has so 

far been limited to the low-hanging fruit of the Internet, which is the 

centerpiece of current attention.286 This is followed by renewed efforts 

at scouring foreign public news media, a forte of the Foreign Broadcast 

Information Service since before the founding of the CIA. 

 Another section of the same intelligence reform law changes the 

official definition of intelligence: 

Paragraph (5) of section 3 of the National Security Act of 

1947 (50 U.S.C. 401a) is amended to read as follows: 

 ``(5) The terms `national intelligence' and 

 `intelligence related to national security' refer to 

 all intelligence, regardless of the source from which 

 derived and including information gathered within or 

 outside the United States, that-- 

 ``(A) pertains, as determined consistent 

 with any guidance issued by the President, to 

 more than one United States Government agency; 

 

284 Government Printing Office, Section 1052 Open-Source Intelligence, Intelligence 

Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Washington, D.C., House Reports 

Online via GPO Access, 2004 online at < whole text 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/108-796/108-796_intel_reform.html. 285 Katherine Shrader, “New U.S. intel center studies free secrets,” Associated Press 

and SeattlePI.com, November 8, 2005 online at 

<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155AP_Open_Secrets_Center.html. 

286 The latest public estimate regarding the size of the overall annual intelligence 

budget of the United States holds it to be over forty billion dollars. Katherine Shrader, 

Ibid. The author would be surprised to find that the amount spent on open-source 

intelligence exceeded one-tenth of one percent of the total. 

284
 and 

 ``(B) that involves-- 

 ``(i) threats to the United States, 

 its people, property, or interests; 

 ``(ii) the development, 

 proliferation, or use of weapons of 

 mass destruction; or 

 ``(iii) any other matter bearing on 

 United States national or homeland 

 security.'' 

 This is no small semantics. The older definition, while not 

explicitly excluding any type of source, gave room for an interpretation 

of the word satisfactory to those who would have ‘intelligence’ be only 

classified knowledge created and used behind the veil. Everything else 

was something else, and not the business of the intelligence 

community, and that was part of the cultural problem that the sense of 

Congress recognized. 

 If one were to check the Internet for Leavenworth County, to 

use our Kansas example one more time, the county websites would 

reveal more information than had ever before been available so 

inexpensively or from a distance. Still, by clicking the link to the 

county GIS office, you can read, 

GIS has a growing archive of many map 'layers'. Aerial 

photos, (ranging from 1941 to current), property 

boundaries, land use, roads, hydrology, flood zones, 

elevation, municipal boundaries, water districts, school 

districts, tax districts, to name a few. They create and 

maintain new layers as projects develop. They sell hard 

copy paper maps of any layers separate or in any 

combination. ... A person can contact this department 

and get an aerial photo of any property that shows rightof-ways, property lines, creeks and ponds, buildings, 

flood zones, elevation, soil types, land use, etc. Since 

285
this office was created, the information is all kept up-todate. If they don't have the type of map you need, they 

can direct you to who does. 

So if you were to visit the county courthouse and plop down about 

$2,500 you would get thousands of times more data about the county 

than if you limited yourself to the teaser on the Internet. While you 

were in town you could also go to the library and search through a 

number of historical files and, if you had an agreeable reason, go to any 

number of businesses and public offices for more information. The 

information is not hidden because it is tied to public decision-making 

processes -- taxation formulae, zoning, construction and many other 

activities that cannot otherwise function democratically. If you want an 

analysis of what it all means, you’ll probably need to make friends with 

someone who has been dealing with the data in conjunction with the 

county’s problems -- maybe the mayor, senior officers in the police 

department, school board members, or, of course, real estate agents. 

Foreign geographies are not so different, and to the extent they do not 

have as much information as Leavenworth to give or sell, it can be 

developed. The point is this: Most of the most useable information for 

finding people, their wealth, and their habits is in some sort of public 

form. Those forms have not been considered. 

 There exists today a growing worldwide movement, having 

nothing to do whatever with security intelligence, to promote 

transparency of wealth, the central purposes being to expose corruption 

and create the conditions for broad economic development.287 Open 

bank accounts and real estate records are foremost on the list for 

exposure. Formalizing land records not only promotes the creation of 

development capital, it establishes a criminal deterrent. The threat of 

asset forfeiture is a powerful argument for law abidance among those 

who have something to lose. Creating formal, open land records shapes 

geographies for effective intelligence. As land databases dovetail with 

 

287 See, for instance, Transparency International: the coalition against corruption, 

transparency.org online at <http://www.transparency.org/. 

286
other records, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone with an 

appreciable level of wealth to act anti-socially without their wealth 

being subject to forfeiture, and without their family, friends, passport 

numbers, telephone numbers, etc. being exposed to law enforcement. 

The potentially negative consequences for personal liberty and privacy 

are obvious. Tyrannical governments seek the same control, but the 

expansion and formalization of ownership regimes is without doubt the 

long-term option for the control of dangerous behaviors, including 

government behaviors.288

Indiana Jones and direct sensing 

 The section just above stated that in the process of deriving a 

sensible information collection plan one would want to determine 

where the most relevant information resides, who has access and then 

seek to engage them in the process of creating useable knowledge. In 

the twentieth-century evolution of the American intelligence agencies, 

the problem of access took on tremendous weight, faced as the country 

had been by a powerful and threatening opponent with a closed society 

and paranoid government. Sending people to fish around for publicly 

available information in the Soviet Union was not reasonable as a 

mainstay strategy. As a result, technically-based remote sensing 

(something that could feed off a technical fascination anyway) seemed 

to solve many problems, especially when combined with sophisticated 

analytical and search techniques. In the process of mastering and remastering remote sensing, other methods simply withered away from 

the internal institutional culture. Geophysical characteristics of foreign 

places absorbed the lion’s share of attention because they could be 

remotely sensed. The flashlight was on. Any captured cultural and 

event data would be limited to that which could be heard or overheard 

at a distance that obviated the problems of personal access. If 

something were broadcast, wittingly or unwittingly, it might get in. 

 

288 See Geoffrey B. Demarest, Feasibility of Creating a Real Property Database for 

Colombia, Foreign Military Studies Office, available online at 

287
Something more obscure, such as legal characteristics, didn’t have 

much chance of entering the intelligence holdings. Within the agencies 

charged with creating knowledge in support of government decisions 

this has meant that the culture of collection, and therefore the collection 

plan, was based on what persons inside the intelligence apparatus could 

safely learn based on the access they might have. Of course there have 

been spy-managers, but these are particularly expensive assets and so 

their application is in the direction of information that is specifically 

hidden, not the vast bulk of stuff. 

 The effect of a remotely-sensing knowledge culture is still 

evident in the National Intelligence Strategy. It is concerned with what 

the members of the intelligence community can find out on their own, 

and so the Internet becomes but another remote sensor. It is ‘opensource’ because it is the product of that vast world of knowledge not 

created by a securitized machine and from within the agencies. To the 

intelligence insider the Internet is almost synonymous with the opensource world of knowledge (we can add in foreign media emanations) 

because they can go to it ‘directly’ without access problems. It may be 

a difficult psychological step for that insider to admit that the Internet is 

but a small window into a huge world of knowledge to which, by the 

nature of his institution, he has little access. Due to his identity, he 

cannot go into that world efficiently. In other words, because they do 

not have practicable asset into the limitless world of knowledge about 

which the Internet hints, intelligence professionals tend to deny 

institutionally the size and value of the ‘unclassified’ knowledgecreating world.289 For the cause of property this is very not good. 

Property information is dull in incremental form, and not subject to 

much remote acquisition, even while more and more information 

appears on the web. As I hope I have argued forcefully enough, 

property information and the strength of a society’s social contract are 

so intimately tied that to not interpret that information is tantamount to 

not understanding the society. Besides, property information renders 

 

289 See, for instance, William M. Nolte, Rethinking War and Intelligence, in Anthony 

D. Mc Ivor, ed., Rethinking the Principles of War (Annapolis; Naval Institute Press, 

2005), pp. 419-439. 

288
its greatest probative value when considered in the context of other 

cultural information. Geophysical characteristics of the world are less 

than half the puzzle. 

 To limit the number and power of outlaw criminal organizations 

in the world, the wealth of those entities must be exposed. Movements 

that promote the elimination of anonymity of wealth are therefore 

helpful. If individuals and organizations are to achieve any level of 

power sufficient to threaten on a transnational level, they must 

necessarily amass wealth, and that wealth they must preserve and 

convert in one way or another if they are to implement their own 

strategies. The first purpose of brigandage is to amass wealth. The 

most stable and desirable form of wealth for the brigand is real estate, 

especially real estate located in geographies where the rules of 

ownership have been brought under the sway of the brigand. For this 

reason, the call for transparency of wealth should become one of the 

centerpieces of United States’ defense diplomacy in every part of the 

world. Wealth records, such as land registries, aircraft registries, bank 

accounts, or insurance policies can be made transparent. 

 As a useful historical note, tying together the evolution of 

civilization and the purposes of mundane records, another look at 

England is in order. The Domesday Book was a property record 

compiled beginning in1086 by order of William the Conqueror to 

assess the land and other wealth owned in England. “‘there was no 

single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one 

pig which was left out’. The grand and comprehensive scale on which 

the Domesday survey took place...and the irreversible nature of the 

information collected led people to compare it to the Last Judgement, 

or 'Doomsday', described in the Bible....”290 The book, now over 900 

years old, is still in the British national archives. A website on the 

subject states; 

 

290 See, domesdaybook.co.uk, “The Domesday Book Online,” domesdaybook.co.uk, 

online at <http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/faqs.html#8. 

289
The Domesday Book provides extensive records of 

landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they 

owned, how many people occupied the land (villagers, 

smallholders, free men, slaves, etc.), the amounts of 

woodland, meadow, animals, fish and ploughs on the 

land (if there were any) and other resources, any 

buildings present (churches, castles, mills, salthouses, 

etc.), and the whole purpose of the survey - the value of 

the land and its assets, before the Norman Conquest, 

after it, and at the time of Domesday. Some entries also 

chronicle disputes over who held land, some mention 

customary dues that had to be paid to the king, and 

entries for major towns include records of traders and 

number of houses.291

William knew what he was doing, but he was hardly the first to 

emphasize the importance of wealth records. Cuneiform in clay, one of 

the earliest forms of writing, dating from the 4th century BC, was 

invented exactly for the purpose of recording wealth, including real and 

chattel property.292 The title of this book alludes to the application of 

technology to good governance as evident in the statutes of fraud. 

Need being the mother of invention, writing itself seems to have come 

about with the need for orderly records of wealth. The lesson of human 

history regarding the basics of civilization and effective governance 

will hopefully be consulted in order to judge today’s projects and 

programs aimed at “governance.” If such a project or program is not 

based on precise, comprehensive and transparent records of wealth, it 

not only misses the time-proven opportunity to apply technology to the 

challenge of human conflict, it ignores the human cultural record. 

 

291 Ibid. 

292 See C.B.F. Hooker, “Cuneiform,” in Trustees of the British Museum, Reading the 

Past, (London: The British Museum Press, 1990), pp.15-74. 

290
GIS 

GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems, or perhaps 

Geographic Information Science. Sometimes the ‘G’ turns up as 

georeferenced or geospatial and the ‘I’ as intelligence but the overall 

meaning remains intact regardless. The term is thrown around freely to 

encompass the physical and organizational technologies that together 

allow data on every kind of phenomenon to be organized in database 

form, perhaps to be visualized in accurate spatial and temporal ratios on 

a computer screen, and made subject to calculations and analyses 

otherwise unavailable to the human mind. The GIS technological 

revolution is as important to academics and to intelligence as is the 

Internet. Tens of thousands of licenses for commercial GIS software 

are sold all around the world to academic, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, which are using the technology in 

combination with GPS-derived data to create massive files of precise 

information on everything from endangered species to real property 

ownership. 

GIS is the certain future of intelligence, as well as the 

technological/ methodological key to a universe of information in the 

files of foreign public administrative units, non-governmental 

organizations, foreign agencies and enterprises, and in the best-practice 

research efforts of university scholars. This universe of information, 

almost wholly unclassified, has within it the material needed to name 

foreign malefactors, tie one to another, and to trace their wealth. It is 

the same tool, and the same body of knowledge that allows checks on 

tax equity, specifies the effects of and responsibility for environmental 

harm, allows optimal traffic design and so on. GIS is raising standards 

of social science research, making the research of disparate disciplines 

compatible for comparison and enrichment, and allowing research to be 

more easily tested for veracity and scholarly care. GIS is the technical 

dimension of a revolution in public knowledge that the US federal 

government has not yet applied to questions of national security. As 

yet, almost all of the extensive investment in GIS by the various 

government agencies involved in US national security still revolves 

291
around the precise location and representation of geophysical 

phenomena. 

A consolidating set of analytical and presentation protocols is 

also emerging in the wake of recognition of the suite of technologies 

associated with the term GIS. Consensus as to what constitutes a bestpractice in GIS methodological science to some degree depends on the 

specific practical application or on theoretical preferences and 

traditions within a given academic discipline. Perhaps because the 

explosion of GIS is occurring within and as part of the accelerating 

pace of globalization, the currents of GIS knowledge and method are 

highly internationalized. 

For decades now, the US military has taught as doctrine a 

process of information management, visualization and analysis known 

as Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB). Its purpose is to 

define the battle environment, describe the effects of that environment, 

describe threats within it, and predict the likely courses of action of 

those threats. GIS is applied to a much greater an more complex set of 

variables and endeavors, many not associated with a threat, but, in the 

end, GIS is the way civilians spell IPB. 

Are the goals, resources and methods applied by the United 

States and its allies to conflictive or unstable foreign countries 

reconciled? No, because the goals of conflict resolution are not 

matched to the resources and methods used to achieve them. Very little 

has been done by the United States to create, perfect or protect formal 

property around the world. Are the military efforts applied by the 

United States in internal warfare situations (insurgency, “low intensity 

conflict” guerrilla war, etc) in consonance with the essence of strategy -

- to block the enemy leaders’ lines of communication? To some degree 

no doubt, but this could be greatly improved by incorporation of police 

and academic information cultures on a military scale. Property 

information that paints in detail the relationship between persons, 

places and times is wholly inadequate, but could be radically improved. 

292
Property Strategy 

"Individual liberty is individual power, 

and as the power of a community 

is a mass compounded of individual powers, 

the nation which enjoys the most freedom 

must necessarily be in proportion 

to its numbers the most powerful nation."293

 John Quincy Adams 

"Strategic culture...is very much the product of 

geopolitical factors as they are locally interpreted."294 

 Colin S. Gray

If foreign powers were to occupy a place like Bosnia with 

military force to gain basic possession of terrain, then turn that 

possession over to whom it felt were rightful owners, could the 

occupying powers then leave without possession reverting to the 

unworthy? The answer is maybe. Occupying missions might wish to 

give ownership of land to a favored group, but can they establish a 

stable system of rules regarding that ownership, and a stable 

psychological environment regarding who has what rights in what 

land? In the case of Bosnia the results were not all negative, the good 

part relating directly to a real estate strategy: 

“This situation has significantly improved since 2000, 

however. The Property Implementation Plan, which 

featured a more vigorous implementation of established 

 

293 In a letter to James Lloyd, 1 October 1822, as reported online at 

http://quotes.telemanage.ca/quotes.nsf/quotes/63377956d94ac5ef85256df8001c816d 

294 Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: The University of 

Kentucky Press, 1988) p. 51. 

293
property laws, greatly facilitated the return process 

between 2000 and 2002. The coordinated work of 

OHR, SFOR, the UN Mission in Bosnia and 

Herzegovina, the OSCE, and UNHCR has been the key 

element in creating an environment conducive to 

returns.”295

Neither Mackinder nor Spykman wrote of geographic areas as 

property with divisible rights. They mentioned cultural data as entries 

on lists of factors--like population or strategic materials, but their 

geopolitics assumed that whole geographies were lost or gained in 

gulps. Strategic materials and populations were obtained or subdued 

through territorial control. It is a whole-fee approach to property 

inspired by litmus test sovereign entities. Perhaps the threat posed by 

the Soviet Heartland is not gone forever, and anyway, more states exist 

that seem interested in gobbling up other lands. This fact demands 

respect. Geopolitics is not dead. However, it is the world of diffuse 

ownership and particularized power that promises to occupy the 

majority of spies and diplomats day to day. Most places demand a 

strategy whose theoretical roots show all the knotty twists of property 

relationships. In fact, the United States has at times formulated 

property-oriented strategies, usually a version of land reform. Land 

reform has been embraced in one form or another by the contenders in 

many conflicts throughout the world. We can ascribe unevenness of 

results to incomplete understanding of the ownership environment. 

Geopolitics does not analyze geography in terms of its basic human 

value of rights and duties, and it can fail miserably when a conflict 

involves multiple, divided and shared rights, or fractured and 

overlapping owner identities and partially competing ideologies. These 

complicated ownership environments are the rule, rather than the 

exception, in the 21st century, globalized world. 

 

295 James Dobbins, et. al. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq.

Santa Monica: Rand, 2003, p. 99.

294
On occasion, development of the property regime has been a 

military mission. The military has not only had to secure basic 

possession of territory against a hostile opponent, it has been asked to 

establish the social conditions that would allow itself to withdraw. 

Occupations of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and part of Germany are the 

largest US examples in the twentieth century. The U.S. military held 

possession, but at least in Korea and Japan, also restructured the 

ownership regime, changing ideology and creating owners. In the 

Japanese case, the goal was not stabilizing ownership claims among 

competing ethnicities as might be the case in an area such as Bosnia. 

Instead, the question was one of making the population of Japan more 

owner and less owned; in other words, democratizing. 

Newtonian logic--internalized by Clausewitz and applied to 

military strategy--still rules over a wide range of military math, but the 

new, beyond-Newton science of chaos and swarms requires something 

beyond Clausewitz, something that responds to non-linear, temporal, 

non-state and partially state challenges. Seen as a changing concert of 

rights and duties associated with parcels of geography at the local level, 

property appears as a first key toward understanding the new strategic 

geography. In The Geopolitics of Super Power, quoted at the 

beginning of this section, Gray favorably invokes the influence on 

America security policy of Mackinder’s heartland and Nicholas 

Spykman’s rimland theories. Reading his book a decade and a half 

later makes one strain to remember the strategic context in which 

Gray’s advice was so plausible. "Even without a great statesman at the 

helm--though with policy makers who are, one hopes, familiar with the 

ideas of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman--Americans should 

be able to remember that the Soviet Union is going to be an enemy for 

a long time to come; that Soviet power needs to be distracted by major 

military tasks on the ground in Eurasia; and that Soviet seapower 

should be denied access at will to the world’s oceans."296 There may 

yet be a ring of truth there, but the inertia of this thinking created a 

 

296 Gray, supra note 294, p. 199. 

295
mismatch between the theoretical underpinnings of American strategic 

policy and the kinds of challenges that the United States most often 

takes up. 

One can see the powerful effect of entrenched military thinking. 

Environments where complicated owner relationships need adjustment 

simply do not lend themselves to blitzkriegs. Police work means 

suspects and trespasses, rather than enemies and invasions. The United 

States can easily expand its efforts to deny terrorists, brigands and 

subversives anonymity and impunity. This can be done by 

reconciliation of police, military and academic investigative cultures, 

and as part of that reconciliation the creation and sharing of databases 

that maintain non-geophysical information at a much greater resolution 

of detail than is the case today. Global security and world peace now 

depend upon, and United States foreign policy can promote, the 

transparency of wealth worldwide. Bank accounts, corporate interests, 

real estate, resource licenses and concessions, etc. can be made visible. 

As the threat to civilization becomes increasingly complex, we are 

obliged to use advanced technologies to expose concentrations of 

wealth that can be transmuted into instruments of hate. 

Hohfeldian analysis of conflicts is not complicated. It requires: 

Identification of all important rights and duties 

potentially at issue; 

Naming all the possibly interested identities 

related to each right and each duty; 

Determination of or assumption regarding the 

preferred and acceptable goals of each 

interested identity; 

Measuring the resources that each of the 

identities could bring to bear on the issue; 

Anticipating likely outcomes under a variety 

of circumstances; and 

Estimating the costs and risks of distinct 

courses of action. 

296
Each step requires knowledge about the rules of the relevant 

social contracts, details regarding the rights and duties, and the cultural 

habits and expectations of the potential identities. It, like big 

geopolitical analysis, seeks measurement of the relative power of 

potential contenders. This process of measuring power is also tied to 

property theory. 

Measuring Property 

At one place or another throughout the text of this book, the 

explanations, examples or quotations decorating the sections allude to 

the close association among the terms ‘property,’ ‘power,’ ‘wealth’ and 

‘ownership.’ Since the immediately foregoing paragraphs reject 

mainstream strategic analysis and power measurement, and at the same 

time accept the idea that measurement of power is a good idea, then 

there arises a responsibility to state a better method. That better 

method, like Hohfeldian analysis, is based on property, and it 

necessarily has two aspects. The first is a method for measuring the 

quality of the property regime within a country or other geographical 

area. Included in this measurement falls the degree to which a given 

people participates in property world-wide -- perhaps meaning its level 

of globalization. The second is the measurement of power of 

individual identities that our Hohfeldian analyisis identifies as 

potentially mixed up in a specific conflict over specific rights and 

duties. 

Beginning with the measurement of the quality of a property 

regime, we can apply an assessment methodology, an instrument 

applicable across societies and geographies that could compare the 

developmental status of property regimes -- not just as they concern the 

exposure of capital, but as they relate to security and freedom. Such an 

index would include elements recognizable to the geographer, cadastral 

bureaucrat, real estate agent, county sheriff and property lawyer -- and 

to the economist or military strategist. Recalling the definition of 

property asserted in Chapter One, that... 

297
Property is a contract between society and owners that 

recognizes preferential rights and correlated duties; the 

strength of the social contract judged by the quality of 

its observance, which depends on the quality of the 

evidence of ownership and on the capacity of both 

owners and the society (usually by way of some 

government) to act on conclusions logically drawn from 

the evidence... 

We can derive a universal instrument to measure of the quality of a 

property system as a vehicle for prosperity, freedom and peace. 

(measurement of the total value of a polity’s ownership is a separate 

challenge that will be considered further below). The measurement 

will follow the three streams suggested by the definition: 

1., the quality of the evidence delineating rights, duties and the 

identity of owners (this is sometimes referred to as clarity of 

allocation); 

2., the capacity of owners (or claimants) and the government to 

act on conclusions logically drawn from the evidence (this is in 

some contexts referred to as ease of alienability or as security 

from trespass depending on the mix of owner rights and 

government duties involved); and 

3., the conduciveness to peace of the basic rules delimiting the 

contract (this we at times refer to as liberality). 

 A detailed version of the instrument is included as an Appendix. 

The method does not support a mathematical comparison of one 

property regime to another, but it will allow researchers to build toward 

an objective comparison of property regimes. 

The quality of the property regime internal to a polity will have 

a strong relationship to the nature of personal and business dealings that 

a people have with the rest of the world. A property-focused set of 

power elements can be used to measure the relative strength of entities 

298
not contiguous to or synonymous with country-identity or of the overall 

power of a country as it deals with the outside world. This is what 

leads us to the second kind of power measurement that supports 

Hohfeldian analysis of conflicts. The following components are 

proposed for the calculation of power of namable identities using a 

property lens: cohesiveness of owner identity, internal system of 

ownership rules, leadership, wealth, and technology. 

 The first component, and the starting point for calculating 

power in a given circumstance, is cohesiveness of owner identity. 

When the United States citizenry is powerfully committed as citizens of 

the United States to do something, the power of the U.S. government is 

very great. This is the national morale listed by Spanier and it is the 

upshot of Ray Cline’s politectonic essay. Resolve is the start point for 

application of any wealth that might be brought to bear on a problem, 

and cohesiveness of owner identity is the source of common resolve.297 

Resolve of the Venezuelan population to support the socialist 

revolutionary pretensions of their president Hugo Chavez may be falter, 

but apparently remains quite high in comparison with revolutionary 

movements in other countries in the past. How much communal 

resolve might be available to a post- Fidel Cuban leader is a great 

unknown on which sets much of the speculative distance between 

predictions regarding the future of that polity. 

 

297 Resolve, morale, will, and cohesiveness are closely related. The author has chosen 

to distinguish cohesiveness as the strength of a common identity as owners. The 

connotation is one of breadth and depth of emotion regarding a shared identity. A 

powerful feeling of solidarity as Americans gives an American president as a national 

leader, great potential power. Resolve and will carry a connotation more closely 

related to perseverance and willingness to sacrifice to achieve an end. They are less 

closely associated with strength of identity and solidarity. The meaning of morale, 

used especially by military people, seems to reside somewhere in between. One 

might say that the leader must translate cohesiveness into resolve in the face of a 

given project. If his organization, group, unit, or nation has high morale, the task is 

easy. The semantic differences are of secondary importance, and any overlap or lack 

of discipline in their use is of little harm to the principal points about national power. 

299
Next on the component list for a property-based measurement 

of power is the system of ownership rules (which in broadest terms can 

be termed ideology). If the rules of ownership, the ideology that guides 

the corporate will in a given circumstance are deeply and broadly held, 

such legitimacy lends power. The United States enters most 

international competitions from a position of advantage because its 

basic values are broadly acceptable. However, the government of the 

United States can distance itself from this source of national power in 

two ways. First, even if Americans begin with great national 

cohesiveness regarding an international issue, cohesiveness and resolve 

will diminish if the United States government appears to promote rules 

that are not clear or not fair. In other words, resolve will collapse to the 

extent that the ownership environments produced (or to be produced) 

by the government’s objective does not satisfy Americans’ beliefs. 

Second, the United States government must appear to act within the 

system of American ownership rules. The government must appear to 

act according to the laws of the United States, the customs and mores 

of the nation, and to some degree international law. In other words, 

one way the government can undermine national power is related to its 

objectives, the other is related to the manner in which it proceeds.298 

 

298 Large-scale American involvement in Vietnam began in front of the force of great 

national will. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution evidenced national resolve, but the 

resolution was perhaps achieved by dissemblance on the part of President Lyndon 

Johnson as to the details of the Tonkin Gulf incident.298 At any rate, national 

cohesiveness began to dissolve, albeit several years later, in two broad ways. Policy 

objectives (the ownership environment that was to be gained or preserved) were not 

sufficiently legitimate according to the perceptions of a growing number of 

Americans. The authoritarian regime of South Vietnam did not appear sufficiently 

noble to deserve American sacrifice, and the importance of Vietnam to other aspects 

of American ownership was seemingly insubstantial. In addition, the manner in 

which the United States prosecuted the war was increasingly portrayed as in violation 

of American moral standards. The My Lai massacre became emblematic of the 

perceived military behavior that determined this portrayal. In retrospect, the quantity 

of public resolve to wage the Vietnam War was great considering the limited direct 

U.S. property interests. Geopolitical arguments were laid that control of Vietnam 

would lead to Soviet control of Southeast Asia, threaten the United States’ ASEAN 

allies and finally result in loss of open passage through the Straits of Molucca, a key 

ocean choke point. Oil resources of Indonesia and throughout the region would also 

300
For Americans, national identity and the basic system of fairness 

(manifested in concepts like due process and equal protection) are 

probably overlapped more than for other national identities that might 

be glued together much less by ideology than by other cultural factors. 

The owner identity of a group such as Al Queda may be all but 

indistinguishable from its internal system of ownership rules (a set of 

Islamic-cult precepts). Comparing the two identities, American vice Al 

Qaeda jihadist, the United States holds immensely more power. Its 

ownership rules bind in common enterprises a broad range of humans 

and human experiences, while the narrow interpretation of Islam 

holding Al Qaeda together in jihad is ridged and not broadly attractive. 

A third component of power is leadership. Whatever the 

identity of a group of owners, whatever the cohesiveness of their 

identity, and however compelling the system of ownership rules, 

leadership initiative and vision must be present in order for power to 

have any active meaning. Effective leadership builds cohesiveness, 

translates cohesiveness into resolve, and preserves resolve by ensuring 

that goals and actions are in consonance with the accepted system of 

ownership. Adolf Hitler was an effective leader in this sense--he 

identified the keys to building German cohesiveness and to turning it 

into aggressive resolve. His property enterprise was not subtle or 

complex. Aryans were rightful owners, others were not, and some, like 

the Jews, were not fit even as property. Germans, according to Nazi 

vision, had a right to more land, and had a right to own other peoples as 

part of it. Hitler worked to maintain cohesiveness, constructed a 

system of ownership rules that fed on and satisfied a national mindset, 

and translated German resolve into specific territorial goals. His 

 

be lost to communist exploitation. Another Communist victory would embolden 

Communist radicals in other parts of the world, and would embolden the Soviets to 

support them. But these arguments, to the extent they were credible, lost importance 

to the American public. The United States fought for over a decade expending more 

than fifty-four thousand lives. Attempted strategies did not produce a favorable 

conclusion within the time made available by the existing quantity of American 

resolve. The North Vietnamese strategies did. 

301
system of ownership rules was fueled by an arrogance that misjudged 

the resolve of the rest of the world. Hitler’s leadership might have been 

sustainable if Nazi pretensions regarding ownership had not been so 

exaggerated. In the Ukraine, for instance, German domination might 

have been accepted as a favorable alternative to the enslaving Soviet 

rule. The Germans seized a lot of ground, but they could not 

incorporate enough demography into the shared ownership identity. 

They increased the amount of land but not the number of owners. They 

therefore could not increase the amount of potential resolve favoring 

the national project. German failure to understand the dynamics of 

ownership doomed the Third Reich. 

Wealth is obviously a component of power. Wealth is 

determined to an extent by physical geography, which is to say, basic 

factors such as territorial space, location, minerals, water, or population 

– the preoccupation of geopoliticians. A geoproperty understanding of 

wealth goes beyond the natural bounty to include results of 

entrepreneurial skill, conquest, work habit and innovation. Wealth is 

power only when it is applied to some project. The United States 

enjoys so much national wealth that it can be led into endeavors even 

when the national will is limited and divided. With great national 

wealth, average leaders can successfully undertake projects that do not 

enjoy a high degree of resolve. Great leadership can make up for a lack 

of basic geographic wealth. Genghis Khan, with limited geographical 

resources, determined to conquer all of Asia. Wealth alone is not 

power, but it is property. Wealth as an element of power is both means 

and end. It is also the most important clue regarding the holders of 

power since wealth, more than cohesiveness, resolve, leadership skill or 

ideology, can be pinpointed, traced, counted, followed, ruined and 

confiscated. 

Technological capacity is well recognized as a primary element 

in a society’s ability to compete strategically. The author lists it 

separately as a component of power because it translates basic 

geographic factors into wealth, but does not fit well as basic geography. 

Technology is an aspect of culture that, in property competitions 

302
between societies, invites comparisons of relative advancement or 

primitiveness. A society with a changing technology tends to be 

dominant, other factors of power being more or less equal. Technology 

could be absorbed, in another reduction of the components of national 

power, into economic or military capacity or into wealth. Inventions 

not only impinge on the value of property, and on the ability to gain or 

protect property, they also at times create or constitute property. An 

important invention creates not just new, fungible wealth; it creates 

new sets of rights and duties, as well as new competitions and new 

owner relationships. Weapons are specialized technologies that help 

physically coerce, capture or kill people, and they are used to gain and 

protect property. Weapons technologies will be considered separately 

below because they are centrally important to the development of 

military strategies. Technology of all kinds paces the relative 

competition of modern states and yet, aside from weaponry, little 

scholarly work has been done on the effects or meaning of uneven 

technological progress as it relates to international conflict. As for 

entities apart from the nation states, technologies are more often 

organizational than physical, and often second-hand, but consider again 

Al Qaeda. The use of airliners as bombs, of individual suicide bombers 

or improvisation of remotely detonated bombs has been a hallmark of 

that organization’s enterprise. 

Military might, like diplomacy, is an instrument (as opposed to 

a basic element or component) of national power.299 The military 

 

299 Some explanations of national power list the military as a basic element rather than 

as an instrument. When confronted by an international event or situation that requires 

or could benefit by the application or threat of physical force, the nation must 

arguably have some force on-hand. The technology, physical and organizational, of 

modern military force demands a development and procurement time so great that it 

is not feasible to wait for an enemy before determining to acquire a military 

instrument with which to respond. Also, the status of a nation-state seems so closely 

tied to the existence of a national military that the two concepts, state and military, 

often seem inseparable. The designation of military capacity as a basic element of 

power causes a new range of semantic problems, and twists arguments back in the 

loop of tautologies. For instance, does military power include police power? It is 

more than a word problem. Institutionally, many nations have national police or 

303
instrument is a product of demographics, wealth, technology and 

leadership, and its formation is a manifestation of resolve on the part of 

the collective identity to defend or arrogate property. 

Military technology is more than weaponry or intelligence and 

communication hardware. It includes organizational and doctrinal 

innovation. Organizational change seems often to lag behind 

significant changes in weapons technology and behind the environment 

of threats. Historical examples are legion, the tank being one of the 

most cited twentieth century example. The French, unable to 

comprehend the nexus between the machine and its best method of 

employment, suffered rapid defeat in WWII as a result. Even today, 

with a United States military that prides itself on technological 

transformation, the importance of some innovations is hard to digest. 

While the civilian world races to employ GIS to map in detail every 

aspect of culture from the varied pronunciation of words to political 

opinions, purchase habits and of course all manner of property rights 

and duties, the military to this point has only seen GIS as tool to 

precisely catalog physical features. An especially curious and 

debilitating phenomenon, it seems to ride hand in hand with a 

predisposition for thinking of intelligence capability as a separate entity 

of power apart from military power 

 

 Before leaving the measurement of power, the most presently 

relevant aspect of a property understanding of power deserves to be 

highlighted, repeated and underlined. Property pertains equally and 

with little adjustment to transnational, international, multinational, 

supranational or un-national entities of any kind that might wield power 

in any way for good or evil. This is of ultimate significance because 

 

paramilitary forces under their defense departments. More important still is the 

question of intelligence. The capacity to know, under the rubric that knowledge is 

power, has fallen more and more to separate, civilian intelligence organizations. In 

many countries these apparatuses may be more significant than the military as 

supporting columns of the state. Some nations, meanwhile, have their entire 

intelligence apparatus under military control. 

304
the measurement of power according to property theory supposes the 

search for data pertaining especially to wealth and to the names and 

interrelationships that define ownership and claimant groups. To better 

find these signs of power, related or unrelated to the nation states as 

generally understood by the power-balance practitioners, the 

implementation of laws and social expectations that lead to the creation 

of transparent records constitutes shaping of the environment for useful 

intelligence. This intelligence is born almost entirely of cultural 

processes, and is perfected through creation of georeferenced databases 

of phenomena that rarely present a physical signature detectable by 

remote sensors. 

305
306
Chapter Five: What is to be Done? 

Create property .......................................................... 309

Learn Geography ....................................................... 313 

Produce property knowledge .................................... 319 

Build national security law, international law ......... 323 

What should not be done ........................................... 326 

Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and other places .............. 335 

Restatement ................................................................ 348

Chapter Five: What is to be Done? 

“You can always count on Americans to do the right 

thing - after they've tried everything else.” 

 Winston Churchill 

 

307
Improvement of foreign property systems is a ‘right thing’ to 

do, and could usefully be made a principal column of plans for a 

peaceful world. As such, the promotion of formal property deserves 

mental, emotional and practical commitment equivalent to that assigned 

to human rights prosecutions or the mounting of fair elections. Foreign 

diplomacy, security strategy, intelligence planning and developmental 

efforts will profit by incorporating, if not founding themselves on, the 

spread and growth of formal property regimes. To the extent this 

formalization of property has been achieved in Iraq, the social contract 

there will have been readied to succeed on its own. To the extent this is 

accomplished during Cuba’s transition away from the Castro tyranny, 

Cuba will transition toward being a member of the ‘First World. 

 Chapter One introduced property as an evolved economicjurisprudential-technological institution that has ameliorated and 

resolved conflict inside Western societies. It asserted formal property 

as a necessary precondition for peaceful society elsewhere. Chapter 

Two generalized global threats in property terms, and stated why 

development of property everywhere, and especially in the most 

troubled lands, translates into greater security for the United States. 

Chapter Three described Colombia, where the property regime has 

been stunted and malformed by competing ideological streams 

regarding how to distribute wealth and power, but where improvements 

of the property regime immediately and permanently contribute to 

prospects of peace. Chapter Four presented a way by which US 

national security strategy, including military strategy could more 

effectively respond to the changed nature of the global security 

environment, fully incorporating property rights concepts. In this final 

chapter the arguments are recapped and some related prescriptions 

drawn. First among these prescriptions is that the United States take a 

more energetic lead in promoting and demanding the creation of formal 

property systems, a recommendation that is followed immediately by a 

second --that foreign affairs decisions of all kinds be informed by 

complete and accurate property intelligence. 

308
Create property 

 “As the farmers planted their barbed-wire quadrangles 

across the range, they came into ferocious conflict with 

the range cowboy. Such a battle could only have one 

outcome. The entire edifice of the law -- and with it 

every sheriff and U.S. marshal who ever became a 

white-hatted movie hero -- was on the side of property; 

in other words, of those whose land was measured and 

entered on a plat.”300

Andro Linklater in Measuring America

 It is one thing to assert that a property line between two farms -- 

mapped, monumented and properly registered at the county courthouse 

-- can serve the cause of peace between the two farmers. It is another 

to say that a legal and technical system generalizing formal property 

will help secure internal peace for a society; and it is yet another thing 

to claim that formalizing property around the world will make the 

United States and the world at large more secure. Nevertheless, that is 

the point. Within a democratic society, the precise comprehensive and 

transparent expression of everyday rights and duties is indispensable if 

trespass is to be controlled. By logical extension the same careful, 

explicit delineation of rights and duties is a necessary precondition for 

peace in an ever more ‘globalizing’ society. The security strategy of 

the United States should feature the creation and formalization of 

property as a central component. Military, diplomatic, intelligence and 

developmental sub-strategies should each explicitly commend and 

aggressively implement the improvement of property regimes, 

especially in those parts of the world most prone to the spawning of 

incivility. 

 

300 Andro Linklater. Measuring America: How and Untamed Wilderness Shaped the 

United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy. New York: Walker & 

Company, 2002, p. 235. 

309
 Hernando De Soto and his team of researchers exhaustively 

documented that for the poor of the third world to advance materially, 

they need to be able to create capital, and that in most under-developed 

countries they cannot. The reason for this inability to create capital can 

be found in a lack of formalized property regimes. De Soto’s 

perspective is a powerful, seemingly unavoidable challenge to any 

developmental strategy or project that does not embrace the question of 

broad-based capital formation. Furthermore, it is fast creating an 

intellectual assumption that availability of reliable land ownership data 

(transparency) is a necessary condition for the success of economic 

development projects.301 As a result of a growing acceptance of the 

cadastre as an indispensable institution and organizational technology, 

some new money is being aimed at extending and modernizing 

cadastral systems as well as the extension of formal ownership. The 

scale of the effort in most places, however, is ridiculously inadequate 

and far out of proportion with the size of investment in other projects 

whose failure is all but predestined by the incomplete reaches of the 

property regime. 

 As the importance of formalized property for capital formation 

and economic opportunity becomes, properly, a conventional wisdom, 

so should the formalization of property become a pillar of practical 

theory in the areas of conflict avoidance and resolution. In this vein, a 

USAID initiative stemming from the Summit of the Americas, the 

Inter-Summit Property Systems Initiative (IPSI), calls for the 

governments of the Americas to incorporate alternative dispute 

resolution mechanisms into their plans. It is understood that successful 

local judicial and non-judicial resolution of property conflicts is 

dependent on reliable, open information regarding ownership. 

Assuring the fidelity and permanence of public records is an obvious 

 

301 On the subject of public information transparency, see Luz Estella Nagle, The 

Search for Accountability and Transparency in Plan Colombia: Reforming Judicial 

Institutions - Again, (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

War College, 2002). “Transparency and accountability are essential to good 

governance. They will discourage nepotism and curb the bestowing of favors on 

family and friends.” Ibid. p. 8. 

310
start-point for building systems for quieting title (ending dispute over 

ownership by court decision).302 However, while USAID is greatly to 

be credited with some of the most forward-looking efforts in property 

formalization, many efforts are predicated on building a tax base for 

local government and almost none of the programs demand a proof of 

product in the form of transparent information about owner rights and 

duties. A justifying argument may be that the agency must work 

through local national governments, and that improving tax bases is 

naturally attractive to these governments. It is unfortunate that the tax 

hook has become a driver of what should be an engine for ensuring 

government responsibility and accountability. Hopefully American 

programs to build property rights will move toward an impulse to 

impose obligation on government and protect the rights of owners, 

rather than the reverse. The AID programs also appear oblivious to or 

even disdainful of the powerful law enforcement utilities potentially 

derived from the process of formalization -- this in spite of the fact that 

creating a greater level of overall community security is a supposed 

centerpiece goal of assistance efforts, and in spite of the fact that 

greater security would have a positive effect on land values and, in 

turn, the tax base. Often lost in the analysis of land formalization 

economic assistance efforts is the essential fact that it is exactly the 

exposure of ownership slices (the defeat of impunity through the 

reduction of anonymity) that gives ‘ transparency’ its worth in the 

social contract. 

Creation of formalized and maintained land records offers a 

variety of forensic possibilities related to the illicit use of terrain by 

large criminal enterprises and to smaller, but well funded, terrorist 

organizations. To obtain this forensic benefit, foreign records must 

above all be transparent, and transparency of records has not been a 

principal goal or requirement of US development programs, or of US 

diplomacy. Since transparency of ownership records is what, in the 

final analysis, gives the social contract its long-term strength, this 

 

302 See “Virtual Office for the Inter-Summit Property Systems Initiative” 

<http://www.property-registration.org/Documents/IPSI.htm. 

311
failure to emphasize transparency is an essential error. Real property 

and real property records have also not been a subject of US foreign 

intelligence except in the most anecdotal manner, in spite of the 

immense quantity of information available and its obvious utility. The 

logic flow bears repeating: 

-- There is a positive correlation between formal land 

ownership and material progress; 

-- There exists a complementary relationship between 

formal land ownership and social peace; 

-- Informally owned and unregulated land ownership 

favors illicit land use and violence; 

-- Property manipulation is a dimension of outlaw 

political and military strategies that has been overlooked 

by America’s foreign intelligence; 

-- Collection of property information on a strategic scale 

is practicable because of new technologies; and 

-- Property information powerfully supports police, 

military, developmental, economic, and diplomatic 

decisions and programs. 

The best human and financial capital that the developed 

countries can expend on less-developed countries will be on the 

creation of property, that is, to impel the entire process of establishing 

and solidifying an agreement about agreements regarding rights and 

duties associated with places and resources. As a practical matter, 

creating property means interviewing, surveying, monumenting, 

mapping, registering, filing, digitizing and web-mounting data, as well 

as parallel efforts to draft and pass laws conducive to the creation of 

stable reliable evidence, and to consequential enforcement of decisions 

derived from the evidence. The utility of this process of systematically 

building and using evidence of the exercise of rights related to places is 

not limited to dry civil law cases involving some plaintiff arguing over 

a road easement to a parking garage. It is also applicable to the 

identification and location of organized criminals, terrorists insurgents, 

etc. Creating property means building a foundation for social peace 

312
and prosperity. It also and simultaneously means preparing the 

battlefield for intelligence. 

Learn geography 

“War is God’s way of teaching geography”

 Variously attributed 

Among the sub-themes urged in this book is the return of 

Geography to a position of prominence as an academic discipline for 

guiding foreign affairs and international studies. It is a bandwagon 

observation really, since the new technologies conglomerated under 

techno-abbreviations like GIS, GPS or ESRI are forcing the ascendance 

of geography in universities all over the world.303 Institutions closest 

to questions of security and defense, however, may find themselves 

generation behind the curve if they do not react appropriately to the 

new math. The United States military, for instance, has for decades 

encouraged its officers to seek masters’ degrees in business 

administration, or perhaps education or sometimes history, but almost 

never foreign languages or geography. How this happened is food for 

its own essay, but the effect is evident: few books on military 

geography have been written in the past thirty years. This may be 

about to change. As Jerry Dobson, President of the American 

Geographical Society, puts it, “Society cannot afford to continue 

“business as usual” with regard to geography and GIS, but remedies 

will require corrective actions as dramatic as those accorded to physics 

a 

 

303 GIS stands for Geographic Information System, Geographic Information Science, 

or sometimes Geo-referenced Information System. GPS stands for Global 

Positioning Satellite or Global Positioning Satellite System. ESRI, which stands for 

Environmental Systems Research Institute, is not itself a system or innovation, but the 

name of the leading commercial firm dealing in GIS software and science promotion. 

The brand name is becoming synonymous with its software family of “Arc” products, 

such as ArcView®

 and ArcGIS®, which are the standard software platforms for 

practical GIS work. 

313
and nuclear engineering after World War II.”304

Once at the forefront of both strategy and US foreign 

intelligence, geography is making a silent, ineluctable comeback. The 

American Geographical Society, in particular, is cognizant not only of 

the implications of the new technologies, but of the pressing need to 

guide the healthy reemergence of the discipline, and for the US 

government to correctly exploit that re-emergence.305 The position of 

the Society, if not misinterpreted by this author, is to reclaim the lost 

presence of geography as a practical and theoretical discipline by 

responding to the current need not just of the United States 

government, but of the nation, to improve its understanding of foreign 

lands and peoples. The Society’s method is to engage civilian scholars 

from universities all over the United States in a rediscovery of the 

world, promoting the global presence of accomplished social scientists 

leading small expeditions of students and scholars in the creation of a 

new, continuously updated, unclassified body of geographical 

knowledge -- one that would invite participation and comment, would 

train a new generation of military and government officials, and would 

herald a better visibility of the world for Americans generally. 

Significantly, this would be done in a manner informed by and 

reconciled with the new world of GIS technologies, and by the highest 

standards of academic rigor. As a modest policy prescription, the 

author suggests that the US government add the position of Geographic 

Attaché to its diplomatic missions around the world, and that this 

 

304 J. E. Dobson. "The GIS Revolution in Science and Society," Chapter 24 in Stanley 

D. Brunn, et.al., editors. Geography and Technology. New York: Kluwer Academic 

Publishers, 2003, p. 573. Professor Dobson is a research professor at the University 

of Kansas in the Applied Remote Sensing Program of the Kansas Biological Survey 

and in the Department of Geography. 

305 See generally, Brunn, Geography and Technology. supra. Note 1. The AGS is an 

appropriate beacon for change given its organizational history. The United States 

government contracted with the AGS heavily in the early in half of the 20th century 

through the Second World War to provide mature intelligence before the modern 

national intelligence organizations existed. On the influential history of the AGS, see 

The American Geographical Society online at 

<http://www.amergeog.org/history.htm. 

314
attaché should have working for him or her a group of technically 

competent GIS liaisons who could provide unclassified GIS support to 

all facets of the US embassies’ missions. They not only could link 

themselves directly to the vast and growing GIS industry in 

government bureaucracies and NGOs around the globe, they could be 

the government’s host in each country to visiting professors of the 

Society’s worldwide network of muliti-discipline scholars. Geography 

is growing away from being a cute middle-school contest of whoknows-the-capitals and into its own as the multidiscipline integrator of 

place-based social science. 

Why the emphasis on geographers and GIS? Because, as 

hopefully has been made clear in preceding chapters, property lies 

between law and land, land and economics and between military 

strategy and human rights. Property is the agreement about 

agreements, the basic conflict resolution mechanism, the social 

contract, the most successful of civilizing institutions, and the 

indispensable secret that permits liberty and long-term peace to flow as 

one. Like so many things, property as a term or concept or practical 

tool can only be fully understood and shaped against the context of 

other geographic knowledge. 

GIS is the medium through which most people 

know and practice the methods and techniques 

traditionally claimed by geographers. It is profoundly 

changing society, yet it may well be the most 

underutilized, relative to its proven capability, of any 

technology in existence. It is one of the most promising 

and, simultaneously, one of the most dangerous 

technologies emerging today.306 

GIS is one vector of a convergence of phenomena that makes property 

and land use intelligence at a strategic level practicable. Only in the 

 

306 J. E. Dobson. "The GIS Revolution in Science and Society," supra. Note 1. at 

537. 

315
past decade or so has it been reasonable to expect cadastral records to 

be turned into mathematical digits, mounted on a computer database 

and transmitted over the Internet. All the theoretical assertions of 

Chapter One, or the forensic promise made in the following chapters, 

would be gratuitous if it were not for the GIS revolution. Furthermore, 

property records, while valuable of themselves, are immensely more 

useful to planners and scholars when their information is placed in the 

geographic context of other computer-mapped data. Environmental 

changes, engineering projects, biological and agricultural modeling, 

urban planning – all have been accelerated a thousand-fold by GIS 

technology. As such, the theories and preparations of Geography are 

newly ascendant. Geographers are now better equipped, and as a 

result, will probably be both more daring in application of their 

discipline and more docile in their assertions. 

Ray Cline, geographer and maybe geopolitician mentioned in 

Chapter Four, named his formula for measuring national power after 

plate tectonics. His liberal allusion to plate theory was an artistic 

flourish suggesting that big answers are valid and that problems of 

international conflict can be mapped on a global scale. What might a 

global property map look like? Freedom House, a Washington based 

human rights NGO, produces a map that shows the status of human 

freedom by country.307 Freedom House displays in an atlas-type 

composition what is an admittedly subjective comparison of a mixed 

bag of human liberties. The map shows countries as free, partly free, 

and not-free. With a little imagination, one can see that where not-free 

countries are close to free ones there is potential for conflict, or at least 

a lot of migration. A geostrategic message is delivered bell-clear by the 

 

307 In addition to an annual world map, Freedom House publishes a monthly journal, 

Freedom Review, and an annual survey of political rights entitled Freedom in the 

World; See also Michael Kidron & Ronald Segal, The New State of the World Atlas

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). The New State of the World Atlas places 

attention in graphic form on many of the kinds of relationships alluded to in this book. 

Map titles include "Urban Blight," "The Longer Reach"(international mail receipts 

and radio ownership), "The First Slice of the Cake," "Religions of Rule," etc. The 

atlas is an attempt to display 

316
Freedom House world map. Color-coding on the Freedom House map 

does not display rimlands, shatterbelts, heartlands or other spatial 

relationships, but instead shows differentials in rights. Because the 

value of global lands is not generated only by location and shape, but 

by the way places are owned, geostrategists can see on the Freedom 

House map what is invisible on those of the Spykmans and 

Mackinders. 

Other indices have been fabricated to trace a connection 

between visible societal conditions and the prospects of peace and 

prosperity. One is the Index of Economic Freedom.308 Another is the 

Human Development Index, created by the United Nations.309 Another 

is the Failed States Index and yet another the Oxford Analytica Risk 

Assessment.310 That they differ in methodology, scope and purpose is 

clear from some of the differences in results. For instance, Cuba, 

mentioned often in this book, rates very poorly on the Economic 

Freedom index, but does moderately well on the UN’s Human 

Development Index. Among this author’s favorites are the 

Globalization Index and the Corruption Perceptions Index.311 Since the 

writing of most of this text, the Property Rights Alliance published its 

 

308 See Edwin Feulner Jr. et al., 2005 Index of Economic Freedom, Washington, D.C.: 

The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, 2005); The index has been 

published since1994. The methodology contains in it a superficial measure of 

property regimes, but looking at the country rankings, one would expect that, given a 

thorough comparison of property systems, that the countries at the top of the rankings 

will fare far better than those at the bottom. The rankings can be found online at 

< http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm 

309 United Nations Develpment Programme, “Human Development Index,” 

www.undp.org online at 

 <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/hdi_rank_map.cfm. 

310 Aon Political Risk Services & Oxford Analytica “2007 Political and Economic 

Risk Map”; The Fund for Peace, “Failed States Index,” online at 

www.fundforpeace.org < 

http://www.fundforpeace.org/programs/fsi/fsindex.php?column=rank&.>; 311 ATKearney Globalization Index at 

<http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,4,1,116>; Transparency International, 

Corruption Perceptions Index at 

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi. 

317
International Property Rights Index (IPRI).312 FMSO has for some 

time proposed a world index showing comparing property regimes, and 

the IPRI goes a long way in that direction. Although the Property 

Rights Alliance work is focused on economic advancement of the poor, 

rather than on avoidance and resolution of internal violence, it is 

probably a point of theoretical consensus that the two are intimately 

related in many places. Certain property rights, such as minority access 

to public and semi-public places, corporate ownership participation, 

water court operations, eligibility for leadership in cooperative 

ownership schemes, passport and visa requirements, or child 

illegitimacy might all be more revealing of potential conflict than some 

current measures of human rights status. For example, if we were to 

rate one place as less humane than another because of the existence of a 

death penalty, that measure may not be reflective of greater political 

instability or potential violence. Extreme differentials in ownership 

rights, combined with a lack of formal records, however, probably 

predict violence. Being able to anticipate war on the basis of 

geographic knowledge is a higher achievement than learning 

Geography as a result of war. In many parts of the world the most 

important geographic knowledge concerns rights related to land. 

Very recently, the principle unit of employment of the 

American military has been shifting away from what had been the 

division, an organization of blessed with its own armor, artillery, 

engineers and other support units, of about sixteen thousand soldiers. 

As a result of the Global War on Terror, the main organizational unit 

seems now to be a special forces team, comprised perhaps of a dozen 

people. The difference is reflective of the nature of the threat, 

characteristics of globalization and the particularization of power 

discussed earlier. The basic elements of geography that guide our 

operational intelligence view of the world needs to be changed as well. 

Instead of the country, we need to focus on the county and its 

international cousins. Almost everywhere in the world the best 

property intelligence is at that level of territoriality and below. 

 

312 See footnote 56, infra. 

318
Produce Property Knowledge 

"You cannot convert the absence of information into a 

conclusion." 313

 Tom Clancy in Sum of All Fears

When a country invades another militarily, both face a set 

calculus regarding the amount of force they can bring to bear within 

specifiable amounts of time in given places. These decisions regarding 

where, when and how much force might be applied, though difficult 

and consequential, are relatively simple. The physical threat of a 

nation-state military can be roughly understood in relation to the 

characteristics of physical technologies--the range and speed of a 

missile, the march rate of a tank division. Trade-offs in terms of speed 

to the objective and risk to lines of communication can be clearly 

understood, even if not precisely calculated. Given unchallenged 

precision bombing, and other preparations, the US military was able to 

race to Baghdad in weeks. Other challenges to ownership are more 

confusing in terms of resources to be committed and time available. 

Cross-border migrations, transnational crime, acts of terror, 

environmental degradation, harmful trade barriers, or the proliferation 

of threatening technologies gestate at unknown rates and manifest 

themselves in seemingly unpredictable places. The application of 

physical force (or as is said these days, ‘kinetic’ weaponry) in support 

of policy initiatives aimed at such threats is therefore likely to be 

sporadic, erratic, inconsistent and imprecise. Today, the power to 

influence behavior (or to kill people) on a global scale has become 

more and more diffuse, is by no means monopolized by the nationstates. Successful strategies may even be the aggregate result of 

thousands of disparate, independent actions orchestrated by no more 

than a popular idea. One path toward understanding this complex 

environment is to identify the various owner and claimant identities as 

 

313 Tom Clancy, Sum of all fears, p. 935. 

319
they relate to each potential slice of the ownership related to a place. 

That is to say, consider with precision the individual rights and duties 

in play, name all of the competitor identities and all of the rules and 

authority that might bear on the mix. Some contentions may be 

revealed that cannot be peaceably reconciled, but even in these cases 

many of the owner identities and claimed rights might be peaceably 

cleared from the mix. 

To take this analytical approach at all, however, requires 

knowledge regarding the specific rights in question. To consider the 

panoply of rights and claims from which a stable resolution might be 

drawn requires written records of the most basic ownership interests. 

We know almost nothing about what people really fight over in the 

places where we have inserted ourselves. We can name the most 

obvious claimant identities, which are generally the most radical, but 

we have barely a clue about the specific ownership interests of the 

many contending identities. We can talk to the political parties through 

their leaders, but are usually oblivious to what those leaders own or 

with whom they own it, or what they would own if they could, or how 

they might peaceably go about owning it if a peaceable path were made 

available. In our enthusiasm for electoral democracy, we may even 

encourage the formation of claimant groups that confound the stability 

of the rule of law and the peaceable consideration of property rights. 

How can we presume to be peacemakers while we remain without any 

notion of the most basic objects of conflict? This is a truly odd 

condition to consider once one realizes how dependent on property 

intelligence a city council or county commission is when faced with 

major decisions regarding their communities. 

In the United States, dozens of federal organizations add, in 

semi- or wholly independent ways, to the mountain of information 

national decision-makers might digest in regard to events n foreign 

lands. In addition to the traditional intelligence bureaucracies (such as 

the CIA, DIA, or NSA) the Department of State, the Drug Enforcement 

Agency, the Commerce Department, the Environmental Protection 

Agency, and myriad of others have informational responsibilities. 

320
However massive or efficient a system of policy intelligence (not that 

the two characteristics are known to coincide), there is a fixed amount 

of information that can go into a decision maker’s head in a given 

amount of time. For one thing, it is difficult to block some information 

in favor of others or even to decide the priority of sources. As a result, 

some of the wielders of the bits of particularized power that are partly 

or wholly at odds with American policy, whether they are within the 

government or not, are bound to have intelligence as good as, or better 

than that of the relevant American leader. Significantly, no US national 

intelligence agency produces property intelligence on any scale – there 

is no foreign property intelligence office. Meanwhile, opposition 

organizations, such as the Colombian FARC, are in possession of 

detailed ownership information on which they base many decisions. 

Groups like the FARC, with almost no capacity to mount technical 

collection means using remote sensors and the like, are able to mount 

specifically targeted agile campaigns of extortion and kidnapping or of 

illicit drug market penetration and delivery because they can identify 

with precision the amount and location of their mark’s wealth and 

personal relationships. Our agility to mark them, meanwhile, is 

handicapped because we have lost sight of the relationships people 

have with places and things we disparage as property. The globalized 

enemy prizes information about the logistics of his targets and enemies, 

but the United States government has yet to see the same geography 

regarding these same lines of communication. 

The traditional American intelligence organizations are large 

mainly because of the imperatives of the Cold War. Secrecy of sources 

and methods of collection has been seen within these organizations as 

paramount to maintaining a full flow of correct information. When 

dealing with the world of particularized power, secrecy becomes a legal 

and practical burden. In reference to a criminal organization or a 

violent political movement, secrecy of sources and methods is still 

critical to successful pursuit. Most other power-wielding identities 

depend heavily on open communication and on the creation of 

solidarity around ideas. They cannot afford too much secrecy of 

communications. Since the power being exerted by non-governmental 

321
groups and individuals often depends on mobilizing adherents, there 

almost always appears an openly publicized manifestation of effort. 

Correspondingly, open source intelligence on political matters is 

growing in importance, even within the intelligence community, to gain 

insight about the many particles of power that are being exercised 

today.314 Whether this information is considered a part of the national 

wealth, a function of leadership, or a basic element of power is 

unimportant. It is important that the open source information is newly 

appreciated as a contributor to the fluid application of national power. 

Property information is by its nature almost entirely open-source, and 

while property intelligence is not yet being produced to any degree by 

any agency of the government, new acceptance of unclassified 

intelligence and security-relevant scholarship is a positive sign. 

It is common to consider information itself as valuable private 

and common property.315 It is likewise easy to understand the 

increased value of preferentially held information--proprietary 

information. More emphasis is being placed on unclassified 

 

314 The Internet is the realization of an old dream about universally shared global 

information. H.G. Wells, in one of his less well-known works, promoted the idea of a 

universal encyclopedia of knowledge and a world-wide common educational 

curriculum as an engine of world peace. Herbert George Wells, World Brain

(London: Methuen & Co. Limited, 1938). Wells wasn't very optimistic about human 

nature or the use of information, however. "Man reflects before he acts, but not very 

much; he is still by nature intellectually impatient. No sooner does he apprehend, in 

whole or in part, the need of a new world, than, without further plans or estimates, he 

gets into a state of passionate aggressiveness and suspicion and sets about trying to 

change the present order. There and then, he sets about it, with anything that comes 

handy, violently, disastrously, making the discordances worse instead of better, and 

quarrelling bitterly with anyone who is not in complete accordance with his particular 

spasmodic conception of the change needful. He is unable to realize that when the 

time comes to act, that also is the time to think fast and hard. He will not think 

enough." Ibid., p. xi. 

315 See Anne Wells Branscomb, Who Owns Information?, (New York: Harper 

Collins, 1994). Branscomb correctly treats information in terms both of power and 

property. She asks, Who Owns Your Name and Address?, Who Owns Your 

Electronic Messages?, Who Owns Computer Software?, Who Owns Government 

Information?, and other questions that have direct bearing on the pace of the diffusion 

of ownership and the particularization of power. 

322
information gathering and processing to avoid legal and practical 

pitfalls of government secrecy, and because it is so valuable in its own 

right.316 Regardless of the growth of open-source information in 

support of national policy, the most dangerous threats to a state's 

sovereignty will continue to require monitoring by secret and expensive 

means. Particularization of power includes bad groups and individuals 

as well as good. The bad tend to be more liberal in their willingness to 

enforce their property pretensions through the use of violence. They 

are also more likely to understand and manage the value of closely held 

information. For this reason, national governments, and even large 

non-governmental organizations, will probably invest more in 

information security and in attempts to gain the closely held 

information of others. The size and utility of general purpose armed 

forces may continue to decrease, but investment in intelligence 

gathering and information protection will increase. 

Build national security law, international law 

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall 

abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the 

United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of 

life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor 

deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal 

protection of the laws." 

From Section 1, Amendment XIV of the United States Constitution

 

316 An oddly relevant historical analogy can be found in Hagen Schulze, The Course 

of German Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). In one 

section, Schulze describes the energy generated in 1848 Berlin over news of the 

revolution in Paris. A Public opinion immediately entered a stage familiar to the early 

history of all revolutions: that of widespread excitement and general exasperation, 

when opportunities for general outbursts are cultivated, without giving the police 

occasion for effective counter-attacks. The public places=, wrote a contemporary 

observer, the reading-booths...presented an unusual appearance as overcrowded 

political meeting places.... Ibid., p. 7. The dawn of new communication technologies 

and the widespread, poorly censored or monitored use of public communications 

gives hint to the importance of the Internet.

323
The United States military has been a bit slow to recognize the 

revolutionary implications of GIS beyond the realm of precision in the 

guidance of munitions. It has been more complete in its response to the 

slower onslaught of the law into all dimensions of military operations 

and life. Americans have by and large agreed that "we the people" has 

to include more than one status--that the cohesiveness of national 

identity (by force of arguments about the nature of rights, and the 

pragmatics of an immigrant culture) demand inclusive interpretations 

of constitutional principles, even in the post 9/11 world of security 

consciousness, and in spite of decisions related to the sui generis 

captivities of Al Qaeda suspects. 

A ‘US Person’ is defined by executive order to be "a United 

States citizen, an alien known by the intelligence agency concerned to 

be a permanent resident alien, an unincorporated association 

substantially composed of United States citizens or permanent resident 

aliens, or a corporation directed and controlled by a foreign government 

or governments."317 US Person status engages a range of constitutional 

protections including those relating to illegal government searches, 

invasion of privacy, and warrantless arrests. It is an example of a selfimposed dilution of sovereignty. For many law enforcement purposes, 

the rights accruing to United States citizens have been extended beyond 

citizenship and beyond US borders. For instance, units along the 

border US-Mexico border have long taken a broad interpretation of the 

executive order defining the US Person. In that spirit, and guided by 

the intent of the Posse Comitatus Act, they are normally cautious, 

presuming anyone within the United States, but outside a certain 

distance from the border, to be a US Person. They may also presume 

that anyone heading toward Mexico from the interior of the United 

States is a US Person. Whether or not operational intelligence overlays 

and briefings detail the legal limitations on government forces is of 

 

317 Ronald Reagan, Executive Order No. 12333, December 4, 1981, "Presidents 

Oversight Intelligence Board." Can be found in Compilation of Intelligence Laws 

and Related Laws and Executive Orders of Interest to the National Intelligence 

Community (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Gov't. Printing Office, 1993), 645. 

324
secondary importance. The greater point is that along the Mexican-US 

border the traditional intelligence fodder of enemy, weather, and terrain 

gave way to worries about illegal impositions on the concert of civil 

and property rights. These worries can even be translated into 

graphically illustrated planning factors. In almost every military 

mission that occurs under within the confines of some domestic legal 

system, the parameters of property laws can be mapped (mapped in the 

most traditional sense of lines, shapes and colors on paper or on a 

computer screen). The social consequence of property law has a 

geographical shape important to planning, and so should be fully 

incorporated into security doctrine, including national security law, its 

subordinate, military operational law, and operational planning. 

The upshot of these assertions for scholarly analysis or for 

strategic intelligence is obvious. However, the possibility of making a 

continuous weave from the global scale to the local or tactical is 

especially intriguing. Property struggles can be mapped down to the 

life estate rights of tenant farmers, the right to carry a concealed 

weapon, the right to keep a dog off a leash, to vote on a school bond, or 

to carry away fallen wood. Every one of these things influences 

political contests, and every armed political contest will contain a 

mixture of these kinds of issues. Even the potentially big wars of the 

future are sure to be cluttered with extortion and parasitic enemy 

strategies. To win against these, any country must be able to target 

discreetly with the correct amount of force and informed by the correct 

kinds of intelligence. Notably, to describe the objectives, determine 

success and prepare strategies for the confused conflicts of the future, 

the relevant competitions can best be described in property terms. 

Keying on property reminds that the job of protecting diffuse 

rights and duties is as often a police job as it is a military one. The 

force structure necessary for a successful application of the rule of law 

will not only lend the physical strength to take and keep possession, but 

to create and protect property rights until such a time that conflicts over 

rights and duties can be satisfactorily resolved without the immediate 

325
presence of armed force. As Robert Ardrey noted in Territorial 

Imperative,

“We may also say that in all territorial species, without 

exception, possession of a territory lends enhanced 

energy to the proprietor. Students of animal behavior 

cannot agree as to why this should be, but the challenger 

is almost invariably defeated, the intruder expelled. In 

part, there seems some mysterious flow of energy and 

resolve which invests a proprietor on his home grounds. 

But likewise, so marked is the inhibition lying on the 

intruder, so evident his sense of trespass, we may be 

permitted to wonder if in all territorial species there does 

not exist, more profound than simple learning, some 

universal recognition of territorial rights.”318

 

However noble a foreign presence and however welcome 

among even a majority of the local population, there is something 

innately and universally understood about territoriality that gives a 

foreign force only so much time to set a society on a peaceable course. 

That is to say, time cannot be wasted waiting on a secure moment 

before establishing the evidentiary basis for a stable social contract. 

Foreign armed forces will enjoy a diminishing welcome over time, 

wherever they are posted. To secure a lasting and positive result, to 

give substance to a veneer of ‘democracy,’ it will nowhere be enough 

to teach elections, or to have a ‘mandate.’ A property regime must be 

established that is likely to service human flourishing. 

What should not be done 

"Land...cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, 

controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures 

 

318 Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal 

Origins of Property and Nations. New York: Antheneum, 1966, p. 3. 

326
and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership 

is also a principal instrument of accumulation and 

concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to 

social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major 

obstacle in the planning and implementation of 

development schemes....."319

 UN Policy statement, 1976 

 The official policy of the United Nations has evolved 

considerably since the above policy statement was written. 

Nevertheless, in 2004 the United Nations published a report, with 

principal sponsorship from the European Union, on the condition of 

democracy, or of the concept of democracy, in Latin America.320 The 

report was presented in Spanish from the UNDP website in PDF 

format, allowing the reader to download reasonably sized portions of 

the lengthy document and its appendices. The electronic format also 

permitted quick word search and content analyses. One might suppose 

that Hernando De Soto's writings would figure in the report, since the 

report highlights unrealized material prosperity in the region as a 

determinant of flagging faith in democracy. 

The report mentions De Soto’s work only once, however, in the 

bibliography, and this reference to his 1984 work, The Other Path. The 

Mystery of Capital did not make it into the body of works that the 

preparers of the report considered worth mentioning. (The report was 

printed in Peru and several of the text contributors are, like Mr. De 

Soto, Peruvian.) This dismissal of De Soto's thesis was cause enough 

to search a bit deeper into the contents of the report. Looking for 

 

319 "Report of Habitat: United Nations Conference on Human Settlements," 

Vancouver, 31 May - 11 June, 1976, (A/Conf.70/15) found online at The UN and 

property rights <http://www.sovereignty.net/p/land/unproprts.htm. 320 The United Nations Development Programme. La Democracia en América Latina: 

Hacia una democracia de ciudadanas y ciudadanos. (Democracy in Latin America: 

Toward a democracy of the citizenry). Buenos Aires: Aguilar, Altea, Taurus, 

Alfaguara, S.A., 2004; online at 

<http://www.undp.org/dpa/pressrelease/releases/2004/april/0421prodal.html. 

327
‘cadastre’ (catastro) was perhaps a frivolity, but absence of the word at 

least determined that the researchers had made no intellectual incursion 

into the vocabulary of land value or tax equity. Of the 12 times the 

word ‘property’ (propiedad) appears in the text, four are in the sense of 

a statistical characteristic, not ownership. Two other appearances of 

property are in a pair of repetitive footnote references to a 1965 work 

by T.H. Marshal.321 The report writers state a preference for Marshal’s 

division of citizens’ rights into three general types: civil, political, and 

social. Both citations embrace Marshal’s inclusion within civil rights 

of the “right to property” or the “right to possess property.” In these 

instances, the report writers, like Marshal, employ the word in terms of 

the thing, rights not being embedded in the concept. Thus, along with 

the absence of the word ‘land’ (tierra) or its near synonyms, the failure 

to address the question property could be forgiven as a simple decision 

not to direct the report in the overly vocational direction of land or 

money. Another use of the word property is given in reference to an 

index of the favorability of business climates, another related to an 

individual’s right to governmental information, in this case about his or 

her property ownership data.322 The next use betrays the distance 

between the authors’ concept of property and other rights. 

“Missing is a State able to guide the general direction of 

the society, manage conflicts according to democratic 

principles, effectively guarantee the functioning of the 

legal system (property rights and citizens’ rights 

simultaneously,...)”323 

The next reference is a minor note about crimes against persons and 

property324, and the last an inert reference of large holdings and private 

enterprise.325 The word rights, meanwhile, appears more than 500 

 

321 Ibid., p. 58, note 25 and p. 60, note 32. 322 Ibid., p. 109. 323 Ibid., p. 187. 324 Ibid., p. 189. 325 Ibid., p. 195. 

328
times. Potentially, reconciliation is available between those who see 

property as a body of rights and those who see it as theft. The Pipes, 

Bethels, and De Sotos of the world understand formal property as a set 

of asserted, affirmed, evidenced, represented, respected and enforced 

rights – the object of ownership being of less significance. One can 

suppose that a body of thinkers, such as those authoring this UNDP 

document, who clearly place rights at the center of their concerns, 

could be shown common ground in the De Soto argument. Perusal of 

the various rights discussed or promulgated in the UN report -- and of 

the assumptions regarding the nature of society, the role of the State, 

and the prescriptions offered -- suggest that the United Nations writers 

cannot embrace the De Soto message. For most of them it seems, Latin 

American development is detained by insufficient democratic political 

participation at all levels. Their general prescription, to the extent there 

is a consensus, calls for more broad-based forms of mass democracy 

that go beyond simple elections, involve civil society organizations, and 

common ownership. Almost no favorable mention is made of private 

property. As for the creation of capital, or any relationship between 

security and the development of a property regime, the report is 

absolutely oblivious. Capital itself is mentioned almost exclusively in 

the context of the injustices of capitalism. Meanwhile, much of the 

report and accompanying ‘debate’ is hard to follow in that so many 

paragraphs are admixtures of abstractions and apparent code words. 

The debate seems to welcome class struggle analysis and bemoans 

limitations on the powers of elected executives to exercise sovereign 

authority. 

The report, written from an intellectual world-view able to so 

completely exclude De Soto and his thesis should exasperate the reader 

looking for insight into conflict resolution, the suppression of violence 

or the spread of prosperity. While the report gives worried attention to 

enclaves of State militarism, and to a constant threat of arrogation by 

the regions’ national armed forces, there is almost no mention of 

insurgents, subversives, terrorists, narcotraffickers or illegal organized 

groups of any kind, much less the impact their actions have had on the 

prospects of democracy or development. The Latin American universe 

329
of organized malefactors is reduced in the report to indirect reference, 

and blamed on general conditions of the economy and weakness of the 

state.326

The weekend after the UNDP report was released, the Miami 

Herald ran an article by Frances Robles titled, “Lead vs. Machete” 

about land-related violence in Venezuela. The abstract stated, 

Bloody disputes erupt between those who had property 

and those letting [sic] their first taste of ownership. 

Nowhere are these battles currently claiming more lives 

than in Venezuela. 327

In his 1,200 word article, Robles brings us far closer to the central 

question weighing on peace, prosperity and freedom in Latin America, 

and in most of the world, than the UNDP did in hundreds of pages. (It 

is appropriate that it ran in the Miami Herald, too, from a community 

intellectually and emotionally close to the coming Cuba crisis. Cuban 

property will be a centerpiece of all practicable and intelligent 

consideration of that great impending change.) 

This book’s Chapter Three discussion of the property regime in 

Colombia mentioned a 2003 United Nations report that was also 

produced by the UN Development Programme.328 That report barely 

considered property, and passed on the notion of defeating the armed 

enemies of the Colombian State. The intellectual consistency between 

the two UN reports cannot be coincidental. The vision of the United 

Nations, at least as manifested by the vanguard of its developmental 

and conflict resolution thinkers, appeared to be moving on an azimuth 

180 degrees removed from what this book proposes as the necessary 

 

326 Ibid., p. 167. 327 Frances Robles. “Lead vs. Machete.” Miami Herald April 25, 2004. Online at 

<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/8504687.htm?1c. 

328 The United Nations Development Programme. El Conflicto, callejón con salida: 

Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano Colombia – 2003. Bogotá: Panamericana 

Formas e Impresos, S.A., 2003.

330
path. Chapter Three suggested there have been four historical strains of 

intellectual influence on conflict in Colombia – conquest & 

evangelism; federalism vice anti-federalism; social revolution; and 

unbridled gangster capitalism. The United Nations reports embody and 

exaggerate the third strain and gave a blind eye to the forth. However 

we might characterize the intellectual underpinnings of the United 

Nations vision for peace and prosperity, the practical result can be 

unfortunate. The United Nations, to the extent it is guided by the same 

thinking that produces it’s literature on the subject, seemed to 

disqualify itself, in the face of history, evidence and logic, from being a 

useful partner in promoting human flourishing. It appeared that the 

United Nations was stuck in the same theoretical world as that of the 

pre-World War II geopoliticians, in which whole-fee nation-states and 

indivisible sovereignties rule the mind and guide program goals and 

methods. The real world is just not that way. It is a world of divisible 

and diffuse ownership, ephemeral ownership identities, and 

particularized power. The corporate understanding of the United 

Nations, expressed in its publications and internalized to its programs, 

has not been the right path, not what is to be done. It is an error of 

concept that doubly insults the lofty purposes of the United Nations 

because in this one thing, formalized property, material development 

and human security coincide. The original reason of property was and 

remains conflict resolution. This is a proposition seemingly rejected by 

the corporate intellect of the United Nations, a rejection that will 

ultimately disqualify the United Nations in development as in security. 

The good news at the United Nations is a fresh counter-current. 

In 2006, Hernando De Soto was made co-chair, along with former 

secretary of State Madeleine Albright, of the UNDP Commission on 

Legal Empowerment of the Poor, a non-governmental cooperation. Dr. 

Karol Boudreaux, another accomplished advocate of formalizing 

property as a developmental necessity, is a member of the 

commission’s ‘Working Group on Property Rights.’ Dr. Boudreaux is 

an expert on international property systems at the Mercatus Center, 

George Mason University and has studied the insufficiencies of 

property regimes in Africa, especially Sudan. We can hope that this 

331
recognition of the importance of property rights spreads from an 

understanding connected only to the economic progress of the 

desperately poor to one connected to the internal peace of societies in 

general. 

 Unfortunately, the predispositions noted in the United Nations 

reports have also been present, if to a lesser degree, in the 

developmental thinking of US missions abroad. For instance, the word 

property does not appear in the widely successful 1966 textbook titled 

Nation Building, which was published as a collaboration of some of the 

leading political science scholars in the United States at the time. Land 

reform does not appear and even agriculture is barely mentioned. To 

be fair, the book was not so much focused on the practical problems of 

development as it was political party organization, identity, and the 

relationship of economic progress on the consolidation of democratic 

electoral forms in emerging states. Still, it appears that the notion of 

property, and its central place in Western heritage, held no space at all 

in the minds of a significant slice of the political science elite at the 

time. In 2003, Rand published an anthology titled America’s Role in 

Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq. In this effort, several of an 

equally qualified group of scholars do address the role of property and 

property development. 

“ In Japan, SCAP pushed through a land reform that 

destroyed the power of the landholding classes and 

made the peasantry property owners. SCAP also greatly 

expanded workers’ rights and forced through the 

dissolution of the large business combines (zaibatsu) 

that had dominated the economy.”329

“The damage resulting from generations of communist 

mismanagement followed by a decade of Serbian looting 

proved difficult to repair. Facing disagreement within 

 

329 James Dobbins, et. al. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq.

Santa Monica: Rand, 2003, p. 55. 

332
the international community on how to tackle these 

challenges, the UN administration delayed many of its 

decisions. By the end of 2000, Kosovo had a muchimproved commercial code, the outcome of international 

development efforts. Nearly a year passed after the 

conflict before a criminal and civil code was put in 

place, and then it was the Yugoslav code dating 

from1989, which had the virtue of being pre-Milosevic 

but the disadvantage of also being pre-post-communist. 

A number of property disputes therefore remain 

unresolved even today.”330

The writers also briefly touted success of a private property 

formalization program in Bosnia. Curiously, there is no mention of 

property in the ‘lessons learned’ section, which is not that surprising, in 

a sense. Ambassador James Dobbins, one of the lead authors and a 

respected developmental planner, served, inter-alia, as Special Advisor 

on Haiti to the U S State Department during the Carter administration. 

In 1995, Ambassador Dobbins delivered a presentation extolling US 

and international peacekeeping efforts in Haiti.331 It was 

understandably upbeat, recanting the relatively peaceful 

reestablishment of Bertrand Aristide as President, as well as a number 

of developmental and democratizing programs and projects. At the 

time, some 200 million dollars per year was being spent on Haiti, most 

of it from the United States -- but almost no money was spent toward 

establishing a modern property regime. 

 Contemporaneously, Hernando De Soto’s team of economists 

completed a brief survey of the country. According to that 

investigation, only one/third of urban dwellings in Haiti fell within 

some formal framework of ownership, and in rural areas only three 

percent of the land was formally owned. The evidence of “dead 

 

330 Ibid. p. 125. 331 James F. Dobbins. “Haiti: A Case Study in Post-Cold War Peacekeeping,” 

remarks at the ISD Conference on Diplomacy and the Use of Force, September 21, 

1995. <http://sfswww.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/isd/files/haiti.htm. 

333
capital” indicated “the total assets of the poor are more than one 

hundred fifty times greater than all the foreign investment received 

since Haiti’s independence from France in 1804.”332 De Soto clearly 

expressed the need to perfect Haiti’s property system and to streamline 

the quagmire of requirements for the legalization of property. The role 

of property development as an engine of economic prosperity and 

freedom was well-explained. Nevertheless, property did not figure as 

more than a minor, tangential subject of international programs there. 

Regardless, U.S. plans for Iraq have been similar to those applied in 

Haiti, only times 200. In March of 2004, Mr. Dobbins testified before 

congress, giving recommendations as to Haiti’s future.333 He did not 

mention property. Also outspoken regarding Iraq, he stated in 2003 

“We don't seem to have learned much."334 He is doubtless right, but he 

still had not mentioned property, and it is this oversight on the part of 

our leading developmentalists that must be addressed and reversed. De 

Soto asks, “How could something so important have slipped our 

minds?”335 Perhaps against an un-sensed educational and ideological 

background that disdains the word. Seeing after less than a decade how 

international efforts in Haiti have been unrewarded by conditions there, 

it is sobering to think what the result will be in Iraq. Just as the now 

obvious missing component of property development was identified 

and ignored as to Haiti, it has been identified and dutifully ignored as to 

Iraq. American thinking regarding the significance of property 

progressed only slightly from Nation-Building to America’s Role in 

Nation-Building. 

 

332 Hernando De Soto, p.5. 333 James Dobbins. “A Fresh Start for Haiti?: Charting Future U.S. Haitian 

Relations.” Testimony presented to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 

Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotic Affairs, March 10, 

2004. online at 

<http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2004/DobbinsTestimony040310.pdf. 334 George Gedda. “President Bush's Ex-Envoy for Afghanistan Criticizes U.S. Effort 

in Iraq.” Associated Press July 16, 2003 online at the Common Dreams News Center, 

<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0716-03.htm. 335 Hernando de Soto, , p. 8.

334
The United States committed to spending a lot of money in Iraq, 

but most of it will have been wasted if the institutions that underpin 

trust and accountability are not created. These are the social qualities 

that make trade in real estate possible. Collateral is created and capital 

made representable for commerce when property, and especially rights 

in land, are made transparent and protected. When real estate in Iraq is 

bought and sold freely and confidently, peace will not have been a biproduct; it will have been the essential product. 

“most people cannot participate in an expanded market 

because they do not have access to a legal property 

rights system that represents their assets in a manner that 

makes them widely transferable and fungible, that 

allows them to be encumbered and permits their owners 

to be held accountable. So long as the assets of the 

majority are not properly documented and tracked by a 

property bureaucracy, they are invisible and sterile in the 

marketplace.”336

This will continue to be true in Haiti and Iraq regardless of other 

programs. Worse, without property formalization, Haiti will never 

enjoy both electoral democracy and internal calm. It will be 

condemned to possessions by force or tyranny regardless of the amount 

of money spent there by international aid organizations or the United 

States. So it is with Iraq. So what is not to be done is to continue to 

place property development on a secondary plane of goals. 

Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and other places 

An aside of this book is an observation that the geographic 

focus of United States security concerns might better be made closer to 

home, that the near abroad and the security problems in our own 

neighborhood of worthy of precedent. The challenges in our own 

 

336 Ibid. p. 211. 

335
hemisphere are multi-faceted, mixing uncontrolled migration, 

organized crime, violent rebellion and changes of leadership, 

corruption and the aggressive misapplication of natural resources. 

Physical proximity is no insignificant variable in the calculus that turns 

these ugly things into a threat to the United States. The incomplete 

nature of the property regimes in the Western Hemisphere underlies the 

causes, and improving property regimes is the most effective solution 

for the long term. This is not to say that the same prescription of 

improved, formalized property does not apply to all the places around 

the world where the United States and its allies have security interests 

and concerns. It does, but starting close to home is not a bad idea, in 

light of the facts of time and space. 

Of five countries chosen for mention, Colombia, with a 

generally liberal system of ownership, is in the midst of violent internal 

challenge from powerful brigands. Colombia has a stunted property 

regime, which it is trying to improve while defeating its internal 

enemies. Mexico has a property regime that is only slightly further 

along than that of Colombia. Major changes in the Mexican property 

regime are underway and understanding them is critical to confronting 

the challenges that the United States and Mexico will overcome 

together or not at all. Haiti, already considered in the previous section, 

is a country that aspires just to join the third world, but which regularly 

re-enters political and economic crisis despite massive international 

assistance, especially from the United States. Unfortunately, little of 

the aid has gone to fixing the Haitian property regime. Cuba is a 

country about to face the death of a king. It has a completely illiberal 

social contract and a significant portion of disaffected citizens that will 

demand something better or leave. Finally, Venezuela is another 

country with an insufficient property system, and it is quickly turning 

into another Cuba in spite of considerable oil income. 

Colombia 

It does not take much of an education in Geography to see why 

336
Colombia might become a place where the United States spends a lot of 

its defense capital. Almost any theory pointing up an element of 

physical geography as a determinant of relative strategic importance 

could find Colombia near the top of the list. Colombian history has 

been one in which globalized supply and demand for a changing variety 

of valuable natural resources has constantly re-coded the value of 

Colombian places. In this context Colombian’s have fought over rights 

related to those resources – rights to extraction, access and control of 

labor, transport routes, taxation, processing. Colombians will continue 

to debate the traditional questions of territorial autonomy and taxing 

power, continually revisit the practical nature of taxation authority in 

light of physical and social realities. Eventually they will overtake and 

subdue amoral, violent entrepreneurs. As for social revolution and 

class struggle, that intellectual current is alive and well, and while it 

contributes positively at some level, one of its ill effects has been to 

close mental space about the nature of property. Disdain for ‘private’ 

property has crippled understanding of property generally, as well as 

property’s role in economic prosperity, liberty and social peace. In 

turn, space has been closed to practical international assistance 

programs that would build a precise, comprehensive and transparent 

property regime. The first thing that must be done, then, in Colombia 

and elsewhere, is to check anti-property ideology and resulting 

prescriptions that reject property as a building block of socio-economic 

development and peace. 

The United States has been slow to settle on a unified 

interpretation of the problem that could allow either effective advice or 

assistance. Even if all players in the design and implementation of US 

policy were to willingly concentrate on defeat of the illegal armed 

forces, the resulting victory could be short-lived. Military victory, 

though achievable, will not leave a Colombian polity organized to 

resolve and obviate territorial competitions before they grow again into 

organized armed arrogations. Another recent document that has been a 

stimulus for academic debate in and about Colombia is titled ‘Andes 

2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the 

337
Region.’337 Among the document’s key recommendations, “the 

imposition and enforcement of property tax; acceleration of land titling 

and registry; and the enactment of strategic, market-assisted land 

reform in an accountable and transparent fashion.” That emphasis is 

put on the formalization of property is great; that the first thought 

understanding of property is the imposition of a tax is a shame -- in a 

country the violent history of which so often turns on questions of who 

will tax what. 

United States government decisions regarding Colombia, 

whether related to counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, economic 

development, military operations, long-term peace or otherwise, are not 

well-taken unless fully informed regarding the ownership of real 

property. Only a few years ago such an assertion not only would have 

been curious, but unreasonable -- not so much because property 

ownership did not influence political actors in Colombia, since they 

undoubtedly have, but rather because such intelligence could rarely be 

had. Even if US decision-makers would like to have had better 

information about who owned what and with whom, the intelligence 

challenge was generally insurmountable, at least beyond immediate and 

anecdotal investigation. Today, property data can be collected, 

organized, analyzed and presented in ways that can support foreign 

policy and strategy. A convergence of new technologies, including 

global positioning satellites, and expanding technical protocols such as 

the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, makes provision of detailed 

foreign property information to United States decision-makers 

practicable. 

 Colombia’s governments can do more to make land ownership 

precise and transparent, and therefore to control corruption and reduce 

disillusionment. Part of the problem in recent decades may have been 

an unfortunate set of signals from the United States regarding the 

importance of formalized land ownership as a fundamental mechanism 

 

337 Council on Foreign Relations, Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of 

Colombia and the Region, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Center for 

Preventive Action, 2004. 

338
for social peace and honest government. United States aid programs 

have only recently addressed the question of formal property, and then 

usually on a ‘micro-pilot’ scale chasing secondary purposes such as 

building a local government tax base or giving titles as a quid in some 

‘alternative crop’ scheme. Meanwhile a great deal of emphasis has 

been expended on prosecuting the perpetrators of violent felonies. 

There has never been a correspondingly energetic campaign to establish 

civil law that might resolve the conditions that led to the abuses in 

question. There has been little attention to building the social contract, 

to building the property regime -- even while real estate has always 

been at the absolute center of Colombian violence. 

The shortcoming isn’t just what we try to do in Colombia, but 

what we don’t know. In face of US desire to assist Colombia in ridding 

itself of brigands, and to curb corruption, the United States needs more 

detailed information -- strategically relevant, comprehensive data about 

whose ox is gored and whose pocket lined with every major political 

decision made. 

 Success for Colombia in dealing with its internal enemies, and 

in establishing the conditions for long-term peace, depends on gaining a 

better understanding of the details of ownership. In order to influence 

the course of Colombian change, the United States needs a better grasp 

on who specifically benefits from the redistribution of interests in land, 

who is involved in land-based money laundering, land extortions and 

organized squatting. To succeed at counter-narcotics, the US must 

know more about who owns illicit cultivations, and about geographic 

value beyond the crop areas themselves. US foreign policy need not 

veer away from human rights discipline, but could focus on the erosion 

of liberty and property that precede gross violations. A complete map 

of Colombia is needed, one that comprehends ownership and land-use, 

that shows the quality of rights and progress (or lack of it) against the 

339
underlying causes of gross human rights violations there.338 The US 

can assist in its creation and should demand its transparency. 

 The measures of effectiveness applied in determining the 

success or failure of US policies and those of the Colombian 

government also need to be improved. It might be useful to keep track 

of quantities of illicit drugs grown, shipped or sprayed, but the value, in 

detail, of Colombian land is more significant by far.339 When 

Colombia begins to enjoy widespread, regular increases in rural 

property values, it will be the surest indicator that their war is being 

won. As well, Colombian and US government policies to pacify the 

country will by necessity correlate both to the success of the legal 

regime and to the implementation of environmental regulations and 

standards that allow for rational, sustainable exploitation of natural 

resources.340 Here again, development of formal property is a 

prerequisite for success. 

 The upshot of these observations about the nature and 

significance of property and property mapping in Colombia is clear. 

The government of Colombia is attempting to improve its property 

system to support long term security, remediate rights violations 

 

338 Violations of human rights most decried by our government, and by private 

citizens working through non-governmental organizations include lack of habeas 

corpus, torture, organized rape, extrajudicial execution, forced exile, 

disenfranchisement, and genocide. Any situation involving the violation of human 

rights could be expressed in ownership terms, but with reference to these most serious 

violations, the use of property terminology might sterilize or routinize descriptions. 

At that point, the relative utility of a property-based description of events and 

conflicts would be exceeded. Most important in defending broad attention to property 

rights in the analysis of national and international security affairs is observation of the 

close linkage between denied property rights and evolution of basic human rights 

abuses. 

339 Colombia has a sufficiently competent and knowledgeable quantity of land 

appraisers, organized into a national professional federation, that it is feasible to 

implement a methodology for determining market values of land in most areas of the 

country. 

340 A description of US aid to Colombia is provided by Center for International 

Policy, Internet, online at <www.ciponline.org/.

340
already suffered and to combat violent illegal organizations. US 

assistance can help Colombia formalize land ownership, make land 

ownership and value information complete and readily available, 

challenge concentrations of ownership in the hands of outlaws and 

more fully incorporate real property purchases and distribution into its 

own counter-narcotics and counter-terrorist strategies. This will 

contribute to a State with a visible commitment not just to security, but 

also to civil rights and open government. 

Precisely enunciating and evidencing (that is mapping, 

monumenting, titling, registering, digitizing and publishing) the various 

rights associated with the object of conflict (land in most rural contexts) 

is an indispensable action for peace. Creating an open, fluid market for 

real estate rights will further identify relative worth, who actually has 

control of it, and how the overall worth of Colombia’s social contract is 

progressing, or not. Colombia’s is a history of territorial competition, 

land grabs and failed reforms. It needs to become one of property 

development if as a nation it is ever to join the community of 

prosperous and peaceful countries that is generally considered as the 

“First World.” That said, as with so many aspects of development, 

Colombia is uneven in its property. It is by no means underdeveloped 

in all places or in regard to all real estate. The differentials in the 

development of formal property themselves have an influence on the 

geography of social conflict. Colombia is the example used here of a 

country suffering violent organized internal conflict, but the lessons 

apply to other countries in the same straits. 

 More immediately, in the context of the still virulent and ongoing war that Colombia has to wage against a mix of dangerous homegrown enemies, the following news item is revealing: 

“Las autoridades intervinieron 18 bienes inmuebles, 

propiedad de un jefe de frente de la guerrilla de las 

FARC, informaron en Bogotá fuentes judiciales. ... [S]e 

trata de seis fincas, cuatro campamentos, dos tiendas de 

341
víveres, una gallera, una joyería, una farmacia, un local 

de billares, dos discotecas y un hotel...”341

(Judicial authorities inform that they have confiscated 18 

pieces of real estate, property of a FARC Front leader. 

Involved are six farms, four camps, two food stores, a 

cock fighting ring, a jewelry store, a pharmacy, a 

billiards parlor, two discotheques and a hotel.) 

To put the above news item into its best perspective, we recall 

the words of T. Miller Maguire quoted in Chapter 2 on the essence of 

military strategy – “a general whose road homeward or to his base is 

threatened or cut by a superior force must, if he loses a decisive battle, 

be ruined as well as defeated.” The Colombian authorities did not just 

confiscate some real estate from an outlaw, they smashed his line of 

communication, making it impossible for that unit of the FARC to 

operate at any where near the level it had, because its logistics network 

was severely damaged and the boss’s ‘route homeward’ badly 

impaired. The insurgent’s ability to hide among the population was all 

but ruined. The real estate itself is but a part of the story, but therein 

lies the essential military importance of property, property records and 

property intelligence in the context of internal warfare. 

Cuba 

Cuba is nothing like Colombia. No violent anti-government 

 

341 EFE, “Incautan propiedades de un jefe de las FARC,”14 de diciembre de 2006; 

Ths blow was delivered against a unit of the FARC. For a similar case, but against 

the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) see Fiscalia de la Nación (Attorney 

General’s Office), “Propiedades de alias ‘don Antonio’ pasarán al Estado 

Colombiano,” (Properties of AKA ‘don Antonio’ pass to the Colombian State) at 

http://www.fiscalia.gov.co/PAG/DIVULGA/noticias2007/lavado/LavaAntonioAbr12.

htm

342
outlaws are marching around extorting, stealing, smuggling, 

kidnapping and murdering. It is, in a depressing, submissive sense, 

peaceful. The Castros’ rebels won decades ago, but soon the time of 

their governance may run out. Whatever the prospects for a post-Raul 

survival of the regime, loss of control by the Castro brothers will attract 

global attention to the island. Although ‘human rights’ may crowd 

headlines, no subject will be more critical to the prospects of human 

flourishing than that of property rights. 

We will witness a disaster of nearsightedness if the Cuban 

property puzzle is treated as one revolving around claims that must be 

resolved in order to facilitate a transition to democracy, or as set of 

disputes that must be rectified in order to re-establish normal 

diplomatic or economic relations. That is not what is to be done. 

Instead, the transition must be of property. Property cannot be taken as 

a stumbling block, a step to be taken, or as a matter to be resolved 

enroute to the goal of a successful transition, but must instead be the 

transition. Changing the system, the property regime, must be the 

centerpiece of design and action. How Cubans account for the day-today rights that Cubans have in relationship to Cuban places – that is the 

heart of the social contract. One way to protect the social contract is by 

way of balancing and limiting political power. Democratic political 

processes must be established, of course, to help peaceably protect the 

social contract, but why bother if the social contract itself is not the 

object of careful design? If Cuba is to succeed, and particularly if it is 

to succeed beyond the inconsistent and haphazard levels of other Latin 

American countries, it must underpin a liberal social contract on formal 

property. 

 The reasons for such a property-based strategy are pragmatic. 

US goals for Cuba should include that it not be a locus of military or 

criminal threat to its neighbors, that it not be the source of unwelcome 

human migration, and that it contribute to regional economic wellbeing. Cuba becoming a democracy is presupposed, but that term begs 

definition of form and quality. Outsiders can lead Cuba to become a 

place where liberty and property is protected, and where the value of 

343
that property is consistently improved for all Cubans. All this, in 

shorthand, means making Cuba successful. 

There will be a number of problems at which the US will 

probably have to throw money, perhaps in quantity not dissimilar to 

that expended on Iraq. Claims in the Property Claims Commission 

claims can be paid by the US government outright, as they are a 

needless distraction. A similar commission and court apparatus can be 

pre- established, perhaps in a third country for quieting title to 

expatriate and exile claims. Real property possession, including the 

exact identity and quality of ownership must be mapped and publicly 

exposed as soon as possible an integral part of a comprehensive GIS 

mapping effort. Continuous public update of this information should 

be a central requirement of the transition effort. Along with the 

ownership information, the process of changing ownership must also be 

transparent. A strict statute of frauds is a must, requiring that all 

contracts for an interest in real property be signed, notarized, registered, 

digitized and quickly made publicly transparent; all contracts of over 

some fixed amount should have a reasonable challenge period from the 

time of registry in order to diminish land frauds and weaken insider 

trading; no government offices dealing with real property registration 

should be allowed to close for more than one day per week; no offshore 

or secret banking should be allowed; no contracting companies should 

be allowed to maintain confidential accounts of Cuban dealings; no 

confidential banking activities should be allowed on the island, etc. 

These are the kinds of things that will steward Cuba during a difficult 

period of change -- far more than elections, which might best be 

postponed. The above list of property items presuppose that the current 

Cuban constitution will be voided. Initial wording of the constitution 

regarding alienation of property, and initial laws regarding registration 

and frauds will more than likely have to be provided from outside the 

Island. 

Some limitations on real estate assignment and alienation may 

be necessary at the outset and should immediately negotiated. For 

instance, at least at the beginning of the transition, interests in land 

344
should be under Cuban or Cuban-majority ownership. This point is of 

central importance as an assurance to Cubans and to the world that the 

transition is not a free-for-all land rush, or worse, an inside-trader land 

rush that would simply shove out Cubans. ‘Cuban’ should be clearly 

defined from the outset, and as part of the transition agreement, to 

mean, perhaps, born on the Island or the genetic son or daughter of at 

least one Island-born parent.342

The kinds of things mentioned above, and others like them, 

amount to a property-based strategy as opposed to a principally 

diplomatic or political one. It is a strategy intended to give certain 

property advantages within a fixed and transparent set of rules. It 

establishes a rule of law for a period of transition and anticipates an 

end-state of formal property in which stable, precise, comprehensive 

evidence of ownership is the norm and the basis of conflict resolution. 

Engaging such a strategy, far more than stewarding fair elections, will 

ensure that Cuba, unlike its Latin American neighbors, will 

successfully enter the First World, the West, where it belongs. There is 

an international market for property regimes. Past and current residents 

of the Island of Cuba under the Castro system of property have tried to 

leave the island because the value of rights there is not high. We can 

help improve the value of Cuban rights. 

Mexico 

 Setting aside hyperbole regarding the rate and structure of 

undocumented migration to the United States across the Mexican 

border, suffice it to say that as a nation the United States does not know 

to any appreciable degree of precision the who, where or how many. 

Whatever the potential threat to the security of the United States, the 

 

342 In order to deter over-concentration of ownership, a rule might be pre-emplaced 

that no single individual or corporate entity be allowed to aggregate ownership of 

more than some small percent of real property by value or by surface area during a 

fixed period of transition. This could help to force investors to include a broader 

range of Cubans as owner participants. 

345
dangers of human contraband are palpable both to the migrants 

involved and to the communities and populations whose land is being 

crossed. The tight relationship of the property system in Mexico to 

questions of migration and criminal enterprise was noted in Chapter 

Two, but a prescription was not made. That prescription needs to be 

made, in the opinion of the author, not in terms of property rights, but 

in terms of civil and human rights. This is not to abandon in the last 

chapter the entire thrust of this book regarding the importance of the 

social contract expressed in property regimes, but the argument is dull 

in the face of some phenomena the poignancy of which deserve a more 

direct expression. The lives of hundreds of thousands of undocumented 

aliens in the United States is one of para-citizenship in which property 

rights are suspect, civil rights are incomplete and human rights 

correspondingly vulnerable. As noted in Chapter Two, the strength of 

the United States rests ultimately on the way in which we conceive of 

property -- not how we divide the pie, but the strength of our own 

common agreement about who can be owners of what, an agreement 

supported by the best evidence. The United States can remain a place 

where people prefer to go. 

 In Tancanhuitz, Mexico, the people can catch a weekly bus to 

the United States. Many of their lives and livelihoods depend on safe 

passage. Defense against gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha or 

terrorists from other parts of the world depends on the participation of 

hundreds of thousands of people such as those from Tancanhuitz. 

When their passage is dignified and welcomed and their rights honored 

best in the United States, the honor will be repaid. It is not a flowery 

concept but a pragmatic one. When the bulk of Mexican migration is 

legalized and made easy, illegal migration will expose itself. The 

geography and associations of illegal migration will be separated from 

the legal, and the legal migrants whose families and livelihoods depend 

on cross-border economics and societal links will participate freely in 

protection of the system and the exposure of its enemies. Protection of 

the US-Mexican border depends on recognition that the geography of 

the border and of migrant populations is not a line, but a vast puzzle of 

ownership identities, rights and duties. We can map that puzzle. 

346
Mexican cooperation in the battle to protect ourselves is but a grace 

away, and that grace is to define ‘ourselves’ and ‘border’ intelligently, 

inclusively. When Americans go to Tancanhuitz they cannot be 

indifferent, and it is not an engagement born of sympathy. It is 

engagement born of the realization that the mayor of a town that speaks 

Tenic (into which a little Spanish and English is mixed) knows the rate 

and origination of foreign remittances, box scores of professional sports 

teams, tuition rates at various major universities, routes and itineraries 

of at major transportation hubs.... He is intensely interested in 

Mexican and American success. That success is the success of his 

ejido and his family, of his personal leadership, of his neighbors’ math 

whizzes; it is not a distant or foreign dream of opportunity. When US 

law furthers the structure of life in Tancanhuitz, the right path to 

national security along the Mexican border will be found. The 

insecurity America senses is due to omissions, not to the activities 

called globalization. The United States implicitly invites the people of 

Tancanhuitz to migrate. They need to be made owners, perhaps or 

perhaps not citizens, but not fugitives. 

 The formal condition of property within the United States is the 

most important existing defense against internal violence. US national 

cohesiveness, and public cooperation to help government limit 

violence, is born of a faith in government's role of protecting public and 

private property rights, especially in land. Constricting illegal 

migration is important as an act of solidarity with current owners, even 

if legal migration is liberalized. The actual buying and selling of real 

estate to encourage specific land uses and population shifts can also an 

important strategy option. Finally, the regulated privatization of law 

enforcement activities, (especially those related to property protection) 

can anticipate and undercut vigilantism. 

Other places 

 The countries chosen above are all nearby the United States. It 

makes sense to begin close to home to describe how property bears on 

347
questions of national security, how property issues in one country bear 

on the security of another. The author believes that for the United 

States, the space within a few thousand miles to the south is of utmost 

security importance, but the near abroad is used as an example in this 

book, not as the subject. The argument applies to all parts of the world, 

especially those parts where governance is far from perfected and 

where violence is more the norm than the exception. At the time this 

book is being written, Iraq and Afghanistan are the preoccupation of 

American military leaders. Hopefully it is not too late to lay the 

groundwork of social and administrative intelligence, of censuses, 

personal identification systems and cadastres necessary to build a 

foundation for just, durable and productive property regimes in those 

countries. It will not be too late because it is ever past being a good 

idea, but perhaps because American national will to remain may have 

been expended, or because local power has grown sufficient to block 

transparency measures. It might also be that other interests will occupy 

developmental funding that might have been made available for the 

creation of property and property records. So this book is probably for 

the next place. In that next place, money will be wasted until a formal, 

liberal property regime is in the making. For the next place, property is 

what is to be done. 

Restatement 

“You cannot divorce property from power. You can 

only make them change hands.” 

 John Randolph Roanoke 

The rule of law starts with law against trespass, not murder. 

Our reverence of constitutions and elections has put them almost 

everywhere, and human rights are for Americans a permanent crusade, 

but somehow the central role of property in building a peaceful society 

slipped our minds. The essential victory of the American experiment, 

and the foundation of the success of Western polities, is not the way we 

choose or unseat our leaders. If by the success of a society we mean 

348
parallel improvement in freedom, material prosperity and social peace -

- a trio which together might fairly be called human flourishing -- then 

construction of formal, liberal property regimes is as important toward 

achieving success as is the writing of constitutions, the holding of 

elections or the prosecution of human rights violations. The 

Constitution of the United States of America looked to protect life, 

liberty and property from the machinations of government, and the 

three values were seen to travel together. The founding fathers were 

interested in electoral democracy as a way to peacefully change those 

to whom the privilege of service was to be temporarily lent; but the 

exercise was not essentially one of creating democracy, which many of 

the fathers also feared as a potential tyranny. The goal was to build and 

protect an equitable social contract, a property regime that was likely to 

resolve conflict and induce prosperity. At some point we forgot that, 

fell in love with the competition for leadership and forgot the meat of 

the design. Accordingly we push the democracy part and overlook the 

social contract. 

 

There is no camouflaging the sanctimony of American human 

rights policies once it becomes obvious that they are uninformed of, or 

oblivious to, the basic rights and duties that lead to abuses. Doggedly 

prosecuting a murder appears as a gratuitous moral huff if the jury 

realizes that the State has had no interest in the habitual disregard of 

rights and obligations that led to the crime. If we have no grasp of or 

interest in who has what and who took what from whom, then we 

deserve to suffer not only be the lightened weight of our moral suasion, 

but the harsh backlash accorded to hypocrisy. The West, if it is to 

proceed to improve the observance of human rights standards in the 

world, must improve property rights in the world, and to do that it must 

develop the information necessary to know who has what, and where. 

The inhumanities that energize American foreign policy are the 

violent consequences of underlying conditions, conditions that by 

themselves failed to generate emotional energy. Violent symptoms 

rather than underlying causes seem to become the focal point of policy. 

By better appreciating property we can consider a broader range of 

349
those contested rights and duties that lead to violence. If, in all the 

lands where the United States regularly cites grave human rights 

inadequacies, one were to ask simple questions about landlord-tenant 

laws, title registry systems, zoning ordinances, mining stakes, paving 

contracts, street gang territories, paternity laws or water courts, two 

judgments would be reached: First, that powerful linkages exist 

between violent abuses of human rights and contested property. 

Second, that U.S. intelligence collectors, analysts, and policy makers 

have been indifferent to details of the ownership environment. Ask 

everyone in the Defense Intelligence Agency what they know about the 

details of taxation in Iraq and the answers will underwhelm. 

It is not just that the United States and other Western countries 

waste billions of development dollars every year on programs that have 

not been built on firm property systems, but that they also fail 

constantly to learn about who owns what in the world. As power in the 

world has become more and more diffuse, threats to physical security 

are decreasingly well described by the name of a country. Many of the 

worst threats are better identified by the names of individual humans 

(the Pablo Escobars and Bin Ladens) and by the trouble they can 

personally bring to bear with the wealth they amass. Yet we have been 

caught unaware regarding who has what wealth in the world. We set 

our categories and definitions according to geopolitics, rather than 

according to the much finer and detailed view of power that the county 

sheriff or property judge would take. While not long ago the argument 

might have existed that such a detailed understanding of the world of 

power was out-of-reach technically, that argument is no longer valid. 

Strategic knowledge of personal, family, party or corporate power is 

very possible today, and it is especially possible to know the nature of 

power as it is reflected in real property. 

One typical reaction to the list of Western property details 

(easements, zoning, deed restrictions, etc.) is that so many societies do 

not have such fine developments. But that reaction is always bred of 

near total ignorance of the facts. To be sure, where the indoor toilet is 

unknown the sewer easement is absent, but it is in those same places 

350
that solid evidence regarding the division of those rights and duties that 

do exist is needed and can be created. If we say that valid evidence of 

ownership rights cannot be found or created...what can such an 

assertion mean? -- that we don’t know with any confidence who is in 

charge of what resources, who has what power, who can do and who 

cannot? How do we deal with such a place? One would hope the 

answer is not simply to hold elections and deal with whoever wins. 

We in the West confuse electoral democracy with the condition 

of our success, which we have come to label democracy. The secret to 

that condition, which includes electoral democracy, is something else, 

however. It is an application of physical and organizational 

innovations that protect the social contract. That social contract is an 

agreement about agreements. It is an agreement to enforce agreements 

about the division and exercise of everyday rights and duties. The 

social contract, agreement about agreements, enforcement of quotidian 

rights and duties, is the West’s fundamental mechanism for conflict 

resolution. The West is successful because its property regimes are 

simultaneously advantageous to the three prongs of human flourishing 

– freedom, material prosperity and social peace -- in measure 

appropriate to the particulars of local culture. The West’s property 

regimes are successful because of the high quality of the evidence of 

everyday rights, the capacity of the citizenry and governments to 

implement the meaning of that evidence, and because the basic rules 

which determine what can be owned and who can be owners are liberal 

in measure appropriate to the common understanding of justice. 

 

 Formalizing property serves peace in at least five ways. 

Formalized property information feeds conflict resolution mechanisms 

by clearly identifying owners, claimants, rights and duties so that 

disagreements can be more peaceably reconciled. Formalizing property 

creates confident stakeholders willing to support the rule of law. 

Formal property regimes create and expose capital, which ameliorates 

negative socio-economic conditions that fuel internal conflict. 

Landowners are less likely to engage in illegal behavior when they risk 

forfeiture if they involve themselves in outlawry. Finally, the records 

351
associated with formal property provide a powerful forensic tool with 

which to support peaceful conflict resolution processes, combat illegal 

activities and bring violators of basic human rights to justice. It is no 

exaggeration to say that to formalize property is to build the peaceful 

rule of law. In addition, the condition in which humans are secure in 

their possessions is in-and-of-itself a happiness. Nevertheless, the 

principle assertion of this book is not that building property systems 

will lead to peace. The assertion has been in the negative. In countries 

where informal property regimes are allowed to continue, there will not 

be peace. Outside the lines of formal property lies possession by force. 

The gamut of societal choices is actually very narrow, the choices few 

– formal property, internal violence, or tyranny. It is unfortunate that 

peoples often choose tyranny over violence because the first choice, 

formal property, has not been offered. 

The security challenge of the United States can be summed as 

follows: The march of technology has brought us to a point in history 

wherein the problems of our neighbors are quickly our own, where the 

peace and prosperity of foreign places is undeniably tied to ours. 

Fortunately, the march of technology has also provided us with the 

ability to create nearly perfect evidence regarding the peaceable 

assignment of rights and duties. In terms of human temperament we 

are in no better shape than the English Parliament in 1677 when it 

recognized the opportunity to put technology in the service of 

improving man’s commitments. We do, however, have better 

technology with which to support modern statutes of fraud. To the 

extent that writing is civilization, our writing instruments have 

improved, but we have to use them. The soldier may ask what this 

bloodless, tiresome subject of social contracts and documentation has 

to do with his job, with warfare. The answer is ‘nothing’ -- unless he 

wants to find and fix an illusive enemy; unless it is important to the 

soldier to establish conditions after combat that will allow him to go 

home; unless he thinks it important to keep insurgencies from forming 

so that his presence in those difficult environments is not necessary; or 

unless he would prefer there to be fewer places where terrorists were 

352
bred an sponsored. Otherwise, property should not be important to the 

soldier. 

Places that are not at peace within themselves are a danger to 

the globe, and places that do not develop their property regimes cannot 

be at peace within themselves. Therefore, and with little room for 

exceptions, it is directly in the interest of American and global security 

to promote the development of formal property regimes everywhere. 

Furthermore, it is not possible to proceed in the improvement of 

property systems without knowledge regarding the details of 

ownership, knowledge we do not now have. 

 

What, then, is to be done? 

1. Vigorously create and formalize property everywhere. 

2. Encourage governments to make ownership records 

precise, comprehensive and transparent, so that the world 

knows who owns what, and who claims what. 

3. Precondition assistance programs on the formalization 

property regimes, not just electoral democracy. 

4. Prosecute the violation of human rights, but promote 

observance of everyday rights and duties called property. 

5. Teach leaders to demand complete information about 

who owns what and where. 

6. Teach the philosophical principles of the liberal social 

contract. 

7. Apply property strategies that place stakeholders of a 

beneficial social contract where they can best defend it, and 

that deny anonymity to those who offend it. 

353
354
Appendix: Instrument to measure the quality of a property regime 

Subjoined is a taxonomy of questions that the author proposes be used as a 

research instrument as part of a methodology for determining the relative quality of a 

real property regime. The definition of ‘real property’ presented on page 4 of the text 

is the basis of the investigative framework. That definition reads: 

Property is a contract between society and owners that recognizes 

preferential rights and correlated duties. The strength of the social 

contract is judged by the quality of its observance, which depends 

on the quality of the evidence of ownership and on the capacity of 

both owners and the society (usually by way of some government) 

to act on conclusions logically drawn from the evidence. 

The relative quality of property regimes can be measured by following three streams 

of inquiry into 1., the quality of the evidence delineating rights, duties and the identity 

of owners (this is sometimes referred to as clarity of allocation); 2., the capacity of 

owners (or claimants) and the government to act on conclusions logically drawn from 

the evidence (this is in some contexts referred to as ease of alienability or as security 

from trespass depending on the mix of owner rights and government duties involved); 

and 3., the conduciveness to peace of the basic rules delimiting the contract, 

especially who is allowed to own what. (At times this is denominated liberality). 

Consequent field research (implementation of a methodology for determining the 

quality of a property regime) would include collection of data elements more-or-less 

according to the three streams of inquiry suggested above and detailed below. The 

third of the three streams -- that related to liberality, is not as clearly announced in the 

definition as the first two. It may be a more complex question than it seems, as it is 

possible to subtly exclude groups from equal ownership possibilities. 

Three streams of inquiry: 

1. The quality of the evidence delineating rights, duties and the identity of 

owners (sometimes clarity of allocation). Quality of this evidence is 

determined by three characteristics: accuracy (or precision. How accurate 

technically is the geographic description, and how accurate legally in terms of 

owners and rights, and perhaps how accurate in terms of value); 

comprehensiveness (what is the coverage both geographically and in terms of 

the percentage of owners and the possible rights involved); and transparency 

(the visibility and availability of the data and its resistance to corruption and 

fraud). 

355
A. accuracy 

B. comprehensiveness 

C. transparency 

A. accuracy 

1. Extent to which ownership registry and cadastral descriptions 

are unified. 

2. Existence of a statute of frauds and related statutory 

requirements. 

3. Availability and use of title insurance; 

4. Accuracy of surveying technologies; 

5. Monument quality and density; 

6. Age of records; 

7. Capacity of cadastral and registry bureaucracy; 

8. Appraisal cost and availability; 

9. Relationship of tax assessments to market value appraisals if 

applicable. 

B. comprehensiveness 

1. Percentage of the geographic surface represented in cadastral 

maps; 

2. Percentage of owners whose properties are represented in 

cadastral maps; 

3. Difficulty of registration; 

4. Percentage of properties with tax appraisals; 

5. Percentage of properties with market appraisals. 

C. transparency 

1. Access to cadastral information on; 

2. Access to land-use data on-line; 

3. Are paper records available for public; 

4. Where records are kept; 

5. Are registries and cadastral records digitized; 

6. Are cadastral maps digitized and vectorized; 

7. If government development projects are advertised on-line and 

GISed; 

8. What records cost; 

356
2. Capacity of owners (or claimants) and the government to act on conclusions 

logically drawn from the evidence (sometimes ease of alienability or security 

from trespass depending on the mix of owner rights and government duties 

involved). It also can be reduced to three parts: marketability, protection from 

invasion, and protection of the social contract generally. 

A. Marketability 

B. Protection from invasion 

C. Protection of the social contract 

A. Marketability 

 1. Ratio of properties bought and sold to total properties in a given 

time; 

 2. Existence of a professional real estate industry and its measures 

of professionalism; 

 3. Regulatory limitations on sale commissions, and their effect; 

 4. Real estate price controls and what is the effect; 

 5. Where zoning laws exist; 

 6. If deed restrictions and other controls on alienation are used, 

where and for what; 

 7. Existence of a MLS; 

 8. What collateral is accepted for loans and what are standard rates 

across types of real estate. 

B. Protection from invasion 

 1. How long it takes to file a quiet-title claim; 

 2. If there is a grievance mechanism against real estate 

professionals; 

 3. How much it costs to conduct a quiet-title action. 

C. Protection of the social contract 

1. How often the statue of frauds is applied; 

2. If agency contracts are used; 

3. If sales contracts are used; 

4. Whether or not the police use formal records to resolve property 

disputes; 

357
5. Professional standards of real property sales force; 

6. Professional standards for appraisals; 

7. Prenuptial requirements (is there a statutory requirement, what 

are the choices, what is the intention, how do they limit 

alienability). 

3. Conduciveness to peace of the basic rules delimiting the contract (at times 

called liberality). The two general determinants of liberality are inclusiveness 

(who can effectively be owners) and divisibility & alienation (how thoroughly 

can real estate be divided, and what rights do supposed owners have as to 

disposal of real property. 

A. Inclusiveness 

B. Divisibility and Alienation 

A. Inclusiveness 

1. If women can own property; 

2. If foreigners can own property and to what extent, where, etc.; 

3. Are other religious or ethnic identities excluded; 

B. Divisibility and Alienation 

 1. If subsurface rights can be bought and sold; 

 2. The ratio of registered names in relation to geography and 

population; 

 3. Can real property be freely bequeathed by testators; 

 4. How intestate estate property is disposed by statute; 

 5. If life estates are used; 

 6. What other divisions are used (time shares, condominiums, joint, 

common, partnership, corporate etc and is there data on geographic 

distribution and percentage of types); 

 7. Standard tenancy patterns (leases, sharecrop arrangements, 

ejidos, communes, family corporations, etc.); 

 8. If land is otherwise fully alienatable (can be bequeathed, leased 

sold rented, etc.); 

 9. Do any studies relate ownership and tenancy forms to violence 

migration or illicit narcotics production or trafficking? 

 

358
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Index 

Albright, Madeleine, 342 

Ardrey, Robert, 45, 336 

asymmetry, vi, 51, 52, 53, 62-65, 130, 

210, 258, 259 

Bauer, Peter, 12n. 

Bethel, Tom 19n., 79n. 

Boudreaux, Karol, 332 

brigandage, 49,65-70, 226 

cadastre, 16, 43, 154-160, 262, 276, 

311, 329, 349 

Caribbean, 102, 118, 275 

Chavez, Hugo, 64, 70, 104, 116-119, 

199, 300 

Clausewitz, 242-246, 296 

Cline, Ray, 235, 300, 317 

Colombia, 4, 41, 47, 53, 65, 70, 77, 

96, 112, 120-207, 265, 273, 331, 

337-343 

Cuba, 14, 101-111, 116-119, 257, 

275-281, 300, 309, 318, 331, 336, 

337, 343-346 

culture, 9, 26-29, 39, 62, 73, 97-99, 

107, 113-114, 227, 254-255, 267, 

291, 295, 299, 301, 305, 352, 

cunieform, 290 

De Soto, 2, 27, 41, 79, 196, 206, 310, 

327. 329, 331, 333, 334 

democracy, 16, 37, 42, 101, 123, 197, 

280, 320, 326-329, 335, 343, 349, 

351, 353 

Dobbins, 333, 334 

Domesday book, 289, 290 

ejido, 28, 270, 347 

FARC,53, 64-70, 118, 124, 133-136, 

148, 150, 158, 161-199, 205,321, 

341 

fee simple, 39, 99, 165, 240, 242, 251, 

274 

Freedom House, 316, 317 

Gray, Colin, 229, 293, 295 

Haiti, 5, 13, 92, 252, 256, 333-336 

Hobsbawm, E. J., 55, 56 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr., 15 

Howard, Michael, 14n. 

human rights, 3, 4, 22, 59, 60, 79, 81-

92, 101, 183, 205, 211, 219, 308, 

315, 339, 345-353 

insurgency, 34, 65, 70-74, 161, 179, 

200, 241-254 

Iraq, 4, 5, 13, 33, 61, 71, 92, 250, 253, 

308, 334, 335, 348 

Japan, 27, 231, 232, 236, 284, 285, 

310, 346 

John Randolph Roanoke, 348 

liberal, 3, 4, 11-15, 42, 59, 98, 116, 

123, 199, 274, 278, 298, 336, 348, 

349, 353 

Linklater, Andro, 309, 366 

Mackinder, Halford, 222, 229, 230, 

231, 234, 235, 236, 239, 250, 309, 

310, 382 

Marshal, 259, 342 

Mexico, viii, 111, 125, 126, 127, 129, 

141, 241, 286, 321, 338, 349, 350, 

359, 360, 380, 381 

nation-building, 309, 346, 348, 377 

North, Douglass, 49 

Noyes, Reinold , 22, 95, 97, 384 

particularization of power, 65, 67, 68, 

69, 224, 336 

Powelson, John, 93, 109, 110, 111, 

280, 385 

Pipes, Richard,18, 93 

social contract, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 

31, 33, 35, 47, 51, 67, 104, 105, 

113, 125, 130, 131, 139, 140, 144, 

153, 167, 168, 169, 186, 187, 209, 

217, 240, 289, 290, 303, 322, 325, 

329, 340, 350, 353, 355, 357, 360, 

363, 365, 367, 369, 371 

Spykman, Nicholas, 231, 232, 236, 

309, 310, 386 

373
374

St. Augustine, 64, 72, 81, 82, 83 

statute of frauds, xi, 33, 34 

strategy, 66, 71, 137, 222, 223, 225, 

233, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 250, 

254, 256, 257, 259, 262, 280, 296, 

303, 308, 338, 351, 352, 370 375, 

376, 377, 378, 380, 382, 384, 385, 

386, 387 

Tancanhuitz, 346 

terrorism, 77, 149, 178, 298, 299 

transparency, xi, 16, 22, 25, 27, 30, 

34, 73, 92, 114, 122, 153, 156, 169, 

172, 173, 174, 179, 209, 212, 218, 

288, 290, 294, 304, 305, 323, 325, 

349, 351, 352, 358, 359, 367 

trespass, 25, 33, 47, 64, 65, 66, 124, 

132, 155, 164, 168, 291, 292, 323, 

340, 362, 369, 371 

Umbeck, John, 98, 99 

UNDP, 341, 343, 344, 345 

United Nations, 75, 118,214, 272, 

309, 331, 341, 343, 344, 345, 346, 

347, 376, 388 

USAID, 288, 324 

William the Conqueror, 290 

Woolsey, James, 63,64 

About the Author 

Geoffrey Demarest has been an analyst at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Ft. 

Leavenworth, Kansas since 2000. He is a retired US Army officer and also practiced 

law as a civilian. He earned his undergraduate degree in Economics at the University 

of Colorado in 1970, a law degree at the Denver University School of Law in 1980 

and PhD at the Denver University Graduate School of International Studies in 1989.