The Gaza blockade mostly empowers Hamas

Some tough-love advice from The Economist to Israel:  the Gaza blockade makes you weaker and strengthens Hamas's ability to keep a firm grip on power in Gaza.

As usual, a strategy of disconnecting your enemy from the outside world empowers those ruling elements who prefer a firm grip over the masses to their individual empowerment.

More prosaically, the blockade has failed in all of its goals:  the Israeli solder taken hostage is still a hostage, weapons galore still make their way into Gaza via tunnels, Israel is becoming more isolated diplomatically while Hamas is winning sympathy and still overshadowing the far more quiet and more competent West Bank Palestinian leadership.  In short, all trends are heading south.

Obama is under fire here for "ruining" the relationship, but it's hard to see how he's guilty of anything more than simply realizing Netanyahu is no friend of the US and has no intention to pursue peace.  So Obama cuts his losses and the relationship suffers.  To me, that's a sensible choice given all he has on his plate regionally. And if that logic pushes Israel to bomb Iran, then so be it, because that'll just be another regional dynamic that he cannot control--especially when the Saudis collude to make it possible.

All of this is presented as tragedy, because Israel is the best thing about the Middle East in just about every other way.  It is a connectivity hub in all relevant forms. It is, putting aside the Palestinian questions, the most admirable nation-state in the region--by far.

Where to go? Obama is encouraged to get Hamas back to the negotiating table. I see that as a useless proposition.

Given the losing hand it holds right now, I can foresee Israel making the logical leap to pounding Iran. Not much to lose and better dynamics to trigger. And I say this believing quite deeply that most of Israel's leadership knows they are heading--unavoidably--to a nuclear standoff with Iran that will soon be joined by others.

Given the situation Israel finds itself in now, I would say that migrating events down that path and establishing its tough profile on that subject would make a lot of sense.

How much has Obama preserved America's connectivity?

Last piece by outgoing Lexington at The Economist.

In it, Lex provides summarizing judgment on Obama's success to date in keeping America an open and connected society/economy.

The record is decidedly mixed:  no progress on an immigration bill combined with politically-insipid shows of military force along the border (the 1,200 guardsmen just sent); no great trade barriers but also no serious efforts to move free trade pacts on the books (Colombia, South Korea).  A Cato expert is quoted as saying the Obama administration seems to view trade policy as a way to advance environmental and social goals and nothing more. Our border bureaucracy is described as the worst in the advanced world (I guess I would agree).

Larger downstream argument advanced: US military dominance is waning in the sense that we can no longer play Leviathan to everyone and assume all the SysAdmin jobs that result. Suggestion is that we need to recalibrate alliances to account for rising great powers.

Good news is that US soft-power exports remain world-class.

China is contrasted:  one-fifth of college grads say they want to emigrate, but few peasants do.

Piece ends with call for Obama to stand up more for openness.

Kind of a sad finale for this Lexington.  He doesn't seem to be finding much improvement on this score from Obama.

I think we're going to see a lot more such arguments from big-thinking types regarding the importance of America standing up for its cherished ideals.  Obama's too-lawyerly approach does not inspire like his speeches, and the gap is becoming noticeable.

The more Pakistan goes after the frontier extremists, the more they seem to penetrate Pakistan's interior

The victims of terrorists bury their dead

Economist story that argues the extremists are growing strong in the more advanced areas of Pakistan--in effect, spilling out of the frontier into what most would consider to be Pakistan proper.

Vibe: the more the Pakistan military/security forces go after the extremists (Pak/Pashtun Taliban, Afghan Taliban in refuge, al Qaeda & other militants) in the FATA and NW Frontier Province, the more those groups retaliate by spreading eastward and southward into previously stable areas--returning the favor, so to speak.

Corollary argument is that whenever the same happens, radical elements are driven over border into Afghanistan, something that, as a rule, Islamabad is okay with, because it prefers Pashtun dominance in the north (the "strategic depth" argument).

Upshot being, this is why Islamabad in general likes to take a hands-off approach to the FATA and NW province: the hornet's nest stirred up is bad for Pakistan's usually more stable areas.

Story highlights a recent gunmen attack on the Ahmadis in Lahore.  They are a religious minority often persecuted as heretics by fundamentalist Muslims.  Over 90 were killed, and the shocking events retriggered a debate about how pervasive the Taliban are across the country as a whole.  Gov says there ain't no such thing as Punjabi Taliban, but local police in Lahore argue otherwise, saying they were behind recent Ahmadi assault.

There have always been Sunni Muslim extremist outfits in the settled areas, typically banned yet tolerated (and even supported by Pakistan's ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]), especially if they proved useful vis-a-vis India in the Kashmir "olive-tree" fight (like the most publicized player, Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai assault).  Conventional wisdom has long said that these groups were distinct from the Taliban in the NW; now many are saying that's no longer true. More and more these groups decry the "foreign domination" of the US, so everything seems to be increasingly mushed together in that nasty "stew" you keep hearing about.

Conclusion of piece:  the more the US pushes Islamabad to work the Taliban issue in the NW, the more likely we end up pushing them to address militants throughout the country.  In short, either a comprehensive element or the usual whack-a-mole selectivity on Islamabad's part will become too apparent to hide from all interested parties.

This analysis falls in with the arguments you see more and more in the community that our focus in South Asia should be Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  That dovetails with my choose-India-first arguments.

Inevitably, I think this is how events are funneled. 

Training of Afghan security forces: close but no SIGAR

FT story by way of Our Man in Kabul.

Key findings to be released at the end of June:

A US government audit to be released at the end of this month will cast doubt on the $25bn effort to build Afghan military and police forces, a blow to the cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s exit strategy.   

According to the audit, the standards used to appraise the Afghan forces since 2005 were woefully inadequate, inflating their abilities.

The Nato-led coalition’s rating system measured forces based on such factors as training and equipment, rather than a metric that would more accurately assess their fighting abilities, the report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concludes.

Military officials acknowledge the rating system’s inadequacies . . .   

For nearly five years, the Capability Milestone measure was used to advertise the growing number of competent Afghan soldiers . . . 

“The system deliberately exaggerated the combat capacity of Afghan troops, and it disguised the true level of attrition and desertion,” said Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

A new system measures troops in terms of operational effectiveness. It relies on field assessments by Nato commanders.  But auditors say the changes made are inadequate. Others say there is too much room for personal bias.

As Afghan forces have expanded, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the coalition, has pushed for a revised barometer of the forces’ abilities, settling on a new rating system in April . . . 

Afghan forces will play a critical role in the months leading up to July 2011, when American troops will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, according the strategy Mr Obama outlined last year. 

To be sure, there's a lot of political pressure applied regarding a hoped-for declaration of progress by July 2011.

As usual, the military's best defense regarding such SysAdmin ops is a strong inspector general.

While Gaza gets all the attention, the West Bank actually starts to work

Nice Friedman argument that we're missing the actual advances in Palestinian governance in the West Bank.

Key second half:

You see, there are two models of Arab governance. The old Nasserite model, which Hamas still practices, where leaders say: “Judge me by how I resist Israel or America.” And: “First we get a state, then we build the institutions.” The new model, pioneered in the West Bank by Abbas and Fayyad is: “Judge me by how I perform — how I generate investment and employment, deliver services and pick up the garbage. First we build transparent and effective political and security institutions. Then we declare a state. That is what the Zionists did, and it sure worked for them.”

The most important thing going on in this conflict today is that since 2007 the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and the U.S. have partnered to train a whole new West Bank Palestinian security force in policing, administration and even human rights. The program is advised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton — one of the unsung good guys. The Israeli Army has become impressed enough by the performance of the new Palestinian National Security Force, or N.S.F., under Abbas and Fayyad that those forces are now largely responsible for law and order in all the major West Bank towns, triggering an explosion of Palestinian building, investment and commerce in those areas.

Here are highlights: the Jordanians have trained and the Palestinian Authority deployed and equipped five N.S.F. battalions and one Presidential Guard unit, some 3,100 men. Plus, 65 Palestinian first-responders have been trained and are being equipped with emergency gear. A Palestinian National Training Center, with classrooms and dorms, is nearing completion in Jericho so the Palestinians themselves can take over the training. The Palestinian Authority is building a 750-man N.S.F. camp to garrison the new N.S.F. troops — including barracks, gym and parade ground — near Jenin. At the same time, the Palestinian security headquarters are all being rebuilt in every major Palestinian town, starting in Hebron. An eight-week senior leadership training course in Jericho — bringing together the Palestinian police, the N.S.F. and Presidential Guards — has graduated 280 people, including 20 women.

A course for captains and below in how to handle everything from crowd control to elections has also begun. The reinvigorated Palestinian Ministry of Interior is leading the Palestinian security sector transformation, and the Canadians are helping to set up Joint Operations Centers across the West Bank so all Palestinian security services can coordinate via video conferencing. The Canadians are also helping the Palestinians to build a logistics center. Parallel with all this, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has reduced Israel’s manned checkpoints in the West Bank from 42 to 12.

This won’t be politically sustainable for Abbas and Fayyad, though, unless Israel begins to turn full authority over to the Palestinians for their major cities — so-called area A — in the West Bank. Palestinians have to see their new security services as building their state, not cushioning Israel’s occupation. There could be a moment of truth here for Israel soon, but at least it will be based on something real.

In sum, this dynamic — Palestinians building real institutions from the ground up and getting Israel to cede to them real authority — is the ballgame. Make it work across the West Bank and find a way to transfer it to Gaza (how about reopening the Israel-Gaza border and letting the new Palestinian N.S.F. control the passages to Israel?) and a two-state solution is possible. Let it fail, and we’ll have endless conflict. Everything else is just a sideshow.

A nice refocusing of strategic attention.

Is it enough of an argument to prevent Israel from taking its swipe against Iran over the nuke program? Only way we get definitive evidence is when the bombs start falling.

But a great argument from Friedman.

Chart of the day: Why China will survive a real estate bubble burst

Economist story subtitled, "China's economic boom can survive a property bust.

First reason is the fact that most Chinese mortgages are for less than half the house's value, so hard to go "underwater" (unlike in US, where the habit became, between first and second mortgages, one of being 100% in debt, so any drop in prices immediately put a lot of people underwater--i.e., owing more than the house was now worth).

Second reason shown in the chart:  why the yuan value of all mortgages in China is skyrocketing, as a percentage of GDP, the total still remains quite low (less than 16%).  In the US, the share is more like 80%, so a lot more potential impact when a bubble bursts.

Good news for China and the global economy.

Winning in Iraq: What else do you call it?

The periodic chart in the NYT that tracks trends over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan too.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers are inconclusive in the latter two, reflecting the previous neglect and now the heightened effort.

The only numbers here that jump out are from Iraq.

Somehow we go down from 153k US troops to just 95k, while the Iraqis go up from 445k to 665k and EVERYBODY'S deaths go down dramatically--ours and theirs (to include their civilians).  

Hard not to call that victory, and that's important to remember. Bush-Cheney screwed up the postwar, and then spent years resisting the move to serious COIN, finally giving in after the 2006 election rebuff. When the generals really took over and did what their own hearts and minds told them was right, we got success.  Didn't come in a flash and it cost plenty, but we got success.

That's where the rush job now on Af-Pak strikes me as destined to fail--and prove nothing, especially when we doom ourselves by aligning with Pakistan.

Where I was wrong on Iraq:  I did not believe that the COIN would be enough absent a regionalization effort that included some cool-down on Iran.  I still think we'd have a much more stable Iraq with such an effort, but I clearly underestimated our ability to stabilize Iraq and put the civil war dynamics on the backburner. Iran's domestic troubles have helped in this regard, but we are still a long ways away from engaging Iran more sensibly on the nukes.  There I see a postwar generation of leaders not unlike the Brezhnev crew in the USSR (in relation to the Great Patriotic War) that are brutal enough in their repression but clearly calculating in their brinkmanship with the West and essentially obsessed with getting their revolution historically recognized by the West in the form of admitting their "power" achievements--to include nukes that protect them from regime change.  In sum, I don't view Iran as irrational.  We've been down this pathetic path before and we know how to handle it.  So the regionalization logic, while deferred, still awaits Iran's clear achievement of nuclear weaponization, which is coming.

On Afghanistan, I will stick to the same regionalization logic, because Pakistan's interests here are so strong in seeing Kabul dominated by a Pashtun/Taliban dynamic in the south.  As with Iraq, I see a larger player (India) that must be satisfied on some level if we want true regional security to emerge (and guess what, it's basically another unofficial nuclear power, as is its rival Pakistan). 

In the end, both of these regional efforts at security regimes will resemble what we did in Europe following WWII, and yes, even there it took about 30 years to work itself out, but our patience and our engagement and our military resolve all paid out magnificently.

Gates: a 5GW warrior working a wedge

PLA Daily photo.

WAPO piece by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The gist:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates accused China's military on Thursday of impeding relations with the Pentagon, taking exception to its unwillingness to invite him to Beijing during his trip to Asia this week.

Gates told reporters that there is a clear split between China's political leaders, who he said want a stronger military connection with Washington, and the People's Liberation Army, which he said does not.

"I think they are reluctant to engage with us on a broad level," he said. "The PLA is significantly less interested in this relationship than the political leadership of China."

Beijing's political and economic relations with Washington have gradually improved in recent years, as the emerging global superpower and the established one have tried to come to terms with each other. But military cooperation has lagged, a source of frustration for Pentagon officials.

They say that communication with the People's Liberation Army needs to improve to deal with regional crises, such as South Korea's accusation that a North Korean submarine torpedoed one of its warships in March, to broader strategic issues, such as the long-term buildup of China's military forces. Washington also has been seeking China's support -- without much success -- in trying to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

We make our choices on things like Taiwan arms sales and military aid to Pakistan, and these choices allow hardliners in the Chinese and Indian militaries to make their case against stronger cooperation with us. At some point, we decide other things like North Korea and Iran really are more important, or we keep with these yin-yanging relationships that never quite come to fruition. You have to remember:  we're the established superpower, and they are the risers, so sensitivities must be observed, just like the Brits did with rising America a century ago. It's just the cost of doing business.

But I like Gates' explanation here, because it's a truthful one: the PLA can't afford too much comity with the US military, because it undercuts their own Leviathan funding and pushes the nation down the path of assuming more responsibility for its expanding global economic network ties, which will bog down the PLA in all sorts of SysAdmin work.

But in Fifth Generation Warfare terms, this is how we do it.

Man-bites-dog story: New cyber command chief says US completely invulnerable!

Okay, so I lied.  The WAPO piece really stated that Gen. Keith Alexander, new head of US Cyber Command, warned that the US was vulnerable to such attacks and that evidence exists that rivals and enemies plan to do just that in the event of wars/terrorism.

Then again, what do you expect the new head of a new command to say on the subject?

Don't get me wrong:  the command makes sense.  DOD nets receive 6 million hacking attempts a day.  Then again, Bank of America receives something in the same range.

I just find the coverage a bit rote.

Balkans: the remapping isn't done?

Economist piece.

The US and EU want no redrawing of borders between Serbia and Kosovo, and no diplos on either side makes the case publicly yet.

And yet, expectations are rising that a slice of Serb-heavy northern Kosovo will get handed over in the ongoing custody battle.  Why?  Something like half of Kosovo's Serbs are found there.

The EU warns Serbia that it's jeopardizing its admission application, and yet, nobody wants a new Cyprus.

Very familiar dynamic: small population tied to neighbor is trapped inside border; that nation's government can't really extend its writ there; so the upshot is continued unrest and non-resolution, because the would-be-breakaway region can neither break away or come under stabilizing rule.

Custody decisions get revised all the time.  This one should too.

The Chinese take a page from my Irish ancestors

WAPO story.

The gist:

The Chinese government has begun ramping up research, production and training related to the humble spud, and hopes are high that it could help alleviate poverty and serve as a bulwark against famine.

The challenge of feeding a growing nation on a shrinking supply of arable land while confronting severe water shortages has long been a major concern here. China has to feed one-fifth of the world's population on one-tenth of its arable land, and the nation's expanding cities are consuming farmland at breakneck speed. China estimates that by 2030, when its population is expected to level off at roughly 1.5 billion, it will need to produce an additional 100 million tons of food each year.

That statistical reality could change eating habits here. Potatoes need less water to grow than rice or wheat, and they yield far more calories per acre. 

Makes you wonder why the Irish got so heavy into potatoes, because there's no shortage of water there.  Must be the tough growing season.

But the pattern is clear enough:  cut back on water-intensive crops and move into more hardier fare (rice to potatoes).  Obviously, rice isn't going anywhere, but as one Chinese ag expert put it, "Rice, wheat, corn -- we've gone about as far as we can go with them. But not the potato."

Some perspective on this shift:  China actually ALREADY produces and consumes more potatoes than any other in the world. But when it comes to consumption, because we're talking such a huge population, the Chinese lag in per capita terms, eating only one-third the amount of potatoes that Russians do and two-thirds the amount Americans eat.

If I could get every Chinese to eat a potato a day . . ..

SOCOM turned loose by Obama administration

WAPO story by DeYoung and Jaffe.

Key point:

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

'More access'

Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We have a lot more access," a second military official said. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

So the soft-on-terror bit doesn't hold with Obama.

I approve of this message:  I see no reason why my trigger-pullers should not stay trigger-happy.  They are good at what they do, and I prefer to take the fight to its sources.

Doesn't obviate the nation-building realities of the international security landscape, where we definitely need to swap out Old Core allies for New, but it demonstrates our commitment to waging the Long War on its own terms.

So a solid course from this White House that earns my respect.

Gates getting even tougher--and more realistic--on the budget

NYT piece by Thom Shanker.

Gates turns the budgetary screws a bit tighter:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered the military and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy to find tens of billions of dollars in annual savings to pay for war-fighting operations, senior officials said Thursday.

His goal is $7 billion in spending cuts and efficiencies for 2012, growing to $37 billion annually by 2016.

Every modern defense secretary has declared war on Pentagon waste and redundancy. And there have been notable, but relatively narrow successes, in closing and consolidating military bases or in canceling a handful of weapons systems.

But if Mr. Gates’s sweeping plan is fully enacted, none of the armed services or Pentagon civilian agencies and directorates would be immune from the pain of annual cost-cutting, which would become institutionalized across the Defense Department.

The spending guidelines were delivered orally to senior military officers and civilian officials before Mr. Gates’s departure this week for an Asian security conference in Singapore, and the official signed guidance will be issued over coming days.

The goal is to force all of the Defense Department agencies and organizations, and all of the armed services, to save enough money in their management, personnel policies and logistics to guarantee 3 percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the accounts that pay for combat operations.

Current budget plans project growth of only 1 percent in the Pentagon budget, after inflation, over the next five years.

“Given the nation’s fiscal situation, there is an urgency to doing this, rather than shifting more of the nation’s resources toward national defense,” William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary, said in an interview.

Mr. Gates’s spending orders offer a considerable incentive to the armed services. Each dollar in spending cuts found by a military department would be reinvested in the combat force of that branch, and not siphoned away for other purposes.

The last bit is the smartest.  The services always fear that answering the call on budget discipline is a zero-sum game.

A grim reminder that contingency operations are not good for the defense establishment's bottom line--at least once the splurge mentality is curbed.

A sense of just how risk averse the Chinese single-party state is

NYT story on China's first astronaut orbital space flight back in 

The point:

As the nation held its collective breath, China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, floated back to the motherland, having orbited Earth 14 times in the Shenzhou 5, or Divine Capsule.

It was October 2003, and the national broadcaster CCTV carried live coverage of the momentous event, from Mr. Yang’s famous pleasantries uttered in space — “I feel good” — to the instant that workers opened the capsule door to reveal the pale but smiling face of a hero, offering irrefutable evidence that China’s maiden manned space voyage had gone off without a hitch.

Or had it?

In a lecture he gave to a group of journalism students last month, a top official at Xinhua, the state news agency, said that the mission was not so picture-perfect. The official, Xia Lin, described how a design flaw had exposed the astronaut to excessive G-force pressure during re-entry, splitting his lip and drenching his face in blood. Startled but undaunted by Mr. Yang’s appearance, the workers quickly mopped up the blood, strapped him back in his seat and shut the door. Then, with the cameras rolling, the cabin door swung open again, revealing an unblemished moment of triumph for all the world to see.

The content of Mr. Xia’s speech, transcribed and posted online by someone who attended the May 15 lecture at Tianjin Foreign Studies University, has become something of a sensation in recent days, providing the Chinese a rare insight into how their news is stage-managed for mass consumption.

Titled “Understanding Journalistic Protocols for Covering Breaking News,” the speech was intended to help budding journalists understand Xinhua’s dual mission: to give Chinese leaders a fast and accurate picture of current events and to deftly manipulate that picture for the public to ensure social harmony, and by extension, the Communist Party’s hold on power.

My point:  China's ruling party is beyond conservative.  They cannot afford defeats or losses or embarrassments or anything that suggests loss of control.

So long as China remains a one-party state, it cannot be a serious global leader.  To lead is to risk failure, and the CCP has no taste for that.  The bums cannot be thrown out, so they cannot risk anything truly significant.

First rule of commitment: if you have to say it, it ain't there

Wash Times piece by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The gist:

The Obama administration is deeply committed to its relationship with India despite concerns to the contrary, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.

William J. Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, tackled a prevalent belief in India that the Obama administration is less committed to a relationship with India than his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Mr. Burns, who previously served in the Bush administration, said there was bipartisan commitment in Washington to the U.S.-India relationship.

My, what a vessel and what a message.  You just know it has to be true.

Chart of the day: Oil spills in historical perspective

To me, just some fascinating perspective.  The difference this time is the depth of release, as the graphic notes.

Sorry for the scan.  Just could not find it online at Newsweek for some reason.

Two recent mentions overseas: China (People's Daily) and Italy (Il Tempo)

Two recent overseas pieces reference the blog and the vision.  The first is an op-ed in the English-language version of the People's Daily Online, the Chinese Communist Party's mainline publication.  The authors provide this dual biography:

John Milligan-Whyte is called the "new Edgar Snow" and the "21st century Kissinger" and is the only non-Chinese to be elected the winner of the Social Responsibility Award from the China Business Leaders Summit. John Milligan-Whyte and Dai Min are the executive producers and co-hosts of the Collaboration of Civilizations television series adapted by the eight books they wrote in the America-China Partnership Book Series published in English and Mandarin in 2009-2010 that created the "New School of America-China Relations." They founded the America-China Partnership Foundation and Forum in 2008 and the Center for America-China Partnershipin 2005, which was recognized in 2009 as "the first American think tank to combine and integrate American and Chinese perspectives providing a complete answer for America and China's success in the 21st century."

 I am rightfully accused of being a peace-monger on China in a column titled, "Thomas Barnett recommends US never go to war with China."  Tripping through the piece:

Peaceful coexistence has today become both all that the US can afford militarily and economically and essential for US economic and national security. The Iran and North Korea crises are becoming impossible for the US to defuse without long over due new US policies towards China. The limitations of American military and economic power are unfortunately dangerously self-evident. The US military is already over extended and bogged down in two long wars. The US financial, economic, unemployment and government solvency crises are relentlessly entering even more dangerous stages. It is easy for the US to start or be forced into new wars that are impossible for anyone to win given the potential speed and economic impact of major wars. The world has changed. Conventional American policies and policymakers' mindsets must change faster than they can. 

Fortunately, President Obama recognizes the need for and is now urgently searching for unconventional policies capable of bring the US back from the brink of economic collapse and unbearable humiliation or catastrophic wars with Iran and North Korea that can overnight engulf the Middle East, Asia and the world in economic, social and political collapse . . . 

What is China to do? New American policies towards China are essential for the US and China to be able to solve the America's economic and the North Korea, Iran and other national security crises. Conventional American policies exacerbate rather than solve these crises for the reasons explained by the Center for America China Partnership's books and articles and now fortunately by Thomas P.M. Barnett. 

On June 2, 2010 Thomas Barnett stated that China: "can now legitimately claim to be working on behalf of the global economic security as much or more than America. In short, it can claim that 'what is good for China is good for the world,' an argument to which only America could lay serious claim in past decades. This is why we're never going to war with China; codendency on globalization is profound." 

US News & World Reports describes Thomas Barnett as "one of the leading strategic thinkers of our time." Barnett has seen and understood the world from his roles of senior advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, Central Command, Special Operations, and led the five-year NewRulesSet.Project for the U.S. military. He is the author of two books that have been profoundly influential: The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. Barnett's comments were posted on his website,http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/globlogization/tag/china, in response to an article in the Financial Times on May 24, 2010, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de337ab6-66ca-11df-aeb1-00144feab49a.html.

The Financial Times article titled "The way to increase America's exports to China" was published as the second round of the Strategic and Economic Dialogues began by Dr. Huo Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a subsidiary of China's Ministry of Commerce, and John Milligan-Whyte, chairman of the Center for America China Partnership. Barnett quoted five paragraphs from the article stating that they are a "nice summary of China's thinking regarding our bilateral economic relationship" and "an excellent and hard-to-refute summary argument" . . . 

Thomas Barnett has an extraordinarily American reputation and track record of successfully prompting American policymakers to realize that profound changes in US military strategic thinking are required. Today the US's conventional economic and national security policies have not provided either economic or national security although the US economy is by far the largest in the world and US military spending is over half of all nations . . . 

Then we get some Paul Kennedy--not exactly my favorite take.

Then this interesting twist:

Chinese policymakers have understood for thirty years, as Thomas Barnett stated this week, that America and China must never go to war. President Obama implementing that advice requires healthy changes America's whole relationship with China. China's military spending is 12 percent of the US, although its population is 500 percent larger. China has been at peace with all nations since 1979 and had the fastest growing economy in the world because it's policymakers adopted Deng Xiaoping's policies of opening up to foreign investment and peaceful coexistence with America and all other nations. America must now reciprocate Deng Xiaoping's policies. President Obama must become America's Deng Xiaoping.

For 60 years there has been a fundamental core problem in US-China relations that only President Obama can and needs to change now: US policymakers and policies have not accepted the legitimacy of the Chinese government. Chinese policymakers were optimistic when President Obama was elected with the promise and mandate for change at a time of profound American economic and national security crises. It has been 60 years since the birth of modern China and resulting outbreak of the Korean War, which never formally ended as the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel reminded us. The views of Thomas Barnett quoted above support an unconventional perspective for American policymaking: that America should accept peaceful coexistence with the 22 percent of mankind and the legitimacy and success of their indigenous government. It has been very successful in managing sustained economic growth, social and political stability, peaceful foreign and defense policies, and reform and opening up to American investment .  .  .

The cool twist was the reverse imaging on Deng-Obama.  The second para oversells the lack of legitimacy argument, but I suppose that's a backhanded reference on Taiwan, because that's where the text goes next.

A bit down the road:

American policymakers wonder what has changed, since they are merely continuing conventional US policies of selling arms to Taiwan irrespective of China's national security needs? Everything has changed. American policymakers do not understand sufficiently that the US's relationship with China has abruptly and prematurely forever entered a new 21st century era when the US Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson told the world that the US financial system and economy would collapse without immediate government bail out of insolvent American banks and insurance companies. Now America is itself, like many nations, insolvent. What has changed is what Paul Kennedy feared would happen in The Rise and Fall of Great Nations published in 1987. Hopefully, President Obama will agree with Thomas Barnett's recommendations . . . 

A bit of Chinese hubris, I might argue.

Better bit, which I argue with wholly:

The third question is does President Obama believe that many existing American policies towards China undermine America's economic and national security? The White Paper cites as an example, that US policy is to prevent Chinese oil companies from buying American oil companies, prevent China from interfering with America's sources of oil and acquiring oil from nations America disapproves of such as Iran. This approach seeks to be win-win only for America and is not realistic. America and China, the two largest economies, consume more oil than they produce. Many US policymakers today believe that this makes war between the two nations inevitable. 

It means exactly the opposite. The two nations that consume 42 percent of the world's oil must be both economic and military allies, aligning their economic and national security in a new era of peaceful coexistence, or neither will have the oil they require. It benefits no nation for oil to vary in price from 47 to 147 US dollars a barrel. Collaborating America and China could stabilize the price of oil at a price of 65 to 70 US dollars a barrel benefiting all nations and militarily and economically ensure the peace that is essential for steady oil production and transportation globally. The US and China entering a new era of really collaboration, because they both recognized they will never go to war, would change the Iran and other issues profoundly.

In a style typical for People's Daily, a certain listing of grievances packs the piece, which ends with a near-term reference to the slighting of Gates.

In summary, Chinese policymakers refusing the US Defense Secretary's request to visit China signals President Obama personally that conventional American policymaking will not be effective in the Iran and North Korea crises. It signals President Obama personally that Chinese policymakers need the US to accept the legitimacy and success and reciprocate the peaceful coexistence policies of China's indigenous government, and to reciprocate and open up to Chinese companies investing, and thus creating US and Chinese economic and employment growth. That breakthrough is what is essential to make the world governable.

Overall, pretty interesting to watch a fellow peace-monger work the argument from the other side, clearly operating within certain sensitivities (e.g., all pertinent grievances must be aired--very Chinese).  To my knowledge, this guy is the only American I've ever heard of--maybe even the only foreigner--ever to have a foreign affairs column at the People's Daily, so he's certainly in a fascinating category--whatever it is.  Upon sending him an email, he sent me back a long reply that catalogues all the content he's running through their system as a one-man content empire, so once I get his most recent tome, I'll either review it here or at WPR, because it's all certainly indicative of something worth commenting on.

Anyway, something to remember:  Christianity is all about sin, so it's all about repentance equating to salvation. Confucianism deals with the problem of disorder, so the solution is all about harmony leading to social order. In other words, the old justice-versus-order conundrum.  There is a middle ground upon which the two sides can meet, but we have to have to understand how differently the Chinese view the world and its dangers.  We will accept a lot of disorder in the name of justice; they will not.  Somewhere between lies globalization's path for a long time to come.

Second reference comes in Il Tempo.

Piece about PM Berlusconi and his foreign policy ambitions in Africa, with a special notion of taming Gaddafi.

My left-over Romanian is such that I can just about understand the reference to the libro PNM.

Non a caso la Cina sta investendo miliardi di dollari in Africa e gli Stati Uniti hanno deciso di rilanciare la loro politica di cooperazione e sviluppo nell'area. Il continente dimenticato, in un mondo che si fa sempre più stretto e affollato, diventerà molto presto la scacchiera dove le grandi potenze si contenderanno il primato. In fondo la storia anche in questo caso ama ripetersi. Fu così anche nell'epoca coloniale, quando gli imperi decisero di allargare i loro confini. Fu una delle tappe della globalizzazione. Gli effetti sono quelli di una società connessa che ha le sue aree di crisi e di guerra dove è disconnessa. Quest'ultimo è un concetto sviluppato da un pensatore strategico di nome Thomas P.M. Barnett che in un libro intitolato «La nuova mappa del Pentagono» spiega come siano le società disconnesse (dalle relazioni internazionali, dall'economia, dalla rete) a creare focolai di crisi pericolosi per la stabilità mondiale. Pensateci bene, per lungo tempo anche la Libia è stato un Paese disconnesso, fuori dal network internazionale, isolato e, purtroppo, terrorista.

The piece seems to argue that Berlusconi is pursuing a strategy of heightened connectivity with North Africa. How very Roman.

Arms spending is up! Among the rich and rising great powers--quelle surprise!

I'm too sexy for my hurt

A Guardian story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

SIPRI, the arms-spending-tracking think tank out of Stockholm, says global defense spending is up almost 50% over the past decade, so a more dangerous world right?

Except when you examine the details, it's all so underwhelming.

Global defense spending peaked in the late 1980s and then dropped dramatically over the 1990s, picking back up around the turn of the century and eventually equally the late 1980s total in the latter years of the last decade. That means we spent two decades getting back to the late Cold War total. 

How did we do this as a planet?  Well, the bulk of that additional spending was by the U.S. (more than half). The rest was almost all by rising powers like India, China, Turkey, etc.--nothing out of the historical norm there.

So you look at the top spenders and unless you can sustain the fantasy of America taking on its banker (China), this is simply a cash of the rich getting richer.

Meanwhile, the 65-year moratorium on great-power non-war holds as steady as ever, despite our collective navigation of the worst financial crisis in modern globalization's history.  State-on-state war remains historically low, and our primary problems remain terrorists and civil strife.

SIPRI's report admits as much:

Only six of the biggest armed conflicts last year concerned territority, with 11 fought over the nature and makeup of a national government, according to Sipri's report. It said that only three of the 30 big conflicts over the past decade were between states.

My, what a dangerous world.  Rich, largely uninvolved rising great powers are bulking up their militaries, while rich-but-aging Western powers are spending precious coin on COIN.  All that tells me is that we need to get the free-riders to pay for their ride.

Brezhnevian Iran: obsessing with the surface

WAPO piece that highlights an uptick in "morality police" activity.  

Gist:

Iranian authorities have begun police patrols in the capital to arrest women wearing clothes deemed improper. The campaign against loose-fitting veils and other signs of modernism comes as government opponents are calling for rallies to mark the anniversary of the disputed presidential election, and critics of the crackdown say it is stoking feelings of discontent.

But hard-liners say that improper veiling is a "security issue" and that "loose morality" threatens the core of the Islamic republic.

This is so pathetically transparent that it would laughable absent all the other nasty stuff that Tehran's ruling militarized government does to serious dissidents.  But it gives you the same sense I had as a budding Sovietologist when I lived a summer in Leningrad in 1985. The government made this huge effort to maintain the appearance of control over a fairly sophisticated population whose hearts and minds it has lost long ago (maintaining the loyalty really only among the isolated rural folk who knew no better), but the compromise was clear: you pretend to obey in public and we pretend to rule over all.  The more obsessed you see the government become with appearances, the less control it really has.  It's all just the Potemkin village effort that everybody, on both sides of the power equation, engages in.

I know a lot of people see Iran's reach for nukes as a grand culmination of a threat, but I view more as the last gasp of a failed revolutionary movement.  Yes, just like the Brezhnev crowd, the Revolutionary Guard crew harbor all manner of beyond-border ambitions. That's just part of the fantasy.

Asian integration: an appreciation

 

Very solid piece in World Politics Review by an American U. (DC) prof, Amitav Acharya, who's clearly spent a good chunk of his career building up this expertise.

I trip through the piece as so:

To begin, it might help to quickly summarize some of the most familiar criticisms of Asian regional institutions (while noting that I find some to be more accurate than others). The first is that they have not played a role in the major and longstanding regional conflicts, especially those that are holdovers from the Cold War period, such as the PRC-Taiwan conflict, or those between North and South Korea, and India and Pakistan. Neither have they mattered in the management of maritime territorial disputes, such as the Spratly Islands dispute involving China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Brunei. Similarly, territorial disputes between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Daoyutai islands, or between Korea and Japan over Takeshima/Tokdo islands, have not been addressed by any of the regional groupings.

A second criticism relates to their failure to make use of available instruments of conflict-prevention and resolution . . . 

Third, the failure of regional trust-building, which is supposed to have been brought about by regional groups like the ASEAN or ARF, is reflected in the emergence of what seems to be a significant arms race across the region . . . 

Fourth, on the economic front, there has been no regional free-trade area under the auspices of APEC, which was created partly with that objective in mind. Instead, bilateral trade arrangements have flourished . . . 

Fifth, while the region is regularly visited by natural calamities, there is no standing regional humanitarian and disaster assistance mechanism in place, despite periodic attempts to create one . . .

Finally, on human rights and social issues, Asia continues to lag behind other regions, including Africa and Latin America, not to mention Europe, in developing regional human rights promotion and protection mechanisms . . . 

Yet, skepticism about Asia's fledgling regionalism should not obscure its contributions to regional order. One major contribution has been the socialization of China. In the early 1990s, China was wary of regional multilateral cooperation. It viewed regional institutions like ARF or ASEAN as ways for the region's weaker states to "gang up" against Chinese interests and territorial rights. Yet, China significantly revised its view of Asian regionalism and has now become a key player driving it. 

Without engagement in this nascent regionalism, China would have had little option but to deal with its neighbors on a strictly bilateral basis, which would have given it far more leverage and coercive ability over its individual neighbors at a time of rapidly expanding national wealth and power. In that event, China's re-emergence as a great power might have been much rougher and more contentious. Many Chinese analysts agree that involvement in Asian regional institutions was a major learning experience for China with regards to wider international cooperation . . .

Skeptics may argue that the Chinese "charm offensive" that flowed in conjunction with its participation in regional multilateral institutions is little more than a "time-buying" tactic, until such time as China has built up its economic and military muscle to show its true aggressive colors . . .

But such skepticism can be challenged. Which country would totally eschew bilateralism in its foreign affairs? And which country, great power or not, would forsake aspirations to some sort of a leadership role in the international arena, at least over some key issue areas? And while China may have initially made some strategic calculations about its interest in regional participation, it is not immune to the logic of socialization and learning fostered through the habits of dialogue and continuous interaction. Chinese policymakers are aware of the costs of switching from a policy of engagement to a posture of confrontation . . .

Asian regional groups are not problem-solving or law-enforcing mechanisms, but norm-making and socializing agents. In this respect, they do conform to the general model of international organizations, which generally lack coercive enforcement power, but act as instruments of socialization and legitimation. 

Asian regionalism is often compared, mostly unfavorably, with the European variety. Yet, even the much-vaunted European Union is not without significant shortcomings. Compare, for example, the EU's approach to Russia with Asia's approach to China . . .

. . . the relationship between U.S. military presence and alliance structure in the region and the development of multilateral institutions in Asia is not a zero-sum situation. Indeed, in recent years, U.S. military assets in Asia and the Pacific have been increasingly used for addressing common regional challenges, such as natural disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. U.S. military exercises, like Cobra Gold, have expanded beyond their original missions (in this case, of supporting Thailand) to include a range of other regional countries, serving as a platform for multilateral coordination. Multilateral cooperation featuring American forces and those of non-allied nations, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, has also been on the rise in efforts to ensure maritime security in vulnerable parts of Asia, such as the Straits of Malacca. The rationale for regional security institutions need not conflict with U.S. military alliances. Rather, the two can be mutually supportive. 

None of the above assertions would imply that Asian regionalism is in no need of reform and change. To be more meaningful and relevant, Asian institutions need to address four challenges.

The first is the challenge to overcome the 19th-century mindset of sovereignty and non-intervention . . .

Second, Asia needs to reconcile competing proposals for regional architecture that have cropped up . . . 

Third, Asian institutions need to move beyond the ASEAN Way of informal, strictly consensus-driven cooperation, to adopt greater institutionalization and legalization . . . 

Finally, Asian regional institutions should widen their focus to embrace transnational issues, and move beyond being forums for consultations and dialogue to become instruments for problem-solving . . .

To sum up, criticisms of Asian regionalism and regional institutions are not without merit. Yet, they do not warrant the view that investing in Asian regionalism is a waste of resources and time, or that the Asian institutions have not made positive contributions to regional stability and prosperity. Much depends on what sort of yardstick we use to judge their performance. In general, the benefits of regionalism and continued institution-building far outweigh its costs, and the region would be a more dangerous and uncertain place without them.

Very nice piece.