Trying to unwind this demonization trend

Another John Milligan-Whyte and Dai Min piece in China Daily on how to--in my words--slow down this demonization trend on China here in the States.  I cite it because my WPR column on Monday is exactly about the trend.

How can China end America's relentless 60-year-old policies of arming Taiwan? Deng Xiaoping's policy is to let time take care of currently irresolvable disputes . .  . Half a century after the Cuban Missile Crisis almost escalated into World War III, Cuba has never been invaded. America has not relented in its regime change policies toward Cuba. But President Kennedy agreed with General Secretary Khrushchev that America would never invade Cuba. As a result the USSR stopped dangerously arming Cuba's reaction to America's regime change policies.

That's actually a smart twist on what I wrote in "Blueprint" about trading the Taiwan scenario for a better strategic understanding with China ("locking in China at today's prices"):

• President Hu announces clearly in communications with President Obama that under no circumstances will China invade Taiwan militarily or seek to force its unification by arms; and in return for that memorandum of understanding
• the administration works to repeal the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and its provisos about arming Taiwan and always maintaining a military capability to defend it.
• Once the act is repealed, the U.S. and Taiwan and China enter into trilateral security talks to de-militarize the situation (or better yet, have ASEAN host because that's the closest thing in the region to an alliance of sorts), but the Taiwan-Chinese political and economic relationship remains theirs and theirs alone to discuss.

Tell me that's not a better than the arms race we've got with the Chinese on the subject, or the one both sides fuel in the region (China with behavior, the US with arms transfers)?

Next up:

What can China do about American and South Korean continuous naval exercises each month projecting America's military power in the Yellow Sea? Deng Xiaoping's policy is that China should be unaligned in hostilities between nations, and always aligned with peaceful coexistence. China broke off military exchanges in reaction to the Obama administration's sale of military equipment to Taiwan when cross-Straits relations are improving. Now the Obama administration very much wants such military cooperation and exchanges. China should return to peaceful coexistence protecting policies. How? China's navy should join the American and South Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea. China also should continue to take a neutral position on the regional disputes such as the recent warship sinking event of South Korea.

Fine and dandy.  I don't think we should be in the business of military exercises in the region where China is excluded.  The whole point of those things nowadays is outreach more than improving operations.  Break down the walls.

Now for the South China Sea:

What can China do about having jurisdictional disputes with its neighboring countries which have now been complicated by China and America asserting conflicting "vital national interests" in the South China Sea? How can China put jurisdictional disputes back into their normal peaceful mode? China and the nations that it has jurisdictional disputes with can form a joint development corporation called "South China Sea Joint Development Corporation" to economically develop the disputed areas peacefully. It is easier to negotiate the size of each participating nation's investments, responsibilities and share of the profits of such a corporation with multinational win-win policies. The joint development corporation approach avoids the zero sum game ownership disputes during which no nation can safely develop the economic benefits nor safe guard its national pride and interests in the disputed areas.

On February 22, 1984 Deng Xiaoping discussed what now for decades have been China's successful solutions to the Taiwan and Hong Kong sovereignty issues with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said, "I have also considered the possibility of resolving certain territorial disputes by having the countries concerned jointly develop the disputed areas before discussing the question of sovereignty. New approaches should be sought to solve such problems according to realities."

Nowadays, The Center for Strategic and International Studies and other leading American think tanks should carry out the study Deng's proposal and present it to American policymakers and the American people. The Center for America-China Partnership and leading Chinese think tanks will help it do so.

That, to me, is an offer worth taking up.  Beats declarations of interest that only heat the situation up further with no outlet revealed.  Get the eggheads on the case, drag it out for months so everyone can have their say, run a few get-acquainted mil ex's in the meantime.  Work the thing for a real solution instead of gamesmanship.

It's all naive BS until somebody gets off their rear-end and actually does it.  Then it's big-time statesmanship.

Nice piece.

Of course, if China really wants to stop the demonization trend, Beijing needs to swallow hard on the Nobel Peace Prize and give up on that squelching effort. It's crude and won't work with anybody and just makes China look weak and scared.

I should acknowledge that John's and Dai's Center for America-China Partnership will be hosting me in Beijing and elsewhere for a stretch of time next month.  

Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Ways the New Congress Changes the Future of War

What with all the Washington pundits swashbuckling before Tuesday's election about why President Obama should and shouldn't rush back to the battlefront, you'd think national security might have been a bigger campaign issue. There is that little matter of the economy, of course, but then there's that wrinkle called the Tea Party — and the Republican instinct to placate the underlying political anger by way of conspiratorial notions concerning war and peace. Well, we're not quite back to Bush/Cheney territory, but a conservative majority means a lot for America's global outlook. (And that doesn't mean the left leans left, Bill Kristol.) Assuming our old new enemies in Yemen don't hit the terror jackpot any time soon, here are the issues to track after the stunning repudiation of our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president by the American voter. We're not even going to get started on Don't Ask Don't Tell...

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

Big-War Thinking in a Small-War Era: The Rise of the AirSea Battle Concept @ China Security journal

Big-War Thinking in a Small-War Era:  The Rise of the AirSea Battle Concept 

Amidst increasing US-China tensions in East Asia, America has upped the ante with the introduction a new war doctrine. The AirSea Battle Concept is a call for cooperation between the Air Force and Navy to overcome the capabilities of potential enemies. But the end result may be an escalation of hostilities that will lock the United States into an unwarranted Cold War-style arms competition with China.

Read the entire article at China Security.

The Politics Blog: The Problem with David Petraeus Talking to the Taliban

Much has been made of the new "talks to end the war in Afghanistan" as General David Petraeus "rewrites the playbook in Afghanistan." The King of Counterinsurgency has shelved his nation-building effort to broker a near-term peace accord with Hamid Karzai, say the journalists fed information by the very man who's given up on Karzai, ambassador Karl Eickenberry. (Or so says Bob Woodward.) And while informed observers are quick to note that U.S. armed forces are still laying it on thick — with real success, it now appears — not enough has been made of the dangerous game Petraeus is playing for the long term. It's a bet that could end up putting U.S. arms back in the hands of a new wave of terrorists.

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog. 

WPR's The New Rules: Nation-Building, not Naval Threats, Key to South Asian Security

It is hard for most Americans to fathom why the U.S. military should be involved in either Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan for anything other than the targeting of terrorist networks. And since drones can do most of that dirty work, few feel it is vital to engage in the long and difficult task of nation-building in that part of the world. These are distant, backward places whose sheer disconnectedness relegates them to the dustbin of globalization, and nothing more.

If only that were true. 

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

The book reviewed in the piece is Monsoon:  The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.

The "rising near peer" returns the paranoid favor

The NYT reports that the U.S. military is alarmed at the rising anti-American tone and sentiment of younger Chinese military officers.  This is the same U.S. military that assembles multinational war games in China's front yard and sells advanced weaponry to a small island nation off its coast--in addition to anyone else who will buy it in the region (and yes, business is very good right now, as weapons purchases are up 100% over the past half decade).

The U.S. military, which found its network-centric warfare roots in the seminal shell game known as the Taiwan Straits crises of 1995-1996, now takes inspiration from China's response since then (a build-up of anti-access/area denial assets that rely heavily on ballistic missile attacks to keep our carriers at bay) to launch its own AirSea Battle Concept--a new high-tech warfighting doctrine that makes no bones about specifically targeting the Chinese military.

And we wonder why the Chinese military seem to think we're their number one enemy?  Are we honestly that clueless or has our disingenuity broken through to some higher, slightly irrational plane?

Follow me into this brave, alternative world:

• Imagine the Chinese navy holding multinational exercises with the Cubans and Venezuelans and Nicaraguans (a silly sight, I know) in the waters around Cuba, while Beijing warns us subtly that their 1979 Cuba Defense Act will be pursued to the ultimate vigor required, including the sale of advanced attack aircraft to the Cuban air force.  
• Imagine Chinese carriers conducting such operations, sporting aircraft and weaponry that could rain destruction over most of the continental U.S. at a moment's notice.  
• Imagine Chinese spy craft patrolling the edge of our local waters and flying around the rim of our airspace.  
• Imagine the Chinese selling all sorts of missile defense to Venezuela and other allies "scared of rising American militarism."
• Imagine weapons purchases throughout Latin America doubling in five years time, with China supplying most of the goods.  
• Imagine Chinese naval bases and marine barracks doting the Latin American landscape and Caribbean archipelago.
• Imagine a Cuban missile crisis-like event in the mid-1990s, which led the Chinese military to propose a new evolution in their warfare since.  
• Imagine the Chinese military conducting regime toppling events in the Middle East, involving countries upon whom our energy dependency is dramatically and permanently rising, while China actually gets the vast bulk of its oil from non-Persian Gulf sources like Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Africa and itself.  
• Imagine the Chinese government demanding that the Chinese military produce an elaborate report every year detailing the "disturbing" rise of U.S. military power.  
• Imagine the Chinese military announcing their new military doctrine of attack from the sea and air, with their documents chock full of bombing maps of U.S. military installations that are widely dispersed across the entirety of the continental United States, meaning their new war doctrine has--at its core--the complete destruction of U.S. military assets on our territory as the opening bid.
• Imagine the U.S. military stating that this new doctrine of attacking the entirety of the U.S. territory is necessary to maintaining the regional balance of power in the Western hemisphere, because the U.S. Navy has--in an "unprovoked" and "provocative" manner, begun significant patrolling operations in the Caribbean Basin, whose waters constitute a "profound" national interest to the Chinese.
• Imagine this series of developments unfolding over close to two decades, as China, having lost its familiar great-power war foe, the Soviet Union, firmly glommed onto the U.S. as a replacement enemy image.
• Imagine all that, and then imagine how the U.S. military views the Chinese military.  
• Imagine if the Chinese military offered military-to-military ties under such conditions.  

What do you think the U.S. Congress would say to that?  Would it be considered "caving in" to Chinese pressure?

The truth, unexplored in this otherwise fine article, is that the U.S. military needs--and has needed--rising China as an enemy image for more than a decade-and-a-half now, so I don't know how we can expect anything from young Chinese officers other than returning the favor.

I'm on the BBC World Service yesterday with John Mearsheimer of Chicago (go ahead and listen to the guy--see the post directly below for link), who is stunningly open in his claims that America will never allow China to become an influential power in Asia because we are firmly committed to remaining the world's sole superpower and will basically do whatever it takes to stop China's rise, including a containment strategy that marshals the entire region's militaries to box in the Chinese.  He raised the specter (rather fantastic) of a China with a per capita GDP equivalent to our own in the foreseeable future--a prospect he labeled incredible in its fearsomeness.

[Mearsheimer has a tendency to use the word "power" over and over again, like a mantra, and he clearly meaning warfighting and power-projection capacity.  He seems to have drunk mightily at the neocons table and remains hungover in his appreciation that the American government's number one goal is to remain the dominant military power on the planet and prevent anybody's rise that might challenge that.  He is very much in the George Friedman vein of thought.]

This is the state of our discussion:  the world's biggest and by-far strongest military regularly getting up into the grill of the second-biggest economy on the planet and letting it know--in no uncertain terms--that it will not countenance China exercising military power in its own region!  Why?  Despite being intensely overdrawn militarily around the planet and facing military resource shortages in the very same regions where Chinese economic interests are skyrocketing, it's in our best interest to deny China's rise with all our might.  Safely buttressed by the vast security resources of our NATO allies, it's clear that we don't need any new friends and--instead--must do everything possible to deny their emergence, because more Chinese security means less U.S. security; it is a completely zero-sum game.

Brilliant stuff.  I can't imagine why the Chinese look upon us as anything but the best of friends.  I am flabbergasted at our naivete in hoping for something better to emerge.  This is all working out so brilliantly--for the U.S. Navy and Air Force.  If only we can get a sensible Republican back in who can jack the defense budget back . . . I dunno . . . just up!  

Because when I look two decades down the road, it's clear to me that we don't want to have anything to do with China or its military.  While boxing them in--in East Asia, we and we alone will manage the world's security system, using money that arises from our rapid quadrupling of exports . . . to places like China, which will be cowed into accepting our goods by the awesome specter of our military power!

It's really all so easy when you think about it.  Just zero out all the complexity and interdependence created by this globalization of our making, and we'll be able to boss the entire world around militarily--assuming we have the courage and strategic intelligence to devote as much resources as necessary to completely box in the Chinese military and keep them as paranoid as possible.

Happiness is a warm gun, my friends, pointed at "rising" China. That path will get America everything it needs while costing us nothing of strategic importance.

And yes, we should remain shocked . . . shocked! . . . at the rising ant-Americanism in the ranks of the Chinese military.  I cannot imagine where this mindset comes from.

But read the piece, because it's a good and balanced bit of writing (Wines is almost always totally solid in delivery). The quotes from the Chinese academics echo stuff written here many times--especially the bit about the Chinese military officers being a bit inexperienced and retrograde in their PR skills.  David Shambaugh, the U.S. expert on the Chinese military, is cited offering his usual wisdom on the subject.  Unlike the many hyperbolists on this subject, most of whom get paychecks or contracts from the U.S. Navy or Air Force, he remains a very calm and intelligent voice. [Another pair of intelligent voices on the subject are Mike McDevitt and Dave Finkelstein at the Center for Naval Analyses (complete disclosure--I do some on-call work there, though not with those two)].

And Shambaugh is right, this is an unnecessary and unstrategic and wasteful path for both sides to be on.  We are pretending to play Cold War when both of us should be managing the global security environment--in tandem.  I'm not saying our logic doesn't make sense.  Things like the AirSea Battle Concept make eminent sense--if a war over Taiwan is the ordering principle for the U.S. military going forward.  Me?  I just don't buy that as our North Star for the 21st century and globalization's further evolution.  Instead, I see it as a colossal and stupid diversion of resources and attention span.  

Why?  Again, back to my basics:  thinking about war within the context of everything else and not just within the context or myopic logic of war itself. That "everything else," for me, is best encapsulated by the term globalization, because it's the global economy + all those rising connections + all those rising interdependencies + all those overlapping security interests ("security" ain't the same as zero-sum defense--remember) + all those ever-changing dynamics that arise from all this complexity. Compared to all that, the Taiwan scenario is frozen in time. Fine, I guess, for our military to obsess over it, just like the PLA, because it keeps those otherwise unoccupied by the Long War and frontier integration and nation-building occupied with something they naturally are drawn to as ordering principles. But, in the end, it's make-do work, in historical terms; it's shutting the door on the past and not opening the door on the future. It simply does not rank in a US foreign policy that's coherently focused on shaping a future worth creating.

But this is what we end up with when our primary goal in foreign policy is to--as Clinton puts it--keep all the balls in the air. When everything is equally important, there is no strategy whatsoever. It's just chasing your tail and current events and putting everybody--save yourself--in the driver's seat.  

Obama needs to take control of his foreign policy and start paddling faster than the current, because he is--by not taking more control--losing control of his own national security enterprise, and that is not leadership.

NOTE:  Post picked up by Time magazine's "Swampland" (politics and policy) blog.

WPR's The New Rules: Building Real States to Empower the Bottom Billion

America's top African diplomat recently signaled Washington's desire to establish more official contacts with the autonomous region of Somaliland, which sits within the internationally recognized borders of the failed state known as Somalia. Meanwhile, both our Agency for International Development and the Pentagon's recently established Africa Command worry about Sudan's upcoming vote on formally splitting the country in two. For a country that has sworn off nation-building, it's interesting to see just how hard it is for America to remain on the sidelines while globalization remaps so much of the developing world.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Report: NATO members foil Mumbai-style wave of attacks on Europe

From Michael Smith, the gist of the Sky News report:

Intelligence agencies have intercepted a terror plot to launch Mumbai-style attacks on Britain and other European countries, according to Sky News sources.

... militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous strikes on London and major cities in France and Germany . . . the plan was in the advanced but not imminent stage and the plotters had been tracked by spy agencies "for some time".

Intelligence sources told Sky the planned attacks would have been similar to the commando-style raids carried out in Mumbai . . . the European plot had been "severely disrupted" following intelligence sharing between Britain, France, Germany and the US.

It is not known whether the attackers are already in Europe.

News of the planned strikes came as the Eiffel Tower in Paris was evacuated because of a bomb scare for the second time in two weeks . . .

When the terror plan came to light, the US military began helping its European allies by trying to kill the leaders behind the plot in Pakistan's Waziristan region.

There have been a record 20 missile attacks using drone aircraft there in the past 30 days.

Why it's important to pay attention:

• It's long been my contention that extremists operating in NW Pakistan, most likely in some collusion with al Qaeda (not a big leap), will keep trying to make some big splashy strike in the West.  Many experts saw the Times Square bombing attempt as a practice run using an expendable. Figuring how hard that is to pull off--in a relative sense, and with AQ and its net falling from our collective memory thanks to the economy, the default alternative for such groups to regrab the headlines is to do something easy and cheap like Mumbai II and to do it in Europe.  So yeah, I find this whole logic believable.

• I think Obama is right when he says, we can absorb another attack without freaking out.  I don't think we would, having gone through Afghanistan and Iraq since and understanding that such unilateralism just leaves us holding the bag.  So the next strikes, I believe, can lead to more interesting and better cooperative opportunities with Russia, China, India, Turkey, et. al, if done well.  Is Obama the guy to do it?  While I don't think Americans would freak, I fear another attack would simply give the man another chance to come off as far-too-Vulcan for the average American voter.  While I think we're still in philosopher-king political mode and will be for a while, I think his off-putting style will mean we'll stop reaching for the smartest-guy-in-the-room option, because that guy should be the brilliant adviser (which Obama lacks because his smartest-guy-in-the-room mindset attracts other big egos and sycophants and apparently not much in between) and not POTUS himself, who should be all about leading and not aspire to such a title.  Therefore, I do not see a rally-round-the-prez dynamic unfolding when it eventually happens.  That bad feeling will simply be piled upon the existing glut of bad feeling about the economy.

• The other side's ability to sked our counter-reactions is a real problem, because, in our habits, we feel the need to "keep all balls in the air," so terror competes with WMD in NorKo and Iran competes with our growing fears of Chinese military build-up competes with global warming competes with . . .. What was nice about the post-9/11 period was the willingness of great powers to clear the decks on most everything else, keeping them in some big-picture perspective mode, and exploiting the common threat opportunity embodied by AQ to contemplate a serious recasting of the great power relationships for the better.  But then Bush-Cheney went wild on the unilateralism/primacy and that moment was largely wasted.  Can it happen the next time a crystalizing attack occurs?  Sadly, I don't see the leadership anywhere in the world to take advantage, so we go on with the current situation, where everybody is juggling balls and no serious progress is being made on anything. Meanwhile, mutual suspicions pile up, and increasingly we've all got enough gripes with every other great power to make cooperation an almost tortured affair. I'm not secretly wishing for something bad to happen; that is a dangerous intellectual route to go for someone who thinks seriously about the future. The point is, I don't have to. Globalization's penetrating speed has not abated one whit with the great recession--anything but. We're only dimly aware of that here in the States because we think that drawing down in Iraq and hoping to do the same in Afghanistan is a big deal for the system, when, in truth, it barely notices it right now and continues down its aggressive integrating path.  In short, we assume it's Old-Core-does-Gap-or-nobody-does-Gap, when in truth, it's New-Core-does-Gap-systematically and compared to that, the West's efforts are marginal and concentrated in bits and pieces.  I'm not looking to go back to the frantic push the US made after 9/11.  I'm looking for a better marrying up of those two efforts, because the mismatches in resources are vast and the big opportunities for new collaborations are slipping away.  AQ or others will accommodate that need whether we want it or not.  That's the dynamic we're in right now with globalization pushing into previously disconnected places with such force that serious blowback will be the norm for the foreseeable future.  Yes, we can dream it'll all come down to some naval battle in the South China Sea, but that's just habit talking.  And that's what I find so sad right now:  that whole "juggling the balls and keeping all of them in the air" mentality of Clinton and Obama is just a placeholder for real leadership, which events will eventually demand.  Why?  Because they will keep trying and eventually they'll get our attention.  As always, what we'll do in that moment will be far more important than the vertical shock laid on us.  Nation-states still run horizontal scenarios to ground, meaning the question of the day is, "When the next vertical shock comes, where will go with it?"

• Then tack on Obama's statement to Woodward that "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan."  I guarantee you, the next scheduled-by-our-enemies response (when the drones aren't enough) will induce a serious calibration effort/opportunity with both China and India.

And that's why I pay attention to stories such as this.

Globalization cherry picks, and so do we on the failed-state carcass that is Somalia

Voice of America piece by way of reader Robert Prescott.

The opening (in more ways than one):

Somaliland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said the willingness of residents living in the self-declared autonomous region to fully embrace democracy has played a pivotal role in making the area unattractive to hard-line Islamist insurgents, such as al-Shabab.

Mohammed Abdullahi Omar welcomed what he described as the renewed U.S. interest after a top official in the Obama administration said Washington wants to strengthen ties with both Somaliland and Puntland, located in the Horn of Africa.

The US official expressing interest is our top State diplo for Africa, Johnnie Carson.  Interest, for now, equals more diplomats and aid officials.  Our logic?  Keep the al Shabaab problem as small as possible geographically. 

These Somalis are more than happy to get direct US aid:

“Somaliland has been stable for the last 19 years and we have definitely adopted (a) system into our politics. And, we have had a free and fair presidential election a few weeks ago, whereby a new president won the election. This has demonstrated that Somaliland’s political system has matured.”

He added that Somaliland’s “matured” democracy has renewed interest not only from Washington, but also “other western countries, and made them change their view on Somaliland.”

And I would guess there is some eastern country interest as well.

Five points:

1) Note the pattern that where US troops go since the Cold War's end is to intervene mostly in fake states, and that one outcome of such interventions is that, where there was originally one state, now there are more than one state, meaning we effectively play mid-wife to the birthing of new countries--ones typically buried by past European colonial creations.

2) Globalization, which comes in many forms, has an interest in salvaging as much of Somalia as possible, making chunks open for business and access to East Africa, cutting down on the footprint of the pirates (not mentioned here so must not be a problem here), and keeping the al Shabaabh reach as small as possible. Somaliland really has been a break-away province going all the way back to our first intervention there at the junction of Bush-Clinton. It now presents just enough stability for the connectivity to happen.

3) This is my old story of the break-up of a fake or weak state when globalization shows up:  the more stable and ambitious parts are more than eager to break off and make a better life for themselves with globalization, thus ending--in their minds (and often in objective reality)--their tragic relations with the other "losers."

4) Somaliland's emergence shows that we and other Core powers will be in the nation-building business for the very long haul.  That doesn't--by any stretch--always result in troops or even aid, as most nation-building results from private-sector activity generating local public demand for government services--NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!  But yes, if you, the state in question, can put on a good show of a modicum of democracy and stability, that is highly attractive, because it means whatever public nation-building efforts are made will proceed with little to no controversy back home.

5) Our goal for places like East Africa is to encourage overarching economic union in a radial pattern, meaning from the inside of Africa to the coasts like slices of pie. We want to help stitch together a pattern of economic complimentarity wherever possible, so that even places with modest resources are at least selling their location for transit of other peoples' goods.  We want, in effect, to create larger associations to which these fledging states can belong.  So as Africa is remapped by globalization and more states appear (like South Sudan shortly), we help provide a larger regional pattern and structure for them to glom onto--local political disintegration married to regional economic integration.

This is a perfect example of SysAdmin function unfolding with merely modest US interest and resources.  It happens simply because globalization is coming to Africa whether or not America cares.  It happens because globalization will remap fake states whether or not America cares.  It happens because everybody and anybody, when given just the slightest chance by circumstances, reaches for connectivity and the options it brings.

All of this happening in a place where we've studiously avoided a military return.

Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Reasons Ahmadinejad Might Just Be Good for the World

Ah, U.N. Week — that time of year when Fox News sounds the alarm bells and The National Review starts making musical-theater references to impending speeches from Dictators with an Important Audience. And when the rest of us realize that Thursday's session with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be quite the opposite: another round of comic relief sure to sabotage his own attempts to be taken seriously, followed by another round of (mostly) effective sanctions. The Obama administration already rolled one eye on Monday by refusing a detainee swap, so let's see just how far one man's stubbornness can be leveraged, shall we?

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

Good instinct, bad linkage on Iran-Afghanistan

Ignatius piece in WAPO that starts out promisingly:

Iran is signaling that it wants to join regional efforts to stabilize Afghanistan -- presenting President Obama with an interesting diplomatic opportunity. He had solicited just such help from Tehran last month, but the administration has not yet responded to the Iranian feelers.

And then replays past mistakes:

U.S. policy is still in flux, but the administration appears ready for a limited dialogue with Iran about Afghanistan, perhaps conducted through the two countries' embassies in Kabul. This position has not been communicated to the Iranians, in part because Washington is waiting to see whether Iran will return soon to negotiations about its nuclear program with the "P-5 plus 1" group.

Thus we see yet again what our mania with nukes costs us in the Long War.  Sadder still, but telegraphing our conditions in such a rote fashion, we cede all initiative and put Tehran in the driver's seat on both scores.

Unimpressive.

Kims back in the driver's seat

NYT John Pomfret reporting that America and its allies in Asia are working to reopen talks with North Korea, afraid that the ongoing succession process could send the whole relationship down the path to war.

Score one for the Kims and so much for Team Obama's "strategic patience" (tough talk and shows of force and letting the Kims stew in their own paranoid juices).  I had thought the White House had settled on a solid path of not caving in, but Obama seems to have chickened out rather quickly:

Anxiety is rising on both sides of the Pacific that tightened sanctions and joint military exercises - what U.S. officials have called "strategic patience" - could, if continued indefinitely, embolden hard-line factions in the North to strike out against South Korea or to redouble efforts to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.

Ooh!  So NorKo sinks a South Korean military ship and we better back off, lest they strike out against South Korea!  Gotta love that logic.

So we basically say to Kim the Younger:  do as Daddy has done and you will be both respected and rewarded.

Spineless.

Our breakthrough demand?  NorKo doesn't have to admit it sunk the ship, just express condolences for the loss of life.

The US State Department sources describe a three-legged stool of sanctions, mil exercises and talking with NorKo.  If we only do the first two, we risk war!

And so the same old, same old is pursued with the usual vigor.  Non-change I can believe in.   Because the last thing we want to risk is a conflict that consumes this war criminal regime.  Kim's strategy of achieving firm deterrence against the US has been a complete success, telling similar regimes around the world to get themselves a nuke for similar, air-tight protection from US pressure.

WPR's The New Rules: China Still Needs U.S. in Global Security Role

 

When Europe ran the world, trade followed the flag, meaning that globalization in its initial expression -- otherwise known as colonialism -- grew out of the barrel of a gun, to paraphrase Mao Zedong. On this subject, Franklin Roosevelt and Vladimir Lenin agreed, even if that conclusion led them to embrace diametrically opposed strategies: FDR's realization that "the colonial system means war" drove him to erect an international liberal trade order following World War II that doomed the vast colonial systems of his closest European allies. Roosevelt's success not only enabled America to contain and ultimately defeat the soul-crushing Soviet alternative, it laid the initial groundwork for today's American-style "open door" globalization, itself a nod to cousin Theodore. In the end, that "traitor to his class," as Roosevelt was often labeled, should rightfully be acknowledged as the single-most successful anti-imperialist revolutionary leader of the 20th century.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

I just participated--this morning--in my first virtual meeting of the Geopolitical Risk Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum as led by Eurasia Group CEO Ian Bremmer.  I wrote this piece in anticipation of that, in effect offering my definition of the biggest geopolitical risk I could imagine: "declining" or "retreating" America + rising-but-pol-mil-weak China = a system whose revealed risk could suddenly spike.  How so? Some scenario comes along that confirms US impotence or unwillingness to step into any new breaches, while likewise confirming the "paper tiger" nature of the PLA (shiny weapons + no experience makes Wang a tentative soldier).  Then the question is, what or who steps into this breach?  Rising secondary powers? Underpowered and/or atrophied international organizations? Or, most likely, is that breach simply left wide open, revealing the true macro geopol risk in the system--namely, that we stand astride a transition from an overburdened and overleveraged superpower to an inexperienced and lacking-in-will-and-political resilience newcomer?  And what is the possibility of alliance between the two at this time?  Poor indeed. You pile that geopol "revealed risk" on top of a fragile global recovery, and that's a dangerous mix.

What a serious containment of nuclear Iran would demand of US

cool graphic here

Nice op-ed in The Daily Star by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Author is Middle East expert at Jamestown Foundation, an unusually solid source of common sense.

After laying out the realism that is accepting Iran will get nukes, Ramzy Mardini addresses what a serious containment strategy would require:

Three crucial features must be included in any containment approach. First, the US must strive for a coherent foreign policy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic, with interests pegged to regional stability, not democracy and regime-change. Secondly, the US should be prepared to play a pacifying role in the region: restricting Iran, but simultaneously working to minimize dangerous escalations involving local allies, particularly when it involves Israel.

Finally, the US must offer a degree of certainty to its allies in the region – building on, reiterating, and implementing promises of active engagement in containing Iran. The growing uncertainty about Washington’s commitment will dramatically increase the incentive for regional states to seek self-assurance, and hence, indigenous nuclear deterrents of their own. Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are among those who might seek this form of reassurance.

Without the necessary diplomatic arrangements and American leadership, the danger is that a containment strategy may be both amorphous and fragile. Tehran could easily engage uncertain actors interested in hedging their bets and, consequently, erode the cohesiveness of the coalition aligned against it.

American prudence and recognition of the limitations of power should not be confused with weak and ineffective policymaking. Given the uncertainties involved when it comes to Iran, Washington should emphasize realpolitik in addressing Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Pretty solid list, in my opinion. 

And despite all the brave talk, I think the Obama administration is actually moving down this path with a lot of care--and genuine success.

Iran's oil exports not choked, but redirected eastward

Our sanctions are described as "choking" Iran's exports.  But what I see is an export level dropping in concert with production, where the sanctions may be having significant impact, but probably not as much as claimed. 

Clearly, what the sanctions etc. has done is redirect Iranian oil exports from Europe & Japan to "rising" Asia. Eventually, the investment profile will change to reflect that, meaning the energy investments Iran attracts will likewise be shifted from West to East.  It just takes longer.  

Naturally, the Obama administration wants to shut down that possibility as well, but I suspect it'll be far less successful simply because rising Asia needs oil and gas from EVERYBODY, and can't afford our WMD qualms.

And frankly, why should they when we shield our best-boy in the region on the same subject?

Scary, I know, but eventually Iran's nukes gets Israel the strategic security it needs.  Frightening journey, yes, but I've yet to see an alternative pathway of any serious plausibility.

Obama to Russia: Bring it on! . . . to Afghanistan

Putin and Karzai in 2002, so why did it take so long?

NYT story on Russians coming back to Afghanistan, economic connectivity in tow.

Twenty years after the last Russian soldier walked out ofAfghanistan, Moscow is gingerly pushing its way back into the country with business deals and diplomacy, and promises of closer ties to come.

Russia is eager to cooperate on economic matters in part by reviving Soviet-era public works, its president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Wednesday during a summit meeting with the leaders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, the second such four-way meeting organized by Russia in the past year.

In fact, Russia has already begun a broad push into Afghan deal-making, negotiating to refurbish more than 140 Soviet-era installations, like hydroelectric stations, bridges, wells and irrigation systems, in deals that could be worth more than $1 billion. A Russian helicopter company, Vertikal-T, has contracts with NATO and the Afghan government to fly Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopters throughout the country.

The Kremlin is also looking to blunt Islamic extremism in Central Asia, which poses a threat to Russia’s security, particularly in the Caucasus, and to exploit opportunities in the promising Afghan mining and energy industries.

The Kremlin’s return to Afghanistan comes with the support of the Obama administration, which in retooling its war strategy has asked Afghanistan’s neighbors — including Russia, whose forces the United States helped oust — to carry a greater share of the burden of stabilizing the country.

As someone who's complained about the lack of this in our foreign policy, credit must be given to Team Obama. All I can say is, we need a whole lot more of the same, to include the encouragement of efforts by India, China, Turkey and Iran.  Otherwise we get the bed (Pakistan) we made for ourselves.

Quelle surprise! State now freaks out over its just-assumed--and huge--SysAdmin job in Iraq

Unremarkable, I-told-you WAPO story about State realizing that it is unprepared for the SysAdmin role it's stepping into in Iraq.

Sad to say, but this may be the failure we're looking for in terms of eventually birthing the Department of Everything Else.

People always ask me what good thing needs to happen to bring it into existence, and my answer is always that it'll take the right bad thing.

Waiting on State's evolution here is a fool's errand.  I need my good cop (State) and I will always treasure my bad cop (DoD), but I need somebody in between to play midwife across the Gap as globalization remaps a lot of fake states (thank you Europe and Uncle Joe!).

State will freak out and then backtrack in its ambitions to the point of dissipating a great deal of what's been achieved with blood and treasure since the end of 2006, and that level of tragedy will trigger some intense debate.

I can hope for better from State and from the Iraqis themselves, but I am not optimistic.

And so the search for seriousness continues . . ..

Negotiating with the Taliban naturally displeases Afghanistan's non-Pashtun minorities

WSJ front-pager on how Karzai is losing support from Afghanistan's minorities due to his desire to reach out and co-opt the Taliban.  This is seen as the equivalent of reaching out to the Sunnis in Iraq during the similar surge.

Naturally, the non-Pashtun fear any accommodation will allow the Taliban a long-term path for returning to power.

A rep of the Hazara (the Shiia in this equation; a similarly sized Hazara popultion exists in Iran) puts it this way:

We feel betrayed by the president . . . It seems that what President Karzai pursues now is the Talibanization of Afghanistan. The only difference between him and the Taliban is that he sits in the presidential palace and the Taliban sit in the mountains.

This is part of why I think the fracturing of Afghanistan is inevitable: to bring the Taliban back into the fold is to admit they own the south, and once you do that, the rest of the minorities will either want the same or will seek to do battle at some point in the future.  But with damn near everybody saying the military defeat of the Taliban is impossible, it's hard to see how you get any peace without co-opting them.

In the end, the minorities fear that the endgame as currently imagined leads to a resumed fight that the Taliban has a good chance of winning seems far from hyperbolic.

So a divided Afghanistan (however we maintain the fiction of unity) seems in the works.  The only question is who is the external guarantor.  We seem to be choosing Pakistan, ignoring the alternative of India-Iran-Russia, and I don't see how that doesn't buy us a return visit, because we've been down this path before.

So it feels like a catch-22:  don't include the Taliban and you have a truncated state, but include them and you get a divided state with the most likely unifier being the Taliban--again.

As the Leviathan experiences a budget squeeze, another door opens--a bit

BAE Systems announces in FT a cut of almost 1,000 jobs, just after Lockheed announces 600 execs take buy-out packages--all because of expected cuts in big platform purchases (total cuts sought are $100B over five years, or $20B a year).  Boeing, also announcing cuts, even broached recently the notion of a merger with another big firm.

Meanwhile, defense companies applaud (Bloomberg Businessweek) the proposed export-control revamp offered by Obama, described as the most important change in that area in the last two decades.  The change: instead of one big list of technologies that face export controls, now a three-tiered structure where government approval for export is made easier (2nd tier) or completely obviated (3rd tier).  For example, in the realm of tanks and trucks, of the 12,000 items currently requiring export licenses, three-quarters would now be shifted to the lesser control categories.

Talk about just-in-time!

Good move for US exports and competitiveness and a reasonable sop to the defense industry facing a smaller US defense budget.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Needs an Activist, Independent Turkey

 

If America could be magically granted its ideal Muslim strategic partner, what would we ask for? Would we want a country that fell in line with every U.S. foreign policy stance? Not if the regime was to have any credibility with the Islamic world. No, ideally, the government would be just Islamist enough to be seen as preserving the nation's religious and cultural identity, even as it aggressively modernized its society and connected its economy to the larger world. It would have an activist foreign policy that emphasized diplomacy, multilateralism and regional stability, while also maintaining sufficient independence from America to demonstrate that it was not Washington's proxy, but rather a confident great power navigating the currents of history. In sum, it would serve as an example to its co-religionists of how a Muslim state can progressively improve itself amid globalization's deepening embrace -- while remaining a Muslim state.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review