Back from MWC. Heavy cold. Browser queue jammed with stuff. I'm going to do a brief succession of link posts to clear up. (Happenings last week; huge Leveson revelations, James Murdoch out, King Mob abolished workfare, horse, Borisbus fiasco, debate on Daniel Morgan, even more Leveson..)
This one deals with everyone's favourite global geo-political region, the Middle East. Anthony Shadid died, and Angry Arab thinks the obits weren't tough enough on the Israelis. Alyssa at ThinkProgress has a list of 20 of his best dispatches and only one covers the Palestinians and tangentially at that. Really?
Foreign Policy's David Kenner provides some history of the 1982 Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Syria and its repression by President Assad's dad President Assad. Worth noting that by the time the Syrian army began its infamous destruction of Hama in '82, the struggle had been going on since 1976. Just because the rebels have kept it up so long - which is astonishing and a demonstration of extreme courage - shouldn't be taken to mean that they are going to win in the end.
Colin Kahl, writing in the Washington Post, points out that the Osirak raid in 1981 didn't slow down Saddam Hussein's effort to build the Bomb, in part because it hadn't really started before the raid. However, the attack convinced him to make a concerted effort, and also caused Iraq to abandon the power reactor-reprocessing-plutonium route in favour of the highly-enriched uranium route, which is much easier to conceal and also to distribute among multiple facilities and which turned out to have a entire black market supply chain.
He also links to this piece on planning considerations for Israel, which highlights their air-to-air refuelling tankers as a key constraint. Kahl also points out that in the event of an Israeli raid, their air force would probably be needed at home immediately afterwards.
The Americans, for what it's worth, don't think a strategic decision has been taken to get the Bomb.
Bizarrely, the IAEA inspectors have discovered that the fortified enrichment plant at Fordow in Iran contains 2,000 empty centrifuge cases but not the centrifuges themselves. Is it a bluff of some sort? Is it a decoy target? Is it just a very odd way of going about building an enrichment plant?
Binyamin Netanyahu memorably described as "carrying both Anne Frank and the entire IDF around in his head", presumably in between the bees in his bonnet and the bats in his belfry. It is argued that he won't attack Iran because the settlers won't like it, or possibly that he's bluffing about Iran to draw attention away from them.
Ultima Ratio is down, but you can read their excellent (French) review of Syed Saleem Shahbaz's posthumous book Inside Al-Qa'ida and the Taliban in the Google cache. Fans of "Kashmir is still the issue" will be interested by the argument that Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri and ex-Pakistani officer Haroon Ashik introduced a new strategy aiming to bring about more conflict between Pakistan and India, in the hope of alienating Pakistani leaders from the alliance with the US. Apparently they were planning something against an Indian nuclear site when Kashmiri was droned in June 2011.
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Sunday, January 09, 2011
big war postponed, small war still on the menu
So what about those North Koreans? As the SWJ put it, a small war in Korea was postponed. I'd query "small", especially in the special sense they use it - it wouldn't have been particularly small and it would have been defined by high-intensity battle - but perhaps they are really thinking of whatever would happen after North Korea, as in David Maxwell's paper I linked to. (Maxwell turns up in the comments thread.) The postwar is reasonably certain to show up; the big question is whether Korea has to go through the big war to get there.
It's worth noting that the North Koreans took care to be seen to be alert and causing trouble during the exercises off Yeonpyeong, but without doing anything that would be unambiguously hostile. It's also interesting that they seem to have used electronic warfare as a way of signalling their continued determination to fight in a field that wasn't a direct challenge to the South Koreans and their allies.
Actually, all parties to the conflict attempted to find alternative forms of confrontation in order to exert power while trying to keep control of the escalation dynamic. I recently saw somewhere on the Web a reference to the idea that having multiple independent forms of power or status was an egalitarian force in society as they could balance each other. It's certainly an important concept in international politics. North Korea's original bombardment of Yeonpyeong was a direct and physical, kinetic, attack on the disputed border - at one level, they hoped that if there was no response from the South, they would have set a precedent that South Korea could not treat the island and part of the surrounding sea as entirely its own territory. More strategically, it was a demonstration that they were willing to cause trouble in order to extract concessions, and that they were willing to escalate significantly.
From the Southern side, there were serious restrictions to the possible response. Anything they could do in the same context would either have involved risking bringing about the big war, or else risking a disastrous fiasco - a major raid over the border would have been too much, a commando operation to destroy the guns facing Yeonpyeong would have risked ending up with prisoners in North Korea. There is not much at the moment they could do to put pressure on North Korea economically, and the North Koreans often respond to economic problems by provocations designed to get economic concessions. The North Koreans held escalation dominance - they could choose whether to go further, without necessarily having to go for the ultimate deterrent.
This is why the navies were so important. Although they were constrained in what they could do in one context, the Peninsula, the US Navy and its allies were not so constrained in bringing ships into international waters in the area. The response was to move the focus of the conflict into a different context. Also, cooperating at sea allowed Japan and South Korea to demonstrate alliance unity in a way that they could not otherwise - nobody would bring Japanese troops to Korea, for example, but there is no such objection to Japanese, US, and South Korean ships (or aircraft) cooperating. This is still true even though the US-made or US-inspired equipment aboard those ships permits them to cooperate very closely indeed, with radars aboard one ship, aircraft from another, a command centre in yet another, and missiles aboard a fourth being internetworked.
Also, there was very little the North Koreans could do about it without taking unacceptable risks (even for them). The biggest concern for the allied ships was that the North might lay mines in the narrow seas west of Korea. Paradoxically, the North Koreans were probably self-deterred from doing this - had they got lucky and sunk the Jimmy Carter while she was spying around Yeonpyeong, the consequences would probably not have been ideal from their point of view.
Another parallel form of conflict was the nuclear issue. North Korea had just revealed its new uranium enrichment cascade when it started shelling Yeonpyeong, after all. Bill Richardson's officially-unofficial mission to North Korea brought back the offer to sell North Korea's stock of plutonium to the South. This sounds better than it is, precisely because they now have the capability to use uranium rather than plutonium. On the other hand, accepting it is sensible - it's a matching concession to de-escalate the situation, less plutonium in North Korea is probably desirable, and it moves the nuclear debate onto the slower "enrichment track".
The nuclear debate also provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to play the role of turning up late but bringing a solution. If the 12,000 rods do leave North Korea, a big question is where they would go. The Chinese might buy them and might even offer fuel of some description in return, a replay of the 1994 framework agreement.
It's worth noting that the North Koreans took care to be seen to be alert and causing trouble during the exercises off Yeonpyeong, but without doing anything that would be unambiguously hostile. It's also interesting that they seem to have used electronic warfare as a way of signalling their continued determination to fight in a field that wasn't a direct challenge to the South Koreans and their allies.
Actually, all parties to the conflict attempted to find alternative forms of confrontation in order to exert power while trying to keep control of the escalation dynamic. I recently saw somewhere on the Web a reference to the idea that having multiple independent forms of power or status was an egalitarian force in society as they could balance each other. It's certainly an important concept in international politics. North Korea's original bombardment of Yeonpyeong was a direct and physical, kinetic, attack on the disputed border - at one level, they hoped that if there was no response from the South, they would have set a precedent that South Korea could not treat the island and part of the surrounding sea as entirely its own territory. More strategically, it was a demonstration that they were willing to cause trouble in order to extract concessions, and that they were willing to escalate significantly.
From the Southern side, there were serious restrictions to the possible response. Anything they could do in the same context would either have involved risking bringing about the big war, or else risking a disastrous fiasco - a major raid over the border would have been too much, a commando operation to destroy the guns facing Yeonpyeong would have risked ending up with prisoners in North Korea. There is not much at the moment they could do to put pressure on North Korea economically, and the North Koreans often respond to economic problems by provocations designed to get economic concessions. The North Koreans held escalation dominance - they could choose whether to go further, without necessarily having to go for the ultimate deterrent.
This is why the navies were so important. Although they were constrained in what they could do in one context, the Peninsula, the US Navy and its allies were not so constrained in bringing ships into international waters in the area. The response was to move the focus of the conflict into a different context. Also, cooperating at sea allowed Japan and South Korea to demonstrate alliance unity in a way that they could not otherwise - nobody would bring Japanese troops to Korea, for example, but there is no such objection to Japanese, US, and South Korean ships (or aircraft) cooperating. This is still true even though the US-made or US-inspired equipment aboard those ships permits them to cooperate very closely indeed, with radars aboard one ship, aircraft from another, a command centre in yet another, and missiles aboard a fourth being internetworked.
Also, there was very little the North Koreans could do about it without taking unacceptable risks (even for them). The biggest concern for the allied ships was that the North might lay mines in the narrow seas west of Korea. Paradoxically, the North Koreans were probably self-deterred from doing this - had they got lucky and sunk the Jimmy Carter while she was spying around Yeonpyeong, the consequences would probably not have been ideal from their point of view.
Another parallel form of conflict was the nuclear issue. North Korea had just revealed its new uranium enrichment cascade when it started shelling Yeonpyeong, after all. Bill Richardson's officially-unofficial mission to North Korea brought back the offer to sell North Korea's stock of plutonium to the South. This sounds better than it is, precisely because they now have the capability to use uranium rather than plutonium. On the other hand, accepting it is sensible - it's a matching concession to de-escalate the situation, less plutonium in North Korea is probably desirable, and it moves the nuclear debate onto the slower "enrichment track".
The nuclear debate also provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to play the role of turning up late but bringing a solution. If the 12,000 rods do leave North Korea, a big question is where they would go. The Chinese might buy them and might even offer fuel of some description in return, a replay of the 1994 framework agreement.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
a glimpse of imagery diplomacy
This is one of the most interesting stories in the Wikileaks cable dump. The Saudis use the existence of the French national imagery satellite capability, and David Ignatius's column in the Washington Post, to resist efforts by the Americans to stop them using US arms and satellite data provided for use on Al-Qa'ida for other goals of foreign policy, notably trying to encroach on Yemeni territory. Of course, the UK isn't allowed to do that.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Korea: logistics, and propaganda
In my continuing fit of doom about Korea, this isn't helping - a US Military Sealift Command reserve freighter full of Maritime Prepositioning System kit is practising offloading it all in a Korean port. Supposedly, when they're finished they'll put it all back aboard and sail away. If you believe that, though...
The MPS is the US military's way of saving time shipping stuff around; they basically keep all the gear for an Army or Marine brigade packed in a ship somewhere strategic. Instant force, just add soldiers, who can come by air. This has a nasty logistics sound to it. Meanwhile, there is a real danger of war, says a Korean strategist from CSIS. Serious politicians are saying things like "reunification is drawing near" and that the Japanese military might be sent to look for people abducted by North Korea. That last one, from the Japanese prime minister, has an even nastier propaganda sound to it.
The Chinese envoy has been to Pyongyang, while the Foreign Ministry has had a pop at the US commander in chief in the Pacific, Admiral Mullen. This could be good news in the sense that Chinese engagement might warn off anyone from doing anything dangerous. The US Deputy Secretary of State is going to Beijing soon with a delegation, followed by Robert Gates next month.
The MPS is the US military's way of saving time shipping stuff around; they basically keep all the gear for an Army or Marine brigade packed in a ship somewhere strategic. Instant force, just add soldiers, who can come by air. This has a nasty logistics sound to it. Meanwhile, there is a real danger of war, says a Korean strategist from CSIS. Serious politicians are saying things like "reunification is drawing near" and that the Japanese military might be sent to look for people abducted by North Korea. That last one, from the Japanese prime minister, has an even nastier propaganda sound to it.
The Chinese envoy has been to Pyongyang, while the Foreign Ministry has had a pop at the US commander in chief in the Pacific, Admiral Mullen. This could be good news in the sense that Chinese engagement might warn off anyone from doing anything dangerous. The US Deputy Secretary of State is going to Beijing soon with a delegation, followed by Robert Gates next month.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
not about the Americans
The key fact to remember about the Wikileaks cable dump is this: it's not about the Americans. There's not been much in there that says something huge about US policy, which is why con-wissy types are so happy to deny it any significance. What there has been is something for everybody - a major purpose of diplomacy is to get political information, and leaking a ton of US diplomatic cables provides something for every host country to enjoy.
Here's Italy's delivery, for example. Not that anything about Berlusconi is shocking any more, but it's certainly interesting that he has a very personal special relationship with Russia. That throws an interesting light on the era of the "3Bs", Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi. Modern thinkers all, they also all thought they had special access to Russia.
Here's important confirmation that the Saudis are a major force pushing for military dictatorship in Pakistan, and probably in so far as they support Nawaz Sharif they are only using him as a pretext for military rule. This also tends to confirm that the Saudi influence sphere is a real factor in Afghanistan still.
Here's something for Belgium.
Here's something for us; Mervyn King was a key actor in insisting on cuts and a Con-Dem coalition, and specifically in terrorising Nick Clegg with "it's worse than we thought" stories.
Here's something else for us: there was a major ruck in the intelligence special relationship about the disclosure of imagery gathered by U2s operating from Akrotiri to the Lebanese, Israeli, and Turkish governments. It seems that the Brown government was trying to impose serious conditions on operations from Akrotiri.
Something for the Americans: Robert Gates is a major barrier to starting more wars.
This is interesting, although you've probably already read it.
And of course there's going to be a bank sometime in the near future.
Statistics efforts are coalescing here.
Leave your favourite leak in the comments.
Update: The Grauniad metadata file claims to contain the date, source, tags, and destination of each cable but the destinations are missing.
Here's Italy's delivery, for example. Not that anything about Berlusconi is shocking any more, but it's certainly interesting that he has a very personal special relationship with Russia. That throws an interesting light on the era of the "3Bs", Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi. Modern thinkers all, they also all thought they had special access to Russia.
Here's important confirmation that the Saudis are a major force pushing for military dictatorship in Pakistan, and probably in so far as they support Nawaz Sharif they are only using him as a pretext for military rule. This also tends to confirm that the Saudi influence sphere is a real factor in Afghanistan still.
Here's something for Belgium.
Here's something for us; Mervyn King was a key actor in insisting on cuts and a Con-Dem coalition, and specifically in terrorising Nick Clegg with "it's worse than we thought" stories.
Here's something else for us: there was a major ruck in the intelligence special relationship about the disclosure of imagery gathered by U2s operating from Akrotiri to the Lebanese, Israeli, and Turkish governments. It seems that the Brown government was trying to impose serious conditions on operations from Akrotiri.
Something for the Americans: Robert Gates is a major barrier to starting more wars.
This is interesting, although you've probably already read it.
And of course there's going to be a bank sometime in the near future.
Statistics efforts are coalescing here.
Leave your favourite leak in the comments.
Update: The Grauniad metadata file claims to contain the date, source, tags, and destination of each cable but the destinations are missing.
Monday, September 06, 2010
ambassador, with this pdf you are spoiling us
So I was trying to parse the London Diplomatic List (this month's edition yet to make an appearance). Cian suggested pulling out the fontspec tags on the grounds that they're often redundant and it might be possible to identify groups among them. So I did just that and then a little bit of data reduction.
25 tag declarations squash to 11 unique font/size/colour declarations. Mmm, compression. The bad news is that, for example, countries and ambassadors (or rather, chiefs of mission - not all of them are ambassadors) are in font 1 - but font 1 is actually identical to fonts 2, 7, and 8, which include diplomats' names, spouses, and styles. The good news is that at least font-grouping will help to filter the crap like lists of national days and page numbers and obvious MS Word copy-paste artefacts.
(wordpress.com still eats embedded spreadsheets: here's a link.)
25 tag declarations squash to 11 unique font/size/colour declarations. Mmm, compression. The bad news is that, for example, countries and ambassadors (or rather, chiefs of mission - not all of them are ambassadors) are in font 1 - but font 1 is actually identical to fonts 2, 7, and 8, which include diplomats' names, spouses, and styles. The good news is that at least font-grouping will help to filter the crap like lists of national days and page numbers and obvious MS Word copy-paste artefacts.
(wordpress.com still eats embedded spreadsheets: here's a link.)
Sunday, August 08, 2010
scraping the barrel
I've finally got around to answering my own question here. The scraper is work in progress at the moment; the original pdf is rendered by pdftohtml into a tiresomely semi-structured (i.e. worse than no structure) tagpile. I was trying to tackle this through recursion, but I might either try using Python's
This all depends on the thing actually having any underlying structure, of course - it may be assembled by copy-and-paste, so anything I do will blow up every month. The things I do for England...
continue keyword or perhaps trying to pre-tokenise the document based on the number of blank lines between blocks, and then deal with the blocks.This all depends on the thing actually having any underlying structure, of course - it may be assembled by copy-and-paste, so anything I do will blow up every month. The things I do for England...
Thursday, February 25, 2010
this diplomacy stuff seems to work...for some
Well, this is unusual; Londonstani confirms that the Pakistanis just arrested 50% of the Taliban high command, in so far as such a thing matters. Not only that, they're willing to extradite one of them to Afghanistan. First of all, Pakistan and Afghanistan even talking is rare. Secondly, extradite? What is this, Germany? Don't they know they're meant to administer a medically unnecessary enema and ship the guy to the Kerguelens or somewhere where they can lock him in a dungeon for the next ten years?
I don't think I've seen anyone link this story with this one of Laura Rozen's; at the same time, the Iranians have caught the leader of the Baluch rebels in the south-east, down where the Pakistani border would be if there was any border to speak of. The Iranians are playing it up as a "captured CIA agent" story, but according to Laura's sources (and frankly, if you'd read nobody else on diplomatic stories in the Bush years you'd be in the top 5% of the information distribution) the Pakistanis and possibly the US forces in Afghanistan were cooperating with the Iranians.
It certainly looks like some kind of sudden outbreak of regional cooperation, in a sort of tacit agreement to jointly attack each others' rebels. Someone smarter than me would probably point out that this is natural - it's the difference between being a state and not being a state.
Could the reason have something to do with this? The first talks between India and Pakistan at foreign minister level for a while. It seems to have gone reasonably well; in the light of the Kayani doctrine speech, in which the General said that Pakistan would be satisfied if Afghanistan wasn't explicitly aligned with India, as opposed to being run by the Taliban as satraps for Pakistan, you might wonder if there's a bigger deal afoot.
If India agrees not to claim a sphere of influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan might be willing to lock up the Quetta shura as a sign of good faith, and then...perhaps they might get a payoff in concessions on Kashmir, and/or trade with India and with the wider world. How that interlocks with the Iranians is not quite clear, but it would fit with the Pakistanis getting sufficient assurances from the other regional powers for them to crank down the degree to which their various half-rebels, half-proxies cause trouble.
I don't think I've seen anyone link this story with this one of Laura Rozen's; at the same time, the Iranians have caught the leader of the Baluch rebels in the south-east, down where the Pakistani border would be if there was any border to speak of. The Iranians are playing it up as a "captured CIA agent" story, but according to Laura's sources (and frankly, if you'd read nobody else on diplomatic stories in the Bush years you'd be in the top 5% of the information distribution) the Pakistanis and possibly the US forces in Afghanistan were cooperating with the Iranians.
It certainly looks like some kind of sudden outbreak of regional cooperation, in a sort of tacit agreement to jointly attack each others' rebels. Someone smarter than me would probably point out that this is natural - it's the difference between being a state and not being a state.
Could the reason have something to do with this? The first talks between India and Pakistan at foreign minister level for a while. It seems to have gone reasonably well; in the light of the Kayani doctrine speech, in which the General said that Pakistan would be satisfied if Afghanistan wasn't explicitly aligned with India, as opposed to being run by the Taliban as satraps for Pakistan, you might wonder if there's a bigger deal afoot.
If India agrees not to claim a sphere of influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan might be willing to lock up the Quetta shura as a sign of good faith, and then...perhaps they might get a payoff in concessions on Kashmir, and/or trade with India and with the wider world. How that interlocks with the Iranians is not quite clear, but it would fit with the Pakistanis getting sufficient assurances from the other regional powers for them to crank down the degree to which their various half-rebels, half-proxies cause trouble.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Afghanistan the Doonesbury way
There is more truth about Afghanistan, counter-insurgency, insurgents and empires in this cartoon than in the vast pile of thinktank and military-academic reports on my local hard disk.
(Today's is pretty good, too.)
Sunday, December 21, 2008
business in great waters
Meanwhile, this is good news. As more and more ships from various parts of the world - like China and Iran - arrive in pirate country, somebody's made vaguely sensible arrangements to put them on trial in Kenya, which is what has been done with the ones captured by Northumberland. This is a much better idea than returning them to the tender mercies of Somali rivals, or alternatively to their home base, or any evil nonsense promoted by tiresome Internet hard men. (You know who you are.)
I'm not sure whether to be pleased, or worried that China and Iran are apparently cooperating in an exercise designed to be more law-abiding than some British courts, and far more so than whole swaths of the US defence establishment. This is incredibly important; I keep saying that a primary reason for the success of some Islamist movements is that they offer some form of legal order, rather than Franz Neumann's Behemoth.
After all, dogs have an innate appreciation of justice, so we should surely accept that it matters for human beings too. As a modest proposal, now the EU has taken over the lead in combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden, could we perhaps give the naval task force a further mission - to compel EU-flag fishing vessels to respect the Somali EEZ? (We wouldn't have legal authority to stop anyone else without a UN resolution, but it's a start.) I agree they have plenty on their plate, which is why I'm going to make a second modest proposal.
Rather than frigates, EU states participating in this could instead deploy some of their sizeable fleet of amphibious assault ships, with a deckload of helicopters, a dock of small craft, and a tankdeck containing a mix of marines for boarding parties, and medics, engineers etc to support the UN's aid activities.
I'm not sure whether to be pleased, or worried that China and Iran are apparently cooperating in an exercise designed to be more law-abiding than some British courts, and far more so than whole swaths of the US defence establishment. This is incredibly important; I keep saying that a primary reason for the success of some Islamist movements is that they offer some form of legal order, rather than Franz Neumann's Behemoth.
After all, dogs have an innate appreciation of justice, so we should surely accept that it matters for human beings too. As a modest proposal, now the EU has taken over the lead in combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden, could we perhaps give the naval task force a further mission - to compel EU-flag fishing vessels to respect the Somali EEZ? (We wouldn't have legal authority to stop anyone else without a UN resolution, but it's a start.) I agree they have plenty on their plate, which is why I'm going to make a second modest proposal.
Rather than frigates, EU states participating in this could instead deploy some of their sizeable fleet of amphibious assault ships, with a deckload of helicopters, a dock of small craft, and a tankdeck containing a mix of marines for boarding parties, and medics, engineers etc to support the UN's aid activities.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
The Switzerland of the Middle East (for some periods of Swiss history)
There is a fascinating post at Pat Lang's about a study trip to Lebanon which involved meeting some interesting and alarming people (Samir Geagea, described here as "a bit Lyndon LaRouche" - well, whatever hard things have been said, quite understandably, about the latter, he never commanded a militia that cut huge crosses in the bodies of its enemies). Bashir Assad's wife is apparently an Obama Girl, Walid Jumblatt is losing his wits, Saad Hariri is an arrogant twit, Rafiq Hariri's sister is considerably smarter than Saad, Siniora is a Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and all the Hezbollah representatives they met were very impressive indeed, once they laid off the war porn propaganda pix.
Apart from this Lebanese version of the Spectator at its best, I was interested by this:
Further, the availability of cheap ATGWs and electronics is a big boost to the strength of such a force, and there is no shortage of people to use them. In some ways it's a lot like the development of another well-known army in the Levant, which was founded on the guerrilla wing of an integrated political party/economic development organisation/rebel army. Can anyone guess which it was? Of course, the Israelis concentrated on buying tanks - but then, they weren't in the mountains. The other good thing about such a policy is that it would be a handy way of dealing with the existence of militias - wrapping them into some sort of national command structure.
And, of course, Lebanon used to call itself the Switzerland of the Middle East. The similarities are actually more than you think - cantons of differing linguistic/religious identities, mountain frontiers, a profitably discreet and profitably dubious banking sector. You can even ski. But, you know, Switzerland as an island of perfect peace is quite a new idea, created by its neutrality in the world wars - before then, well...there's a reason why the pope has Swiss guards, which is that back in the day, Swiss mercenaries scared the hell out of Europe so much that some international treaties specifically bound the parties not to recruit them for use against Christians. (Savages, well, that was OK.)
The overall impression is that the system is gradually working its way back into equilibrium, not least as a result of Bush no longer having an active policy. "Have you figured them out?" asked Zaphod. "No, I've just stopped fiddling with them.."
Apart from this Lebanese version of the Spectator at its best, I was interested by this:
Amin Gemayel was not particularly forthcoming, and seemed badly out of touch. When pressed for details on a number of points he was completely at a loss. He seemed to resort to stock politician phrases even in personal conversation. My impression was of a man losing vitality. I tried to push him on the question of what a real 'national defense strategy' would be, seeking some common ground between him and Hezbollah. He replied that he envisaged a 'Swiss model' of every citizen owning a gun. Incredulous, I asked him if that would really deter Israeli or Syrian aggression. He responded evasively, citing the importance of various UN resolutions. When I cornered him privately after the session, he said that in the 1970s they had tried to acquire Crotale air defense systems but were thwarted by Israeli pressure, indicating that similar factors were at play today.Not that he means much these days, but I can't see what the objection to a "Swiss model" would be. In fact, Hezbollah's total strategy down south appears to have been exactly that in 2006. And given that Lebanon will always be surrounded by bigger powers with dubious intentions, and it is unlikely to be allowed to create a manoeuvre-warfare capability even if it can afford to (see above), it's hard to see what other policy is available.
Further, the availability of cheap ATGWs and electronics is a big boost to the strength of such a force, and there is no shortage of people to use them. In some ways it's a lot like the development of another well-known army in the Levant, which was founded on the guerrilla wing of an integrated political party/economic development organisation/rebel army. Can anyone guess which it was? Of course, the Israelis concentrated on buying tanks - but then, they weren't in the mountains. The other good thing about such a policy is that it would be a handy way of dealing with the existence of militias - wrapping them into some sort of national command structure.
And, of course, Lebanon used to call itself the Switzerland of the Middle East. The similarities are actually more than you think - cantons of differing linguistic/religious identities, mountain frontiers, a profitably discreet and profitably dubious banking sector. You can even ski. But, you know, Switzerland as an island of perfect peace is quite a new idea, created by its neutrality in the world wars - before then, well...there's a reason why the pope has Swiss guards, which is that back in the day, Swiss mercenaries scared the hell out of Europe so much that some international treaties specifically bound the parties not to recruit them for use against Christians. (Savages, well, that was OK.)
The overall impression is that the system is gradually working its way back into equilibrium, not least as a result of Bush no longer having an active policy. "Have you figured them out?" asked Zaphod. "No, I've just stopped fiddling with them.."
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Even More Viktor Bout Arrest Blogging
Douglas Farah reckons the Russians are trying to press the US State Department to press for Viktor Bout's release, or rather his extradition to Russia, which would amount to the same thing. It's an interesting suggestion, although usual caveats apply to a story sourced to Bill "WMD to Syria!!" Gertz. I can imagine them pitching it as a sort of grown-ups' conspiracy, driven by the prospect of sensational revelations.
Just how sensational might be judged by this fine piece of work by the South African Mail & Guardian on the Khalid Rashid case, from back in 2006 (I blogged). Meanwhile, everyone's worried about the fact Bout was offering portable SAMs for sale. I'm not at all surprised that he could source them; hell, he had in the past sold complete attack helicopters. Further, the weapons used in an attempt to bring down an Israeli Boeing 757-300 in Kenya originated in Bulgaria via Somalia, at a period when Irbis Air Co was sending off several flights a day from the UAE to northern Somalia and to ports on the Yemeni coast.
The Economist has a good story on the whole affair; they take the line that Russia has decided to be more helpful on the arms trade, pointing to the arrest of Monzer al-Kassar and the extradition of Yar Klein. That can await early confirmation, as far as I'm concerned. The Economist also points out that it's worrying that he apparently thought he could still use Bulgaria and Romania as he did in the late 90s, now they've joined the EU; some interesting reports are coming out of Romania, for example here. And if anyone could translate this one I'd be very much obliged.
In other news, Bout's brother Sergei, founder of CET Aviation in Malabo back in the 90s, appeared on Russian radio protesting Viktor's innocence and asking "How could the American authorities behave in such an unprincipled way?". He must be the last man on earth who couldn't answer that one.
Meanwhile, z-list wingnut barkie and professional fuckwit Gateway Pundit tries to sneak in on the glory as part of a smear. Glad I'm not you. (In fact, he has given me the germ of an interesting idea. More soon.)
Just how sensational might be judged by this fine piece of work by the South African Mail & Guardian on the Khalid Rashid case, from back in 2006 (I blogged). Meanwhile, everyone's worried about the fact Bout was offering portable SAMs for sale. I'm not at all surprised that he could source them; hell, he had in the past sold complete attack helicopters. Further, the weapons used in an attempt to bring down an Israeli Boeing 757-300 in Kenya originated in Bulgaria via Somalia, at a period when Irbis Air Co was sending off several flights a day from the UAE to northern Somalia and to ports on the Yemeni coast.
The Economist has a good story on the whole affair; they take the line that Russia has decided to be more helpful on the arms trade, pointing to the arrest of Monzer al-Kassar and the extradition of Yar Klein. That can await early confirmation, as far as I'm concerned. The Economist also points out that it's worrying that he apparently thought he could still use Bulgaria and Romania as he did in the late 90s, now they've joined the EU; some interesting reports are coming out of Romania, for example here. And if anyone could translate this one I'd be very much obliged.
In other news, Bout's brother Sergei, founder of CET Aviation in Malabo back in the 90s, appeared on Russian radio protesting Viktor's innocence and asking "How could the American authorities behave in such an unprincipled way?". He must be the last man on earth who couldn't answer that one.
Meanwhile, z-list wingnut barkie and professional fuckwit Gateway Pundit tries to sneak in on the glory as part of a smear. Glad I'm not you. (In fact, he has given me the germ of an interesting idea. More soon.)
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Let's lay this one to rest
Says Iranian foreign minister Manoucher Mottaki:
You can't fault the guy for clarity. Or realism. Let's cut to the carrierwatch, shall we? Here we are; Enterprise is on station, the only US carrier currently deployed. Hardly the Guns of August. The others? Kitty Hawk is back in Yokosuka; Ronald Reagan in San Diego catching up on her interrupted maintenance schedule. Washington is gradually working-up, having done her sea trials at the end of August. Lincoln's most recent task was Fleet Week in San Diego. Washington is doing a similarly steady return from dockyard hands. Vinson and Theodore Roosevelt are in deep refit. John C. Stennis has joined them, having returned from her short-notice deployment and gone straight into drydock. Nimitz is in Pearl Harbour after a long and slow return trip.
Harry Truman is probably the highest-readiness ship, having already done a COMPTUEX and a JTFEX over the summer; however, she's currently employed doing carrier qualifications off the mid-Atlantic coast. Washington returned as late as the end of May.
So, yes - Mottaki is quite right. Enough for the description of things as they are, though; what about things as they should be? Daniel Levy, writing in Ha'aretz, is sensible. He points out that the US and Israeli strategy towards Iran is hopelessly confused; the aim is left open between regime change and nonproliferation. The chief motivation for investing in nuclear technology is to prevent regime change, but no-one is willing to offer the regime security in return for nonproliferation; so why would they stop proliferatin'? And if they don't stop, where is your regime change then?
This is pretty basic international relations theory; it's all about people, states, and fear. States invest in fearsome weapons because they believe that the fear of them increases their security (i.e. reduces their own fear); if you want them to abstain from these weapons, you need to offer a substitute form of insurance. In the Cold War this was thought of in terms of a combination of deterrence and reassurance; one version of reassurance being "self-deterrence", making it clear that you yourself recognised the principle of non-provocation that you expected the other side to observe.
The Americans have frequently tried versions of this with Israel; trying to buy territorial concessions with substitute deliveries of weapons. So far as it goes, there is quite a lot to be said for this; it's better that Israel should look to its wooden walls, or rather its aluminium walls, for security than that it should try to grab more and more territory as a static defence, which increases the chance it will need all those jets. The problem is that they never get to the flipside of this, which is that US military aid should come with conditions. The result is an unhealthy dependence of the Israelis on the Americans, and an American inability to insist on Israeli moderation for fear of weakening them. It's a ratchet; the more people the Israelis alienate, the more arms they need to deal with the worst case scenario consequences. And the more arms they get, the more able the forward school in Israeli politics is to alienate more people.
Anyway, Levy proposes a twin-track diplomacy based precisely on these principles; one track would concern non-proliferation, the other a broad security agreement dealing with the entire perimeter around Iran. Essentially, each track addresses one party's fears. This is roughly what the Baker -Hamilton commission recommended. Levy's original contribution, however, is that the Israelis should press the Americans to open such talks. I think it's an excellent idea, and Olmert is probably scared enough about his political future to be receptive.
The moment is also good; the British army's move back in southern Iraq, as well as the relaxation in US naval operations, are all helpful in reducing the degree of fear.
Meanwhile, we have an amusing study in outdated thinking. Via Yglesias, a thinktank suggestion that "an Islamic Republic accountable to its citizens would not divert billions into uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles"; so, of course, we've got to fight them because of the corruption/malinvestment/whatever. This is silly, but it was very common in 2003-2005; such and such a country's government was corrupt, and the oil (or whatever) money was being wasted, so call forward the Marines! It goes without saying that this sort of thing is fear-generating, in so far as anyone takes it at all seriously.
It's especially stupid, because we know what Iranians do when they believe their government to be corrupt; they change it. That was how Khatami got elected; it was also how Ahmadinejad got elected. And that was also how the revolution got started.
"America, today, in the international system is facing a serious challenge ... Americans are in a very, very difficult situation.
"The people of Afghanistan would not allow America to use Afghanistan against any country. This is our ... belief," he said.
Mottaki said Tehran's findings from three rounds of talks with U.S. officials on the situation in Iraq was that Washington was facing "very serious" difficulties there.
Washington has no exit strategy from Iraq and is bogged down in the conflict there. He said the U.S. had not managed to deliver on its promises to the Afghan people either.
"Therefore, we do not see such a probability that the Americans would want to attack ... another country in the region. They are not in such a position."
You can't fault the guy for clarity. Or realism. Let's cut to the carrierwatch, shall we? Here we are; Enterprise is on station, the only US carrier currently deployed. Hardly the Guns of August. The others? Kitty Hawk is back in Yokosuka; Ronald Reagan in San Diego catching up on her interrupted maintenance schedule. Washington is gradually working-up, having done her sea trials at the end of August. Lincoln's most recent task was Fleet Week in San Diego. Washington is doing a similarly steady return from dockyard hands. Vinson and Theodore Roosevelt are in deep refit. John C. Stennis has joined them, having returned from her short-notice deployment and gone straight into drydock. Nimitz is in Pearl Harbour after a long and slow return trip.
Harry Truman is probably the highest-readiness ship, having already done a COMPTUEX and a JTFEX over the summer; however, she's currently employed doing carrier qualifications off the mid-Atlantic coast. Washington returned as late as the end of May.
So, yes - Mottaki is quite right. Enough for the description of things as they are, though; what about things as they should be? Daniel Levy, writing in Ha'aretz, is sensible. He points out that the US and Israeli strategy towards Iran is hopelessly confused; the aim is left open between regime change and nonproliferation. The chief motivation for investing in nuclear technology is to prevent regime change, but no-one is willing to offer the regime security in return for nonproliferation; so why would they stop proliferatin'? And if they don't stop, where is your regime change then?
This is pretty basic international relations theory; it's all about people, states, and fear. States invest in fearsome weapons because they believe that the fear of them increases their security (i.e. reduces their own fear); if you want them to abstain from these weapons, you need to offer a substitute form of insurance. In the Cold War this was thought of in terms of a combination of deterrence and reassurance; one version of reassurance being "self-deterrence", making it clear that you yourself recognised the principle of non-provocation that you expected the other side to observe.
The Americans have frequently tried versions of this with Israel; trying to buy territorial concessions with substitute deliveries of weapons. So far as it goes, there is quite a lot to be said for this; it's better that Israel should look to its wooden walls, or rather its aluminium walls, for security than that it should try to grab more and more territory as a static defence, which increases the chance it will need all those jets. The problem is that they never get to the flipside of this, which is that US military aid should come with conditions. The result is an unhealthy dependence of the Israelis on the Americans, and an American inability to insist on Israeli moderation for fear of weakening them. It's a ratchet; the more people the Israelis alienate, the more arms they need to deal with the worst case scenario consequences. And the more arms they get, the more able the forward school in Israeli politics is to alienate more people.
Anyway, Levy proposes a twin-track diplomacy based precisely on these principles; one track would concern non-proliferation, the other a broad security agreement dealing with the entire perimeter around Iran. Essentially, each track addresses one party's fears. This is roughly what the Baker -Hamilton commission recommended. Levy's original contribution, however, is that the Israelis should press the Americans to open such talks. I think it's an excellent idea, and Olmert is probably scared enough about his political future to be receptive.
The moment is also good; the British army's move back in southern Iraq, as well as the relaxation in US naval operations, are all helpful in reducing the degree of fear.
Meanwhile, we have an amusing study in outdated thinking. Via Yglesias, a thinktank suggestion that "an Islamic Republic accountable to its citizens would not divert billions into uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles"; so, of course, we've got to fight them because of the corruption/malinvestment/whatever. This is silly, but it was very common in 2003-2005; such and such a country's government was corrupt, and the oil (or whatever) money was being wasted, so call forward the Marines! It goes without saying that this sort of thing is fear-generating, in so far as anyone takes it at all seriously.
It's especially stupid, because we know what Iranians do when they believe their government to be corrupt; they change it. That was how Khatami got elected; it was also how Ahmadinejad got elected. And that was also how the revolution got started.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Talking to Iran, part 3
Right, I've already given reasons why it's urgently necessary to start staff talks with Iran about how we can get out of Iraq. Someone asked what incentive the Iranians had to participate. I suggested, essentially, that they would rather not have us shoot our way out with AC-130s down Highway 8. Well, here's a better answer. From Reuters AlertNet:
Iran said on Sunday it would consider entering talks with the United States on security in Iraq if it received an official request.
Talks with between Washington and Tehran are expected to be one option for quelling violence in Iraq to be suggested in a report due out from the Iraq Study Group, a U.S. bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state James Baker.
But the idea has previously been rejected by U.S. President George W. Bush. The United States accuses Iran of aiding the insurgency and stoking sectarian strife in Iraq, a charge Tehran denies.
Asked if Iran should talk directly to the United States about security in Iraq, Tehran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said: "If they officially ask for that, it will be reviewed by Iran.
"At the present time, some American and Iraqi officials have raised the question of a dialogue. If we receive such a request we are ready to examine it."
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Missile Defence and Deterrence
The North Koreans are attention-seeking again, flaunting the possible launch of some sort of rocket that possibly might be the putative Taepodong-2 ICBM. And, apparently, the US government is thinking of shooting it down with their ballistic missile defence system. Well, system. Experimental test rig would be more accurate.
This is incredibly stupid. Fortunately for the world, the story is in the Moonie Times of WMD-to-Syria craziness fame, so the bullshit adjustment factor is quite large. But if we briefly suspend disbelief, what would be wrong with trying to shoot the thing down? For a start, the North Koreans are not going to point it, if indeed it's an ICBM, anywhere near the United States. That would risk bringing the real missile defence into play - that is, the nuclear deterrent. Not even Kim Jong-il wants to do that.
So not only would it be not very pointful, it would be indefensible in international law (like they care) - it's not illegal to have rockets, and it's not illegal to test-fire them through space. And if it's not aimed at you, it's not self-defence. This may seem a minor point, but there is a more important one in there - ever since the high Cold War, there has been something almost amounting to a norm of customary law that satellites are not interfered with as they pass over sovereign territory - even the other side's recce satellites. (John Lewis Gaddis used this as a pirmary example for his thesis that the Cold War was really the Long Peace) Space is therefore akin to the high seas, which is excellent news for anyone who uses weather forecasts, telecommunications, or satnav, to name but three. The US derives a lot of economic value, and far more military value than anyone else, from the free use of space. It would be very foolish to encourage interference with other people's space activities, as the technology needed to build an ASAT missile is now much more available than it was in the 1960s.
That aside, what would shooting it down achieve? It would certainly slap down North Korea, and set them building as many decoy warheads as possible. Not a great payoff. Unfortunately, the poor performance of the BMD system so far suggests it won't hit the rocket. And the consequences of trying and failing would be really desperate.
The reasoning behind a small "son of star wars" system is as follows: even if we can't hope to deal with a strategic-level nuclear strike, that threat is covered by MAD. The danger comes from proliferation, from small numbers of rockets launched by (presumably) deranged rogue dictators who don't care about being nuked back. (Can you see the logical flaw yet?)
Even if it's not perfect, some BMD would be nice because it makes it much less certain that an enemy missile will get through, and hence the enemy will be less likely to risk it. (If you can't see a logical flaw yet, you're probably Ann Coulter.) This is all based on the assumption that the other side is pursuing a minimal deterrence strategy. Minimal deterrence, as theorised by the French and Israeli defence establishments and by the UK with regard to the "supreme national interest" non-NATO role of its deterrent, argues that the degree of devastation brought about by even a small nuclear strike is so horrific that it is enough to deter anything less than a suicidal attacker - no war of choice in the Pacific would be worth Los Angeles or Seattle, to put it concretely. So, just a small force would be enough to provide credible deterrence for most purposes.
Clearly, this obviates the argument that the threats of today are irrational and therefore impervious to deterrence. BMD is meant to defeat minimal deterrence by making it uncertain whether or not the bomb would get through. Given that this time we know there is no bomb, it's very stupid indeed to run the risk of missing and thus destroying the uncertainty created by the BMD project.
Update: as always, any post with rockets in means comments action. Here's a nice little map courtesy of Chris "Chris" Lightfoot.
Update the second: here's an even cooler map courtesy of Armscontrolwonk.com
This is incredibly stupid. Fortunately for the world, the story is in the Moonie Times of WMD-to-Syria craziness fame, so the bullshit adjustment factor is quite large. But if we briefly suspend disbelief, what would be wrong with trying to shoot the thing down? For a start, the North Koreans are not going to point it, if indeed it's an ICBM, anywhere near the United States. That would risk bringing the real missile defence into play - that is, the nuclear deterrent. Not even Kim Jong-il wants to do that.
So not only would it be not very pointful, it would be indefensible in international law (like they care) - it's not illegal to have rockets, and it's not illegal to test-fire them through space. And if it's not aimed at you, it's not self-defence. This may seem a minor point, but there is a more important one in there - ever since the high Cold War, there has been something almost amounting to a norm of customary law that satellites are not interfered with as they pass over sovereign territory - even the other side's recce satellites. (John Lewis Gaddis used this as a pirmary example for his thesis that the Cold War was really the Long Peace) Space is therefore akin to the high seas, which is excellent news for anyone who uses weather forecasts, telecommunications, or satnav, to name but three. The US derives a lot of economic value, and far more military value than anyone else, from the free use of space. It would be very foolish to encourage interference with other people's space activities, as the technology needed to build an ASAT missile is now much more available than it was in the 1960s.
That aside, what would shooting it down achieve? It would certainly slap down North Korea, and set them building as many decoy warheads as possible. Not a great payoff. Unfortunately, the poor performance of the BMD system so far suggests it won't hit the rocket. And the consequences of trying and failing would be really desperate.
The reasoning behind a small "son of star wars" system is as follows: even if we can't hope to deal with a strategic-level nuclear strike, that threat is covered by MAD. The danger comes from proliferation, from small numbers of rockets launched by (presumably) deranged rogue dictators who don't care about being nuked back. (Can you see the logical flaw yet?)
Even if it's not perfect, some BMD would be nice because it makes it much less certain that an enemy missile will get through, and hence the enemy will be less likely to risk it. (If you can't see a logical flaw yet, you're probably Ann Coulter.) This is all based on the assumption that the other side is pursuing a minimal deterrence strategy. Minimal deterrence, as theorised by the French and Israeli defence establishments and by the UK with regard to the "supreme national interest" non-NATO role of its deterrent, argues that the degree of devastation brought about by even a small nuclear strike is so horrific that it is enough to deter anything less than a suicidal attacker - no war of choice in the Pacific would be worth Los Angeles or Seattle, to put it concretely. So, just a small force would be enough to provide credible deterrence for most purposes.
Clearly, this obviates the argument that the threats of today are irrational and therefore impervious to deterrence. BMD is meant to defeat minimal deterrence by making it uncertain whether or not the bomb would get through. Given that this time we know there is no bomb, it's very stupid indeed to run the risk of missing and thus destroying the uncertainty created by the BMD project.
Update: as always, any post with rockets in means comments action. Here's a nice little map courtesy of Chris "Chris" Lightfoot.
Update the second: here's an even cooler map courtesy of Armscontrolwonk.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)