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Technology, policy and operations in the New World Disorder
Sorry Brazil, in this analysis the 'big four' are the contender states, Eurasian military-economic powers Russia, India and China plus the rival-cum-ally, the US.
Interesting that coinciding with a Condi trip to Beijing comes a possible US military deal with New Delhi that might undermine Russia's virtual monopoly over its defence equipment. Russia continues to supply China, of course, no big.
If India were to become dependent on the US both for nuclear power, Gulf-related energy security and military hardware, that truly would seal it into Washington's orbit as anti-American social forces in Pakistan begin to spin away and thus towards China instead.
Also interesting to note that China's defence budget took another leap last year, as revealed in the annual Pentagon estimate. Part of the 18% hike is probably down to rising oil and food prices, but there can be no doubt that China is building up its capability while hardly making a major contribution to UN peacekeeping (as does India).
All things being considered, it looks like simple geopolitics to me.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
Gates' talking points in Delhi related primarily to defense trade. India's procurement of 126 multi-role combat aircraft in a deal estimated at $10 billion - and possibly, as high as $ 16 billion - was number one priority for him and for the American defense contractors accompanying him. The principal bidders include Lockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The importance of the deal is not only commercial, but that the new generation aircraft will be in use with the Indian Air Force for the next 40-year period and, therefore, clinching the deal becomes absolutely vital for the US if it is to aim at "inter-operability" with India. Gates knows it is the sort of deal that will ensure US-India military-to-military cooperation becomes irreversible and pin India down as the US's strategic ally in the region...
Gates expressed satisfaction over the entry that the US has made in the Indian market, which is traditionally dominated by Russia. He said, "We have tried for some years now to get a seat at the table, and we're finally there." Washington is determined to throw Russia out of the Indian defense market in the coming years. The assertiveness of the US sales pitch is evident from the remark by a US official in Gates's entourage, "When you go into joint production [and] cooperative development [with the US], you're getting not only the best product in the world, but you have the best support system, the best maintenance package over the life of the product. You also have companies that operate with integrity, which is different than what India has seen with other partners in the world. We're very transparent."
Interesting to see US intelligence crawl out of the shadows again, this time making strong comments about Afghanistan. Like the Iran report back in December, this seems to be a sign of a growing political movement within the intelligence community, perhaps a reaction to the misunderstandings of the role of intelligence that led to the failure in Iraq.
Afghanistan mission close to failing - US | World news | The Guardian
After six years of US-led military support and billions of pounds in aid, security in Afghanistan is "deteriorating" and President Hamid Karzai's government controls less than a third of the country, America's top intelligence official has admitted.
Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control...
But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly worded recent reports by thinktanks, including one headed by the former Nato commander General James Jones, which concluded that "urgent changes" were required now to "prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state".
General Jones's comment requires a little deconstruction: Afghanistan is not going to "become a failed state" - it has pretty much always been one. I would argue that it is not even a state at all, dominated as it is by tribal factions.
McConnell mentions that "Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control." There's your key. Rather than 'Afghanisation', it may be better to recognise that the 60% under tribal control is the key ground. Just as with Pakistan's NWFP, it's impossible to rule over these chaps in a conventional manner - so why try?
The way to bring stability is to support local governance networks and hope that security and development will mean that they in turn don't support the Taliban. Unfortunately that means massive amounts of troops and cash, not the paltry 30,000 troops or so under ISAF and the other 30,000 separately-led and counter-productive US contingent.
Force multipliers such as PNGs and AH-64s help, but do not solve the problem of space. To cover an area as large as Afghanistan you need a lot more than that. Can't find the stats but I'm sure that there was ten times that number in the initial occupation of Germany post-WW2. Boots on the ground.
If there's one thing that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - and arguably, sad to say, Vietnam - have proved is that in order to bring peace and stability to a country you need a lot of troops, a lot of money and a lot of time. All of them must be spent wisely.
That was the essence of Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous failure of vision, the deeply misguided belief that the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs was the be all and end all. But he eventually found out that once the high-tempo warfighting phase is over, then the force multipliers of US technology count for nothing.
Incredibly, the US Army has only just redrafted its manual to suggest that "stabilising countries and winning over locals required more than just military skills... and knowledge of foreign languages and local cultures are also important." Duh. That says it all.
That's why developments in NATO are alarming. The SecGen attempts to gloss over the problem, but it's certainly the case that many of the old European nations are still cashing in on the post-Cold War peace dividend. Times have changed, however. At least France under Sarkozy is beginning to pull its weight.
What NATO has to do is create a virtuous circle in Pakistan: contain the Taliban long enough for development and prosperity to flourish, which in turn will provide people with an alternative to fighting for scarce resources and political control. For that there need to be boots on the ground, because one thing's for sure - there's plenty more where the Taliban came from.
Nato crisis grows over Afghan troops | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited
In Washington on Wednesday Gates told the House of Representatives' armed services committee that the alliance could split into countries that were "willing to fight and die to protect people's security and those who were not". He added: "My view is you can't have some allies whose sons and daughters die in combat and other allies who are shielded from that kind of a sacrifice."
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, said more forces were needed to combat Taliban and al-Qaida violence but dismissed Gates' suggestion that Nato could become a "two-tiered alliance" based on a country's willingness to fight. "I do not see a two-tier alliance, there is one alliance," he said as he arrived for the Vilnius meeting.
A disappointingly weak argument for the candidates' foreign policy apathy during the primary cycle. Surely, as commander in chief of the world's most advanced armed forces and helmsman of its largest economy, the president has some choice? Apparently not: policy is 'shaped by events'.
Rubbish. What is the point of all that power projection capability if the US has no role in helping to define global affairs? This is exactly the kind of argument that makes the world a worse place to live in. Sure, unpredictable events occur, but that doesn't mean the president must be hostile to being prepared and having beliefs and opinions.
If anything, the post below is an argument against democracy - if nothing can ever change, then why bother? Shame on you, Friedman.
Foreign Policy and the President's Irrelevance | Stratfor
When you drill down into position papers that are written but not meant to be read — and which certainly are not devised by the candidates — you find some interesting thoughts. But for the most part, the positions are clear. The candidates are concerned about Russia’s growing internal authoritarianism and hope it ends. The candidates are concerned about the impact of China on American jobs but generally are committed to variations on free trade. They are also concerned about growing authoritarianism in China and hope it ends. On the unification of Europe, they have no objections.
This might appear vapid, but we would argue that it really isn’t. In spite of the constitutional power of the U.S. president in foreign policy, in most cases, the president really doesn’t have a choice. Policies have institutionalized themselves over the decades, and shifting those policies has costs that presidents can’t absorb. There is a reason the United States behaves as it does toward Russia, China and Europe, and these reasons usually are powerful. Presidents do not simply make policy. Rather, they align themselves with existing reality. For example, since the American public doesn’t care about European unification, there is no point in debating the subject. There are no decisions to be made on such issues. There is only the illusion of decisions.
There is a deeper reason as well. The United States does not simply decide on policies. It responds to a world that is setting America’s agenda. During the 2000 campaign, the most important issue that would dominate the American presidency regardless of who was elected never was discussed: 9/11. Whatever the presidential candidates thought would or wouldn’t be important, someone else was going to set the agenda.
The issue of policies versus character has been discussed many times. One school of thought holds that the foreign policies advocated by a presidential candidate are the things to look at. In fact, the candidate can advocate whatever he or she wants, but foreign policy is frequently defined by the world and not by the president. In many cases, it is impossible to know what the issue is going to be, meaning the candidates’ positions on various topics are irrelevant. The decisions that are going to matter are going to force the president’s hand, not the other way around.
 Next Thursday, 7 February, sees the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rat, the first in the Chinese Zodiac cycle. No, this isn't some cod astrological analysis: but it does put a little bit of mystical context in. Just look at all the international factors that are just about to converge and you'll see what I mean.
Basically, the next weeks and months could see some rather serious developments in the global political picture.
Kosovo might soon be declaring independence, and despite dissent it looks like most of the international community is going to recognise it. What few realise is that, for Serbia, the secession of Kosovo would be a disaster of monumental proportions. And they're holding an election this weekend in which a hard-right president could be selected.
Already locking horns with the UK, Russia is probably going to stand by Serbia - which means increasing antagonism with the rest of Europe. I can certainly foresee the gas spigot getting turned off for a couple of days, which given the present frigid economic (let alone meteorological) climate could have a severe impact.
Speaking of elections, it's Super Tuesday this week, another moment that's going to define the course of things to come. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or John McCain: the field of four will probably narrow down to two candidates for the top job in the world.
Not long after that, Monday 18 February is finally going to see elections in Pakistan. Whether rigged or not, there will inevitably be implications for regional stability.
Furthermore, set that against the context of Afghanistan. President Karzai has just shot his nation in the foot by turning away one of Britain's most competent statesmen, Lord Ashdown, as a potential UN envoy.
Moreover, NATO is lumbering towards a crisis with Germany refusing to pull its weight and Canada getting very cold feet in the face of what looks like sheer petulance from its allies. Thus, the NATO conference set for next week could well define the future of the mission, and general stability in Afghanistan. Condi is already jetting in do do her firewoman act.
We don't want to see either Pakistan or Afghanistan go down; both of them falling apart at the same time would be disastrous.
And finally, look at China.
Anyone who's queued for rail tickets at Spring Festival - even in a good year - will tell you what a nightmare it is. This year has seen the worst weather in half a century and chances are that the world's largest internal migration is not going to go ahead as planned. That means some unhappy chappies down Chinatown.
Add to that the very real danger of a food crisis - a failed crop could tip China over the edge - compounded by the general economic malaise and you have a recipe for civil unrest in Olympic year.
And finally, add to that a touch of spice in the form of an upcoming referendum in Taiwan (set for 22 March) and you have a fiery plate of noodles indeed.
In summary, there are various crises impending in Eastern Europe, South Asia and East Asia. The year 2008 could well be going for a bag of rats.
Just to prove I'm not the only doommonger around here (though my prediction is 2012, Beijing isn't going to scupper the Olympics on any account), Canada's Globe and Mail looks forward to some tense moments in 2008.
It's unlikely, however, that the Taiwanese people are going to vote for independence in a referendum.That's been tried before, and it was a close run thing, but the electorate are not crazy. They know that such a decision is likely to visit a world of hurt upon them.
On the other hand, the scenario explored in the article does carry some weight. The elections and referenda will, if nothing else, add to existing animosity, and a small incident like an air-to-air collision or an accidental firing of missiles could escalate horribly.
globeandmail.com: How a miscalculation could spell mayhem in Taiwan
Tensions have been high for years, but 2008 could be the most dangerous year of all. It is filled with potential trigger points, including two Taiwanese elections, a controversial referendum, the final days of Mr. Chen's presidency and the Summer Olympics.
This explosive combination of political events will begin on Jan. 12 with a legislative election in Taiwan, followed by a presidential election on March 22. The elections will be accompanied by Mr. Chen's latest gambit: a referendum on whether Taiwan should apply for membership in the United Nations under the name Taiwan rather than its official name, the Republic of China.
 It seems that there is a realisation now (as probably there always was) in Whitehall that there is no direct military solution to Afghanistan. The problem, however, is something of a chicken-and-egg situation: development will give the people the prosperity and stability they need to rid themselves of extremism, but without security there can be no development.
That's why some of the thinking outlined below is slightly worrying. Rushing things - as occurred under 'Vietnamisation' - will not improve the situation. At worst, it's merely a cover for an undignified retreat.
The battle of Musa Qula also has some uncomfortable analogies. Great that the town has been retaken - but why was it lost in the first place? That's just what went wrong in Vietnam: military victory on the ground was not backed up with long-term support. The Vietcong simply moved back in after the Americans left, as per Mao's doctrine of guerilla warfare.
The problem is that there are simply not enough NATO troops to do the job and the Afghan Army is not up to the job.
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Dismantling the Taleban is the aim
The concept is that there are three tiers in the Taleban. The top tier is made up of the irreconcilable leadership. The second tier consists of locally based commanders and the bottom tier are the ordinary foot soldiers.
It is the second tier that is being targeted and the hope is that middle level commanders will bring a lot of the third tier with them. Some 5,000 ex-Taleban fighters are said to have come over before...
The buzzwords being used about Afghanistan right now are - Afghanistan, localisation, reconciliation, and (an old one) reconstruction.
The Guardian picks up and spins a recent pronouncement by Frederick Kagan of AEI. The operative paragraph and conclusion are below, and deserve a bit of picking apart.
A complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum? Highly unlikely. Kagan may say he is not "fear-mongering", but this statement is over the top. Whatever its problems, the moderate mainstream in Pakistan's civil society and the military is more than powerful enough to prevent that eventuality.
There again, it did happen in Iran, but circumstances now are not the same. It is correct, therefore, to make contingency plans, but not to push forward what is not yet an inevitable self-fulfilling prophecy.
A struggle within the Pakistani military? Also not likely. Undoubtedly there remain radicals in the ISI, but if nothing else Musharraf has probably purged the army of the extremist tendencies seen under General Zia, who was himself somewhat discredited by the end of his rule.
However, there is a distinct possibility of Islamabad losing control of the outer regions - some might say it has already done so. This does have implications for both Afghanistan and Pakistan and thus must be taken seriously.
The basic point is that Pakistan needs well-planned aid and support if its WMD are not to fall into the wrong hands. It's the kind of thinking that should have been deployed prior to the Iraq invasion, which after all was about the same thing - preventing access of the wrong people to WMD.
Finally, two things Kagan fails to mention are the China and India factors. He treats the subject as if it's entirely a US issue, which it is not. The two Asian powers have deep-set interests too, and must be part of the solution rather than allowed to become part of the problem.
Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem - New York Times
The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism...
The great paradox of the post-cold war world is that we are both safer, day to day, and in greater peril than before. There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test.
Some analysis of largely-unreported recent PLAN exercises and the connection with the Kitty Hawk incident, in which a USN CVBG was turned away from a scheduled visit to Hong Kong.
The author notes the influence of certain Taiwan-orientated officers within the governing set-up, and also some possible lack of co-ordination between the PLA and the civilian executive, for example the ministry of foreign affairs.
His main point, however, is that China is tentatively trying to demonstrate its power projection capability. Notable that also this week there was a friendly naval visit to Japan, intended to 'reassure' the Japanese. AP notes the irony of both the US and Chinese vessels being in port at the same time but under different circumstances.
Also in context was the Dalai Lama's masterstroke pronouncement on his succession. In a sense, he has to ensure that the next Dalai Lama doesn't suffer the fate of the hapless young Panchen Lama, who through no fault of his own remains missing and probably isn't enjoying the best of times.
But also what better way to highlight Beijing's lack of democratic credentials to the international community than by demonstrating your own willingness to shed the feudalism you've been accused of in favour of a modern referendum? Incredibly, Beijing had the cheek to criticise him for rejecting religious traditions. As if razing hundreds of monasteries to the ground during the Cultural Revolution was an act of respect.
Finally, China's meeting with the EU illustrated the other side of China's power projection through economic means. All in all, this week has been quite significant in China's positioning of itself on the world stage.
China Brief from the Jamestown Foundation
The two most powerful bodies in the polity—the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and the CMC—are filled with cadres and generals with long-standing expertise on Taiwan. Three PSC members have served as either governor or party secretary of Fujian, the “frontline province” just opposite Taiwan. They are Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Jia Qinglin, Secretary of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection He Guoqiang, and Fifth-Generation rising star Xi Jinping, the front-ranked secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat. The CMC is replete with Taiwan Strait specialists. This include Defense Minister designate General Liang Guanglie, a veteran commander of war games off the Taiwan coast; the newly promoted Chief of the General Staff, General Chen Bingde, a former commander of the Nanjing Military Region; Air Force Commander General Xu Qiliang, who was once based in Fujian; and Naval Commander Admiral Wu Shengli, a former vice-chief of the East Sea Fleet. Since becoming CMC chief in late 2004, Hu has promoted a large number of alumni of the Nanjing Military Region, which has “jurisdiction” over the Strait.
On a larger-scale, last week’s provocative exercises tally with the overall pattern of power projection that began early this year with the destruction of an old weather satellite by state-of-the-art PLA missiles. The feat, which apparently signaled Beijing’s readiness to join the militarization of space, was followed by the country’s successful effort late last month to put a Chinese-made satellite into the moon’s orbit. Moreover, the PLA has for the past year deviated from its past practice of keeping newly developed weapons under wraps. Semi-official military websites regularly run stories and pictures that showcase the prototypes or just-completed versions of soon-to-be-deployed hardware ranging from the Jin-class submarine—which is capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles—to the nation’s first aircraft carrier.
Apart from telling Taiwan independence forces—and their sympathizers in the United States and Japan—that Beijing has the wherewithal to maintain national unity, Beijing is flexing its military muscle in a fashion befitting an emerging quasi-superpower. Referring to the 17th Congress, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) strategist Hong Yuan pointed out that “the [defense] concerns of the new leadership and the force projection of China’s military have gone way beyond the Taiwan Strait.” Hong sees the coming five years as “a period of rapid development in areas ranging from the PLA’s establishment, institutions and hardware to the extent and means of force projection” (Wen Wei Po, October 19).
"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."
So says some hitherto unheard of thinktank, somewhat pessimistically perhaps, but they do have eyes and ears on the ground. The point is that without strength in depth and in numbers, NATO is not going to be able to hold ground it takes.
That's just what happened in Vietnam. US forces won most battles but lost the war due to bad politics and bad strategy.
Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban' | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hard-core militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.
It says that the Nato-led International Security Force of some 40,000 troops should be at least doubled and include forces from Muslim countries as well as Nato states which have refused to send troops to the country.
Brief profile of the guy responsible for the Islamist takeover in Swat.
Revolt in Pakistan’s NWFP: A Profile of Maulana Fazlullah of Swat
Maulana Fazlullah, who is now leading an extremist Islam-oriented insurgency in the valley of Swat in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, founder of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws), which he established in 1989 (see Terrorism Monitor, November 30, 2005). In early 2002, TNSM was banned by the Pakistani government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad was sentenced to a prison term of seven years following a crackdown on jihadi organizations in the aftermath of 9/11 and President Musharraf’s collaboration with the U.S. global war on terrorism.
Fazlullah, born in 1975, was raised in a simple farmer’s family in Mam Dheray...
There had to be one, and note how this author neatly ties up all the conflicting elements in the current drama: internal opposition to Musharraf; the Balochistan rebellion; Afghanistan, America and the GWOT; China and Gwadar; India and Kashmir.
The essence of the article is that the current situation is all the result of an American plan to instigate regime change in Pakistan to advance its own interests. Of course much of the report is to be roundly dismissed. I particularly enjoyed this paragraph (I used to work at Jane's):
This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a correspondent for ‘Jane’s Defence Weekly’, a private intelligence service founded by experts close to the British intelligence.
But the point is that the Pakistan situation is not clear-cut in that all Pakistanis favour democracy and Benazir Bhutto, as the Western powers would have us believe. There are still deep veins of paranoia at work, and it's these that enable the continuing dominance of the military and security forces.
Ahmed Quraishi.com
“We have indications of Indian involvement with anti-state elements in Pakistan,” declared the spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office in a regular briefing in October. The statement was terse and direct and the spokesman, Ms. Tasnim Aslam, quickly moved on to other issues.
This is how a Pakistani official explained Ms. Aslam’s statement: “What she was really saying is this: We know what the Indians are doing. They’ve sold the Americans on the idea that [the Indians] are an authority on Pakistan and can be helpful in Afghanistan. The Americans have bought the idea and are in on the plan, giving the Indians a free hand in Afghanistan. What the Americans don’t know is that we, too, know the Indians very well. Better still, we know Afghanistan very well. You can’t beat us at our own game.”
Mr. Bugti’s armed rebellion coincided with the Gwadar project entering its final stages. No coincidence here. Mr. Bugti’s real job was to scare the Chinese away and scuttle Chinese President Hu Jintao’s planned visit to Gwadar a few months later to formally launch the port city.
Gwadar is the pinnacle of Sino-Pakistani strategic cooperation. It’s a modern port city that is supposed to link Central Asia, western China, and Pakistan with markets in Mideast and Africa. It’s supposed to have roads stretching all the way to China. It’s no coincidence either that China has also earmarked millions of dollars to renovate the Karakoram Highway linking northern Pakistan to western China.
There's been much talk in recent weeks on the Treaty of Lisbon, or the EU constitution that wasn't - but not much talk on these pages. The fact is that in the sum of all things, the EU is simply not yet that significant.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, however, yesterday set out a bold agenda for the future of Europe that hopefully will be heeded in the corridors of power in Brussels and beyond. You couldn't imagine his predecessor, Margaret Beckett, making such a speech:
My argument is this: The prospects and potential for human progress have never been greater. But our prosperity and security are under threat. Protectionism seeks to stave off globalisation rather than manage it. Religious extremists peddle hatred and division. Energy insecurity and climate change threaten to create a scramble for resources. And rogue states and failing states risk sparking conflicts, the damage of which will spill over into Europe.'
These threats provide a new raison d'etre for the European Union. New because the unfinished business of internal reform to update our economic and social model is on its own not enough to engage with the big issues, nor the hopes and fears, of European citizens.
For the EU because nation-states, for all their continuing strengths, are too small to deal on their own with these big problems, but global governance is too weak.
So the EU can be a pioneer and a leader. Our single market and the standards we set for it, the attractions of membership, and the legitimacy, diversity and political clout of 27 member states are big advantages. The EU will never be a superpower, but could be a model power of regional cooperation.
For success, the EU must be open to ideas, trade and people. It must build shared institutions and shared activities with its neighbours. It must be an Environmental Union as well as a European Union. And it must be able to deploy soft and hard power to promote democracy and tackle conflict beyond its borders.
Granted, Miliband doesn't tackle the EU's key problem, the Common Agricultural Policy, in anything more than veiled terms of anti-protectionism: "Environmental security not food security is the challenge of the future." But he hits every other nail on the head.
Expansion of the EU, perhaps in a series of concentric rings, could help bind the international community into a sphere of peace and prosperity that the UN has never been able to achieve. But for this to happen requires massive investment in European military capability and the will to use it, a shortcoming which Miliband rightly laments.
He also correctly connects the key threats of environmental degradation, energy insecurity and terrorism too. But the focus is on the EU as a "model power" rather than a "superpower", recognising the continued leadership of the US.
In the coming weeks there will be two major tests of the EU. French president Nicolas Sarkozy is already facing his "Thatcher moment" as he attempts to face down the socialist old guard on the streets. And Kosovo is about to come back to haunt us too, with elections currently being contested.
If Europe can ride these through, then the prospects are bright. But, as Miliband reminds us, there is a choice:
Focus on internal not external challenges, institutions rather than ideals. Fail to combine hard and soft power, the disciplines and benefits of membership with the ability to make a difference beyond our borders. The result - the return of protectionism, energy insecurity, division with the Islamic world, and unmanaged migration from conflict.
Or Europe can look global and become a model regional power.
We can use the power of the EU - the size of our single market, our ability to set global standards, the negotiating clout of 27 members, the attractions of membership, the hard power of sanctions and troops, the power of Europe as an idea and a model - not to substitute for nation states but to do those things to provide security and prosperity for the next generation.
I hope someone is listening.
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Miliband EU speech in full
See also the video.
One to save and read for later, and not a lot of new int. But this (conservative) report does highlight the increasing threat of Chinese economic intelligence gathering, cyber warfare ("weapons of mass annoyance") and its general commitment to asymmetric capability-building:
China’s search for asymmetric capabilities to leverage against U.S. vulnerabilities represents a serious form of irregular warfare preparation. China is convinced that, financially and technologically, it cannot defeat the United States in a traditional force-on-force match up. However, as Chairman of the Defense Science Board Dr. William Schneider highlighted, if it can acquire niche weapons systems that are relatively inexpensive and that can exploit U.S. vulnerabilities, it stands a chance of deterring or defeating the United States in a limited engagement. This strategy explains China’s emphasis on acquiring sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, mines, and information and electronic warfare capabilities.
Quite an unusual remark on p10 regarding China's growing submarine capability: with lots of Kilo-class coming on line, plus several indigenous Shang-class SSNs due for launch in 2008 and rumours of some AIP subs on the build too, the USN should even look at the PLAN as a partner in regional naval security.
On the other hand, an upgraded DF-21 ballistic missile with re-entry capability could make the littoral too dangerous for US CVBGs to inhabit.
Full PDF report downloadable here.
 Michael Klare, author of Blood and Oil, was in Amsterdam today to talk on his conception of the impending energy crisis. While he was a good speaker, seeing him in person did begin to reveal some of the flaws in his arguments.
The lecture opened with a bold set of statements: "No government is willing to solve the energy problem by seeking alternative energies... and I have zero confidence that any will try to increase production." Having tantalised us with this and promises of an apocalyptic vision of the future, Klare then utterly failed to expand.
Fortunately, the organisers allowed one student in the audience to ask a question (the other debating time was reserved for the usual blathering incoherence of rival academics failing to make their points or even ask questions) and he did ask what I would have done. The question was "why?"; Klare's answer was that "dysfunctional governments" were at fault, "governments that piss away billions on Iraq yet invest little on finding solutions".
That seems far too easy a way to excuse the actions of the Bush regime, though he did have a good point on China's failure to deal with the crisis. Though the CCP itself is aware of the trouble we're in, grass roots-level corruption means that any efficiency measures are swept under the carpet in favour of improving growth figures.
Yet Klare's overall take on the US-China contest over energy was as simplistic as the rest. It was, he said, a situation analogous to the Cold War, in which both powers supply arms to their energy-supplying clients in a competition for influence.
He did later remark that Beijing's Africa policy also involves economic and infrastructural aid - something that Africans were rightly suspicious of - but did not elaborate further. But his aim was to reinforce his point that the recent creation of America's Africa Command (Africom) was the latest stage in a continuing Kennedy doctrine, building on previous policy in the Persian Gulf. The SCO, moreover, was a front for China to extend its military supply network to Central Asia.
All of that may be true, but overlooks the nuances of an evolving bipolar US-China situation that is far more than a simple military confrontation.
To be fair, Klare did have some good ideas about 'the resource curse' whereby the wealth in countries like Nigeria falls into the hands of those who control the state, thus negating democratic urges in the governing classes. (One could say the same for Burma). And his analogy with the Balkans of 1914 was apt - violent internal social forces could intersect with external geopolitical motives to produce an explosive mixture.
Also, an interesting theory from an otherwise egomaniacal second speaker came to light, in that $100 oil punished the PRC as much as anyone else, and could be a ploy in order to bring down the RMB or lessen China's export deficit. She also highlighted that fact that Klare didn't even mention Europe, though that merely proved his point that Europe's influence is next to negligible.
But overall, Klare was a little disappointing. He was right to note that control of chokepoints such as Hormuz give militarily powerful states great leverage, but his frame of reference was still bound by conventional military thinking.
The reality is that inducing energy scarcity, just like terrorism and WMD, is an asymmetric method of power projection that doesn't necessarily involve military firepower. Having a big technologically-advanced navy isn't the be-all and end-all any more. That's what makes the problems so complicated and so intertwined.
Pervez Musharraf really isn't doing himself any favours. Take, for example, this editorial in The Telegraph in which an allusion is made to Roosevelt's (alleged) comment exemplifying the ultimate realpolitik: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
The response? Three Telegraph journalists are kicked out of Pakistan. This can only go to show that the regime has now become utterly self-indulgent. Even if Musharraf is saying - only saying, mind - elections will be held in January; even if the clampdown on Bhutto has been lifted; it still goes to show the direction the emergency is taking.
Bankrupt relationship - Telegraph
Despite George W Bush's rhetoric about freedom, the struggle against terrorism is provoking a reaction familiar from the Cold War and nowhere is that clearer than over Pakistan.
In the old parlance, General Pervez Musharraf is "our sonofabitch". He has failed to stamp out extremist groups and close the madrassas that inspire them. He has allowed the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan to fall into the hands of assorted jihadis. And he has sacked independent-minded judges for fear that the Supreme Court declare illegal his re-election as president last month.
Yet, despite this combination of incompetence and brutality, America and Britain continue to back him as head of what has a strong claim to be the most dangerous country in the world.
 Kindly understand the criticality of the situation in Pakistan and around Pakistan. Pakistan is on the verge of destabilisation. Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.
It's kind of sad. In many ways, General Musharraf has been one of the best leaders Pakistan has had for generations. He has more or less turned around the economic incompetence of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, as well as ensuring that General Zia's Islamist agenda was superseded by a more secular outlook.
That's why Musharraf's actions are so deeply disappointing. Probably it's a case of second-term delusion. It's commonly the fact that once leaders have been around for seven or eight years, surrounded by cronies and sycophants they begin to believe in their own infallibility and omnipotence. It even happened to Thatcher and Blair. That's why the US two-term limit on presidents is such a good idea.
Whatever the case, Musharraf has revealed himself for what he always really was: a tinpot military dictator of a teetering banana republic.
I'm not one to support democracy for democracy's sake, and of course it's easy to criticize from the safety and comfort of the West. Ali Eteraz at Comment is Free makes a fair point:
There is a segment of Pakistan - which includes the judges, lawyers, and journalists - which wants to take to the streets. They have dominated the news over the past year and they want to make a democratic push, with some people casting the lawyers in the same role as the Burmese monks. However, Musharraf's shrewd move of setting forth a limited PCO - targeting only the judiciary and leaving the assemblies intact - has neutralised this segment of the population. The illusion of popular participation is retained, while Musharraf's most vexing political opponents - the judges - get sidelined. If he had gone further and cancelled elections, it would have ignited a firestorm, but in his talk to Pakistani public (discussed below), he assured that he would do no such thing.
Disengaged western audiences, pumped full of the current pro-democracy intoxicants, will almost universally decry Musharraf's behaviour. I decry it too, precisely because I am a disengaged westerner and I have that luxury. However, the story in Pakistan is not so straightforward.
What I am being told by bazari merchants, some young professionals, and some industrialists in Karachi and Lahore is that they merely care for stability, whether it comes in the form of the military, or in the form of democracy. Incidentally, many of them believe that it is Musharraf who is more likely to assure that stability. A couple of people, with middle class businesses, suggested to me that Musharraf should behave more like a dictator; a secular version of the previous Islamist dictator, Zia ul Haq, in order to assure stability for business and economic growth. However, that is a minority view.
Yet that being said, history will probably see the state of emergency as Musharraf's biggest mistake. He has almost certainly grossly underestimated the ill-will against him within Pakistan itself. He has in fact strengthened the case against him, which can only help Bhutto, the lawyers and the militants.
In the greater geopolitical scale of things, Musharraf has also effectively chosen sides in the New Great Game too. America is incensed that their puppet president is turning away from even the veneer of legitimacy. Musharraf also mentioned in his address today his embarrassment at the kidnapping of Chinese workers prior to the Lal Masjid siege. Today's effective re-coup shows that Pakistan is now more likely than ever to align with China, which will not interfere in its internal affairs.
The worst case scenario is accelerated destabilisation as the US withdraws support, Bhutto's supporters rise up and in the ensuing unrest the militants seize their chance. Musharraf is committing rather than preventing the suicide of the state.
Heartthrob cricketer-cum-politician, Imran Khan, had a good point today during an interview with the BBC. Dictators always say they're acting for the good of the country; but really the outcome of suppressing the democratic process is to invite change by violent means instead.
"When you stop all legal and constitutional ways of people challenging [the president], then the only ones who challenge him are people with a gun.That's what happened to the Shah of Iran," said Khan, ominously.
 Thought he might. This is not yet checkmate in the Pakistan endgame, there's a way to go yet, but this move - while long-expected - is highly significant. Musharraf has waited for Bhutto to leave the country for the weekend, and has reportedly surrounded the supreme court, home of his new enemies the legal fraternity. And - crucially - TV and radio are off the air.
Thus this incident has all the characteristics of a coup, though one held by the military already in charge. Musharraf came to power in what he called a 'counter-coup' against Nawaz Sharif's 'coup', though it's the winners that tend to write history. So I'd call this the beginnings of a coup to the power of three.
Musharraf is clearly using the steeply rising Islamist-inspired violence in the north-west as his inspiration, and indeed there is some traction to the concept of Pakistan really being in a state of emergency. The attack on Bhutto's homecoming convoy proved that. But it's above all a political move. The question is: how will it be used? With Bhutto and the lawyers closed down for the time being, can Musharraf use the opportunity to quash the militants once and for all - or will they bite him back? And in either case, what are the prospects for Pakistan sliding deeper into the morass rather than out of it?
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Musharraf imposes emergency rule
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule, state-run TV has said, amid reports that police have surrounded the Supreme Court.
Judges are believed to be inside the building in Islamabad, reports say.
Troops have been deployed inside state-run TV and radio stations, while independent channels have gone off air.
Gen Musharraf is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether he was eligible to run for re-election last month while remaining army chief.
 When I started this blog two years ago, crude was priced at $60 per barrel. Now it's $96. The dollar was $1.21 to the Euro then: now it's $1.44.
So go the figures. Something is up. There is a big picture to this, and - shock and awe - after spending the best part of the last two years studying International Relations, I have a theory.
The basic idea is this: there are too many people chasing too few resources. Breaking down this simple statement brings us to two key players - the US and China. And the hidden factor is the instability of a multipolar world that is evolving into a bipolar structure: the 'West', led by Washington, and the 'Rest', very loosely led by China, competing for dominance over those resources, particularly energy.
 The thing is that, unlike the Cold War where two political ideologies were in competition, current US hegemony is still based on military and political power projection, whereas China's ace of spades is economic soft power.
The misuse of firepower is adding to rather than reducing the global instability that came to our notice on 9/11 (but had existed well before then). The World Trade Center attacks were as much a protest against US foreign policy than a statement about political Islam, and since then Islamist terrorism has increased exponentially.
The instability caused by terrorism is adding to the energy crisis by contributing to high prices if not yet directly threatening supply. Meanwhile, China's economic leverage means that the only way that US industry can compete is with a weak dollar. However, both things mean that oil producers such as Russia and manufacturers such as China are building enormous reserves of dollars, shifting the centre of the world economy away from the West. Thanks to events such as the subprime crisis, an economic meltdown is probably imminent.
China and Russia themselves are involved in abetting instability. While they do not directly support terrorism, they sponsor states such as Iran, the key outside player in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a pivotal state in all this, since if Pakistan goes down Afghanistan goes with it.
If Iran is bombed too, as looks increasingly likely, there will be a black hole of chaos slap bang in the middle of Eurasia - from Iraq through to Pakistan - creating a massive geographical chokepoint that most of the world's energy needs to get past.
The more terrorists that are bred in the black hole, the more the West has to spend on security, thus diminishing economies and general confidence. The US is already spewing vast quantities of blood and treasure on Iraq, a situation that can only be helping China's peaceful rise and Iran and Russia's leverage over the energy market.
Add to this the threat of WMD. After the Cold War ended in 1989, only the US had the capability to launch a decisive military blow. Now anyone, terrorist groups included, with a bomb (probably with uranium sourced from Russia and technology from Pakistan, itself donated by China) and a suitcase can hold any other entity to ransom - just as energy suppliers like OPEC and Russia can cut off dependent economies overnight.
Iran and Pakistan are both the key proxy players and the key potential battlegrounds. China and the US are vying for control of both, since whoever calls the shots in Tehran and Islamabad calls the shots over Gulf oil and the terrorist training grounds in Iraq, Afghanistan and the lawless badlands of Pakistan.
 Russia sits in the middle, ostensibly neutral but leaning towards China and away from the US. It got burnt in Afghanistan in the '80s, but isn't shy of lending a helping hand to Iran. Conversely, India is also on the fence, but looks to Washington rather than Beijing. It needs stability in Pakistan above all else, since the threat of a nuclear standoff could suddenly become very real.
Thus it's all connected. That's what this blog is about - making the connections. It's not a dissimilar situation to the Cold War with its proxy conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it is a more complex one. Instead of two or three, there are now four horsemen of the apocalypse - the West, meaning America and its rather powerless allies (notably Europe and probably India), versus the Rest's nexus of counter-hegemony - China and its partners-in-crime Russia and Iran.
The prospects for war? Unlikely at the time being, since Beijing and Washington are still playing different games. Should they ever go head-to-head, however, over Taiwan for example, then all hell will break loose.
China Brief from the Jamestown Foundation
Rapid economic growth has allowed Beijing to dramatically increase defense spending since the late 1990s without compelling Chinese leaders to choose between military modernization and China’s other policy priorities. In the not too distant future, however, the Chinese government is likely to face growing pressure to devote a larger share of government spending to coping with serious domestic problems such as income inequality, the collapse of the healthcare system and environmental degradation, all of which contribute to rising social unrest. As these domestic problems become more pressing, Beijing may have to begin to face some of the budgetary tradeoffs it has previously managed to avoid, even if economic growth continues at a fairly impressive rate. Moreover, in the event of an economic downturn, the challenges of balancing these competing budgetary priorities would become much more acute for China’s leaders. At the same time, however, it is important to keep in mind that Beijing clearly attaches a great deal of importance to military modernization and that even if the need to deal with mounting domestic problems prevents defense spending from continuing to grow at a double digit pace indefinitely, China will remain dedicated to increasing the PLA’s professionalism and enhancing its operational capabilities.
 On the back of the BBC's excellent analysis of the Bush administration's failure on Iraq, 'No Plan, No Peace' comes a similar analysis from The Economist. The essence of both is that Cold War thinking is useless in the modern era.
It's hard to summarise two hours of BBC documentary, but the essence was this: the US didn't have a plan for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and while the British had deep misgivings they failed to make an impact. Memorable moments include: the admission that the only intelligence on Iraqi culture came from the Lonely Planet; the discovery that orders for the aftermath had been copied directly from the Marshall Plan ("the only currencies shall be the US Dollar and the Reichsmark"); and the description of Rumsfeld's deputy as "the dumbest m****f***** I've ever met". Timeless comedy, were it not so tragic.
There needs to be a realisation in the corridors of power that the days of pitched battles and supremacy by superior firepower are gone. That was true in Vietnam, and arguably as far back as the Battle of Jutland. What matters is intelligence and boots on the ground - not soldiers brainwashed in bootcamp but educated professionals able to understand and adapt to the alien culture around them. No amount of technology can replace that. After all, the true weapon of mass destruction is the AK-47.
The reluctance of politicians to accept that this is the true 'Revolution in Military Affairs' is saddening. Rumsfeld's assumption was that a light force could take Saddam out in a matter of weeks, which was correct: but this did not dovetail well with his deeply flawed assumption that everything would be fine afterwards. The surge does appear to be working, but it would have been better in 2003 than now, after thousands have died, the country in chaos and Iran is in the ascendency. You need lots of well-worn boots, not a few shiny new hi-tech weapons.
Armies of the future | Brains, not bullets | Economist.com
The “transformation” advocated by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush's first defence secretary, envisaged that the armed forces would be slimmed down and money invested in “smart” weapons, reconnaissance systems and data links. Speed, stealth, accuracy and networks would substitute for massed forces. The army's idea of its “future warrior” was a kind of cyborg, helmet stuffed with electronic wizardry and a computer display on his visor, all wirelessly linked to sensors, weapons and comrades. New clothing would have in-built heating and cooling. Information on the soldier's physical condition would be beamed to medics, and an artificial “exoskeleton” (a sort of personal brace) would strengthen his limbs.
The initial success in toppling first the Taliban in Afghanistan and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq seemed to vindicate such concepts. But the murderous chaos in Iraq, and the growing violence in southern Afghanistan, have shown that America is good at destroying targets, and bad at rebuilding states. Firepower is of little use, and often counter-productive, when the enemy deliberately mingles among civilians.
Finding a resolution to the crisis on the Turkish-Iraqi border has deep implications for many of the parties involved.
Turkey in particular, with its ambitions to be viewed as a leading state in the Islamic world as well as its aspirations to join the European Union, is under scrutiny as never before. Its actions over the next weeks will define whether its neighbors and allies will continue to regard Ankara as a reliable partner or a potentially destabilizing force within the region.
The United States of America must also impose its will but faces a tricky balancing act between its commitment to Turkey and the need to maintain regional stability. And Iraq, already engulfed in violence, cannot afford more conflict and the flows of arms and refugees that will ensue.
Continue reading "Turkey and Iraq: The Implications" »
One to bookmark for later - but interesting how ICG sees connections between Balochistan and the other key elements in the Pakistan story - military versus democracy, Talibanisation and the GWOT.
International Crisis Group - B69 Pakistan: The Forgotten Conflict in Balochista
Violence continues unabated in Pakistan’s strategically important and resource-rich province of Balochistan, where the military government is fighting Baloch militants demanding political and economic autonomy. President Pervez Musharraf’s government insists the insurgency is an attempt to seize power by a handful of tribal chiefs bent on resisting economic development. Baloch nationalists maintain it is fuelled by the military’s attempts to subdue dissent by force and the alienation caused by the absence of real democracy. Whether or not free and fair national and provincial elections are held later this year or in early 2008 will determine whether the conflict worsens.
Instead of redressing Baloch political and economic grievances, the military is determined to impose state control through force. The killing of the Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti by the army in August 2006 was followed by the incarceration of another, Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, who has been held on terrorism-related charges without due process since December. Law enforcement agencies have detained thousands of Baloch nationalists or those believed to be sympathetic to the cause; many have simply disappeared. With the nationalist parties under siege, many young activists are losing faith in the political process and now see armed resistance as the only viable way to secure their rights.
Relying also on divide-and-rule policies, the military still supports Pashtun Islamist parties such as Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) in a bid to counter secular Baloch and moderate Pashtun forces. The JUI-F is the dominant member of the six-party Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Musharraf’s coalition partner in the provincial government since October 2002. It is also a key patron of the Afghan Taliban. Using Balochistan as a base of operation and sanctuary and recruiting from JUI-F’s extensive madrasa network, the Taliban and its Pakistani allies are undermining the state-building effort in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. and other Western support for Musharraf is alienating the Baloch, who otherwise could be natural partners in countering extremism in Pakistan.
 Carnage in Karachi as suicide bombers attack Benazir Bhutto's homecoming parade - Reuters is now putting the death toll at 133. Sad to say, but it's a safe bet that just as many died in the panicked stampede and crush as were killed by the explosions.
It's happened: now attention must turn to the implications. First, let's take a look at the likely culprits and motivations. First among them is the Islamist movement and 'Al Qaeda', the Taliban and 'related groups' such as Jamaat-e-Islami. There's already been heavy fighting in Waziristan this month, and there have apparently been threats to Bhutto from extremist elements in response to her promise to crack down on them. The sensible fingers will be pointing at them first.
On the other hand, many - including Ms. Bhutto's rather indiscreet husband Asif Ali Zardari - will have conspiracy theories of their own. The ISI, once a sponsor of the Taliban, is foremost among the other possible instigators of the bombings. In fact, the ISI would have been in a good position to create a security loophole for the bombers to get through. And also worth noting that the blasts occurred at the right moment for prime-time UK TV and the US evening news, though not for the Pakistani newspapers. It was about international impact as much as anything.
Elements within the ISI - perhaps not under President Musharraf's control - will fear losing their grip on the country should 'democracy' prevail, though it hardly did badly in the '90s last time Bhutto was in charge. But the General himself or his uniformed cronies could also have a hand in things, since a dead Benazir would solve their short-term angst about handing over the reins and declaration of a state of emergency would certainly hold up the 'elections'.
One figure commentators seem to forget about is the current prime minister, Shaukut Aziz. It has to be said that he's done a reasonable job since 2004 and may well resent being demoted back to finance minister. Could he be raising a faction within the government to further his interests?
In effect, it doesn't matter who really perpetrated the outrage, since Pakistani public opinion - volatile at the best of times - is likely to become highly polarized now. What's for sure is that there will be a reaction.
All of the above - Bhutto, Musharraf and Aziz - are seen by many in the country as US puppets. The blasts are therefore not so much about pro-Islam or pro-PML(Q) [ie. pro-Musharraf] but also anti-American. Thus there's a couple of ways the camps could divide.
It's likely that Bhutto's PPP supporters will be enraged and will seek to vent their anger somehow, but whether this will be against the Islamists or the more obvious target of the military regime remains to be seen. Civil society in the shape of the strengthening lawyers' movement may be their key allies in this - but could there be a Devil's deal with the Islamists too in a union against the army? Alternatively, could the army and ISI be in cahoots with the Islamists, as they were in the last elections?
On the other hand, since Bhutto has effectively sold out to Musharraf anyway, it could be that the army sees this another excuse to crack down on militants, as occurred during the siege of the Lal Masjid a couple of months back. For this it will need the PPP's support. Asia Times sees the current fight against militants in Waziristan as "but a precursor of the bloodiest battle that is coming". And that could have wider implications:
A qualified estimate by intelligence officials is that Pakistani military pacification of the Waziristans would slash the capability of the Afghan resistance by 85% as well as deliver a serious setback to the Iraqi resistance.
Back to Karachi. If anything, Bhutto herself is indirectly responsible. Her showmanlike return - complete with a riotous reception on board the flight, swarms of supporters at the airport and rally and all kinds of thetrical gestures like wearing a sloganized baseball hat above her trademark white headscarf and the intended homage to Jinnah's tomb - was engineered to elicit an extreme mass reaction.
Now she's got it. Pakistani politics was galvanised enough as it was, and the bombs will have intensified the situation even further. What will transpire over the next days and weeks remains to be seen.
I'll never forget a rather unconsidered remark made to me by a Pentagon official shortly after 9/11. I was writing about the sales of Apache gunships to Pakistan, to which the officer replied: "As long as they're helping us against terrorism, they can have whatever they want."
More evidence here of America's continuing military commitment to Pakistan - yet the US is even more unpopular there than India (the second largest third-world buyer of arms behind Pakistan). And in India too, misgiving about the US are high, mainly due to its criticism of New Delhi's energy-based relationship with Tehran.
Meanwhile, China's investment in Pakistani infrastructure is only increasing - and that seems to be buying more love than US weapons ever will. Because roads and railways benefit the people, whereas guns are just used an an instrument of US foreign policy. Indeed, they are often turned on Pakistani people themselves. Reports that 50 civilians were killed in clashes in Waziristan this week are of course to be considered carefully, but the bad blood generated is the real effect of the US arms trade.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news - Arms sales: How the US is not winning friends
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has given over $10 billion to Pakistan to buy or reward President General Pervez Musharraf’s support for its newest war, the “war on terror”. Pakistan has spent over $1.5 billion of this amount on buying new weapons. To understand the scale of this aid, consider Pakistan’s total military budget in 2006, estimated at about $4.5 billion. The United States is now giving Pakistan aid to pay for the new deal for F-16s, bombs, and missiles. It is likely to win few friends.
There is little doubt today about how unpopular the United States is in Pakistan. A Pew poll released in September 2006 found that in Pakistan, the United States is viewed less favorably even than India (with which Pakistan has fought four wars). Just over 25% were favorable toward the United States, compared to one-third who felt that way toward India.
As both China and India "rise and shine" economically, so geopolitical questions begin to assume greater importance. Whatever the rhetoric from Beijing, China's neighbours are clearly less comfortable about it than ever. That's good for India, which (aside from Pakistan, of course) is generally viewed as fairly benign.
However, India's growing strategic relationship with the US is opening this to debate. Apparently, talks are in progress regarding a closer partnership with NATO, and the US ambassador to NATO is interestingly quoted as lumping China in with concerns such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But surely a NATO (read US) - India partnership can only aggravate tensions with China, rather than 'balance' the SCO as noted in the article. Lasting peace in the region needs NATO to engage with the PRC rather than India, in order to pull it into a security structure. Attempting to counteract the SCO via NATO might only lead to an arms race that brings in Russia too.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
Any pronounced gravitation toward an "Asian NATO" form of collective security will inevitably affect India's relations with China. (India shares Australia's predicament on this score.) Therefore, India has to perform some very tricky rope acts in the period ahead. In a major speech during a visit to Thailand on September 14, Mukherjee stressed, "The India-China partnership is an important determinant for regional and global peace and development, and for Asia's emergence as the political and economic center of the new international order."
Three days later, addressing the strategic community in Seoul, the minister underlined the importance of a "truly integrated Asian economy that will draw on the economic potential of India and China". Expressing confidence that India's "strategic and cooperative partnership [with China] will mature and steadily develop", he added, "Sensitivity to mutual aspirations is the underpinning for building confidence and trust. There is enough space and opportunity for both of us to grow and develop."
The challenge for Indian diplomacy will be to convincingly interpret the implications of its "strategic partnership" with the US. The perception is growing, and is incrementally gaining credibility, that India is aligning with a US-led security system in Asia. Clearly, the request by the NATO secretary general to call on the Indian foreign minister wouldn't have been made without Washington's nod.
 Interesting to see China advertising its humanitarian interest in Darfur, with a military show accompanied by a pledge to send peacekeepers to join the UN mission (though not combat troops, and an uncertain number). The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the world's largest standing army and the PRC has sat on the UNSC since 1971, so it is about time.
The Washington Post is quick to note, however, that the promise to help Darfur comes under the cloud of possible boycotts of the Olympics, and the obvious fact that Sudanese oil is an important facet of China's energy security policy.
Of course, all countries have some kind of interest in UN peacekeeping missions, often financial, but with few obvious threats other than so-called Taiwanese 'secession' (as evidenced by this weekend's demonstrations calling for UN membership, unusually by both the DPP party and the Kuomintang), what does the PLA really exist for otherwise? Now that Tibet and Xinjiang are 'free', is there anyone else left to liberate?
QINYANG BASE, China, Sept. 15 -- The Chinese military put on a display of its first Darfur-bound peacekeepers Saturday, having troops throw up Bailey bridges and feign combat to dramatize Beijing's desire to be seen as a partner in bringing peace to the violence-torn corner of Sudan.
The training demonstration, by an engineering unit of the People's Liberation Army, was observed by foreign journalists as part of a new campaign by the Chinese government to show that it is cooperating with the United States and other nations to end the Darfur fighting, which since 2003 has displaced about 2.5 million people and contributed to the deaths of as many as 450,000 from violence and disease.
Every now and again, Asia Times Online turns up an absolute tour de force of an analysis: this is one of them. It pulls together every thread in the Afghanistan war, from the significance of events on Pakistan to the options available to the local powers China, India and Russia.
The one major beef I have with it is, as before, whether it is truly possible to negotiate with the Taliban. Sure, you can talk to the heads of major Taliban groups, but what are the guarantees that one agreement is going to quell the whole bunch of them? Isn't it likely that large splinter groups that oppose any settlement will break off and carry on doing their own thing? Still, the author seems to think that talks are on the cards.
Below, I attempt a rough summary of all the points, in an actor-by-actor format.
- The Taliban: As NATO and the US tire, the chances of a settlement grow, especially in the light of potential instability in Pakistan too.
-
The UN: Growing acceptance of the idea of talking with the Taliban. -
The US: Should seek intra-Afghan and intra-Pakistan dialogue with the aid of China, Russia and India. -
Iran: The US quagmire in Afghanistan is succour to their ambitions for regional dominance. -
Russia: Fears of 'Talibanization' will draw the Central Asian states closer into seurity frameworks such as the SCO. -
China: Stay out of it, and leave the Taliban to the US. -
India: Stick with the US, and hope that Pakistan doesn't regain influence in Afghanistan.
And here's the key:
Clearly, the continued disintegration of the Pakistani state widens al-Qaeda's support base among the Taliban. If US-Iran tensions escalate, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan become intertwined. That means the Afghan war may take a new form rather than lead to peace.
The whole article is reprinted below: check out also Ahmed Rashid's sobering analysis in The Telegraph in which he describes his own land as "a failing state hovering over the abyss".
Continue reading "'Stan - The Big Picture" »
A lot of this Guardian article on the likelihood of US-Israeli strikes on Iran is purely speculative, and thus must be taken with a large pinch of sand. Neither the commentator quoted below, Patrick Cronin, and an ex-CIA source can offer any hard evidence, though both believe that an attack is imminent.
However, one prescient remark from Cronin is that, with elections coming up in November 2008, any action taken in the six months prior to the poll would be seen as 'political'. That would mean that if it's going to happen, it'll happen this winter. Just as with Iraq, it's highly probable that there are already plans drawn up to effect the mission, so all Bush needs is another plausible 'smoking gun'.
Proxy war could soon turn to direct conflict, analysts warn | Iran | Guardian Unlimited
"The proxy war that has been going on in Iraq may now cross the border. This is a very dangerous period," Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.
Iran's leaders have so far shown every sign of relishing the confrontation. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared yesterday that American policies had failed in the Middle East and warned: "I am certain that one day Bush and senior American officials will be tried in an international court for the tragedies they have created in Iraq."
In such circumstances, last week's Israeli air strike against a mystery site in northern Syria has triggered speculation over its motives. Israel has been silent about the attack. Syria complained to the UN security council but gave few details. Some say the target was Iranian weapons on their way to Hizbullah in Lebanon, or that the sortie was a dry run for a US-Israeli attack on Syria and Iran. There is even speculation that the Israelis took out a nuclear facility funded by Iran and supplied by North Korea.
The situation is particularly volatile because the struggle for influence threatens to exacerbate a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
A balanced perspective from The Economist, which does look closely at the reasons for leaving: America no longer influences Iraqi politics; disaster has already befallen the nation. But the reasons for staying are even more compelling.
The Iraq war | Why they should stay | Economist.com
If the case for staying depended on extrapolating from the modest gains the general claims for his surge, it would be a weak one. The strong case is that if America leaves, things will get even worse. This can only be a guess, but it is more plausible than the alternative guess that America's going will nudge Iraq in the right direction. In the past two years, violence has tended to decline where American troops are present and to rise in the places they leave. There is no doubt that some Shia militias want to rid Baghdad of its Sunnis and that American troops are for now the only thing stopping them. Contrary to what foreigners think, most Iraqis say they oppose partition: in the BBC/ABC poll, 62% said Iraq should have a unified government and 98% said it would be a bad thing for the country to separate on sectarian lines...
If America could choose again, it would not step into a civil war in Mesopotamia. But there are worse reasons than preventing a bloodbath for a superpower to put its soldiers at risk. Having invaded Iraq in its own interest—to remove mass-killing weapons that turned out not to exist—America owes something to Iraq's people, a slim majority of whom want it to stay. It is hard to know how Iraq can be mended. At some point it may become clear the country has sunk so low it is simply beyond saving. But it is not possible to be sure of that yet.
 What few commentators have noted is that today's ejection of Nawaz Sharif is thick with symbolic overtones. Not only did Sharif choose the anniversary of 9/11 to stage his attempted comeback, but the debacle at the airport today was strangely reminiscent of the coup and counter-coup that saw Musharraf sweep to power in 1999 and Sharif packed off to exile.
So far so good for the General, since there has been no immediate civil unrest.
Pakistan's political crisis | Shove off Sharif | Economist.com
Mr Sharif’s arrest sparked a few protests in Rawalpindi but was more notable for the failure of his Pakistan Muslim League-N party to organise almost any gathering in Punjab, the country’s most populous province and the party’s stronghold. It did not help that General Musharraf’s agents had arrested most of the party’s leaders and, reportedly, 2,000 of its activists in recent days. Nonetheless, Mr Sharif has not yet raised enough of a clamour to trouble a military dictator.
What will happen once Benazir Bhutto comes in, however, is anyone's guess. And what will the Americans, Indians and Chinese think - after all, they all have major stakes in Pakistan's fragile polity. America and China will probably be secretly happy with a stronger Musharraf who can counter the resurgence of Islamism, while India may feel obliged to back Bhutto. That would set things up for a tense situation.
The last lines of the article are also well worth reprinting:
For his part, if there are no serious protests in next few days, General Musharraf might think he does not need Ms Bhutto. His supporters can muster the simple majority in Parliament that he needs to get himself re-elected president, while also retaining his job as army chief. If he is happy to defy the orders of the Supreme Court—which would probably take exception to this action—he would not need to rewrite the constitution in his favour, a step requiring a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Then he would not need the support that Ms Bhutto has all but promised.
In the short term, this draconian drift might just put a lid on Pakistan’s latest troubles. After all, Pakistanis are accustomed to the bit and bridle of military rule. But a solution that sustains an army dictatorship by smashing faltering institutions and democratic politicians, in a country where supremely undemocratic Islamist forces are seething, does not augur much stability.
As China's commitment in Pakistan, especially through Gwadar increases, so too does their interest in the nation's internal security.
Protection of Chinese national
ISLAMABAD: Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah and Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Luo Zhaohi signed an MoU to form a joint task force for the safety and security of Chinese nationals in Pakistan at a ceremony held here on Monday.
The MoU is the first of its kind signed against the backdrop of the rising number of kidnapping incidents and attacks on the Chinese people who are engaged on various development projects in the country. A number of Chinese nationals have also lost their lives in these attacks.
Well, Canada is doing a good job too but the Yanks are basically making things worse for ISAF. Below the BBC's Paul Wood summarises the commons defence committee's report on operations in Afghanistan. They can be summarised even further into one point - lack of resources.
Basically, in an age when deaths overseas have a direct impact on the ballot box, Afghanistan is proving the inefficacy of our NATO allies. Every military death is tragic, but the unwillingness of the other European nations to allow their troops to do the jobs they are supposed to do simply makes life more difficult and dangerous for the Brits and Canucks. There is no point deploying the military if you are not going to put them in harm's way with all the kit they need to support them.
Secondly, the reason ISAF is there is to establish security so as to create the conditions for development - and thus general happiness and well-being in Afghanistan. That's the greatest obstacle to Talibanisation, not armed action. Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude seems to be that development should be left to the NGOs. In fact there are few worse people to do the job. NGOs exist simply to fulfil narrow and often irrelevant single issues eg. introducing women's theatre groups to towns where there's no running water. What Afghanistan really needs is big money and big business with the backing of Western governments.
Do the job properly or not at all. Put the cash in, put the kit in and put the people in. And this is a defining moment for Europe. Does it really have a role in the wider world, or is it content to let the 'Stan slip back into total anarchy? It would probably take Pakistan with it, and now that the GWOT has kicked off, the existence of a revived black hole full of terror training camps would have grave consequences for Europe's own domestic security.
If the battle in Afghanistan is lost, the war will be fought in the streets of Londonistan instead.
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Afghanistan warning decoded
1. There are too few troops on the ground to win.
If the mission is to succeed, says the committee, it will require a commitment of size and strength greater than the international community is "willing to acknowledge, let alone to make."
2. If we are not exactly losing, we are not winning either.
The committee said: "Violence is increasing and spreading to the relatively peaceful Kabul and the northern provinces."
3. Too many Afghan civilians are being killed.
The committee said: "Civilian casualties undermine support for (the Nato force) Isaf and the Afghan government and fuel the insurgency, further endangering our troops."
4. There are still not enough British helicopters to do the job.
"UK helicopter operations in Afghanistan are not sustainable at the present intensity."
5. Some of our Nato allies are leaving us in the lurch.
"The reluctance of some Nato countries to provide troops for the Isaf mission in Afghanistan is undermining Nato's credibility and also Isaf operations."
6. You can't fight the Taleban and opium at the same time.
The coalition's strategy lacks "clarity and coherence". "Uncertainty among Afghans about Isaf's role in poppy eradication puts UK forces at risk."
7. The Afghan security forces are a disappointment - some useless, some corrupt, some actually working against us.
"Police failure and corruption alienate support for the government of Afghanistan and add to grievances which fuel the insurgency." Even the Afghan army "are some way off operating independently".
8. So the exit strategy has problems, as in Iraq.
"We recommend that the government clarify its planning assumptions for the UK deployment to Afghanistan and state the likely length of the deployment beyond the summer of 2009."
9. The media war isn't going well, either.
"The Taleban is ahead in the information campaign. The government (must)...co-ordinate more effectively the presentation of Isaf's objectives and the way in which developments in Afghanistan are reported."
 The siege of the Lal Masjid is over, but in what looks like an increasingly critical juncture for General Musharraf, the repercussions will now begin.
In the next few days, weeks and months, the following questions may be answered. How will the 'martyrdom' of the hardliners and madrassa students who chose to remain at the mosque be perceived in Pakistan and the wider region? Will they inspire a larger movement, or only fuel the growing crisis of Talibanisation in the border regions? How will the aftermath of the siege react with existing political issues such as the sacking of the Chief Justice and the forthcoming elections?
It is also interesting to note that part of the Islamist's agenda relates to Chinese influence in Pakistan. The incidents are comparitively minor, but it appears that one of the extremists' grievances in Islamabad was a Chinese-run brothel: meanwhile, three Chinese workers were shot near Peshawar during the weekend. If this continues, Beijing may have to say a few private but stern words.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistani soldiers storm mosque
Security forces began a full-scale siege of the mosque last week, not long after mosque students abducted seven Chinese workers they accused of running a brothel.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says the military operation is a gamble for President Pervez Musharraf who risks a backlash from supporters of those inside the mosque.
In recent days the army has redeployed thousands of troops in north-western Pakistan where pro-Taleban militants opposed to President Musharraf have been carrying out a string of attacks said to be linked to the mosque siege.
I've been thinking this for quite a while, and looks like Gordon has been too. The essential problem with the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is that it is not actually a war. 'War' implies some kind of competition for territory and resources; even the Cold War was stretching the point, being as it was an economic and ideological conflict fought for real only by proxy.
The thing is that, once you have got into the 'war' mindset, your approach to the situation is defined by it. Military commanders throughout the world are obsessed with retaining a warfighting capability - MBTs, carrier groups and suchlike that project power over national borders. But the situation we are facing now is not about national borders. Terrorists simply cannot be fought with conventional military forces. Even guerilla armies can't be beaten this way - look at Vietnam.
What the US needs to do is acknowledge that there are two ways to defeat terrorism - through both hard power and soft power. The hard power part is about eliminating those terrorists who are an immediate threat, either through small tactically-inserted special forces teams working overseas or via intelligence and policing within home territory. Wading in with tanks and Apache helicopter gunships will simply create alienation and more terrorists, something the Israelis too have yet to cotton on to. The soft power part is about tackling the warped ideologies that fuel terrorism, which in turn are inspired by disenfranchisment and economic or social deprivation.
It's the classic speak-softly-big-stick argument, but I see little evidence that force structures and governmental foreign policy apparatus are being adapted to meet the moderm world. With the military brass - not to mention the defence industry and the trade union lobbies - eager to obtain and supply hugely-expensive power projection platforms, the real need is overlooked. Yes, of course retain a warfighting capability - but realise that a small nation such as the UK is unable to fight a real war larger than a Falklands/Sierra Leone scale without US assistance. Hold on to what we need to stay militarily viable, but spend the rest on restructuring the surveillance, intelligence and development side of the equation - all of which the military could still turn its hand to and prove its usefulness.
Language and terrorism | Don't mention the GWOT | Economist.com
To speak of a “global war on terror” is over-simple. Shortened to the acronym GWOT, it conflated the military campaign against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in 2001 with the war two years later to overthrow Saddam Hussein, an old foe who almost certainly had nothing to do with September 11th. That Iraq is a magnet for al-Qaeda is the result of the invasion of Iraq, not its cause. GWOT also implies, wrongly, that there exists a military solution to a problem that for a few countries (eg, Afghanistan) requires a co-ordinated nation-building effort but for most demands patient police and intelligence work. “War” should be the exception, not the focus of the effort against terrorists.
Rising China, Shining India; the quagmire in the Persian Gulf and America’s Global War on Terror. These are some of the focal points of international politics in 2007, and none of them exist in isolation.
For the giant populations of Asia to continue their slow grind out of poverty requires economic growth; industrialisation and development must be fuelled. Both China and India are increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports, and in order to safeguard their futures energy security is vital. So each needs to command new sources and new ways of bringing in fossil fuels.
There are some vital strategic areas that can serve as transit routes in both China and India’s energy security policies. Thus geopolitics return to the historical heartland of Kipling’s Kim – the territory now known as Pakistan. It is as if the original Great Game has gone back to square one, only with some fresh rules and new players.
This thesis aims to examine the geopolitical implications of developing Pakistan as an ‘energy hub’, and to analyse the impediments to its fruition and the interested parties’ strategies for seeing it through. And, whereas other studies tend to focus on individual factors at work, it aims instead to critically observe them in the context of the situation as a whole.
Bound copies are available at lulu.com for around $10 plus P&P; downloadable PDF files are free of charge. Click here to access the virtual storefront.
This work is made available on the understanding that it will not be copied, plagiarised or otherwise reproduced without the explicit consent of the author.
Bob Hope and no hope, and I believe that Bob Hope is no longer available for USO performances in any case. But seriously, the idea of a 'military hotline' from Washington to Beijing is reminiscent of Cold War thinking. Could the US be implicitly acknowledging a bipolar structure and China's counter-hegemonic status?
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | US urges China military openness
"You don't have to agree or disagree with any particular country's objective," he continued, "but it's very helpful to understand what those objectives are and why they're going in that direction."
He said he urged Beijing to be more open about its military budget.
Anyone would think China has a policy of encirclement...
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news - China moves into India's back yard
China is all set to drop anchor at India's southern doorstep. An agreement has been finalized between Sri Lanka and China under which the latter will participate in the development of a port project at Hambantota on the island's south coast.
An agreement on the Hambantota project was among eight that were signed during Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's recent visit to China. Even as the Sri Lankans were finalizing the deal with the Chinese, they clinched an agreement with the Americans. In Colombo, officials reached agreement on an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the US.
The agreements come at a time when India is already watching with concern the growing Pakistani influence in Sri Lanka.
The Hambantota Development Zone, which the Chinese will help build, will include a container port, a bunkering system, an oil refinery, an airport and other facilities. It is expected to cost about US$1 billion and the Chinese are said to be financing more than 85% of the project.
A military spending rise of... er... American proportions.
Asian arms race fear as Beijing raises spending | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
"In recent years, China has steadily increased defence spending based on its economic development," Mr Jiang said. "China has neither the wherewithal nor the intention to enter into an arms race with any country, and China won't constitute a threat to any country."
Yes, thanks for that, Mr Jiang. But China's economy is going up by 10% a year, not 17.8%, the amount of the spending increase. And we all know that in reality it's much more.
Such assurances are unlikely to convince its near neighbours Japan and India. Both countries have increased their defence budgets in what is increasingly looking like an Asian arms race.
In the short term, however, it is Taiwan that has the most to fear from a Chinese military build-up. The island is viewed in Beijing as a renegade province. Hundreds of missiles are aimed across the strait and communist leaders have repeatedly warned that they are prepared to reunite the two sides by force if necessary.
I'd say they've got five years.
International Relations is an immensely complex subject, and in order to stay focus everyone has pare away a few factors now and again. The southern hemisphere is completely off my radar, and I am also frequently guilty of ignoring the 'R' in 'BRIC' too - Russia.
But Russia is definately part of the equation even in these post-Cold War days. Historically a partner of India, while China and the US uneasily applied themselves to Pakistan for geostrategic reasons, Russia is now edging back into India's sphere due to its energy wealth.
The article predicts that by 2020 or so, India's energy needs will treble. So it is competing with traditional rival China for Russian hydrocarbons. The US would also like to court India in order to ensure a regional balance, and is doing so in the shape of nuclear technology. Britain's Gordon Brown also just made a visit, though it was overshadowed by the facile Big Brother controversy.
Ironically, therefore, India is now in a great bargaining position, with suitors on all sides. Bizarre as it may sound, India is the new Pakistan.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Russia and India's complex friendship
Before leaving Moscow President Putin was keen to point out "the very specific feature of our interaction has to do with the fact that we have moved from the simple paradigm of seller-buyer relationship to jointly work on products".
Russia is trying to tie in India's lucrative arms and energy contracts.
Moscow has reason to act. India has just begun building a new strategic partnership with the United States.
The spur for this was President Bush's landmark deal offering co-operation in civilian nuclear energy programmes. Washington wants to make common cause with India as the world's biggest democracy and a counterweight to rising China. It wants to sell its own nuclear reactors to India and weapons too.
So India's rise means it is being courted on both sides.
Delhi's ultimate aim is probably to secure what it calls "strategic balance" to avoid becoming too closely tied to either Moscow or Washington.
That will mean some hard-nosed bargaining. But it is India that is buying, whether it is energy or arms, and so it finds itself in an unaccustomed but increasingly powerful role as a major economic player, with both Moscow and Washington vying for its business.
I think we can forget about this 'China's Peaceful Rise' myth. This month's missile test puts things into perspective - any weapon designed to knock out enemy satellites is not a passive defence but an aggressive capability.
Of course, it may not all be bad: Reagan's 'Star Wars' programme arguably sealed the deal for Gorbachev, forcing him to draw down the arms race leading to the ultimate end of the Eastern bloc. And it would also be hypocritical to suggest that Washington is in any way whiter-than-white, since it is not.
But it's also important to consider why China is doing this. It is not, whatever it may say, under any kind of existential threat from its neighbours. Neither the US, Japan or Taiwan have the will or means to do anything nasty to the PRC.
No, as any defence expert will tell you, the system is intended to knock out enemy communications, surveillance and media satellites - which is what you would do in the first hour of an attack on somewhere like, say...
China hails satellite killer - and stuns its rivals in space | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
The test was especially troubling because it exposed the vulnerability of America's dependence on low-orbiting satellites, which are used for military communications, smart bombs and surveillance. In theory, last week's exercise could give Beijing the capability to knock out such satellites - a realisation that underlay the protests from Washington.
Australia and Canada also voiced concerns; Britain, South Korea and Japan were expected to follow. "The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."
Original Aviation Week release is here. Its conclusion:
Although more of a "policy weapon" at this time, the test shows that the Chinese military can threaten the imaging reconnaissance satellites operated by the U. S., Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe.
The Republic of China also operates a small imaging spacecraft that can photograph objects as small as about 10 ft. in size, a capability good enough to count cruise missiles pointed at Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. The Taiwanese in the past have also leased capability on an Israeli reconnaissance satellite.
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Update: Now that the armchair generals have had some time to digest this, the received wisdom is that the test is less about the capability than the signal of intent. It's a brash invitation to the US to re-open the space race, and a not-so-subtle warning to Japan and Taiwan that China is now the boss and they had better not do anything silly like revive a military element to foreign policy or declare independence.
On the other hand, is it also evidence that the PLA is and will act in disregard of CCP wishes, and is thus a sign of a growing schism within the elite?
USCC report here and Jamestown Foundation report here.
I don't believe in Al Qaeda: that is I don't think there is some kind of unified Islamic terrorist group that can be stopped by any means at the West's disposal. But I do believe that there is such a thing as terrorism inspired by Islamic as well as political objectives, and I do believe that current foreign policy is doing them more favours than anything else.
The problem is that the West is now fighting on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are bordered by Iran (which can supply oil and weapons). Pakistan is also a grand source of personnel.
Sooner or later, if the West is to 'win', it will have to join these dots - but of course that will only create more of them.
Global terrorism | On the march | Economist.com
Western security officials say the revitalisation of al-Qaeda is partly due to the fact that “the pressure is off” in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region where the army agreed a ceasefire with militants last September. Afghan and NATO commanders complain that the truce has also provided cross-border safe havens for the Taliban. Mr Negroponte called Pakistan an important ally, but also “a major source of Islamic extremism”.
Western officials also worry about what they call “blowback” from Iraq: instead of sucking in would-be suicide bombers on one-way tickets, it could pump out battle-hardened fighters to wage violent campaigns elsewhere. Mr Negroponte said an American pull-out would allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as an al-Qaeda sanctuary.
Read between the lines here. It is not altogether becoming of a departing intelligence chief to launch a political storm, but the signs are that the US is growing increasingly discontent with the Musharraf regime. Yes, it wants a scapegoat, but the signs are that it is deliberately drawing back from the Pakistan regime with it was once so close.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Al-Qaeda 'rebuilding' in Pakistan
The BBC's James Westhead in Washington says that until now the US has not been so specific about where it believes al-Qaeda's leaders are hiding.
Such a claim will be embarrassing for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who Mr Negroponte described as a key partner in America's war on terror, our correspondent says.
Afghanistan has welcomed the comments. President Hamid Karzai's chief-of-staff, Jawed Ludin, told the BBC that Afghanistan had long maintained that the Islamic militants operated from within Pakistan, and that Mr Negroponte's statement was refreshing in its honesty.
Won't be able to post again this year, so I'll leave you with a nice little festive roundup of this year's flashpoints.
Predictions for next year? On top of the usual, Somalia, Syria, Zimbabwe and of course Pakistan - watch this space.
The PLA is not known for its frequent overseas sojourns and joint exercises, so it's significant that the partner this time around is Pakistan. Also worth noting is the rhetoric on the evils of 'terrorism' and 'separatism' - one man's terrorist etc. etc...
Xinhua - English
"For many years Pakistan and China have focused on economic development and regional stability. At the same time, we are confronting the three evil forces, terrorism, extremism and separatism. China is ready to conduct anti-terrorism with Pakistan to construct the area of lasting peace and mutual prosperity," said Lieutenant General Lu Dengming, Chief of Staff of the Chengdu military region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Can't see it happening - it would be too much of a loss of face for Musharraf, not to mention a potentially destabilising force for Pakistan's fragile sovereignty.
The News - International
WASHINGTON: UN inspectors, including weapons specialists, scientists, engineers and analysts, are ready to be despatched to Balochistan, if President Musharraf allows them to monitor the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said in a commentary.
Referring to the conflicting claims by Pakistan and Afghanistan regarding presence and support to Taliban, the WSJ said an independent evaluation of the facts was necessary. “The only system in the world that can do this is the UN’s Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Committee (Unmovic). With over 300 experts, it can conduct a comprehensive fact-finding mission in Balochistan immediately.”
Written by Miss Ashley Bommer, who worked at the US Mission to the UN during the Clinton administration, it said the UN inspectors can determine if the Taliban command hubs do exist. They will report back to the international community truthfully. Unmovic’s record of independence speaks for itself.
The article said: “Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf are arguing about the Pakistani province of Balochistan. Intelligence sources — and President Karzai — say that the Taliban’s kingpin, Mulla Omar, is operating out of Quetta, Balochistan’s capital. And he is sending arms and fighters into south-west Afghanistan. No wonder President Karzai is upset. The frontline of the Taliban and al Qaeda insurgency has a backline in Pakistan. But US troops cannot go into Pakistan — precisely where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are. So there is a simple next step: Gen Musharraf should agree to UN inspectors.
The Asia Times neatly throws structural realist theory straight out of the window. Also known as neo-realism, this Cold War theory rests on the idea of a balance of power between two giants (then the US and USSR); with equal military capabilities, the peace held for 50 years.
However, with information warfare and nuclear proliferation on the rise, and several examples in recent history of how a small, clever enemy can defeat the conventional military forces of a superpower (think Vietnam, Aghanistan I, 9/11, Afghanistan II, Iraq), it seems that asymmetric warfare is well and truly in. Sheer strength is irrelevant, as long as there is a David who knows how to topple the Goliath.
Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.
a conventional confrontation between the US and the comparatively smaller, less powerful Russia-China axis would quickly result in a catastrophe for the East. In fact, the rising East has intentionally kept its relations with the West as friendly as possible in order to avoid the terrible costs of a direct, conventional confrontation. This policy has facilitated, without needless interruption, the ongoing and massive transfer of wealth from the West to the emerging (rising) economies of the East. It is a very smart and pragmatic policy for the East.
Nevertheless, simultaneous with that policy another one is being actively pursued. The rising East is not content to merely assume that the US colossus will treat, or will learn to treat the globe's lesser powers in a fair and equitable manner, taking proper account of their legitimate views and interests.
Unilateralist, overly muscular and mostly self-serving US policies and actions since the 1991 collapse of the roughly balanced bipolar order of the two superpowers demonstrate that nothing can be taken for granted in that regard. Prudently, the rising multifarious East has been learning ever deeper and wider multilateral cooperation within itself in the energy, economic, diplomatic, political and military spheres aimed at developing and putting in place potent asymmetric leverages in all those same spheres.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
The last few weeks - which have seen China tighten its grip over Africa and Asia, and the Republicans lose their grip in the Capitol and rethink their whole strategy - has generated a slew of articles over at Asia Times Online.
One author speaks of a new East-West Cold War style conflict developing, though I'm not so sure how stable or even feasible a China-Russia-India alliance would be:
It isn't yet fashionable to speak openly of a world subdividing itself again into two camps - those aligned with the US and those aligned with the Russia-China axis at the core of a new rising, multifarious yet coherent pole of the East - with the dividing line between the two camps consisting of the contest for control over global strategic resources.
Despite all the relevant signs pointing precisely in that direction:
# The deepening accord in all key spheres between Russia, China, India, the other rising powers of the East and the key resource-rich regimes of the world.
# Steadily rising East-West tensions, the ever-more divergent interests between East and West.
# The increasingly incompatible approaches to global issues and problems resulting in an ever-widening chasm between East and West.
Far too long to analyse in full, but worth looking at at a later date.
Another writer re-examines the China-India relationship:
Professor Ma Jiali, a veteran South Asia expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), says India's recent economic performance combined with its growing importance in international affairs has led to a rethink in Beijing of India as zhong he guoli, a Mandarin term that translates roughly as a "comprehensive national power".
For Beijing, relations with India are now considered the highest priority, according to Professor Ma, given that India is what he calls a "four-in-one" country. "India falls into each of the four major categories of countries that China wants to focus its diplomatic energies on," he explained. The four categories are: Developing countries, neighboring countries, rising powers, and influential actors on the international stage.
Another still looks at China and Russia, and finally we have the four horsemen of America, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.
There's really far too much to read here, but the implication is clear - the world is shaking into what looks like being its new order for quite a while. I personally will suggest that the US will remain one major pole, with China its key rival and Europe, Russia, India and Iran as second-tier powers that either ally with the gig pair or stand their distance. Both a multipolar and a bipolar environment at the same time - twice as nasty, twice as unpredictable.
Which implies that there are considerations and unpleasant things going on to ignore.
PakRealEstate.com :: News Details
The Chinese envoy, who flew to Gwadar for attending the conference, said that with the passage of time economic and business relations between Pakistan and China would assume new heights and his country would extend maximum help and cooperation to Balochistan for making it an important strategic business and trade hub in the region. He was optimistic about the high-profile economic potential of Gwadar.
Speaking about the future of the new port city, he said that ignoring all security apprehensions the Chinese companies were improving their commercial investment in Balochistan.
However, what this report fails to note is pointed out on an Indian website:
Chinese engineers and workers at the port have been attacked and some killed by Baloch separatists when work on the port was underway.
Analysts say Gwadar's location has great strategic value - both from the military and energy stand points. The gas pipeline from Central Asia would pass from Gwadar and there is competition from many countries including Iran that is also offering facilities to Central Asian states from Chah Bahar in Iran.
Separatist Baloch organisations have opposed the port's development and have targeted 'settlers' from Punjab who have purchased land cheap in Gwadar in anticipation of investment and fast-paced development, causing a spurt in land prices.
 Nuclear-weapons proliferation | Going critical, defying the world | Economist.com
IT TOOK quite literally a bomb to shift the big powers into concerted action at the United Nations Security Council against a long-defiant, boastfully nuclear-capable North Korea. What will it take for Europe, America, Russia and China to agree on the sort of sanctions that might oblige a nose-thumbing but not yet nuclear-armed Iran to obey the council's demand to stop enriching uranium and messing with plutonium, from which its own future bombs could be made?
Great question. The whole Iran-North Korea issue - in many ways it is the same issue, just with different constituent elements - is certainly going to show us the reality of how China will really behave in the context of international institutions like the UN. Is it truly a responsible stakeholder, or will it turn as usual to balance-of-power politics instead?
The Economist thinks the latter:
Having long insisted that the North Korean nuclear issue was better handled outside the UN, China is livid that Mr Kim brushed aside repeated warnings not to test. But if the Chinese are now ready to work through the Security Council, that is chiefly in the hope of forestalling unilateral American action. That still leaves room for dispute that Mr Kim will do his best to widen.
It is becoming increasingly certain, however, that the US's strategy has been appallingly counterproductive. The world has become a more dangerous place since the War on terror; the 'Axis of Evil' has only grown stronger; and America is rapidly losing its diplomatic power to rising China and the the resurgent Russia. Time for reform at the UN.
Reproduced below.
Continue reading "Where the UNSC Now?" »
It's not often that you hear the murmur of an apology in Confucian cultures, much less at the highest of political levels. If Kim Jong-Il really has said he is sorry to Beijing, then that indiscates not only a loss of face but some serious leverage on China's part.
Once again, this whole episode appears to be working out in China's favour while the US and others (Japan and Europe too) stand on the sidelines. Yes, of course it's a regional affair, but one suspects that in the CCP there is some considerable glee at the imroved standing of China in the 'international community'. Solving the DPRK problem truly would make China seem a 'responsible partner' to an increasingly overstretched and irrelevant US.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | North Korea backs down after Chinese pressure
As well as tighter cargo checks at the main border crossing of Dandong, China has ordered at least four banks to freeze money transfers to North Korea. According to the New York Times, it is also threatening to cut low-cost oil supplies in a cross-border pipeline that is thought to provide more than 80% of North Korea's needs.
This leverage appeared to have paid off today when China's special envoy to Pyongyang, Tang Jiaxuan, put a "strong message" to Mr Kim. According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, the North Korean leader expressed remorse for putting China in a difficult situation and demonstrated a willingness to compromise.
It's good that the PRC is taking the nuclear tests seriously. But it is doing so in a typically opaque manner. Of course, this strategy is probably more acceptable to North Korea itself (note that the envoy is not even a current government official, but a retired minister - thus taking off the pressure of 'officaldom' in the PRC-DPRK talks.)
Most noticeably, China's attitude on sanctions remains ambivalent. It is correct to note that sanctions shouldn't just be a means to an end, because anything serious would trigger immediate collapse. However, the world knows that China is the only country with any influence over the situation, and it is beginning to become apparent that it is going to do nothing - even in the face of a UNSC resolution it itself supported.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China pressures N Korean leader
A Chinese envoy has met North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il as tensions mount over the North's nuclear test, according to Chinese officials.
The envoy, former Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, was believed to be carrying a message from China's President Hu Jintao calling for restraint...
China's Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday against "wilfully" expanding UN sanctions against North Korea.
"Sanctions are a signal, not a goal," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference.
 Well, we all woke up to a slightly different world. With even Pakistan condemning the tests (there's an element of hypocrisy there, but still, it's the thought that counts) we are perhaps seeing a sudden wave of unity against Kim Jong-Il. All eyes are now on Northeast Asia.
There's also about to be a significant management handover, and for Ban Ki-Moon (who now looks almost certain to take over the reins at the UN) this is going to be a baptism of fire if ever there was one.
The question is, of course, what happens next? There's three main possibilities I can see.
Firstly, should North Korea pull another similar stunt in the near future, things are going to escalate further. The military solution is of course the nightmare scenario, but there is the chance that the US Army and the PLA would actually join forces and attack North Korea from both north and south. Under such a rapid attack, it's likely that the regime will fold within hours, but this will of course leave the PRC and ROK with an immense headache that they won't have immediate solutions for.
More likely is the turning of the economic screws. But this would also be calling Kim's bluff, since he has previously stated that sanctions will be seen as an act of war. Beijing will also be reluctant to implement this option, since once the DPRK begins to buckle then hordes of refugees will swarm across the Chinese border and create huge social problems in its northern provinces.
The last option is to do nothing - perhaps keep the intelligence work going but little more - and hope that the regime collapses by itself. This could take a long time. And Japan and South Korea will be tempted to develop their own nuclear defences in response, which will ratchet up regional tensions even further. China especially will find it hard to accept a nuclear-armed Tokyo, and Japan itself will convulse with disputes about its pacificist constitution, its role in world affairs and the legacy of Hiroshima.
Ban Ki-Moon, though ostensibly an international figure, is going to be inextricably bound up with the fate of what is after all his home country. Shinzo Abe too is faced with a huge crisis in his first weeks in office. Now is not a good time to be changing the staff; Kim probably knew that all along.
But can it bring its 'soft power' to bear without triggering total collapse in the Korean peninsula, which will have serious knock-on effects in the regional and global economies? More importantly - will it act?
Comment is free: China must restrain Pyongyang
The big challenge though is to China. While the United Nations can pass resolutions, China can take action. It is the major supplier of food and oil to North Korea.
The Kim regime has shown itself to be ruthlessly uninterested in the economic wellbeing of North Korea's people. But the only way to deal with this provocation is by economic, rather than military, force. China has the economic weapons.
A China responsibly taking the lead on behalf of the international community is one good thing that could come out of this unnerving situation.
 With late-night TV-movie plots unfolding in the Amish school massacre and the Miss World hijacking, it's easy to overlook todays two more sobering stories, but the BBC's Paul Reynolds does make the effort to join the dots.
Both the North Korean announcement of a potential test and Iran's statement of refusal to suspend uranium enrichment are further blows to the authority of the UN and US interests. To resolve both situations, we have to look to China.
North Korea's activities may have a more long-term strategic effect, especially if South Korea and Japan feel obliged to go nuclear in order to enhance their self defence. This is the first big foreign policy test for new Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, who was quick to condemn North Korea's missile tests earlier in the year, and Beijing will no doubt be looking closely at what he has to say, or not say. But it certainly won't please China if an arms race emerges in East Asia, particularly one involving Japan. That would certainly complicate matters.
If China takes the lead over quelling Kim Jong-Il's unpredictable ambitions, it is more likely to sit back and watch the Iran situation, or even veto snactions in the UNSC.
In many ways, as a major trading partner of Iran, it is in China's interests to allow it to develop its capability and reinforce it as a friendly power in the Middle East in opposition to the US and Israel. Lack of censure from Beijing is sure to ease the flow of oil to China too.
In a sense, it's also fair to say that the Iran crisis is one of America's own making. Through its aggressive Middle East policy and pursuit of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, an Islamic nuclear conundrum was in a sense an inevitable consequence. On the other hand, China's support for North Korea in the 1950s have let it with an uncomfortable responsibility on its own doorstep.
While the US and Europe stand relegated the sidelines of both issues, China's role becomes ever the greater. But with nuclear weapons, the wait-and-see tactic is a risky one indeed. If things go wrong, can we expect China to be a responsible stakeholder in preventing a drama from becoming a crisis?
BBC story below. See also Asia Times Online, which examines in more detail US and Chinese relations with the extended 'Axis of Evil'. In short, while American political opinion is against the four, China's economic ties with them are on the increase:
The Bush administration's efforts to isolate Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela economically are implicitly designed to promote "regime change" from unfriendly to friendly government in each of these countries. Beijing has explicitly worked against Washington's isolation and regime-change endeavors by deepening its relations with Tehran, Pyongyang, Damascus and Caracas...
Continue reading "Two Balls in Beijing's Court" »
Comment is free: Fighting the wrong war
It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through R&D, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological progress.
 The latest no-brainer from US intelligence - fighting Muslims makes them hate us:
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Duh. Even better, a public document also cited in the New York Times article reminds us again that the war has not actually made us safer but put us in more danger than ever:
“The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
Fantastic. We can look forward sooner or later to lots of radicalised and combat-experienced Muslims coming back to set Europe alight, though with its tiny Muslim population America itself won't have that problem. With Iraq now the terrorist academy of choice, whether Osama bin Ladin is alive or dead is of less relevance than ever.
At least the intelligence assessment on Iraq is uniform: everyone knows what the score is:
“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general...
Original article below.
Continue reading "Iraq Worsens Terrorism" »
 What did Richard Armitage mean by "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age?" Surely no-one would notice the difference?
Joking aside, the recently-published remarks reveal a lot about both regimes.
First, let's examine Musharraf's motivation in letting them spill. He may well be trying to attract sales for his forthcoming autobiography, which I wouldn't put past him (and doesn't the publication of memoirs signal impending retirement too?) But more likely, he's using them as a bargaining chip in a relationship that's looking increasingly strained over Pakistan's wishy-washiness over Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Fact is that most of the populace in Pakistan are pro-militants and anti-West, and that's scary for both Musharraf and his erstwhile ally Bush. The Pakistani President may well be trying to win back a little popular support.
The remarks also speak volumes about the naivety of the Bush administration. The original "back to the Stone Age" bombing campaign over North Vietnam merely strengthened resolve there, leading to America's ultimate defeat. And to think that high-altitude strikes alone can change a regime or even a policy is also wrong - look at the various post-1991 operations against Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the 2003 invasion.
Finally, for a senior member of the US administration to even entertain such thoughts is clearly a sign of how dangerous it had become. You have to feel a little for Musharraf being put under that kind of threat.
Not to say Armitage's was the only view. There must have been some real infighting over Pakistan at the time. I personally remember speaking to a Pentagon spokesperson who told me that, as far as the DoD was concerned, as long as Pakistan helped in the War on Terror it could buy as many weapons as it liked. That in itself is an equally perilous attitude.
Either destroy a nation or arm it to the teeth. Such seem to be the limitations of US foreign policy. Facilitating development and offering economic, industrial and technological assistance in order to promote a transition to legitimacy? Not even part of the equation.
Guardian story below.
Continue reading "Rolling Thunder Phase II" »
 At first, the coup in Thailand seemed like a benevolent, bloodless yellow counterpart to the recent 'Orange Revolutions'; a welcome and necessary reaction against the increasingly erratic behaviour of maverick leader Thaksin Shinawatra. I hope and expect that this picture is not incorrect.
It's certainly not in Thailand's interests to rock the boat of its economic growth, fulled by FDI and foreign tourism. But worrying signs have begin to emerge, for example the clampdown on freedom of information, and today's ban on political action. It's beginning to sound less like a temporary bump on the path to transition as the setting up of a roadblock.
The Economist is also wary:
...things can go badly wrong, as they did in Thailand the last time the men in khaki seized power: opposition to the 1991 coup eventually resulted in bloodshed and military rule collapsed in 1992 after the intervention of the king. Which is why the Thai armed forces' latest escapade, on the night of September 19th, is so alarming. Although the coup was apparently bloodless and accompanied by promises of an election in a year or so, no one has any real idea what will happen next.
Quite. The article also correctly points out that Thailand's polity has been looking shakier by the day this year, what with the anti-Shinawatra demonstrations, the confused snap election and the ambivalence over his stepping down. The military coup, while a shock to many, in retrospect was rather predictable.
What is not predictable is what happens next. Can we really trust the coup leaders on thei promises to return to democracy - and even if we can, what kind of 'democracy' do they mean?
The Economist's assessment, as usual, is grim:
More instability, not less, is the likely outcome. Nor is turmoil likely to help clean up political life. Corruption flourished under a succession of military-favoured prime ministers and was bad, too, under the opposition Democrats in the late 1990s.
The malign consequences of the coup may not be confined to Thailand itself. Most governments, with the honourable exception of Australia's, have been limp-wristed in their condemnation of the assault on Thailand's democracy. Others in the region may yet draw lamentable conclusions from that.
Exactly. Who's going to fly the democratic flag if things don't progress as promised? China? Don't make me laugh - they'd like nothing better than another easily-manipulated regime like Burma on their doorstep.
If the spirit of malcontent does spill over to the Phillippines and Indonesia, the consequences for the region will be dire. It seems that whatever the pundits may say, there is still, even today, a different style of politics in Asia. ASEAN is no closer to emulating the EU than it is to winning the World Cup.
Story reproduced below.
Continue reading "How Now, Yellow Coup?" »
 Even now, five years on, the events of 11 September 2001 possess a certain surreality, a lack of context in the state of things then and the state of things now.
It's certainly one of those 'Kennedy moments', which we will all look back upon decades from now. For me it was doubly unreal, since I was at that time on a military exercise up in the wilds of Scotland, at Garelochhead, an army base near Faslane submarine station. Our SOPs were to remain isolated from external influences, even other units, and when the news broke all we has was a tiny transistor radio that could only pick up the crackly local Scottish station.
The fumbling attempts of those underfunded reporters to take stock of the situation were typical of all media outlets, in a way: CNN didn't do much better. It was weeks before I got to see the footage, by which time its impact had faded; it felt like it hadn't really happened, it was just another late-night disaster movie on repeat showing.
But it was real, and the world we live in now is as much a consequence of 9/11 as 9/11 was a consequence of the world we lived in then. But no-one saw it - it was impossible - even if we had effectively (in the words of IR professor Steve Smith) "sung that world into existence".
The world we are singing into existence now is certainly a bleaker one than we thought we had in 1989, the year of revolutions. It's telling that despite the failure of China's 1989 pro-democracy revolution and the success of those in Europe, it's China that is leading now while Europe is swiftly falling behind.
But that's by the by. The new world disorder is one where terrorist attacks are more, not less, likely. Afghanistan seemed to be a success for a while, but that image is fading fast. Post-Iraq the suicide bombers there and elsewhere have added motive and impetus. This year's 'spectacular' failed, but there'll be another.
North Korea and Iran are both enjoying their spell in the limelight due to the nuclear issue, and post-Lebanon, Israel and Palestine are further than ever from reconciliation while Britain and Blair are now looking like the lame ducks of international affairs.
Ultimately, it looks as if the bigger picture is one where the enemies of the US are winning. In the past five years it has lost so much of the legitimacy it built up since World War II, and squandered the sympathy, solidarity and support of 12 September. It's almost as if 9/11 didn't happen: Bush started it, didn't he?
Perhaps the world didn't change on 9/11; perhaps we just perceived it to have done. If anything, it's a massive distraction from the real underlying and interlinked problems of the planet: overpopulation, poverty, pollution.
But what is happening now and what happens next is and will be the result of the changes that we have wrought. Let's hope that we can turn the tide before that cycle spins out of control.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US interventions have boosted Iran, says report
A report published by Chatham House said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had removed Iran's main rival regimes in the region.
Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and its invasion of Lebanon had also put Iran "in a position of considerable strength" in the Middle East, said the thinktank.
Unless stability could be restored to the region, Iran's power will continue to grow, according to the report published by Chatham House.
China's rise leaves West wondering
The Bush administration came to power convinced that China was America's strategic competitor. But then came 9/11. To Beijing's enormous relief, Washington's focus shifted to terrorism, and there was less attention on China's discreet military build-up.
Nevertheless, Pentagon planners are concerned about developments, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said much of China's arms spending is being concealed.
Ambassador Sha responded strongly to the allegations. "It's better for the US to shut up," he said. "Keep quiet. It's much, much better."
This is a crucial question for China's future. Will it be just an economic superpower content to sell the world shoes and washing machines? Or will it have the military muscle to protect its new interests around the world?
 The accidental (?) deaths of four UN observers after an Israeli bomb went astray may actually have some positive side-effects. Much as I sympathise with the families of the dead, there's two things worth mentioning.
Firstly, it lays to rest the myth that Israel is conducting a campaign of surgical strikes against Hizbollah. Hardly. It proves once and for all that Israel is firing indiscriminately into Lebanon, unmindful of the effects it may have on the civilian population.
While I agree that Israel has the right to conduct a military campaign against Hizbollah, it must be conducted under the rules of war.
More significantly, aside from prompting righteous indignation from Kofi Annan and the UN, it has forced China well and truly into the picture. It's not as severe as the bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade, but now that a Chinese is dead then there has to be a response.
With its rising economy and political and military power, it is about time that China drifted away from its position of abstention and began taking sides. It may be too late for Darfur, but if it goes to a Security Council vote, it looks like China will have an influence.
What effect this will have when China begins to engage in the region remains to be seen, but it's not looking like it will side with Israel. Let's also not forget that the PRC has close links with Iran.
Story below.
Continue reading "China Comes Off the Fence" »
 Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Pakistan launches huge nuclear arms drive
An interesting exchange:
Commodore Uday Bhaskar of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis in Delhi suggested the timing of the report could be intended to influence the US Congress's debate on the Indian deal:
"My initial reaction is that one of the report's authors [David Albright] is a critic of the India-US nuclear deal and therefore this report has to be seen in the light of its passage through Congress. It may be true but there's a reason why the report appears now."
Mr Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who now runs Isis, denied there was any link between the timing of the report and the congressional debate. "It is a strange twist to the debate to see a potential Pakistani threat to India as an attempt to derail the India agreement in Congress," he said, adding that the publication was dictated more by the need to get the report out before the summer holidays began.
There is speculation in Delhi that the new plant may be a fresh sign of China's commitment to a "strategic partnership" with Pakistan. The pair already have extensive military and diplomatic ties.
"China has supported Pakistan since the 80s and it remains the wild card here," Commodore Bhaskar said. "At the time of the Indo-US deal, there were clear indications that Beijing thought if Washington can assist India, China can aid Pakistan."
Mr Albright said Chinese assistance was a possibility.
"You always worry that some of this is coming from China. Can Pakistan really do all this on its own? You wonder," he said. "That would be very serious."
Original Isis report here. Note the conclusion:
South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at a minimum vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material. A negotiated agreement that results in a halt to the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons should be a priority for the international community. Not only are such arsenals a waste of precious resources, they increase instability in the region and could needlessly provoke China to respond by increasing the size and lethality of its own nuclear capabilities.
 More doom, gloom and rampant speculation from Asia Times' Chan Akya. However, there is a tenuous point to it:
We have to recognize that no established Islamic power has the ability to strike outside of its immediate border. The armed forces of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran have no capacity to inflict meaningful harm on the West. The sole exception is Pakistan, which is why the global terrorist brotherhood will probably focus more of its attention on this country than any other in the next few months.
Whether or not the Pakistani state can or will "inflict meaningful harm on the West" is not exactly the point, but in terms of vulnerability to collapse or coup, Pakistan is way up there in the list of potential flashpoints.
There isn't a hell of a lot of evidence for the next point either, but it's an interesting theory:
Just as Syria failed to show much control over Hezbollah, Pakistan has lost control of its militants, who now appear to work directly with al-Qaeda command structures. The turning point could well have been the Pakistani army attacks in the Pashtun areas that were undertaken to keep the US happy in its "war on terror".
Disenchanted that the Pakistani army could kill its own creations, Kashmiri militants appear to have bypassed the army, going straight to the Taliban and perhaps even to bin Laden. This explains the attacks on both Srinagar (grenade explosions that killed nine) and Mumbai on the same day, a move that seems to have caught even the Pakistani army by surprise, if its state of readiness in the days preceding the attacks is any indication.
It is certainly true that the Pakistani military is not making friends among Islamic militants, and is caught in a complex web of alliances and counter alliances across the various conflicts on Balochistan, Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier - including with anti-Taliban US Forces. It's a volatile combination that eventually has to break down.
Whether or not Pakistani Islamists are in league with al-Qaeda, as the author suggests, is not really relevant. I'm also not convinced of the argument that the Militants will ventually get their hands on nuclear technology, though there is mounting evidence of increasing production capacity in Pakistan.
Think 'Pakistan' and 'nuclear' and the next word that comes to mind is 'China'. China is key to the build of Pakistan's military, and props the failed state up in other ways in order to gain from its geopolitical position at a key strategic point for oil supply routes.
While there's little danger of China casting aside its ally in Musharraf, the government that would follow him would be another matter. And eventually, Musharraf is going to fall, whether due to pressure from the outside regarding his nuclear ambitions or pressure from the inside from the Islamists and nationalists.
I'm not impressed with Akya's argument that China will side with the West in order to stave the threat of Taiwanese independence in the background: if anything, China might take the opportunity to seize the strategic zones it needs for energy security and then move on Taiwan while the US flounders in Iran and elsewhere.
But, of course, who can tell?
Continue reading "China, India and WW3 (Part 2)" »
Battleground Balochistan - HindustanTimes.com
The "Balochistan separatist bubble", led by Baloch tribal leader Nawab Akhbar Bugti, has finally burst, an account of military briefing published in newspapers here said on Thursday.
"The organised mayhem is finished off and the separatists plans these sub-nationalist terrorists organisations were making with material support from India have been knocked off," a military official was quoted as saying by The News.
I'd be extremely surprised were this true.
 With Israeli reserves being called up, expect to see a ground offensive launched in the next couple of days. This war is escalating rapidly, and as all students of military history know, it's now easier to keep on going than to change direction and pull back. Just like the great powers mobilised at the opening of World War I, Israel is gaining momentum, and it can't just apply the brakes.
The Economist, nevertheless, calls for exactly that. And so it should, even though it's unlikely. It also argues that this conflict may in fact be a gross miscalculation by both Hizbollah - who didn't expect such a robust response - and by Ehud Olmert, keen to show the electorate and the international community that he's no softie. He's a man conspicuously living in the shadow of Ariel Sharon and other hard-man warrior politicians, and he's got a point to prove.
But the whole premise of the crisis rests on a Hobson's choice. Neither side actually can back down anyway:
If Hizbullah is beaten, it risks losing its position as the strongest power in the fractious Lebanese state, with damaging consequences in the region for its Iranian sponsor and Syrian ally. If Israel falters, many of its people think, the iron wall of military power that has enabled it to win grudging acceptance in the Middle East will have been seriously breached.
That being said, neither are involved in a conflict that it's possible to 'win' an any conventional sense:
However much punishment Mr Olmert inflicts on Hizbullah, he cannot force it to submit in a way that its leaders and followers will perceive as a humiliation. Israel's first invasion of Lebanon turned into its Vietnam. It is plainly unwilling to occupy the place again. But airpower alone will never destroy every last rocket and prevent Hizbullah's fighters from continuing to send them off. No other outside force looks capable of doing the job on Israel's behalf. At present, the only way to disarm Hizbullah is therefore in the context of an agreement Hizbullah itself can be made to accept.
It's amazing that even after decades of terrorism, Israel still assumes that conventional military power can flush out the Islamists. It can't. Even in the unlikely event that Hizbollah was 'wiped out', a new group would simply rise in its place. And hopes that it can be 'beaten' are also misguided:
Hizbullah cannot be uprooted. It is not going formally to surrender. Its past struggle against Israel has won it the fierce loyalty of many Lebanese Shias, and its present one will add to their number even if it comes off worse. Israel's security will not be enhanced by destroying the rest of Lebanon. By weakening the Lebanese state, and its fragile but well-intentioned government, Israel just weakens the already feeble constraints Lebanon tries to impose on Hizbullah's actions.
The only answer The Economist has is for America to promptly broker a settlement. But it doesn't even look like Condi's packed her handbag yet, and Bush is quite happy to let 'this shit' go on for an undetermined period.
Meanwhile, the chances of the rest of the region being sucked in when the invasion begins grow stronger. We don't hear very much from Iran and Syria in the Western media, but you can be sure they'll have something to say when the time is right.
Full article below.
Continue reading "The Accidental War" »
BBC NEWS | Africa | Somali Islamist orders 'holy war'
"I am calling on the Somali people to wage a holy war against Ethiopians in Somalia," said Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys of the Union of Islamic Courts.
Ethiopia denies that its forces are in the government's base of Baidoa, but a BBC reporter has seen them patrolling.
It never rains but it pours war in buckets. Given that the area in question is right off the Red Sea shipping lane it's not exactly another pointless though bloody African conflict.
 Oxford Professor and all-round commentator Timothy Garton-Ash takes a timely look at the state of the world in mid-2006.
His analysis is bleak. Of course, no writer on current affairs has the benefit of hindsight and it'll be a long time before we know how history will view this little episode. But Garton-Ash takes the essentially neo-realist view that a multipolar order is a recipe for disaster.
The neo-liberalist argument that the US will create stability through institutions and 'enlightened self-interest' no longer washes, and the hegemon is clearly on the decline as other powers rise. The kernel of the argument is quite succinct:
This new multipolarity is the result of at least three trends. The first, and most familiar, is the rise or revival of other states - China, India, Brazil, Russia as comeback kid - whose power resources compete with those of the established powers of the west. The second is the growing power of non-state actors. These are of widely differing kinds. They range from movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, to non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace, from big energy corporations and drug companies to regions and religions.
A third trend involves changes in the very currency of power. Developments in technologies with violent potential mean that very small groups of people can challenge powerful established states, whether by piloting an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre in New York, targeting a missile at Haifa, taking on the US military in Iraq, bombing the London underground, or squirting sarin gas into the Tokyo subway.
Not to mention the US's loss of EH Carr's third kind of power, 'power over opinion' (the others being military and economic power). Since the war America has been much better at provoking than winning hearts and minds. It just can't let go of those balls, and unfortunately Israel tends to follow suit.
Most of all, Garton-Ash displays his disillusionment with the tenets of liberalism (which encompasses a convenient jibe at the commander-in-chief of misplaced liberal values, the French President):
When Jacques Chirac spoke fondly of multipolarity, back in 2003, he conflated two claims: the world is multipolar, and that's a good thing. Claim 1 is being proved right. Claim 2 has yet to be confirmed. For a start, it matters a lot whether this is multipolar order or multipolar disorder. Order is a high value in international relations. It stops a lot of people being killed. At the moment, we have multipolar disorder, and it's not clear what the shape of a new multipolar order might be. Historically, the emergence of new powers, elbowing for position, has increased the chances of violence. So has contested authority within the frontiers of states.
I disagree with the author's fears that nuclear conflict is impending; no state (apart from North Korea, perhaps) would be willing to act in such self-disinterest, and I can't see any terrorist organisations gaining the capability or the will to use the bomb.
But the essence of his fears is spot-on:
We liberal internationalists dream of a world of democratic, peace-loving, human-rights-respecting states... Some of the growing powers fit that vision... to a large extent, India and Brazil. China and Russia definitely do not, nor do many of the non-state actors that are currently making the running in world politics. Henry Kissinger has suggested that the geopolitics of Asia in the 21st century could resemble those of Europe in the 19th century, with great powers jockeying for position, using war as the continuation of politics by other means. But it could be worse. It could be that kind of great-power rivalry on a world scale, plus terrorists. And corporations. And transnational religious communities. And international NGOs. No moral equivalence is suggested between these very different kinds of actor, but what they all have in common is that they don't fit neatly into a world order of states.
By other means, indeed.
Continue reading "New World Disorder 2.0" »
 Pakistan. Not so much a country as a whole bunch of problems all waiting to happen. And as events proceed in the rest of Eurasia, the moment when they all crash headlong into each other draws ever nearer.
Veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan's answer to John Pilger, takes a view on the mounting crises in Pakistan here on the BBC website (see also below).
In a way, he seems to feel almost a little sorry for a President who is mysteriously ambivalent - both a dove and a despot at the same time:
...there is little doubt that Gen Musharraf and the military are facing unprecedented global criticism for their apparent reluctance to wrap up extremist groups who still operate with impunity and brazen openness in Pakistan.
However, at the same time, al-Qaeda and their Pakistani and Afghan allies have long expressed a desire to see the end of India-Pakistan rapprochement and an end to Gen Musharraf, whom Ayman al Zawahri, the number two al-Qaeda leader, credits as being the organisation's worst enemy in the region.
Talk about a rock and a hard place. The situation Musharraf faces is impossibly complex and paradoxical. Take Balochistan, for instance:
In Balochistan the army has depended on the Pashtun-based Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) for political support.
The JUI has supported the Taleban since its inception in 1994. Gen Musharraf is hoping to cause a split in the alliance of Islamic parties by weaning away the JUI and enlisting it for his second bid for the presidency. Going against the Taleban now would mean alienating the JUI.
And that is where the contradiction between the international community and the Pakistan military and Gen Musharraf emerges.
Rashid goes on to decribe the devil's pact that the General (who, despite being a tinpot dictator, is also essentially sane and secular) has struck with the Islamists in order to preserve his legitimacy and national cohesion. Ironically in Waziristan the army fights the Taliban, while in Balochistan it's in league with them.
How long the US and India can tolerate these contradictions must be balanced against how long Musharraf can hold his country together - and on a personal level, simply stay alive. If something gives way it'll make the break up of Yugoslavia look pretty.
Continue reading "Many Eggs, One Basket" »
 In this case British Home Secretary Dr John Reid's terrorist, is another man's freedom fighter.
The problem is: how does one differentiate between a true terrorist group and an armed resistance movement attempting to secure self determination under the provisions of the UN Charter? It's a delicate balance indeed. Perhaps it would be more useful to examine the objectives of the groups in question as well as their actions and doctrine.
It's also interesting to note the underlying political motivations of Dr Reid's naming of the Baluchistan Liberation Army and Teyrebaz Azadiye Kurdistan as organisations to be banned. Good relations with Pakistan and Turkey are no doubt also on the British government's mind.
In 1999, Blair and Clinton effectively supported the Kosovo Liberation Army, which could be seen by some as a terrorist group: same goes for the EU's continued relations with Fatah. So there's an element of hypocrisy too.
It's interesting to see the Government of Balochistan website's response. After swiftly condemning terrorism - fascinatingly, the organisation is based in Jerusalem and purports to have friendly relations with Israel - the author goes on to draw some comparisons and make some suggestions:
BLA are freedom fighters who are involved in a "Guerilla Military Action" against the Iranian and Pakistani forces. They are fighting the "Baloch War of Independence" by attacking military forces, blowing up supply lines, destroying infrastructure, and damaging anything and everything that will incapacitate the Iranian and Pakistani government and its armed forces, and taking every measure to avoid civilian casualties. BLA is a resistance force, just like the Forces Fran�aises de l'Int�rieur (French Resistance Army) during World War II.
BLA is taking every measure to avoid any collateral damage. If your government may send a fact-finding mission to Iran and Pakistan to find out the activities of BLA, we are sure that they will declare them a non-terrorist organization. But, by banning BLA without investigating the ground realities is a decision made in haste.
Like the KLA, the BLA and its supporters seek to harness the power of the Internet in promoting their cause. Even the names are similar. It's a fine line.
Original Guardian report below.
Continue reading "One Man's Terrorist..." »
 Go away for a week and the world seems to change in your absence. No exception this time, as all-out war looms in the Levant and terrorists strike again, this time in Bombay.
Both incidents are symptoms of intractable conflicts over Israel and Kashmir. Fortunately, while Israel has let loose - one suspects that the capture of two soldiers was the excuse is was looking for to strike against Hezbollah - India's reaction has been restrained, despite the clear indications that the bombers hailed from Pakistan.
In both cases, the actions serve only to provoke retaliation. But Israel can't help itself, while India clearly can. If only the former could learn from the latter, the terrorists would soon be out of business. Instead, another generation is being created.
Whether there will be a repeat of 1978 and 1982 remains to be seen, but all efforts must now be made to stop Syria getting sucked into the conflict. Prospects for the region as a whole don't look good.
 It was those words, delivered in the broadest of Yorkshire accents, that hit home most of all. They came from a young man just like me: almost exactly the same age; raised in Britain, the son of an immigrant from the subcontinent; well-educated and articulate. Yet Muhammed Sidique Khan was prepared to die and to kill for the most abstract of hatreds:
I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our driving motivation doesnt come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam - obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad. This is how our ethical stances are dictated.
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters.
Until we feel security, you will be our targets. And until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight.
We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.
He could so easily have been myself; a twisted reflection from a world we still barely understand. The parallel universe of Jihad, Shar'ia, martyrdom and the AK-47, all served up for our consumption on prime time al-Jazeera.
A year on from the 7/7 bombings and thankfully there has been no repeat. It's no consolation for the families of the dead, but the attack could have been so much worse. Fortunately the second wave failed in a blur of incompetence. But as Khan's fellow bomber Shehzad Tanweer reminded us in a new video aired yesterday, it certainly isn't over:
What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a series of attacks that will continue and increase in strength until you withdraw your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, and until you stop your financial and military support for America and Israel.
So where are these men - who justify the murder of random people by drawing tenous connections with participation in the democratic process and complicity with government foreign policy - going to come from? There's two answers. The first, and most obvious, is that they will come from within. But the second, and the most worrying, is that they will have been trained and indoctrinated where else but Pakistan.
Pakistan is becoming the new front in the War on Terror, taking the place that Afghanistan held before 9/11. There's plenty more Pakistani diaspora around, from Britain to Bahrain, and it's more easily accessible than Afghanistan was.
Yet by no means is Pakistan under control, and it's doubtful whether the ruling regime has a clue as to what is going on in 80% of the country.
The BBC takes an in-depth look at this and related issues and asks whether or not the bombers were linked to what is nebulously termed 'al-Qaeda'. The conclusion is that indeed someone in Pakistan was directing the bombers, and this has implications for the War on Terror in general:
...in recent months Western intelligence agencies have begun shifting away from the notion that al-Qaeda has largely become an ideology rather than a structured operation, to once again believing that there remains some capability for direct operational planning within al-Qaeda's leadership.
This denies the fact that whether or not al-Qaeda physically exists, it is both an organisation and an idea. It's this idea that inspired the bombers, not the organisation; and their action was a continuation and a reflection of this idea that no doubt will give it further power.
The group itself is becoming increasingly complex, and is intertwined with the many factions fighting for Islam or independence within Pakistan itself:
"There is very much an integration between the Pakistani jihadi community and al-Qaeda's leadership and I think this is the galaxy that spawned the 7 July bombings," explains Alexis Debat, a counter-terrorism expert.
"But it's very hard for investigators to find out where the Pakistani jihadi community stops and al-Qaeda starts. And it's much more difficult for the Pakistani government to go after the Pakistani jihadis."
The only thing that is certain is that of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Pakistan each year, more than one of them will bring something back with them - a plan, a tactic, a mission. The only questions are when will they release it upon us, and will we catch them first?
Khan's entire speech and BBC story below.
Continue reading "We Are At War and I Am a Soldier" »
 The Economist may be dry, but it has a way of hitting you now and again with a paragraph or two stuffed with pithy aphorisms. Take the opener to this week's Pakistan survey:
Think about Pakistan, and you might get terrified. Few countries have so much potential to cause trouble, regionally and worldwide. One-third of its 165m people live in poverty, and only half of them are literate. The country's politics yo-yo between weak civilian governments and unrepresentative military onesthe sort currently on offer under Pervez Musharraf, the president and army chief, albeit with some democratic wallpapering. The state is weak. Islamabad and the better bits of Karachi and Lahore are orderly and, for the moment, booming. Most of the rest is a mess. In the western province of Baluchistan, which takes up almost half of Pakistan's land mass, an insurgency is simmering. In the never-tamed tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the army is waging war against Islamic fanatics.
Nor is that all. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until recently was selling their secrets to North Korea, Iran, Libya and maybe others. During its most recent big stand-off with India, in 2002, Pakistan gave warning that, if attacked, it might nuke its neighbour. Mostly, however, in Kashmir, Afghanistan and its own unruly cities, Pakistan has used, and perhaps still uses, Islamist militants to fight its warsincluding the confused lot it is fighting, at America's request, in the tribal areas. Several thousand armed extremists are swilling around the country. Thousands more youths are being prepared for holy war at radical Islamic schools. Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be in Pakistan.
If that doesn't have you running for the bomb shelter, then switch to the BBC where you'll find news about gun battles involving the Baloch and a rising British fatality toll over the border in Afghanistan prompting swift reconsiderations.
Does the West really know what it's doing here? More than one empire has bitten off more than it can chew in this lawless, volatile region - are we merely the latest?
Furthermore, so much of the situation is down to just one man:
Pakistan does not need a saviour to become stable and well. It needs a sustainable political system, representing the majority of its people. General Musharraf has had some successes. But by sabotaging Pakistan's fragile democracy, he may well have made the country even more dangerous.
Full story below.
Continue reading "The Sum of All Fears" »
 A delightfully acerbic and tongue in cheek analysis of the North Korea missile launch by the BBC's Matt Frei.
In a nutshell, Frei reckons that the launch is little more than a PR stunt from a Kim Jong-Il disappointed at the recent lack of media attention:
...you can imagine the Dear Leader's dismay as he flicks from one channel to the next and finds the world stage obsessed with football, Rooney's red card, Brangelina or the nascent nuclear programme of Iran.
But not him. Not a squeak. Nada.
I can just picture him hurling his kimchi at the plasma screen, shouting: "Why all the fuss about Tehran? Why are they getting all the attention when they have barely started enriching the uranium and the rhetoric. We're beyond enriching. We are fully enriched! We have already manufactured six nuclear warheads and we can't even make it onto late night TV? Hello! Whatever happened to the axis of evil?"
But Brangelina might well hold the key to the situation. Frei's theory is that movie buff Kim takes his cues from spectacular blockbusters like Independence Day - films that harness the paranoia at the heart of US culture.
But more worryingly, there's also a geopolitical element of empathy with - you've guessed it - China:
There he was. Japan's foppish prime minister crooning away incomprehensibly in the Holy of Holies, permitted to don the King's shades, allowed to discuss global affairs with Priscilla Presley.
W had arranged a personal tour of Graceland with bells and whistles and the Chinese president wasn't even allowed to call his recent meal at the White House a state visit.
Oh, the shame of it! So President Hu Jintao may have called up Kim Jong-il and said: "Go girl! The skies are yours, just aim those missiles away from us."
Kim Jong-il relies on China for everything from food to power to rental videos. He is unlikely to have launched several missiles without its consent.
But Frei's got a brilliant solution to the affair:
So here's my idea. Invite him over for face-to-face talks about the stuff that matters and sweeten the diplomacy with a guided tour of Universal Studios, lunch with Stephen Spielberg and a life-long subscription to Netflix and Blockbusters.
The missile crisis will be over and North Korea will be become a fabulous location for Mission Impossible 4.
Fantastic stuff - it's what you pay the licence fee for. Check it out below, and see also this Asia Times brief on the missile suite.
Continue reading "A Hissy Fit from the Hermit State" »
 Perhaps the most interesting feature of this little news item is that the border dispute is still ongoing.
The Times of India reports on a recent meeting between Chinese and Indian ministers. But with trade now the number one priority of each country, why is politics still such a niggly issue, especially over what are really rather narrow and insignificant slivers of land?
See also this BBC story, first of a series.
Continue reading "Sino Indian Border" »
 Of course it is impossible to predict what course the future will take with regard to potential conflict with China. What follows is thus quite speculative. But there are a few factors pertaining to the period around 2012, the next Year of the Dragon, that stand out:
Economic superpower status. Over the next five or six years, China's economic ascendancy will be complete. Publications such as Newsweek are already writing on what they call 'China's Century'. What happens in the Chinese economy sends shockwaves around the world. Not to mention the US budget deficit, much of which is already down to China. With this kind of authority, China is going to be far less shy to act, perhaps radically, in its own interests.
Games over. The Chinese are greatly looking forward to the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo and are unlikely to do anything to scupper them before they are over. But by 2012 they will have neither of these to lose.
Impending implosion? Over the next decade China's resources will be stretched to a crippling limit while, despite the one-child policy, the population will have continued to rise. Rampant environmental pollution is not going to help put food in the mouths of 1.4 billion hungry citizens. Peasant protests and nationalism are both on the increase and by this time the CCP may no longer be able to keep them under control.
Resources on the wane. And oil: never forget oil. By 2012, unless it has taken serious measures to secure resources for itself, it's going to break down like an old banger - and the incredible economic growth that legitimates the Party's grip on power will break down down with it. Many theorists predict this year as a critical point - see for example the Olduvai Gorge theory, itself based on Hubbert's Peak.
Election year. The year 2012 will see elections in not only the US but possibly also in Taiwan. Elections are also due in Hong Kong; whether or not the authorities will allow them is another matter. It may even be time for the current leadership of the CCP to stand down after eight years in power. The year is thus extremely volatile politically with world leaders distracted and potential flashpoints waiting to happen within 'One China' itself.
 Military superpower status. Finally, if speculations are correct, by 2012 China's military build-up will be complete. It will have its motive, it will have its carrier group, it will have its opportunity. If the PRC moves to retake the ROC, will the US act to defend it or not? If things continue as they have done since 9/11, by 2012 the US military itself will be embroiled in conflicts across the Middle East, from Syria, via Iraq and Iran, as far as Afghanistan. Weakened and overstretched it won't be in a position to fight upon a second front. In a Presidential election year as 2012 will be, the prospect of even more American body bags will not be a vote-winner. And if Taiwan falls undefended, what would happen next?
I hope that it does not come to this. The only outcome that is in all our interests is peace. But as if all the above are not enough, there are enough mystical predictions out there to indicate that something is up: we just don't yet know what.
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Update - since this hypothesis was first written in Autumn 2005, I've found a couple more articles which seem to justify it. Of course they must be taken with a large pinch of salt, but this Epoch Times report confirms similar thinking on the 2012 date - see also the analysis by the Association for Asian Research.
Read on below for more detailed explanations.
Continue reading "Flashpoint 2012" »
 Worth noting for future reference, an article delineating some of the geopolitical implications of the Gwadar naval port.
Though events may well overtake me, at the moment it is looking like the most likely future flashpoint between China and the US - Taiwan excepted - is going to be here. All of the pieces are in place. China is building up Gwadar in order to protect its Gulf oil supplies, and perhaps export energy via potential pipelines through Pakistan (see map). The US also has a major presence in Pakistan due to the War on Terror, and is actively engaging the Taliban along the border.
Meanwhile, Baloch nationalists are conducting a campaign for independence - which inevitably will bring them into conflict with both powers. India appears to be supporting this, and finally Pakistan and Iran seem to be caught in the middle between their alliances and enmities with the US, China and India.
A more complex and volatile situation could not be asked for. According to the Government of Balochistan website:
The realization of economic and strategic objectives of the Gwadar port by Pakistan is largely dependent upon the reduction of separatist violence in Balochistan by the Baloch freedom fighters. Pakistani response to secessionism is aggressive military action in Balochistan. Pakistani fighter jets, gunship helicopters, heavy artillery, and over 60,000 troops have launched a military operation inside Balochistan to target the ethnic Baloch population, mainly the non-combatant, innocent men, women and children. To date the Pakistani forces have conducted extrajudicial arrests of more than 4,000 Baloch activists, killed over 700 Baloch nationals in direct military action, and planted landmines in Baloch areas to close all escape routes resulting in the deaths of over 10,000 Baloch civilians due of starvation and lack of medical assistance.
Jerusalem, Israel based Government of Balochistan in Exile is in contact with officials of countries that have a vested interest in containing Chinese ambitions in the region. Negotiations are being conducted to explore ways and means to close the Chinese naval outpost in Gwadar. Both the Indian and U.S. policy makers are keen to resolve the grievances of the Baloch people through peaceful means. But, neither Iran, Pakistan nor China agree to retract from their plans and settle the issue of sovereignty of Balochistan with the Baloch leadership. Hence, the Baloch nationalists were compelled to fight for their self-determination, and they have already waged the Baloch War of Independence on both the Iranian and Pakistani government forces.
Full article reproduced below.
Continue reading "Three Great Powers and One Nascent Nation" »
 Or 14 "observations" on counter-insurgency, in this case.
Quite a few years ago, a British Army TV recruiting campaign veered away from the glamorisation of military life and served up something else altogether. In one ad, the viewer was confronted with an angry African refusing to give soldiers access to his well. The officer removed his sunglasses and calmed the man with eye contact.
It was an example of the way we do things in Britain, and I remember my own officer once telling me to take off my shades one day at the range. "Only Americans wear those," he told me. The implication was: "And the American soldier doesn't understand how to get on with the civilian."
In retrospect it comes as no surprise that the US military did not have any knowledge about how to conduct an operation of the type it finds itself embroiled in today. How this is still possible after Vietnam, however, beggars belief. According to the BBC's Paul Reynolds:
...there was no such counter-insurgency doctrine in the US military as a whole when the invasion of Iraq was launched in early 2003. There was no expectation that one would be needed. The hope was for a quick war and a quick peace.
In the aftermath of Haditha, the US have belatedly turned to their UK allies for a bit of advice - and even to TE Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, from which the title quote comes.
The author is careful to point out that the British are not perfect, but I'd still say that we are a lot better than the US when it comes to judicious use of "underwhelming force". Part of this is down to experience, but the rest of it is down to a different mindset.
With notable exceptions, on the whole the British soldier is disciplined and aware of the environment he is operating in. That means knowing a bit about the local culture and being able to communicate with the local people.
It's softly, softly catchee monkey out there. The Cold War is over - that's what force transformation was meant to be all about. No good charging around in your APCs all day, dressed in full kit, Ray-Bans on and rock music blaring. That's not how to win hearts and minds.
But if America is not a "learning culture", what's the point in telling them that?
Continue reading "Wearing Shades and Eating Soup With a Knife" »
 It's exactly 17 years since Tiananmen: and 38 or so since My Lai. Nothing has changed.
The headlines today are all about the alleged massacre at Haditha. One would have thought that by now the US forces would have learned that this is not what wins hearts and minds, yet still it goes on. Like the CCP, it is caught in a political timewarp, where by divine right it may conduct itself as it wishes to achieve whatever it thinks necessary.
John Gittings makes the comparison between Haditha and Tiananmen in The Guardian's Comment is Free. His point is a little tenuous, but the final paragraphs hit home:
Are not the Chinese people - or at least the majority of them - much better off than before 1989? Is it not time to move on from Tiananmen Square?
There are simpler, more moral, arguments than these. It is wrong to kill civilians whether in the streets of Beijing or Baghdad. The mother of an Iraqi boy shot by US troops is as entitled to protest, as are the Tiananmen mothers. If regimes lie to their people, then those lies must be exposed. This is what brave Chinese protestors mean when they call on their government to "settle accounts with history". It should be a good rule for us all.
But the way I see it, 'incidents' like Haditha, not to mention Abu Ghraib, not only reduce the image of the US to its allies but gives succour to the CCP. If America can get away with it, why shouldn't we, you can almost hear them saying.
If the US truly does wish to be a responsible stakeholder in global affairs, it must be whiter than white. It can't afford to expose itself to criticism in this way. Because for every My Lai or Haditha there will follow an Andijan or a Tiananmen. It's all a question of relativity.
Continue reading "Six Four Oh Six" »
 Talk of the day has to be Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker. The whole text is reprinted below, and here's a couple of the best moments:
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government. He added, I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, What are they smoking? ...
The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap, the former senior intelligence official said. Decisive is the key word of the Air Forces planning. Its a tough decision. But we made it in Japan. ...
Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as a white coup, with ominous implications for the West. Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out, he said. We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution. He said that, particularly in consideration of Chinas emergence as a superpower, Irans attitude was To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like. ...
If you attack, the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.
The diplomat went on, There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking. He added, The window of opportunity is now.
Now, I still find it incredibly hard to believe that after the Iraq debacle, the US is seriously going to attack Iran. It has to be a bluff, right? OK, so Clinton struck Iraq a couple of times during the 1990s too, but actical nukes? And would a hit on Iran be followed by a ground invasion? It doesn't bear thinking about.
Well, Seymour Hersh is a pretty senior journalist. He's ffectively staking his reputation on this, so there must be something in it.
Continue reading "The Iran Plan" »
 It's really starting to feel like the summer of '69, not that I have any nostalgic feelings for Woodstock nor was even born then. I'm taking about the music with a political message. In stark contrast to the Right Brothers (assuming they weren't ironic) now comes this protest song from Nerina Pallot.
With lyrics like this:
If love is a drug, i guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, i guess it's all over
How to have faith when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die
If God's on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don't want to die...
...who needs Joni Mitchell? However - and I do know it's a protest song - I think the chances of Nerina Pallet getting shot in her safe cozy living room in Jersey is highly unlikely, no matter how much it might worry her. Unless she goes on tour in Baghdad, which I can't see either.
More lyrics below...
Continue reading "Battle of the Bands" »
 Where does Britain stand - by the US or beside the EU? An answer to that today in the sale of BAE Systems' share of Airbus.
This is big business - big, big, big business. And the fact that BAE has sold in order to concentrate on the US defence market indicates a trend towards a general European pullout. Airbus is a flagship company if ever there was one.
As far as I know, BAE Systems no longer has any stakes in EADS, the pan-European company that will now fully own Airbus. With the French protesting against economic systems that might actually help them compete in the globalized economy, no wonder the Brits are getting cold feet. Having bought United Defence last year, BAE Systems now has its sights firmly set on the US.
But what does it mean for the EU? After last year's failed presidency, now that the glue of heavy industry has dried out it seems that the UK is drifting further and further away.
Continue reading "Bye Bye BAE-bus" »
 An interesting article by the admirable Max Hastings on Comment is Free.
I think two things have been lacking in the Bush / Blair Iraq policy. The first is honesty. Rather than spinning out the rhetoric on WMD, building upon zavaell's letter reproduced in the comments, our political leaders should should have said this:
"Iraq has the second largest known oil reserves in the world, and is bang in the middle of an unstable, strategically vital and oil-rich region.
"We are sorry, but as you all know the economies of the West are totally dependent on oil. If someone like Saddam gets his hands on WMD in the future, or gets away with anything funny like he did in 1991, we're stuffed.
"So we'd really better take him out while we have the chance. Unfortunately blood does have to be spilt for oil and we should have done it 12 years ago, really."
Not pretty, but at least it's honest. I think that voters may have appreciated this message more than than the one we actually got.
The second failure is in historical, political and strategic awareness, and it makes me wonder what the point of the US Army War College and other institutions is unless politicians listen to them.
I wasn't around around during the Vietnam war but I've read some books on it. That's been enough to teach me a few things about what can go wrong in a foreign war. I'm not saying I'm an expert but it seemed pretty obvious that the more the US forces alienated the local population then the stronger their enemies became.
It's not rocket science. Isn't there a library at the White House? Doesn't it contain some of these books and journals, A Bright Shining Lie for example? A lot of lives could have been saved had Bush and his people had simply studied history a bit harder and learnt from previous mistakes.
 Or is it?
The Sunday Telegraph today boasts this exclusive on 'secret' talks to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. The authorities of course deny it.
Whether it's true or not, it does raise legitimate questions. It's clearly current policy - the 'Bush Doctrine', some call it - to pre-emptively strike countries you suspect to be developing WMD. Even Clinton did it back in the 1990s, so it's not just a neocon thing.
So what to do about Iran? Negotiation isn't going to work - unless, of course, there's a clear threat of force behind it. Perhaps the deliberate spreading of rumours (note how this follows very swiftly from Condi's visit to the UK) is a tool to nudge Ahmedinejad back to the table.
However, the consequences of actual attack on Iran would obviously be dire. It would justify what Islamists would call a defensive jihad. Iran would be able to retailiate against the US and UK on not one but two fronts - Iraq and Afghanistan - possibly in the shape not of MBTs and fighter planes but the far more troublesome supply of weapons and the insertion of guerrilla support for anti-Western factions.
It may be that Iran is already doing so, and hence an extra impetus for the threats.
On the other hand, Iran's impudence is a clear threat to US influence in the region. If Iran were to successfully develop a nuclear weapon, it would become a regional hegemon and thus would be in a far better position to negotiate on topics such as Israel, oil and pipeline routes.
Who'll blink first? If I were Ahmedinajad, I'd stand my ground, knowing that I'm already in more favour with my own voting public than either Bush or Blair - and, moreover, that any infraction on Iranian territory is going to enhance my support while it will inevitably weaken and even topple my enemies.
Your call, Condi.
Continue reading "April Fool, Iran" »
 Breaking news of a major air assault on Iraq. What's the bigger picture, though? Is this intended as a sign that the US is still in control? Is it a warning to the factions that lethal force may be visited upon them at any moment? Is it intended to mark the three year anniversary of the beginning of hostilities?
Probably all of these things. But what's for sure is that an all-guns-blazing Colonel Kildare-style attack is not the best way to deal with insurgents. And this is what the US forces just don't get.
The kind of war they are fighting is not a war where you can fight enemy formations in pitched battles over defined stretches of territory. It's a guerrilla war, where the enemy is smart, elusive and blends into the civilian population. Small groups, often acting entirely independently, make their move and then melt back into the towns and cities.
Just like in Vietnam. Except none of the lessons appear to have been learned.
My prediction for the news over the next few days: tens of American bodybags; scores of dead terrorists; hundreds of wounded and displaced civilians; maybe a thousand new recruits, militated to the cause; and increased tension across Iraq.
It's not going to reassure the Sh'ia majority; it'll only provoke the Sunnis. Even if it solves the Samarra problem, ultimately it'll create new ones.
Continue reading "Operation Swarmer" »
 Something which entirely slipped me, and a lot of others, by when it came out last week is this new US National Military Strategic Plan, part I believe of the Quadrennial Defense Review.
I remember writing an analysis of the QDR back in 2000, some time after the USS Cole attacks, when I worked for Jane's - some confusion about the title? Anyway, since the US armed forces have an unusually open policy on some of their documents at least, PDFs of the strategic plan and the QDR can be downloaded from the DoD website.
The Guardian also has an analysis of the plan, which can be read by clicking on the link and/or below.
It's pretty significant. Basically, the 'War of Terror' doctrine, which was pretty much rhetoric coined off-the-cuff in September 2001, has been replaced by this 'Long War' model.
Looking beyond the Iraq and Afghan battlefields, US commanders envisage a war unlimited in time and space against global Islamist extremism. "The struggle ... may well be fought in dozens of other countries simultaneously and for many years to come," the report says. The emphasis switches from large-scale, conventional military operations, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, towards a rapid deployment of highly mobile, often covert, counter-terrorist forces.
Moreover, in terms of long-term spending and boots-on-the-ground there has been a massive shift away from previous policy. The US at last recognises that it has to create what some might call a 'medium-to-lightweight capability' and others could term 'guerrilla forces'. There is a great emphasis on intelligence and information technology too - good old C4ISR.
As well as big expenditure projects, the report calls for: investments in signals and human intelligence gathering - spies on the ground; funding for the Nato intelligence fusion centre; increased space radar capability; the expansion of the global information grid (a protected information network); and an information-sharing strategy "to guide operations with federal, state, local and coalition partners". A push will also be made to improve forces' linguistic skills, with an emphasis on Arabic, Chinese and Farsi...
..."Long duration, complex operations involving the US military, other government agencies and international partners will be waged simultaneously in multiple countries round the world, relying on a combination of direct (visible) and indirect (clandestine) approaches," the report says. "Above all they will require persistent surveillance and vastly better intelligence to locate enemy capabilities and personnel. They will also require global mobility, rapid strike, sustained unconventional warfare, foreign internal defence, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capabilities. Maintaining a long-term, low-visibility presence in many areas of the world where US forces do not traditionally operate will be required."
All well and good. I haven't read the full report yet, but I'll make two observations:
1. To me this is indicative that we are indeed in a new phase of international relations, one dominated by the US's 'Long War' to maintain its hegemonic position. It's not World War Three, though, it's something different.
2. The focus is too narrow. Political Islam is significant, true, but it doesn't pose a direct threat to the West. The Mussulman hordes aren't going to sweep into Europe and North America, scimitars shining in the dawn sunlight. The threat basically comes down to energy resources - we are running out of oil, and most of it is still contorlled by nations where Islam is the dominant force.
Bush may have admitted in his State of the Union address that America is "addicted to oil" but the measures the US is taking may be too little too late.
The competition is not Islam; it is China. Islam is merely a powerful piece on the chessboard, not the game itself.
Continue reading "The Long War" »
 Not as I do. George Bush on his visit to Asia today urged China to look to Taiwan as a model of, among other things, openness and human rights. Under the current climate, however, this is only likely to send the Chinese sniggering behind their hands.
As George was exhorting, it emerged that there's even more torture and abuse going on than we were aware of. Not to mention a bit of Willie Pete going around.
The problem with this is not just the fact that the US continues to turn a blind eye to rough stuff in the cells and uses munitions that some might describe as 'chemical'. Not that it should be condoned or encouraged but this kind of stuff goes on in war. War is bad and bad things happen.
The problem is that in order for the US to appear in a position of world leadership, as it would claim to be, and make pronouncements on human rights outside its own jurisdiction it needs to be whiter then white. Events in Iraq simply hand carte blanche to those regimes such as China which really do have institutionalised human rights abuses.
 The Boxing Day tsunami, which killed about 250,000 people pretty much outright, hit four or five countries. Some of the victims, especially in Thailand, were foreign tourists. And that, said President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan today in an interview with the BBC, is why the West was so swift to help then yet is so slow to make an impact now.
It may be unpalatable, but there may well be some truth in what he says. If the 'international community' is a force for good, then it at times like these that it should galvanize itself. But the relief effort - which is admittedly hampered by terrain, weather and political problems between India and Pakistan over Kashmir - has so far been slow.
Musharraf's other move today could well be interpreted as in indirect snub to the US. He's postponed the purchase of 16 F-16 fighter planes (worth around $400 million for the lot) so as to save money for reconstruction. It's a clever way of making his point, because the realpolitik of East-West relations often comes down to a couple of factors: aid, oil and defence.
So this is an astute way of reminding the US at least of Pakistan's dire position. Excerpt from the interview follows:
Continue reading "Why the West Abandoned Pakistan" »
Switch on the TV or open a newspaper or magazine and what you see or read are events and themes in isolation. Each exists by itself: you watch a programme or read an article and that's it. Nothing more. Over.
 Surf the Internet, on the other hand, and everything is interconnected, part of the overarching phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. And that is a lot more like real life. Things don't happen on their own. They happen for a reason, often a multitude of reasons and they are driven by a host of differing influences.
War, the nineteenth century strategist Karl von Clausewitz once wrote, is a continuation of politics by other means. It is a bold statement of the most simple but the most profound and important of connections. This blog is about war and politics, but more specifically about the inextricable links and parallels between the events we see unfold every day. The things that the papers don't always pick up on, or that the networks don't have time to run.
So, in the true pre-commercial spirit of the Internet, what I aim to write here is not conventional journalism: but maybe journalism by other means.
You can read more about the idea behind this blog on the about page. In summary, my interests are in the global politics that lead to the breakdown of diplomacy and the advent of war, plus the technology and operations of war itself.
And since the events that we know of occur only on this one planet, I also aim to examine the broader contexts of environmental issues - since the depletion of our natural resources and environment are perhaps the biggest single threat that 'the international community' - if such a thing exists - will have to face. If only they would see it.
My personal background is in defence and technology journalism, but in a larger sense I consider myself not a subject of the country I live in but a citizen of the world. In many ways, I am a product of globalisation - born to an Asian father in North America, yet raised in Britain as a European.
I have two passports, Canadian and British, I am entitled to a special 'Person of Indian Origin' permit and for the last couple of years I lived in a country and among a culture quite alien to my own, China. Other than my interests and my general journalistic skills, these are my only qualifications - but that's the beauty of blogging. You don't need to be an expert, just an observer.
My areas of interest are thus these three continents - North America, Europe and Asia - and the relations between them. South America and Africa are not specifically covered (other than under the 'Unrepresented' and perhaps the 'Travel and Miscellany' categories), not because they are unimportant, but in order to keep some kind of focus.
In brief then, I aim to examine the news and events of the day in context, viewing them not in isolation but paying attention to the wheels within wheels that turn to drive the world we live in. As the motto reads, I study war and peace that my sons may study mathematics and philosophy. As a private individual I acknowledge that I don't stand a chance of changing the world, but it's my generation that's got to at least start.
Many thanks for reading, and welcome again to the weblog.
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