Category: Foreign Relations

Angela Merkel Simultaneously Stupid and Wise

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First, it appears that she continues to buy into Hoovernomics, refusing to implement a new stimulus package, and then, shockingly, she mentions the elephant in the room, noting that the EU expanded too quickly, and needs to get its sh%$ together before adding more countries.

I think that the first opinion comes from two places, her early days as a citizen of the DDR (East Germany) makes her dubious of anything that sounds remotely like socialism, and also the institutional German memory of hyperinflation 1919-23, which afflicts Germans on both sides of what was the Berlin wall.

As to her statement that the EU needs a “consolidation phase” before any new members join, which is both correct, and a significant departure from the conventional wisdom in Europe, this is something that is easy for an outsider to recognize, like Paul Krugman, but not for members of the European equivalent of the “Beltway villagers”.

So props to the Chancellor on getting this right.

Sarkozy Fromally Announces France’s Return to NATO Command

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While France has been a part of the mutual defense guarantees for something like 60 years, it left the command structure in 1966 because Charles de Gaulle wanted more independence from the US.

Sarkosy has now Sarkozy announced that France’s military will once again be formally integrated into NATO’s command structure.

I’m not sure if this will last, given that the opposition, and no small number of his own party, are rather hostile to the idea.

UN Discovers that Its War On Drugs Fueled the Drug Cartels

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Anti-narcotics drive fuelled drug cartels: U.N. | International | Reuters:

A U.N. anti-narcotics drive has backfired in part by making drug cartels so rich they can bribe their way through West Africa and Central America, U.N. crime agency chief Antonio Maria Costa said on Wednesday.

The 10-year “war on drugs” campaign had cut drug output and the number of users, he said. But it had a “dramatic unintended consequence” — profit-gorged trafficking gangs destabilizing nations already plagued by poverty, joblessness and HIV-AIDS.

Hoocoodanode?

You mean that increasingly draconian strategies against illegal drugs increases the profit margin for the suppliers who survive, which gets them more sophistication, and influence, and increases corruption and violence in society?

They could have just asked Al Capone’s ghost, and he would have told them that.

Naked Aggression

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The USNS Impeccable was conducting an “ocean mapping mission” in the South China Sea when she was confronted by Chinese ships, who maneuvered close to her and attempted to snag her towed sonar array:

The exposure came as the American vessel USNS Impeccable was attempting to defend itself against what the Pentagon claimed was co-ordinated harassment and aggression from five Chinese ships. Being unarmed, the Impeccable turned its fire water hoses against two of the Chinese vessels that had come within 50 feet in a threatening posture.

Then, the Pentagon records in the admirably restrained language of international diplomacy, “the Chinese crew members disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet.”

(emphasis mine)

OK, it’s not naked aggression, it’s semi-naked aggression, but still…..

It should be noted that the ship was actually on an intelligence gathering mission:

The U.S. Navy’s description of the incident states that “a civilian crew mans the ship, which operates under the auspices of the Military Sealift Command.” Yet as one of five ocean surveillance ships, the USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS 23) has the important military mission of using its array of both passive and active low frequency sonar arrays to detect and track submarines. The USNS Impeccable works directly with the Navy’s fleets, and in 2007 operated with the three-carrier strike battle group in Valiant Shield 07 exercise in the Western Pacific.

USNS Impeccable is equipped with the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), a passive linear underwater surveillance array attached to a tow cable. SURTASS was developed as a floating submarine detection system for deep waters, and the Navy wants to add an active Low Frequency Array (LFA) to improve long-range detection of submarines in shallow waters.

Note that the ship was only about 75 miles from the Yulin naval base, where the Chinese have based their most advanced SSN, the Shang-class (Type-093), and that the Impeccable does carry the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS).

I’m not sure if they recording acoustic signatures, or recording operations, or both, but this was not just an ocean mapping expedition.

The US government is claiming illegal harassment in international waters, and the Chinese government is claiming a violation of their sovereignty.

It’s probably a bit of both.

Obama Starts Dialog With Medvedev on BMD

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Barack Obama dispatched a letter to Dmitri Medvedev suggesting that the installations in the Czech Republic and Poland are not a done deal, and that if they can come to a meeting of the minds on Iran, this could be called off.

The installations have always been wrong headed, improperly located, and provocative,* so this is a bit of good news.

*I’ve always said that the provocative bit was a feature, not a bug. A bellicose and militaristic Russia benefits the ‘Phants and their defense contractor friends.

If There Is An Organization More Capable of Sabotaging Itself Than Fatah…

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It appears that there was a deal to open the borders to Gaza. It seems to have involved a prisoner release by Israel and the PA in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, but PA walked away from the deal, “because the Fatah officials believed it would weaken them.”

These guys really don’t have a clue. If Hamas releases Shalit, is ready to release Shalit, even with a significant release by the Israelis is going to be a net minus for Hamas, because it removes a bargaining chip from their hand, and because it means that they have negotiated a deal.

But the leadership of the PA is so damn timid, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Fear and Loathing in Euro Missile Defense

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Click Pictures for full size images
Tehran to DC


Masshad to Washington, DC


Masshad to San Francisco


Masshad to Rome


Masshad to Madrid


Masshad to Istambul


Masshad to Athens


Masshad to Chicago

I’m thoroughly skeptical of BMD systems to begin with, particularly the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.

The technology for decoys is simply too easy, it’s basically the same as the shiny metalized children’s balloons you can get at party city, and striking a reentry vehicle when closing speeds are in excess of a mile per second seems to me to involve awfully long odds.

I call it “faith based missile defense,” and one of the earliest goals of the Bush administration was to ensure that it be deployed into service come hell or high water, on the theory that once it was there, it would be politically costly to remove it.

OK, so we all know the game, scary Persians are going to lob an IRBM at Europe, so we have to put an Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system into Poland, so as to protect everyone.

Thing is, Poland is a pretty crappy place to put a BMD system to protect our NATO allies, and this installation, along with the associated radar at Brdy in the Czech Republic* and it’s gotten the Russians absolutely batsh$# insane.

If you figure out the trajectory of a Ballistic missile,† and the tools to the this can be found in a number of places on the web, the location does not make sense.

It does not protect Turkey, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, or southern France.

I’ve had discussions with people sho have suggested that it would protect the eastern seaboard, and it would, if you launched the missiles from downtown Tehran, but just like our ballistic missiles are not located on Washington DC or Crystal City, it’s unlikely that they would put their installation there.

They would want to locate it as far away from a potential aircraft carrier, NATO airbases in Turkey, and the US base at Diego Garcia.

This would put a missile base in the North East corner of the country about 500 miles east of Tehran, in the general vicinity of Masshad, the 2nd largest city in Iran.

Suddenly that interceptor in poland does not do such a good job protecting the east coast.

For an attack on the West Coast, it’s path is too far from either Poland, or the base at Fort Greely, and the installation at Vandenberg seems iffy for covering San Francisco and points north.

Now, the folks the Missile defense agency claim that the installation in Poland is unable to intercept Russian ICBMs (bottom picture), but unsurprisingly the Russians do not believe them.

The Russians did offer a site at Qabala, which they rent from Azerbaijan, if the US dropped the Polish installation, but the respons, at least by Bush and His Evil Minions™ was to go pound sand.

In any case, it’s clear that Azerbaijan, Turkmenestan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia would be prime locations for such a site, though there are serious political issues there, but sites in Turkey, Romania, or Bulgaria would provide better coverage of Europe, and might have a shot at intercepting something headed for Chicagoland, which none of the current installations do.

*In fact, the radar, which can surveil all the airspace in European Russia, may be more of a sticking point than the missile base in Poland.
†I used Google Maps. Go there, then click “my maps”, and then click on “browse the directory”, and click on the distance measurement tool, and it will compute great circle‡ distances, which is what modern aircraft, and ballistic missiles, do .
‡It’s the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. The straight line on a Mercator projection is actually longer. It’s what you would get if you used a globe, and a tight string between two points on that globe.

Israel Demanding Shalit Return in Exchange for Truce

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It’s not going to happen, because if Hamas cuts a deal to release Shalit, even if it gets a truce and (somewhat more) open borders, it cuts its own throat.

Because Hamas’ credibility comes in large part from its absolutist positions,* a negotiation which results in Shalit’s release would be seen by many of their supporters as a capitulation and a defeat, and this would compromise their political viability, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

The short form is that if Hamas did this, they would be signing their own death warrant.

*I was going to use the “takes no prisoners” metaphor, but given the situation here, it just doesn’t work.

Kyrgyzstan Makes it Official

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The Kyrgyz ruling party voted to close the airbases.

It comes down to three things:

  • The Kyrgyz wanted a better deal.
  • The initial deal mostly gave money to family the now overthrown despot, and the Kyrgyz were honked off by that.
  • A Kyrgyz citizen was shot on base by a US soldier, and no meaning action was taken by US authorities against the soldier, inflaming local anger.

This, along with Russia giving them a better offer, was more than enough for them to kick us out of their airbase.

Ahhhh….Sweet Sanity

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It appears that U.S. and Iran will be working together to combat the Afghan drug trade.

This is basic common sense. Diplomacy can be based on common values or common interests, and there is a common interest here: The Shias in Iran, and the Sunni Taliban hate each other, the Taliban going so far as to murder Iranian diplomats, and Iran as a huge drug problem, with supplies from Afghanistan at its root.

There is a common interest here, and it can be the basis of joint action.

Some Sanity in Missile Defense

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It’s only a one paragraph blurb (paid subscription required), but it appears that Robert Gates is moving toward more cooperation with Russia on missile defense, “In his first appearance before Congress as a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, he says mutual missile defense projects with Moscow are not as far-fetched as recent events would suggest.”

When this is juxtaposed with the fact that the Czech parliament has placed an indefinite delay on a on a vote approving the missile defense radar, it would appear that using BMD to poke Russia in the with a stick is no longer the order of the day.

A Challenge to NATO?

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Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have agreed to form a joint quick reaction force with a, “joint command and be based permanently on Russian territory.”

It does not appear to be a particularly large force, it looks like perhaps a brigade, but it does imply an upgrade to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which appears to be an attempt at a counterweight to NATO.

Kyrgyzstan To Close US Airbase

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President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan Kjust announced his intention to close the Manas air base at a press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

He is claiming that the US is not paying enough, and my guess is that the Russian aid also announced influenced him:

Russia, meanwhile, was ready to pay. The Kyrgyz president collected pledges of a $2-billion discounted loan and a $150-million grant. The Russian government also agreed to cancel Kyrgyzstan’s $180-million debt and to build a hydroelectric power plant.

I think that Russia does not want Afghanistan to fall back into the Taliban’s hands, but I also think that they see the bases in former Warsaw Pact and FSU nations as being a deliberate attempt to create a “ring of steel” in order to contain Russia.

I think that there are elements in the US military, and elements in the past administration (Cheney, Rice, etc.) who have been rather strong supporters of the “ring of steel” concept, so it’s not like they are paranoid for nothing.

From a tactical perspective, the loss of Manas is crushing, as it will, leave Pakistan as the only supply route available.

Iceland Looking to Join EU

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Or possibly to just adopt the Euro as its currency.

It looks like they may be making an application in the next few months.

One complication is that the new governing coalition would be at odds over this, with the Social Democrats favoring it, and the Left Greens opposing it.

There will be an election in May, and I think that the Left Greens will do well, if just because the Social Dems were previously in coalition with the Independence Party, and so had a hand in creating the laissez-faire policies that have left them in a lurch.

Obama Considering Ditching Karzai

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Not a bad idea, since Karzai and his people are about the only people on the face of the earth worse at governance than Bush and His Evil Minions™:

The Bush administration’s close ties to the corrupt and ineffective Karzai government kept it in power long past its expiration date. During his tesimony, Gates wouldn’t say corruption reached into the “highest” levels of the Afghan government when prodded by one senator, settling for a more political “high levels” of government.

Since the Afghan people view the government in Kabul as corrupt, our propping it up does us no favors. Which is one of the reasons why Obama’s choice for Afghanistan/Pakistan special envoy, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, is such welcome news. Speaking last year at CSIS, Holbrooke made it clear he views Karzai as part of the problem, not the solution. He said the U.S. must stop trying to bolster the Karzai government in Kabul, which he called “weak and corrupt,” and focus more on governance in the provinces. “I don’t believe you can have a strong unitary government running the country from Kabul, its going to be a loosely governed country.” There is little risk of Afghanistan fragmenting, like so many feared might happen in Iraq, he said, as Afghans do not have “separatist tendencies.”

Gee, you think?

FWIW, I do not think that this was malice on the part of Bush, just an unwillingness to admit error.

I’m beginning to think that the willingness to admit error is among the rarest, and most beneficial, traits in a politician.

Zimbabwe Update

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It seems that on the way out of office, Bush issued an order making it legal to sell arms to Zimbabwe. He found that, “Furnishing of defense articles and defense services to the Southern African Development Community will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace,” which authorizes sales to Zimbabwe too.

Meanwhile, the MDC is finally flat out saying that Mbeki is unacceptable as a mediator, which they should have done many months ago.

Of course, Mbeki is still there and mediating, and doing his best to enable Mugabe.

We also have reports of Senior MDC officials being arrested, along with reports of plans for an iminent arrest of Morgan Tsvangerai, head of the MDC.

Unsurprisingly, the most recent set of talks on powersharing have failed.

Is a Negotiated Solution Involving Gaza and the West Bank Even Possible?

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Regardless of the final status of a negotiated solution regarding Israel and a Palestinian entity (or entities, with the West Bank and Gaza going separate ways), there will doubtless be compromises on both sides that will outrage significant constituencies on both sides of this dispute.

Whether one is talking about East Jerusalem, the “Right of Return”, water rights, transit rights, etc., it there will be provisions that people on one side or the other will not be happy about.

If one, for the moment, ignores the substance of these compromises, and agrees to the existence of these compromises, it raises an interesting question: Is there actually anyone in the Palestinian community who can negotiate such a deal and survive long enough to make it stick?

We know that the compromises of Michael Collins with regard to the 6 northern counties or Ireland were directly responsible for his death at the hands of anti-Treaty faction of the IRA.

The important thing to remember in the case of Michael Collins is that despite his death the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was a done deal, and remained a done deal.

While there is a a real possibility of political assassination, as a result of successful negotiations, it has already happened with Rabin in Israel, but on the Palestinian side there is a real possibility that with the assassination and/or the overthrow of of whoever signs such a deal will abnegate whatever deal that is signed.

Hamas is for the foreseeable future without the institutional imperatives to even enter into such a negotiation, and on the PA side, Mahmoud Abbas carries the moral weight of Hillary Duff.

He’s a party apparatchik who survives through appeasing the various factions and playing them off one against the other, and as such it is unlikely that he would have the political ability to survive a successful final status negotiation.

So, the question is how does one create an environment that will facilitate the creation a movement and/or leader in the Territories that will have the political and moral infrastructure to allow for a successful negotiation?