Indian Strategic Studies: 04/09/15

9 April 2015

Saving tigers caught in the headlights

NEHA SINHA

April 9, 2015

On April 6, a unique State Environment and Forest Ministers’ conference took place in New Delhi, the first of its kind under the Narendra Modi government. The Prime Minister, Ministers of State for environment and forests and other officials discussed agenda items related to the environment, and worked towards finalising proposed changes to India’s environmental laws. These agenda items, in the Ministry’s terms, included clearances, ease of doing business, and development.

While there has been a lot of rhetoric in the past few months over ‘balancing’ environment and development, the acid test for this complex issue is still in the making. Perhaps one of the most classic trials is unfolding in the backyard of Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh: the playground for Rudyard Kipling’s man-cub Mowgli, the site for one of India’s most impressive tiger landscapes in India, and the location for the proposed expansion of a newer, wider, National Highway (NH). The question is: who gets to cross the road: a truck, a tourist car, or a tiger?

A meeting in Paris

SAMIR SARAN

April 9, 2015

There is quite an air of anticipation around the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to France. The government’s foreign policy pace has been enviable, and Narendra Modi has demonstrated a remarkable aptitude in gauging the mood and the space to manoeuvre with various partners. He has revitalised old relationships and lent them his energy. He has also achieved some real strategic gains, such as the one in Seychelles. The visit to France is pregnant with possibilities that are rooted in a historic context and which now need to be leveraged on a broader plane.

France has always been a critical partner to India in high technology areas. Its bid to aid India in the diversification of its defence sector began as early as 1953, when the Dassault-Ouragan fighters were supplied to the India Air Force and played a leading role in the 1961 liberation of Goa. Significantly, when India-U.K. defence relations soured in the 1970s, France emerged as the only western power willing to supply India with state-of-the-art weaponry and support its space programme and nuclear development.

Implications of nuclear deal

G Parthasarathy

Apr 9 2015

Few developments have so significantly occupied international attention ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 as the hostility between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. Tensions in US-Iran relations escalated when Iranian students supporting the Ayatollah Khomeini-led revolution attacked the US Embassy on November 4, 1979, taking 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. The students labelled their action as a "conquest of the American spy den". The students who engineered the hostage crisis painstakingly put together shredded documents which revealed the extent of CIA interference in Iran's domestic affairs. The US had turned a blind eye and tacitly condoned the atrocities of the Shah's intelligence services (SAVAK). The Khomeini dispensation viewed Israel's role similarly.

Relations continued to deteriorate with the Iranians calling the US as the “Great Satan” and vowing to eliminate Israel. The US labelled Iran as constituting an “Axis of Evil”. Covert operations fomenting violence were undertaken extensively by all concerned. The intensity of these operations increased after Iran commenced obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities, primarily through uranium enrichment with crucial assistance from Pakistan’s Dr A.Q. Khan.

Modi and the middle powers

By C Raja Mohan

April 9, 2015

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France, Germany and Canada beginning Thursday should help New Delhi consolidate three of India’s very special relationships. France was the first Western power to become a strategic partner for India and can now turbocharge India’s high technology sectors. Germany is an economic powerhouse with growing political clout in Europe and beyond. Canada and India are colonial cousins, with a shared Anglo-Saxon political heritage and massive economic synergies. Canada is also home to one of our most important overseas communities.

Until now, Modi has been preoccupied with rejuvenating ties with America and China. He has had two quick summits with US President Barack Obama and is preparing for the second round with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month in Beijing. The Modi government has also sought to improve relations with neighbours in the subcontinent and reconnect with the extended neighbourhood in Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Modi’s visit to France and ‘The Make in India’ project

08 Apr , 2015

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is embarking on a 9-day tour abroad during which he will visit France, Germany and Canada. His first stop will be in Paris (April 9-12).

A few comments on his visit to France:

The good news first

On April 6, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar ‘undocked’ the first of the six Scorpene submarines to be built in collaboration with France under Project 75, at the Mazagon Docks Limited (MDL).

The ceremony for ‘floating out’ the first Scorpene submarine was an occasion for Mr. Parrikar to review the progress of the Project 75, in collaboration with DCNS of France.

After the ‘undocking’, for the first time the submarine entered into waters (with the help of a pontoon).

An Indian Navy official told the media: “While the launch would be a more significant event, the floating out of Scorpene will commence its sea trials and more importantly, clear the dry dock that it presently occupies for the construction of the next one.”

Indian Navy: Anti Missile Defence Systems

By Vice Adm (Retd) GM Hiranandani

08 Apr , 2015

In the 1971 Indo–Pakistan War, small 200 ton missile boats acquired from Russia attacked ships patrolling outside Karachi harbour. The radar homing heads of these liquid fuelled missiles successfully homed on, and, with two missiles, in two minutes devastated and sank a much larger and powerful 3000-ton Pakistan Navy destroyer from a range well outside the range of the destroyer’s guns. From the point of view of naval tactics, the advent of such missiles heralded a revolution in the centuries-old-tactics of battle between naval ships by transforming gun battles within visual range to missile encounters much beyond visual range. This development also transformed the nature of the threat because, without any warning, missiles could, by day or by night, regardless of weather, approach their targets at near sonic speed and inflict fatal damage.

Is the US About to Sell 1,000 Missiles to Pakistan?

By Franz-Stefan Gady

April 07, 2015

The U.S. State Department has approved Pakistan’s request for a possible sale of U.S. military hardware that includes attack helicopters, missiles, and communications equipment at an estimated cost of $952 million, according to an April 6 press statementof the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) is the lead agency within the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for arms sales, training and services to allies, and maintaining military-to-military contacts with allied nations.

“This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a country vital to U.S. foreign policy and national security goals in South Asia,” the DSCA said in the release.

Ashraf Ghani: America’s New Subedar?

April 07, 2015

Six months after assuming office, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has finally made his choice of selecting a strategic partner amid questions over what the future holds for Afghanistan given the continuing uncertainty. Following Ghani’s visit to Washington on 23 March 2015, at least the anxieties surrounding the post-drawdown situation seemed to have been put to rest. Ghani fervently pleaded for a slowdown of the withdrawal timeline suggesting that a delay "will pay off the investments over the last 14 years." His plea seemingly found ready acceptance. President Obama said it is “well worth it” and agreed to prolong the withdrawal timeline until 2017 despite an earlier pledge to cut the currently deployed 9,800 troops by half to 5,500 by the end of this year.

President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah renewed the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with the United States and secured more US commitments for stabilizing Afghanistan. This came a week after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2210 (2015) on 16 March 2015, which presented a positive report card of achievements and expressed a “renewed hope” for a stable Afghanistan ahead.

Have Myanmar’s Armed Forces Gone Too Far?

By Hunter Marston and Andrew Morgan

April 08, 2015

In one week in March, Myanmar’s Army bombed territory inside China, killing five Chinese farmers, while police forces beat and arrested protesters around the country for peacefully demonstrating in Yangon and Letpadaung. Does this stepped-up aggression mark the return to a military authoritarian state?

Not necessarily: Myanmar has long struggled to contain armed ethnic groups that rely on networks across the porous border with China’s southern Yunnan province, and Myanmar’s Peaceful Assembly Law, which has drawn criticism from international observers, allows the security sector to step in if it deems actions harmful to the state. However, the fact that these two events happened in such quick succession is cause for concern, and Myanmar’s government must go further to grant full legal protection to peaceful demonstrators. Additionally, President Thein Sein’s administration must do more to demonstrate that the civilian government exercises full authority over the military branch.

Myanmar Peace process: India’s official participation

MARCH 21, 2015

New Delhi is all set to play an official role in the peace talk between Myanmar government and the rebel groups. The former rebel leader and the current supreme leader of the Mizo National Front (MNF) Zoramthanga had earlier visited Naypitaw in January, 2015 to hold peace talk with the Minister in Charge of peace talk with the ethnic group, U Aung Min. He was accompanied by MNF General Headquarter secretary, Rosangzuala and an official from Delhi. Later he flew to Bangkok to hold peace talk with various ethnic rebel groups. This meeting was a follow up of the discussion held in October, 2014 at New Delhi between Zoramthanga and Dessislava Roussanova, one of the team members of the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair on brokering peace in Myanmar. The outcome of the first meeting was quite positive with the Myanmar’s central government and the 16 ethnic rebel groups agreeing to visit India and study the Mizo Accord. The Mizo Accord was signed between the Rajiv Gandhi government and the then rebel Mizo National Front in July 1986 to end the two decade long violent conflict. Although his first visit to Naypitaw and Bangkok was with the knowledge of the Prime Minister Office (PMO) but not its official sanction. This was because New Delhi was apprehensive of its involvement in the internal affairs of Myanmar and decided to take slow and measured steps.

The Evolving Jihad in South Asia

By Arif Rafiq

April 07, 2015

Relations between Islamabad and Kabul have taken a turn for the better in recent months. Though it’s unclear whether the positive momentum can be sustained, strong ties between the neighboring Muslim states pose an existential threat to some jihadist groups in the region, which benefit from the patronage and weakness of both countries. As a result, Pakistani Taliban factions are closing ranks; al-Qaeda aims to subvert peace talks between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban; and jihadists connected to the Islamic State appear to be seeking to establish a foothold in the region through sectarian violence. Burying the Hatchet?

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s assumption of power last fall marked the end of the toxic Hamid Karzai era, providing Kabul and Islamabad with an opportunity for a fresh start in bilateral relations. Ghani has been keen to be on the good side of the Pakistani military. Toward this goal, he has distanced his government from India and reversed support for Pakistani Taliban factions based in Afghanistan.

China's Plan to Obliterate American Supremacy

Richard Javad Heydarian

April 8, 2015

America’s strategic primacy in Asia is at stake. China’s astute economic diplomacy—aimed at challenging the Bretton Woods system (BWS) of global governance—and accelerated construction activities in the South China Sea, an artery of global trade, are chipping away at the very foundations of the decades-long U.S.-led order in Asia. And a whole range of U.S. partners, from the Philippines to Vietnam to Japan, are anxiously watching China’s ever-expanding shadow across the Asia-Pacific theater.

On the economic front, the United Kingdom’s early-March decision to join the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has irreversibly cracked the U.S.-led siege against the proposed financial body.

Should America Really Fear China's Military?

By Harry Kazianis

April 5, 2015

China’s military is growing in terms of raw power and basic power projection. Many of Beijing’s defense investments over the last two decades are aimed at limiting Washington’s ability to intervene in areas that China describes as being of “core interest.” But just how much should Washington worry about it? A good question, for sure. The answer, however, is as not as black and white as many might want it to be. And just how much should America prepare to duel with such anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) forces in the future?

Let’s start with the obvious: While various A2/AD combat scenarios can paint a decidedly bleak picture for America and its allies in Asia in the event of a conflict with China, there are a number of reasons such a war will never come to pass in the first place.

Managing China’s Missile Threat: Future Options to Preserve Forward Defense

By Evan B. Montgomery

April 1, 2015

In this testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Dr. Evan Montgomery discusses the implications of China’s offensive missile force. He argues that in the face of an eroding conventional military advantage in the Western Pacific, the United States faces acute challenges to its forward defense posture. Fielding offensive missile forces might partially ameliorate this problem, enhancing deterrence and improving crisis stability. While the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia prohibits the United States from testing and deploying surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, Russia has not complied with the Treaty’s restrictions and China is not a party to the Treaty. Withdrawing from or revising the Treaty could bolster U.S. Western Pacific defense posture and potentially drive a wedge between China and Russia.Download PDF

Chinese AWACS Aircraft Now Operational

strategypage.com

April 6, 2015

Less than two years after being spotted in the air for the first time the new Chinese KJ-500 AWACS (Air Warning And Control System) aircraft has entered service. The KJ-500 AWACS can track over 60 aircraft at ranges of up to 470 kilometers. The KJ-500 aircraft looks more like the American AWACS (with a round radar dome on top) but is smaller and carried by the Y-9 four engine turboprop aircraft (similar to the U.S. C-130). The KJ-200 designs used the smaller Y-8 aircraft and a long box-like radar array on top of the aircraft. The KJ-500 will supplement and eventually replace the current eleven KJ-200 (also called the KJ-2000) that has been in service since 2005. There are also four of the export model (ZDK-03) in Pakistan. Pakistan paid $300 million each for these KJ-200 variants.

China has been developing its own AWACS since the 1990s, ever since the U.S. forced Israel to back off selling China the Phalcon AWACS (because it used some American technology). China then bought some AWACS from Russia, while hustling to develop their own. The Chinese Air Force was not happy with its four IL-76 AWACS (A-50s from Russia, converted to use Chinese KJ-200 radar systems) and smaller systems carried in the Chinese made Y-8 aircraft. The Chinese claim that their phased array AWACS is similar to, and superior in some respects, to the Phalcon radar they tried to buy from the Israelis. The Chinese were to pay about the same price for each of the four Phalcon systems they sought to get from Israel that they are charging Pakistan.

THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM AND ITS BUREAUCRAT-IN-CHIEF

April 8, 2015

During negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, President Obama repeatedly pressed the intelligence community to make a determinative judgment on the real intentions of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. The intelligence community remained divided, however, and failed to come to a consensus on Khamenei’s policy goals.

Writing in 2009, Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment described Khamenei as “the single most powerful individual in a highly factionalized, autocratic regime” even though “he does not make national decisions on his own.” Instead, Sadjadpour notes, he rules “the country by consensus rather than decree, with his own survival and that of the theocratic system as his top priorities.”

Iran: All About the Nukes?

Frederic C. Hof

April 7, 2015

Imagine a fistfight between a National Football League lineman and say, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Imagine the lineman, after effortlessly decking the Senior Fellow, offering a second round, but with one key difference: each fighter would be armed with a .38 Special. Why, you may ask, would the football behemoth offer to level the playing field in such a potentially fatal manner? One might just as well ask why Iran—absent any credible threat of external regime change to the Islamic Republic—would want to prompt the proliferation of nuclear weapons in its neighborhood by acquiring one itself. Why would Iran, which uses its sheer size and weight to intervene with impunity where it pleases in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and elsewhere, wish to turn every such intervention into a potentially fatal nuclear encounter?

Peddling Peace: Selling the Iran Deal

Daniel R. DePetris

April 8, 2015

For those who are willing to take an impartial and unbiased look at theComprehensive Joint Plan of Action signed between P5+1 and Iranian negotiators on April 2, there is a lot to be happy about.

Whether it’s the two-thirds reduction in Tehran’s centrifuge stockpile (under the deal, 20,000 machines will go down to approximately 6,000), the rigorous verification and inspection regime that will ensure that Iran is meeting its commitments, or the cap on the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran is allowed to keep in-country, it’s difficult to argue that Washington and its partners didn’t receive the bulk of the concessions.

Yet, with that being said, there is an incredible amount of skepticism in Washington about what the Obama administration has achieved in this agreement.

3 Ways to Judge the Iran Nuclear Deal

April 7, 2015

Last week's announcement that the P5+1 and Iran had reached agreement on the parameters for a comprehensive nuclear deal has, unsurprisingly, provoked heated debate. This is despite the fact that there is still no deal yet.

Although the Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action say a lot – perhaps more than we were expecting – about what a deal would look like, the detail still needs to be negotiated (by the end of June). This has not stopped people rushing to judge the parameters. It helps, of course, if you have already made up your mind about whether negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program is a bad thing or a good thing.

I would argue that there three ways to judge the Parameters: on its own merits; in comparison to alternatives; and in the context of future US policy in the Middle East.

America Immobilized as Iran-Saudi Arabia Proxy War Turns Bloody

Alastair Crooke

07/04/2015

BEIRUT -- The Middle East plainly gets it now: the U.S., after wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, inter alia, does not want to decisively intervene with military force in the region's many complicated conflicts. Rather, it wishes to "re-balance" the region's major powers -- to strike an equilibrium of antagonisms -- and wishes them to sort issues out amongst themselves. "This is your sectarian problem; you deal with it," was how one Saudi commentator described the American attitude toward Saudi Arabia's complaints about Houthi actions in Yemen.

It is hoped that such balance -- if it is achieved -- will allow America to stand aloof from the Middle Eastern centrifuge, which always seems to suck America back into its internecine quarrels. The involvement of special forces is a different matter, in Washington's perspective: this, together with financial information, drones and cyber war, represents one tool by which the U.S. can manage the situation, tipping it one way or another in line with shifting interests. The nuclear talks are about bringing Iran into the new balance.

Russia Nervously Eyes the U.S.-Iran Deal

APRIL 7, 2015

When a group of weary diplomats announced a framework for an Iranian nuclear accord last week in Lausanne, there was one diplomat in the mix whose feigned enthusiasm was hard to miss. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left the talks at their most critical point March 30, much to the annoyance of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who apparently had to call him personally to persuade him to return. Even as Lavrov spoke positively to journalists about the negotiations throughout the week, he still seemed to have better things to do than pull all-nighters for a deal that effectively gives the United States one less problem to worry about in the Middle East and a greater capacity to focus on the Russian periphery.

Russia has no interest in seeing a nuclear-armed Iran in the neighborhood, but the mere threat of an unshackled Iranian nuclear program and a hostile relationship between Washington and Tehran provided just the level of distraction Moscow needed to keep the United States from committing serious attention to Russia's former Soviet sphere.

With the Iran Deal, the U.S. Returns to a Better Foreign-Policy Model

BY JOHN CASSIDY

APRIL 6, 2015

I’ll be taking this week off from serious stuff and devoting my time to the Masters golf tournament. But before I disappear, a few words about the Iranian nuclear deal, which is clearly going to dominate the U.S. political agenda over the next few months. Now that we’ve had a few days to examine the Geneva framework, and the interpretations placed upon it by both sides, three things strike me.

If the U.S. interpretation of the deal is accurate, the Iranians have made significant concessions, allowing restrictions to be placed on each of their nuclear installations, including ones whose existence they denied for a long time. It’s for this reason that even some critics of the Obama Administration’s negotiating strategy, such as Gary Samore, of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, have hailed the provisional agreement.

Will Israel's New Advanced Submarines Carry Nuclear Weapons?

April 7, 2015

The first of Israel’s new super advanced submarines is about to enter service, according to local news reports.

In recent days, a number of Israeli and other news sources have said that the INS Tanin is nearing the end of its testing, and will soon enter service with the Israeli navy. The Tanin first arrived in Israel from Germany in September of last year. It is the first of three new Dolphin submarines that Tel Aviv is purchasing from Germany.

“Israeli Navy personnel – together with crews from the defense industry – are executing the final sets of tests of the advanced weapons, communications, and intelligence systems added to the sub after its arrival from Germany in September,” YNet news outlet reportedlast week.

By Franz-Stefan Gady

April 08, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/russian-submarine-catches-fire/

Today, RT reported that a fire broke out on a nuclear-powered submarine at the Zvezdochka ship repair center in the Arkhangelsk region in Northern Russia.

The incident occurred aboard the K-266 Oryol, anOscar II-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSGN), which is part of Russia’s Northern Fleet. According to a spokesperson of the Zvezdochka dockyards, no weapons were on board when the fire broke out.

“The nuclear fuel from the ‘Orel’ was unloaded when the submarine arrived for maintenance to the dry dock. The reactor has been shut down. No workers or members of the crew were harmed during the fire,” Ilya Zhitomirsky, the spokesperson emphasized.

How Iran Would Go to War against America

By Harry Kazianis

April 6, 2015

While all sides here in Washington battle to shape public opinion over the Iran nuclear deal, we should not kid ourselves—this is not Obama’s “Nixon goes to China” moment, nor should we expect Air Force one to touch down in Tehran anytime soon.

Call me a pessimist, but I am not that impressed. There is a long way to go from a “framework” to an actual hard deal—with decades of mistrust making the road to a deal even longer and tougher. So before we start awarding Nobel Prizes, a hard look at the facts when it comes to the U.S.-Iranian relationship are in order.

Russia's Stealth Fighter Is in Serious Trouble

By Robert Beckhusen

April 6, 2015

Just a short time ago, Russia planned to have 52 advanced T-50 stealth fighters by the end of the decade. At least, that was the plan.

Now the T-50 program appears to be in serious trouble, and Russia may cut back the fighters to a fraction of the planned strength.

The first sign something was very wrong appeared last month. On March 24. Yuri Borisov, Russia’s deputy defense minister for armaments, told theKommersant newspaper that the military is drastically cutting its number of T-50s. Instead of 52 stealth fighters, Russia will build merely 12 of them.

Russia Nervously Eyes the U.S.-Iran Deal

April 8, 2015

When a group of weary diplomats announced a framework for an Iranian nuclear accord last week in Lausanne, there was one diplomat in the mix whose feigned enthusiasm was hard to miss. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left the talks at their most critical point March 30, much to the annoyance of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who apparently had to call him personally to persuade him to return. Even as Lavrov spoke positively to journalists about the negotiations throughout the week, he still seemed to have better things to do than pull all-nighters for a deal that effectively gives the United States one less problem to worry about in the Middle East and a greater capacity to focus on the Russian periphery.

Obama Wrecked U.S.-Egypt Ties

April 8, 2015

Last Tuesday, during a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, President Obama outlined a mixed, but nonetheless significant shift in U.S. policy towards Egypt.

On the one hand, Obama released the weapons systems—12 F-16 jets, 20 Harpoon missiles, and as many as 125 Abrams “tank kits”—that had been withheld from Egypt since October 2013. But on the other hand, Obama ended the policy of cash-flow financing, which enabled Egypt to use future aid to buy weapons on credit–a benefit that only Israel now enjoys.

America's Air Force Is Getting Really Old

Janine Davidson, Sam Ehrlich

April 7, 2015

U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James visited the Council on Foreign Relations late last month to discuss the present and future of the Air Force. James, who was confirmed as the twenty-third Secretary of the Air Force in December 2013, spoke on a number of capabilities and institutional challenges within the Air Force, everything from the nuclear enterprise reform to proposed platform retirement. Her bottom line—repeated often—was that available resources are falling far short of the Air Force’s growing responsibilities.

- In operations against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Air Force has conducted 70 percent of the roughly 2,800 coalition airstrikes across Iraq and Syria. Additionally, the Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms have helped coordinate the missions and actions of all other coalition partners.

Amartya Sen: India's dirty fighter

Madeleine Bunting

Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom

The roses are blooming at the window in the immaculately kept gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge and Amartya Sen is comfortably ensconced in a cream armchair facing shelves of his neatly catalogued writings. There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction as he approaches his 80th birthday. Few intellectuals have combined academic respect and comparable influence on global policy. Few have garnered quite such an extensive harvest of accolades: in addition to his Nobel prize and more than 100 honorary degrees, last year he became the first non-US citizen to be awarded the National Medal for the Humanities.

But Sen doesn't do satisfaction. He does outrage expressed in the most reasonable possible terms. What he wants to know is where more than 600 million Indians go to defecate.

PROJECT VULCAN: SPECIAL OPS AND THE TECH INNOVATION END GAME

Anthony Davis, James Geurts, Adam Jay Harrison, Jawad Rachami andChristopher Zember

April 8, 2015

The technology world is accelerating at faster and faster rates – a development that has major implications for the U.S. defense establishment.

Historically, the Department of Defense (DOD) has emphasized internal research and development as the cornerstone of a military-technology strategy, but such an approach requires considerable time and money. There is another often-overlooked component of technology competitiveness, however, that has come to play an increasingly important role in the marketplace and on the battlefield. Applied innovation is the modification or integration of legacy and emerging technologies for new purposes. Today, the center of gravity for research and development is the global commercial marketplace, and the military-technology initiative is shifting to those organizations with the ability to build and exploit information asymmetries regarding the sources and uses of technology (i.e. arbitrage). In this context, technology itself is a commodity with value creation occurring through the rapid identification and deployment of novel applications that are greatly superior to legacy products and methods or what the venture capital community refers to as “killer apps.” More than ever before, DOD’s future technology edge will be predicated on its ability to sense and exploit these killer apps ahead of the threat.

Promoting Norms for Cyberspace

Henry Farrell, Associate Professor, George Washington University.

April 2015

The United States defined its preferred cyberspace norms—Internet openness, security, liberty, free speech, and with minimal government oversight and surveillance—in its 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace. Although the United States has had little success so far in establishing norms against commercial espionage in cyberspace, it has had some early gains with the recognition that international law applies to state activity in cyberspace and that human rights protections that apply offline also apply online.

These efforts to define shared norms have been accompanied by a process of norm promotion that suffered a significant setback in the summer of 2013 with the Snowden disclosures. The U.S. government should reinvigorate its efforts to spread and encourage the adoption of its preferred norms with the following steps:

What Would Thucydides Say?

By James R. Holmes

April 7, 2015

WWTS? What would Thucydides say?

Glad you asked. This is World War I week for our senior course in Newport. That’s when I lecture on the statecraft of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and review America’s part in the Great War. The conflict remains a cipher in large measure, fully a century after armies dug trenches along the Western Front and stalemate set in.

Historians still quarrel about its causes, and wonder why the fighting dragged on for so long—and at such frightful cost—considering the modest goals the combatants entertained. Seldom is consulting classical antiquity a bad way to grapple with such complex, or mercurial, or obscure matters. Over the years the father of history has helped me puzzle out topics from Taiwan’s defense strategy to the impact of demographic decline on grand strategy to China’s and Russia’s aircraft-carrier ambitions.

Is Japan’s New ‘Helicopter Destroyer’ an ‘Aircraft Carrier’?

BY JAMES HOLMES

APRIL 7, 2015

Size matters. But rhetoric matters even more. Is the Izumo, the ship Japan calls a “helicopter destroyer,” really an “aircraft carrier in disguise,” as Chinese commentators allege? The vessel was commissioned into the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) in late March: Judging from the number of stories repeating the phrase “aircraft carrier in disguise” since then, many foreign commentators seem to think so. This suggests that Beijing, not Tokyo, is telling the more compelling story about Japan’s purposes in putting aviation-capable ships to sea.

Military Intervention Is Tricky — Here’s How Not to Do It

By PETER DÖRRIE

A wave of terrible conflicts ripped through the African continent in the 1990s — the Rwandan genocide, the Congo wars and many smaller civil conflicts. They caused immense human suffering, millions of deaths.

And they laid bare the complete inability of the prevailing international institutions, such as the Organisation of African Unity, to put a stop to wars and atrocities on the continent.

For that reason, in 2001 African governments decided to shut down the OAU and found a successor organization — the African Union.

But it’s an open question whether the African Union is really much better. The pan-African body’s military rapid-reaction forces have proved unable to prevent a new wave of crises from escalating into grinding, entrenched wars.

War in Yemen = Peace in Libya?

April 7, 2015

With the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) wreaking havoc in the Levant, Syria reeling from a devastating civil war, and a political crisis in Libya devolving into an entrenched armed conflict, ultimately it was the Houthi takeover in Yemen that galvanized a pan-Arab coalition and military intervention. Led by Saudi Arabia, nine countries have joined Operation Decisive Storm in an effort to drive back the Iran-supported Shia Houthis. Egypt, which has long sounded the alarm about the instability in neighboring Libya and provided assistance to the non-Islamist, Tobruk-based government, has committed its air and naval forces to the mission in Yemen. This could have ramifications over 2,000 miles away in Libya: with Egypt devoting significant military resources in Yemen, it will inevitably have to divert some attention away from its more immediate neighbor, which may help to open the space for success of UN-led negotiations to resolve the Libya’s crisis.

Does the U.S. Navy Need Nukes in Asia?

April 7, 2015

One of the advantages of modern technology is that it offers good access to distant conferences. Internet users already have access, for example, to a mixture of transcripts, audio files and videos from the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference held in Washington in late March. The collection’s worth a browse for anyone interested in nuclear issues. But I’d like to concentrate today on just two of the panels: one on what allies want from extended assurance and a second on what they should expect from the same.

I think the first of those sessions was comparatively disappointing. The panel was composed of three ambassadors: an Australian, a South Korean and a German.

Australia's Desire for Japanese Submarines: A Big Mistake?

April 7, 2015

In their paper supporting Option J, Andrew Davies and Benjamin Schreer don’t just rebut some of the strategic arguments raised against it, but also provide their own argument on strategic grounds in its favor. Their rebuttals offer much to debate, but their positive argument is more important and more revealing, so let’s focus on that.

The argument is essentially as follows. Australia’s interests are best served by the creation of a strong coalition of democracies that would preserve the US-led order in Asia by resisting China’s growing power and ambition. Creating this coalition requires a more strategically-active Japan and closer US-Japan-Australia strategic cooperation, both of which would be encouraged by Australia buying Japanese submarines.

CGSC: Despite an internal report, it is still screwed up — and may become more so

BY THOMAS E. RICKS

MARCH 30, 2015

A year and a half ago a short article for Best Defense blasted the Army’s Command and General Staff College for the problems inherent in its bloated schedule. Indeed, CGSC’s own research into its officer course, as part of its Campaign Plan 2014, found that its “schedule is unpredictable, poorly synchronized, and overtaxes students while under-challenging them.” In of itself this is damning, but the important thing is to see what has been done to fix what are clearly significant problems. If the scheduling issues have been effectively dealt with it would be a manifest demonstration that CGSC was sincere in its desire as an organization to improve things. CGSC has, however, not fixed the schedule. Certainly, some scheduling changes have occurred but they are largely superficial. Furthermore, and perhaps more worryingly, it appears to be heading back to where it started.

America Has a South Korean Foreign Legion

By JOSEPH TREVITHICK

In January, the U.S. Army began reforming the 2nd Infantry Division to include both American and South Korean troops. It’s a historic move — and the binational division is indicative of deepening ties between the American and South Korean armies.

The reformed division includes a combined headquarters unit, a U.S. infantry brigade and a South Korean mechanized infantry brigade. The division’s commander is American, and his deputy is South Korean.

But it’s not a huge step. For more than a half century, South Korean troops have volunteered to work directly with American troops through the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army program, or KATUSA.

The M-60 Lays Down a Lot of Lead

By PAUL HUARD

Perhaps no other firearm is so closely associated with the Vietnam War — or pop culture spin-offs — as the M-60 general purpose machine gun.

Portrayals of the M-60 in the hands of American soldiers range from the sublime dignity expressed by the “Three Soldiers” statue in Washington D.C., to the over-the-top destruction of the fictional town of Hope, Wash., by Sylvester Stallone’s character John Rambo in the film First Blood.

Yet the M-60 is a weapon that has served American soldiers in many battles since 1957. Far from perfect, the early model of the M-60 had so many design flaws that soldiers jury-rigged fixes using everything from wire coat hangers to empty C-ration cans.