Why the ASEAN Economic Community Will Struggle

By Ji Xianbai

September 24, 2014

Serious weaknesses within ASEAN threaten the realization of the bloc’s regional project. 

The recently released U.S. Chamber of CommerceASEAN Business Outlook Survey 2015 highlighted the widespread concern that the much-anticipated ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) would not be launched by the end-2015 deadline. Indeed, most respondents were pessimistic about the inauguration of the AEC by 2020 or later. This is not the first time that AEC faces a probable delay: In 2012, the commencement of the AEC was postponed to December 31, 2015 from the original plan of January 1, 2015. Despite ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan’s firm reassurance that “[t]here will be no more delays and that all ten ASEAN countries will participate,” even the most fervent proponents of AEC are beginning to worry about the increasingly diminishing chance of delivering AEC on time as 2015 closes in.

ASEAN Economic Community

AEC originates from the ASEAN Vision 2020, which was adopted in 1997 on the 30th anniversary of ASEAN. It aspires to create a single market and production base with a free flow of goods, services, investments, capital and skilled labor by 2020. In 2003, ASEAN leaders signed the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II and agreed to establish the AEC by 2020. The 2007 Cebu Declaration accelerated the establishment of the AEC to 2015, and ASEAN introduced the AEC Blueprint, which was substantiated into the Roadmap for the ASEAN Community (2009-2015) two years later, to guide the implementation of the AEC.

To track the progress of the AEC, the AEC Scorecard, a compliance tool developed based on the EU Internal Market Scorecard, was adopted by ASEAN. To date, two official scorecards have been published, one in 2010and the other in 2012. According to the AEC Scorecard 2012, the implementation rates of AEC’s four primary objectives: (a) single market and production base; (b) competitive economic region; (c) equitable economic development; and (d) integration into the global economy were 65.9 percent, 67.9 percent, 66.7 percent, and 85.7 percent, respectively, with 187 out of 277 measures being fully implemented by 2011. The formation of AEC appeared to be on track, which makes it all the more intriguing that so few people expect it to come into force even by 2020.

A Frail Locomotive

MIG-31 INTERCEPT NEAR NORTH AMERICA SUGGESTS RUSSIA CHANGING OFFENSIVE AIR OPS

by Fortuna's Corner

September 25, 2014 

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Military Capabilities

MiG-31 Interception Near North America Suggests Russia Changing Offensive Air Ops

Reuben F Johnson,

Kiev – IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly

Two MiG-31 fighters were intercepted by Candian and US air force aircraft.

The appearance of two Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter interceptors in a group of six Russian Air Force (VVS) military aircraft intercepted by Canadian and US air force aircraft on 17-18 September suggests a change in Russia’s approach to offensive operations.

According to US officials, the aircraft included the two MiG-31s, two Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers, and two Ilyushin Il-78 tankers – a modified version of the Il-76 military transport. The intercepts were the latest in about 50 such incidents over the past five years.

While fairly common during the Cold War, VVS exercises and simulated attack runs against North America dropped off with the collapse of the USSR. They have picked up again in recent years as relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated.

The first intercept was at 1900 local time on 17 September by two US Air Force (USAF) Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptors operating about 55 n miles from the Alaskan coast. The second, at 0130 hours on 18 September, was by two Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) McDonnell-Douglas CF-18 fighters about 40 n miles from the Canadian coast in the Beaufort Sea.

Both intercepts were well inside the 200-mile air defense identification zone, although in neither case did the Russian aircraft enter US or Canadian airspace.

A North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Jazdyk, told reporters that the aircraft were scrambled “basically to let those [Russian] aircraft know that we see them, and in case of a threat, to let them know we are there to protect our sovereign airspace”.

The MiG-31 was designed and built during the Soviet era almost exclusively as a defensive weapon system at a time when there were two separate air forces operated by the USSR military: the VVS, and the air defense forces (PVO). Both services operated fighter aircraft, but whereas the VVS mission was to support offensive operations of conventional ground forces and nuclear bomber assets, the PVO was to defend the USSR’s air space and intercept incoming enemy aircraft.

The PVO’s requirements made it a higher priority than that of the VVS, and the air defense service operated what were considered to be more sophisticated aircraft. One of the most famous USSR defectors, Lieutenant Viktor Belenko, who flew his MiG-25 to Hokkaido in Japan, was a PVO pilot and not from a front-line VVS squadron.

Backgrounder on ISIS Control of Oil Fields in Iraq and Syria and How They Are Selling the Oil on the Black Market

Associated Press

September 25, 2014

Syria, Iraq Oil Controlled by Islamic State Group

BEIRUT — For the first time since the Unites States and five Arab countries started bombing positions of the Islamic State group in Syria, oil installations under control of the militants were targeted overnight and early on Thursday. Here is a look at the oil in the hands if the Islamic State group, which has overrun several large oil fields in Syria and a smaller one in Iraq.

HOW MANY OIL FIELDS DOES THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP CONTROL AND HOW DOES IT SELL THE OIL?

The group controls as many as 11 oil fields in both Syria and Iraq, analysts say. It is selling oil and other goods through generations-old smuggling networks under the very noses of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq as well as authorities in Turkey and Jordan.

Last year, the Islamic State group launched wide offensives in oil-rich areas in eastern Syria and was able to gain control of virtually all major oil fields, including the Omar oil field, Syria’s largest, with a capacity to produce 75,000 barrels a day. On the Iraqi side of the border, the group controls small fields in the central province of Salahuddin and the eastern Diyala province, including the Ajeel and Himrin fields.

HOW MUCH DOES THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP SELL ITS OIL FOR?

The militants sell the smuggled oil at discount prices —$25 to $60 for a barrel of oil that normally fetches more than $100 — but their total profits from oil exceed $3 million a day, according to Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar.

The group’s reliance on oil as its main source of revenue could easily be disrupted by the U.S.-led coalition’s airstrikes.

HOW MANY INSTALLATIONS WERE ATTACKED ON THURSDAY AND WHAT WAS THE DAMAGE?

At least four oil installations and three oil fields were hit around the town of Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and two local activist groups. A third activist group loyal to the militants confirmed the reports. It wasn’t immediately clear how important the installations and the fields were.

Breaking Down America's Air War over Syria

Daniel R. DePetris

September 27, 2014

"No one should be under the illusion that the operations will finish after a few more weeks or that the targets will be as open and easy to find as they were on the first three nights of operations."

After weeks of questions from the White House and Pentagon press corps and uncertainty from nearly everyone in Washington as to when kinetic activity above Syria would begin, the United States and its partners in the Arab world commenced an opening salvo of coordinated airstrikes on ISIL targets throughout Syria on the night of September 22, 2014. The operations weren’t exactly “shock and awe,”—big balls of fire lighting the night sky were not visible to millions of Americans watching on live television—but the strikes were still significant enough to “shock” the terrorists who have made eastern and northern Syria a base for their operations.

And that was only the first night; over the past several days, U.S. and coalition aircraft have gone on the offensive against a terrorist organization that has come to rely upon Syria as a relatively stable staging ground. The latest operations (as of this author’s writing), which took place on September 25 and included a total of sixteen aircraft, took aim at ISIL’s valuable oil assets along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

As is typical during the first seventy-two hours after a dramatic military operation, there are only minor details being released by the Defense Department and the U.S. Central Command combatant commander. More information will trickle in as the days go by, and as Obama administration officials step up to the podium to give reporters briefings on what occurred and when the decisions were made. But even with the limited information that we do have in the public domain, there are a few points that can be made.

Scope and Scale of the Operations

Americans who have been closely following U.S. military activity against ISIL have grown accustomed over the past month and a half to daily news articles released by U.S. CENTCOM, outlining which targets were hit and where those targets were located. The dozens of releases have been monotonous and very similar, not only in the language used, but in the kinds of operations that the U.S. Air Force has conducted: a strike on an ISIL Humvee here, a strike on an ISIL checkpoint there. In other words, nothing particularly earth-shattering or dramatic as far as the public is concerned.

The news release issued by CENTCOM on the morning of September 23—a few hours after the opening salvo of air strikes in Syria concluded—was a welcoming distinction from what we have become used to. Raqqah, Deir ez-Zor, Hasakah and Abu Kamal were all targeted by U.S. and Arab aircraft throughout the night. Command and control facilities, armed vehicles, supply depots, ammunition depots and training sites were hit by nearly fifty Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Philippine Sea in the northern Persian Gulf. Reuters reports approximately fifty ISIL sites were destroyed and seventy Islamic State fighters were killed—and that is all in addition to attacks on infrastructure associated with the Khorasan Group, a special branch of Jabhat al-Nusra concentrated solely on planning and executing terrorist attacks on the United States and Europe.

Backgrounder on ISIS Control of Oil Fields in Iraq and Syria and How They Are Selling the Oil on the Black Market

September 25, 2014

Syria, Iraq Oil Controlled by Islamic State Group

BEIRUT — For the first time since the Unites States and five Arab countries started bombing positions of the Islamic State group in Syria, oil installations under control of the militants were targeted overnight and early on Thursday. Here is a look at the oil in the hands if the Islamic State group, which has overrun several large oil fields in Syria and a smaller one in Iraq.

HOW MANY OIL FIELDS DOES THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP CONTROL AND HOW DOES IT SELL THE OIL?

The group controls as many as 11 oil fields in both Syria and Iraq, analysts say. It is selling oil and other goods through generations-old smuggling networks under the very noses of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq as well as authorities in Turkey and Jordan.

Last year, the Islamic State group launched wide offensives in oil-rich areas in eastern Syria and was able to gain control of virtually all major oil fields, including the Omar oil field, Syria’s largest, with a capacity to produce 75,000 barrels a day. On the Iraqi side of the border, the group controls small fields in the central province of Salahuddin and the eastern Diyala province, including the Ajeel and Himrin fields.

HOW MUCH DOES THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP SELL ITS OIL FOR?

The militants sell the smuggled oil at discount prices —$25 to $60 for a barrel of oil that normally fetches more than $100 — but their total profits from oil exceed $3 million a day, according to Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar.

The group’s reliance on oil as its main source of revenue could easily be disrupted by the U.S.-led coalition’s airstrikes.

HOW MANY INSTALLATIONS WERE ATTACKED ON THURSDAY AND WHAT WAS THE DAMAGE?

At least four oil installations and three oil fields were hit around the town of Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and two local activist groups. A third activist group loyal to the militants confirmed the reports. It wasn’t immediately clear how important the installations and the fields were.

DOES THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP CONTROL ANY REFINERIES?

All the major refineries in Iraq and Syria are under government control but the Islamic State extremists control one small refinery in Iraq, the Gayara refinery in the Mosul area. Syria’s two main refineries are in the central city of Homs and the coastal town of Banias. People in areas under Islamic State control use primitive and dangerous ways to refine oil.

WHEN DID THE MILITANT GROUP CAPTURE THE OIL FIELDS IN SYRIA AND IRAQ?

In Iraq, the group captured the oil fields after its offensive in June, during which it overrun large parts of northern, central and western regions of the country. In Syria, rebels have been seizing fields since late 2012, a year after the country’s crisis began. Over the past year, the Islamic State group has taken control of most of the country’s oil fields.

WHAT WAS SYRIA’S OIL PRODUCTION BEFORE THE CRISIS AND WAS THE GOVERNMENT ABLE TO EXPORT OIL AFTER THE CRISIS BEGAN?

The U.S. and European Union banned Syrian oil exports in 2011, depriving Syria of its main European customers. After that, exports came practically to a halt and the constantly dropping production was diverted to domestic needs.

Before the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government began in March 2011, the oil sector was a pillar of Syria’s economy, with the country producing about 380,000 barrels a day and exports — mostly to Europe — bringing in more than $3 billion in 2010. Oil revenues provided around a quarter of the funds for the government budget.

An Inconvenient War

by Brian Michael Jenkins
September 25, 2014

Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby briefs reporters on airstrikes on ISIL targets in Syria, Sept. 25, 2014

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a full 11 months before the 1942 midterm elections, President Franklin Roosevelt was able to go to Congress the very next day and obtain a declaration of war. When terrorists attacked America on 9/11, nearly 14 months before the 2002 congressional elections, Congress authorized the use of military force within one week, thereby providing the legal basis for U.S. actions against al Qaeda's terrorist enterprise. Congressional approval for military action in Iraq and Syria seems likely to take longer. Among the reasons: election year political calculations.

The advance of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces across Iraq and their murder of two American citizens provoked extraordinary alarm in Washington. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that this was beyond anything we've seen. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) observed, "We are in the most dangerous position we've ever been as a nation." And retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who the president has just appointed to lead the coalition against ISIS, declared that "World War III is at hand."

Well, not just yet. Although the House and Senate voted last week to back the president's plan to train and equip opposition forces fighting the Syrian regime, Congress has not addressed President Obama's plans to take other military steps against ISIS. Some members of Congress do not want to vote on the use of military force until after the upcoming elections. Among these are some who fear their vote could cost them votes.

So far, lawmakers have not been presented with a request from the administration, so it is not yet clear what they would be asked to vote on. And the Congress is used to being ignored when it comes to the War Powers Act. Still, voter reaction could go either way: a vote for the president's plan could be seen by some voters as support for another foreign war, while a vote against could be portrayed as a failure to recognize the ISIS threat.

Either there is a clear and present danger that requires immediate military action, or the threat does not warrant immediate military action. Americans are divided. It is worth a discussion and a vote. But to have one could distract and polarize voters in unanticipated ways, which perhaps some members of Congress would rather avoid right now.

Of course, there is a difference between the current circumstances and the historical examples. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were direct assaults on the United States. ISIS has murdered two American journalists. For now, U.S. military action is preemptive, which should make congressional approval all the more crucial.

THE BEST STRATEGY TO HANDLE ISIS: GOOD OLD CONTAINMENT

by Fortuna's Corner

September 25, 2014 

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The Best Strategy to Handle ISIS: Good Old Containment

“Containment will not destroy ISIS; that is a task that only the people of the region can accomplish. But containment will buy time…”

The Obama administration claims that it has a strategy to defeat ISIS. It does not. The forces of this most radical of Islamist groups continue to grow, even as it becomes increasingly entrenched in the large swath of Iraqi and Syrian territory that it now governs. It can survive bombings-so did the Vietnamese in their war with the United States-and it faces no serious threat on the ground.

There is little point in training the Iraqi army to defeat ISIS. A decade of intensive American and Western training did not yield a real fighting force. The Iraqi Army proved to be a sham. It showed its true colors when its commanders absconded as soon as they confronted the ISIS forces, while its men tore off their uniforms and left their equipment behind for ISIS to scoop up.

The only real Iraqi fighting force is the Kurdish peshmerga, which, until ISIS gave it no choice, Washington had refused to arm for nearly two decades, and which is not really Iraqi at all. But the Kurds have no desire to fight ISIS beyond what they consider to be their historic lands. They certainly have no incentive to help restore the administration’s foolish “one Iraq” policy that for years discouraged increased Kurdish autonomy and simply strengthened the hand of the imperious Nouri al-Maliki.

The administration’s “strategy” for arming the Syrian moderates is no more realistic. Perhaps the majority of Syrian rebels were moderates a few years ago. They no longer are today. ISIS is the strongest opposition group in Syria, and it is systematically routing all its Sunni opponents, especially the poorly coordinated, poorly led Free Syrian Army (FSA). Why this ragtag force, which has failed to overthrow Bashar Assad for the past several years, should be more trainable than the Iraqi Army is a question that the administration has never addressed. Nor has it explained why, after refusing to arm the FSA since the onset of the rebellion against Assad, it now finds the Free Syrians to be a suitable recipient of American weaponry.

The administration has denied seeking forces from other states to fight ISIS on land. Whether those denials are genuine, or whether Washington is privately soliciting those forces, is of no consequence. It will not get anyone to contribute forces if it does not deploy large numbers of its own troops.

The administration rightly rejects doing so, however. It recognizes that short of dispatching a force of hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq, and for that matter, to Syria, a small number of “boots on the ground,” even if those boots are worn by Special Forces, will make little difference. Americans are no longer welcome in Iraq, if they ever really were after 2004. Their presence will simply be a recruiting tool for ISIS.

WHY AL-QAEDA MIGHT BE THE BIGGEST WINNER OF AMERICA’S AIRSTRIKES ON THE ISLAMIC STATE

by Fortuna's Corner 

September 25, 2014 

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Why al Qaeda Might Be The Biggest Winner Of America’s Airstrikes On The Islamic State.

Washington says its air war on the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria is part of a strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the organization. It may have another effect: swelling al Qaeda’s ranks and giving the jihadist group that Osama bin Laden founded a new lease on life.

In the first round of airstrikes that began last night, IS wasn’t the only target. The United States also hit positions belonging to the Khorasan Group, an al Qaeda-linked group that intelligence agencies allege has been planning an imminent attack in Europe or the United States. Warplanes also hit targets affiliated with al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s recognized affiliate in Syria.

But those strikes may not be enough to stop an al Qaeda resurgence — and may not even be intended to. Statements from both U.S. Central Command and President Barack Obama suggest that the strikes against non-IS targets were designed exclusively to disrupt this planned attack and that future U.S. strikes will be more narrowly focused on the Islamic State. Underscoring the limited scope of anti-al Qaeda bombing, the initial round of strikes against Khorasan didn’t attempt to take out the group’s leaders.

If the United States, satisfied with having disrupted the Khorosan Group’s plot, moves forward with a narrow focus on IS targets, it may create an incentive for individuals and groups within IS, an al Qaeda offshoot, to defect back to the mother organization. Al Qaeda’s leadership seems to understand this: In a series of moves that have flown below most analysts’ radar, al Qaeda appears to be deliberately positioning itself to snap up as much of its rival’s manpower as possible in the event of a continued air campaign that focuses on IS.

The Islamic State has put itself in a very vulnerable position, fighting on at least three fronts simultaneously in Iraq and Syria. But the Obama administration is in its own kind of bind: Openly aligning with Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime is regarded as a non-starter — as it should be. In scrambling for allies on the ground, the administration has committed to training and arming moderate rebels.

Many rebel factions in Syria, moderate and extremist alike, are eager to fight IS. Prior to its dramatic June offensive that captured several Iraqi cities, all of IS’s major gains in Syria came from defeating other rebels rather than regime forces. IS has fought several battles with Nusra, and is believed to be responsible for the February suicide bombing in Aleppo that killed Abu Khalid al Suri, al Qaeda’s chief representative in Syria. More recently, many observers, including jihadists, believe IS was responsible for the dramatic car bomb attack in Idlib this month that killed more than a dozen senior leaders in the jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham. IS has also fought the Kurds and moderate Syrian opposition factions like the Free Syrian Army.

Two Videos of American Airstrikes on ISIS That Should Scare Iran

John Allen Gay

September 24, 2014

Credibility in international relations, noted Benjamin H. Friedman in TNI in August, “doesn’t travel well.” Tough actions in one part of the globe don’t necessarily make leaders in another tremble at the sound of our footsteps. Weakness in one place doesn’t necessarily provoke aggression in another. “Historical studies show,” wrote Friedman, “that leaders deciding whether to defy foreign threats focus on the balance of military power and the material interests of the threatening state, not on its opponent’s record of carrying out past threats.” So all the worries that Obama’s false start on Syria last year inspired Russia’s revanchism in Ukraine or China’s pushiness in the South China Sea are overwrought. And the new campaign against the Islamic State will probably have a similarly ephemeral impact on America’s credibility in other confrontations.

But a faraway war can still send shockwaves through national-security establishments around the world. A rival might demonstrate that his forces are stronger than expected; a friend’s hidden weaknesses might come to light. The decisive U.S. victory in the 1991 Gulf War lit a fire under the Chinese military, which realized the extent of its inferiority. Days after the war, the Soviet Union’s Marshal Viktor Kulikov—formerly commander of the Warsaw Pact forces—told an interviewer that “The military operations between the coalition forces and Iraq have modified the idea which we had about the nature of modern military operations....The Soviet Armed Forces will have to take a closer look at the quality of their weapons, their equipment, and their strategy.” There were similar recalculations after, for example, the 1999 NATO air campaign in the former Yugoslavia.

The air assault on the Islamic State will be no different. And there’s one country that has to be paying particular attention: the Islamic Republic of Iran. US Central Command has released several videos of strikes on ISIS facilities. Two of these videos demonstrate advanced bombing techniques that analysts have noted will be important in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Writing in International Security in 2007, Whitney Raas and Austin Long dug into the technical side of a possible Israeli strike. Many of Iran’s nuclear facilities, such as the huge centrifuge halls at Natanz, are hardened and buried to make the attacker’s task harder. One bomb—even a “bunker buster” designed for the task—might not be enough to dig through all the dirt and high-strength concrete. “One method” for dealing with this, Raas and Long say, “is to use [laser-guided bombs] targeted on the same aimpoint but separated slightly in release time to ‘burrow’ into the target.” A former Israeli Air Force general said that this method could “eventually destroy any target.” But hitting the same spot again and again takes extreme precision.

And that’s exactly what we see in this footage of a strike on “an ISIL compound” near Raqqa on Tuesday.

Why the US Should Conclude a New South Pacific Tuna Treaty

By Eileen Natuzzi

September 26, 2014

Longline tuna fishing boats off the coast of Guadalcanal, with Savo Island in the background

The South Pacific Tuna treaty is up for its five-year renewal but current negotiations between the parties are stalled. This treaty was established in 1987 between the United States and the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) member nations (Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu) and it sets operational terms for U.S. purse seine tuna fishing vessels to operate in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean. While its terms change very little from one renewal agreement to another, this year the stakes in renegotiating the treaty are high. Pacific Island nations have economic pressures and development concerns they wish to use monies from the treaty to address, while from a U.S. perspective President Barack Obama’s expansion of Pacific Remote Island Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) will negatively impact the U.S. tuna industry by cutting off their access to these U.S. waters. This has made a newly negotiated U.S. South Pacific Tuna treaty a matter of survival in more ways than one.

Over the past 27 years the South Pacific Tuna Treaty has served as the U.S. government’s only significant economic assistance program in the Pacific Region, and yet it is one of Washington’s most modest appropriation of foreign aid funds. The current dollar value of the treaty agreement is $25 million per year, paid to the Forum Fisheries Agency which then distributes funds to its 14 member states. Of this amount, $18 million comes from U.S. government appropriation funds while American tuna boats pay the balance. Pacific tuna is worth a lot, more than $3 billion annually, but Pacific Island countries only see approximately 14 percent of that value, despite being the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s tuna. It is no wonder that these small Pacific Island developing states are holding back on negotiations. Obama’s “Pacific re-pivot,” as evidenced by Secretary John Kerry’s recent historic visit to Solomon Islands, suggests a U.S. willingness to redefine its relationship and foreign aid policy in the region. What hard policy and new programs come from the re-pivot remains to be seen.

Sustainable fisheries, ocean conservation, climate change, and economic development are important issues confronting Pacific Islanders. The topics have been discussed at the recent Pacific Island Forum, the U.N. Small Island Developing States, and the United Nations General Assembly Climate Summit. These discussions include health issues related to climate change impacts and the rising tide of non-communicable disease like cancers, diabetes, heart and lung disease among Pacific Islanders. The increasing rate of chronic diseases is important in the Pacific Region because it further burdens underdeveloped health systems already strained by infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue, tuberculosis and childhood diarrhea. The recent WHO Climate Change and Human Health conference has highlighted the human health impacts that are inextricably linked to climate change.

Is There an Obama Doctrine?

By Robert E. Kelly

September 22, 2014

In year 6 of his presidency, does Barack Obama have a foreign policy doctrine? 

It is something of a Washington truism that presidents must have a “doctrine” attached to their name. And certainly, as presidents enter their “legacy” years – where Obama is now – pressure grows to find some kind of definitive statement of what the last messy six or seven years were all about. U.S. presidents enjoy enormous autonomy in foreign policy, unlike at home, where they face Congress and long-standing interests groups. So the space for their personal predilections to shape foreign policy are wide.

Nevertheless, it is often hard to figure out what this means – a grand strategy for the whole world and America’s place in it sounds like a Herculean metaphysical task, and changing events often dictate large swings in policy. President Jimmy Carter famously came in determined to focus U.S. foreign policy on human rights, but he morphed into an unexpected hawk due to the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Thedoctrine that bears his name today sounds nothing like what he says today. Similarly, George W. Bush entered the White House determined to focus on traditional great power politics, but emerged from the 9/11 catastrophe as a global democratic revolutionary.

Strategy is often defined as connecting ends to means. Bush may have wanted global democracy in his heart, but this was simply impractical for the United States to achieve. To force a level of realism and clarity on presidents’ foreign policy behavior, the U.S. Congress actually mandates a yearly “national security strategy” be published by the White House. But presidents rarely meet that goal, and often the NSS is windy and imprecise. The current one, the only one from this president so far, dates to 2010.

Looking instead at the actions of President Barack Obama, four “doctrinal” elements stand out:

1. Restraint – but not decline

The president genuinely seems wants to husband U.S. resources for long-term challenges like China and a war on terrorism that will not seem to go away. He is wary of the quagmires that beset his predecessor. They were costly blunders – hence the president’s line “don’t do stupid stuff” – which America needs to avoid to contend with emerging powers in the future, most obviously China. This is often understood by conservatives and hawks as “embracing decline.” Obama, they contend, is allowing American “leadership” to slip away, because he will not use force more frequently.

But this implies that Obama’s rhetoric and behavior are somehow to blame for the relative decline of the U.S., when the real cause is the continued, long-term growth and maturity of the former Third World. The globe is “filling up” with wealthy functional states outside of the West. As places like the BRICS or G-20 states become wealthier and more politically stable and capable, it will be harder and harder for the U.S. to push its preferences on them. This is not a question of U.S. leadership or national will; it is the long-term structural outcome of globalization, specifically the spread of global capitalism and the management revolution it has brought to previously wasteful, dysfunctional economies like India and China. The U.S. is not in absolute decline; it is not 5th century Rome. Instead, it is more like Britain after World War II: reasonably strong, but facing a wide, restive, nationalist, and increasingly capable world. As developing nations mobilize and modernize, the U.S. will no longer overawe as it did in the 1990s. Obama sees this and is husbanding U.S. resources for what really matters in the future (Asia). Hence his notion that nation-building starts at home.

2. Allied Free-Riding

New Malware System Found in Linux and Unix Ops Systems, Called SHELLSHOCK, Can Take Control of Millions of Computers

Nicole Perlroth

September 25 2014

Security Experts Expect Shellshock Software Bug to Be Significant

A newly discovered bug in the world’s widely used Linux and Unix operating systems could allow hackers to take control of hundreds of millions of machines around the world, according to security experts.

The bug, named Shellshock, is similar to the Heartbleed bug that generated widespread fear last spring because it would allow anyone with knowledge of the vulnerability to exploit a large number of computer servers. The flaw was discovered in Bash, short for Bourne-Again Shell, a command prompt in Unix. Unix is commonly used in corporate computer networks and is the basis of other operating systems, like Linux and Apple’s Macintosh operating system.

It is not yet clear how the bug affects Macintosh machines.

The bug, which was reported late Tuesday night, would allow hackers to write code that could surreptitiously take over a machine, or run their own programs in the background. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has said that the vulnerability is a 10 out of 10, in terms of its severity, impact and exploitability, but low in terms of its complexity, meaning it could be easily used by hackers.

While the Heartbleed bug affected some 500,000 machines, in early estimates, security experts predicted that the Shellshock bug could ultimately be far more significant.

Researchers at Kaspersky, a security firm, noted that hackers could only use Heartbleed to steal data from a server’s memory in hopes of finding something interesting. But the Shellshock vulnerability makes it possible for someone to take over a machine. The Kaspersky researchers said that as soon as the bug was reported Tuesday they detected widespread Internet scanning by so-called “white hat” hackers — most likely security researchers — as well as people believed to be cybercriminals.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team, known as US-CERT, which warns about security vulnerabilities, advised users and technology administrators to refer to their Linux or Unix-based operating systems suppliers for an appropriate patch.

Researchers at Red Hat, a company that distributes a version of Linux, found that the patch initially offered by the agency was incomplete and noted that hackers could still use Shellshock to take over a machine. They were working on a more comprehensive patch. US-CERT referred experienced technicians administrators to a GNU Bash patch, which patches for the flaw.

For users at home, security experts advised them to stay abreast of updates from techonology manufacturers on their websites, particularly for hardware such as routers.

3 Lessons From Saratoga

By James R. Holmes

September 26, 2014

The Naval Diplomat’s guide to the Battle of Saratoga. 

This has been a geography-intensive two weeks, ranging from America’s island redoubt of Hawai’i to the rocky redoubts of Vermont and upstate New York. The Naval Diplomat returned from Honolulu only to re-embark immediately for a “staff ride” to Bennington, Vermont, and Saratoga, New York. Stripped to its basics, a staff ride means a group of people — in this case the fine young cannibals of our Strategy Department — takes the time to study some important campaign, then decamps to the site of that campaign for a few days to see how events unfolded in their actual setting and debate what the protagonists might have done better.

We southern New Englanders tend to look at the Revolutionary War through the lens of Boston in 1775-1776. But Bennington and Saratoga are the battlegrounds that decided the fate of Great Britain’s Hudson River campaign of 1777 — and in turn determined whether New England would be cut off from the rest of the colonies. British commanders’ idea was that controlling the Hudson River would seal off that troublesome region, isolating a hotbed of rebellion while simplifying the problem of pacifying the colonies. Using internal waters to bar internal transit made perfect sense for a sea power like Great Britain. East-west movement between New England and New York was hard at the best of times in those days before plentiful bridges.

Deploying military power could make it even harder. Accordingly, a land army under General Johnny Burgoyne would move south from Canada, moving by water when possible, marching overland when not. A second host under General William Howe was assigned to venture upriver from New York City. The two forces would join up at Albany, Britain would command the Hudson and lakes, and, if you were British or an American loyalist (booo…hiss!), all would be right with the world. To make a long story short, a hybrid force of Continental Army troops and militiamen commanded by General Horatio Gates obstructed Burgoyne’s passage near Saratoga, and the battle was on. Read the book.

With that thumbnail sketch of the history behind Saratoga, here are my major lessons learned, or relearned, from this week. One, the occasional attitude adjustment is helpful. We aren’t tacticians at the Naval War College. That being said, acquainting yourself with the realm of battles and engagements — or reacquainting yourself, in the case of one-time warfighters such as yours truly — is inseparable from what we do. Big thinkers at the political and strategic levels have a bad habit of writing checks that tacticians can’t cash. We shouldn’t unwittingly encourage them to do so by concentrating solely on politics and strategy. An unexecutable strategy is no strategy at all.

To take a pop-culture example, think about the emperor Commodus (Joachim Phoenix) in Gladiator, who informs General Aelius Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) that military life is simple: “you give your orders, the orders are obeyed, and the battle is won.” Nothing could be easier, right? Commodus’ is an easy habit of mind for us in the ivory tower — or, worse, in the halls of government, within earshot of talking heads but remote from the action — to fall into. Such complacency is important to combat.

Two, war has been absent from North America so long that we no longer think of our continent as potentially contested turf. War is a bad thing that happens elsewhere on the globe. The lakes of upstate New York are for water sports, right? Well, yes. But before that they were part of a strategic, mainly water route connecting New York City with Quebec. Once it chased off George Washington’s army and occupied New York City in 1776, Britain held both termini of that inland waterway. And it had fleets of merchantmen and warships that could ferry men and materiel upriver as far as Albany. That was a geostrategic advantage of major proportions.

Historical forgetfulness is a bad thing in our line of work. North America has been a theater of war and could be one again someday. Visiting sites like Saratoga in the company of land-warfare specialists helps us recover that long-lost sensibility.

Three, terrain matters. The geospatial dimension of soldiering is something that eludes naval and air practitioners unless we work at it. We don’t intuitively grasp how geographic features shape martial endeavors. That’s because we operate in different elements. The sea is a featureless plain except along the sea/shore interface. The sky is an undifferentiated battlespace except at low altitude. Vector mechanics rules for seamen and airmen. Ground-pounders see their lines of movement deflected by hills, defiles, forests, you name it.

Losing the "Forgotten War" The U.S. Strategic Vacuum in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia

By Anthony H. Cordesman

SEP 26, 2014

The U.S. is now engaged in a major national debate over how to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Afghanistan, however, has become the “forgotten war” at a time when the Taliban is making steady gains, civilian casualties are rising, there still is no clear U.S. plan, and its allies lack clear plans for any post-2014 aspect of transition. 

Afghanistan is also only part of the story. Pakistan is as critical to any meaningful definition of strategic success in the fighting as Afghanistan. Pakistan, however, is in political chaos, has rising tensions with India, has only made uncertain progress in its latest military campaign, and has made no progress in the mix of economic and educational reforms that are critical to a stable future. Few Americans see Pakistan as having been anything but the most reluctant ally since 9/11 and many see Pakistan’s ISI as part of the enemy.

U.S. forces have effectively left Central Asia, but the U.S. has not announced any strategy to deal with Central Asia in the future, or how to adjust to the growing tension with Russia.

The end result is that United States has failed to define meaningful future strategies for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. It is cutting its presence in Afghanistan so quickly that its Transition efforts may well fail, and it has no clear future strategy for Pakistan or Central Asia.

As a result, the Burke Chair is issuing a study that examines the overall mix of problems in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region. It suggests the best solution for the U.S. in dealing with the complex problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia may be the simplest and most minimalist approach. No vital U.S. national security priorities are currently involved that require sustained, major U.S. intervention, and strategic triage indicates that other areas and problems have a higher priority.

At the same time, there is still a chance that the U.S. can at least make Transition work in Afghanistan if the new Afghan government is unified and acts quickly enough to show it can be a credible partner, and if the Obama Administration is willing to provide the needed advisors and aid on a conditions-based level, rather than reduce the U.S. presence to an unworkable level by the end of 2015.

This paper is entitled Losing the “Forgotten War”: The U.S. Strategic Vacuum in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, and is available on the CSIS web site here.

Download PDF file of "Losing the 'Forgotten War' The U.S. Strategic Vacuum in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia" Revised Sept 26 2014

The Quiet Death of John A. Walker, the KGB Spy Whose Ring Betrayed the US Navy’s Codes and Ciphers to the Russians

Marc Ambinder

The Week

September 26, 2014

The quiet death of America’s worst spy

John A. Walker Jr., accused of masterminding a family spy ring, is escorted by a federal Marshall as he leaves for Baltimore federal court in 1985. Photo: (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty)

Chief Warrant Officer John A. Walker, who died in federal prison late last month at the age of 77, was the most consequential spy in American history. Over the course of seven years, from 1967 to 1975, he turned over some of the country’s most significant military secrets to the Soviet Union. When he retired, his friend, Jerry Whitworth, continued where he left off. Walker was arrested in 1985. His wife Barbara turned him in.

Walker’s motive was money. He spent lots on prostitutes and lots more to try and keep his wife happy. When a woman looked at him crossways, a fellow sailor said, “he would unzip his breeches” in a heartbeat. He was unhappy and erratic, except on his binges. His friends knew this; the Navy did not. Walker was nearing bankruptcy and his most valuable asset was his security clearance: TOP SECRET, with access to cryptologic material. Officially, he volunteered himself to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, walking in under the nose of the FBI, which monitored every movement in and out of the 16th Street complex. (His spying may actually have begun earlier.)

But when he did show up in Washington, he brought sample documents, including schematics of advanced submarine systems and diagrams of rotor wire settings for an encryption machine called the KL-47, which protected the U.S. Navy’s most sensitive traffic. The KGB resident at the time, Boris Solomatin, knew at once that he was a genuine walk-in. When Solomatin, against all protocol, introduced himself immediately, Walker “didn’t say anything about his love for communism or for the Soviet Union. And because of that, he showed himself to me to be a decent man because as a rule, the people who want only money always try to camouflage their real desire. They try to act as if they are ideologically close to us. But Walker did not,” he told author Pete Earley.

So important was Walker that Solomatin kept knowledge of his recruitment to only two other KGB officers in Washington. In short order, Walker would leave thousands of classified documents at a dead drop in Maryland, all of which Solomatin forwarded to the KGB’s 16th directorate, responsible for stealing enemy communication. Walker handed over war plans, documents describing procedures to relocate politicians in the event of disasters, details about technology the U.S. used to track ships. The Soviets digested all of this happily. But both Walker and his KGB handlers knew that his most valuable secrets were the code keys that he regularly stole from the crypto vault he worked in, keys that would allow the KGB to decrypt intercepted traffic. If they ever got their hands on any of the code devices that the United States used, they might even be able to read the traffic in transit in real time, a type of intelligence coup that had not happened before, not even with Enigma, or with Magic, and would not happen again, until the Cold War ended.

A new compact against IS

by Hardeep S Puri 

September 26, 2014 

The determination of the United States to lead the war against global terror was signalled on September 24. Addressing the 69th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, President Barack Obama said that the threat posed by the “cancer of violent extremism” has “perverted one of the world’s great religions”. The US, along with a coalition of 40 nations, would militarily degrade and destroy the Islamic State (IS). The time has come, he said, for the world to explicitly and forcefully reject the ideology on which this violent extremism is based and “forge a new compact”. He hit out at those who make money from the global economy and then funnel it back to these groups.

The sectarian conflicts within Islam needed to be urgently addressed, and he called upon the Islamic world, particularly the Arab nations, to concentrate on developing the potential of its youth. This, and the fact that he personally presided over the UN Security Council meet, also on September 24, where it adopted Resolution 2178, dealing with foreign terrorist fighters (FTF), suggests the alarm bells are ringing.

Resolution 2178 will be counted along with Resolution 1267, dealing with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Resolution 1373, adopted after 9/11, as one of the milestones in the development of the counter-terrorism framework under the aegis of the UNSC. The IS calls into question the effectiveness of the global counter-terrorism strategy. Resolution 2178 seeks to get a grip on

the growing threat posed by FTFs through action by individual countries, regionally and globally. Obama said that he looked forward to countries reporting to the UN next year the specific actions they had taken, in pursuance of this resolution, to curb the financing and movement of FTFs.

Taiwan, Asia’s Secret Air Power

By Ian Easton

September 25, 2014

A look at what Taiwan is doing to ensure its air defense and why it matters for the United States and the region. 

When current and former world leaders, including Bill Clinton, visit Taiwan, they often stay at the Grand Hotel Taipei, an opulent Chinese architectural landmark perched atop Yuan Mountain. With spectacular views of the downtown riverfront and a palm-lined swimming pool surrounded by lush green jungle, guests at the Grand Hotel could be forgiven for thinking they had arrived at one of the most peaceful spots in East Asia.

In fact, just under their feet lies a vast underground command center from which Taiwan’s top leadership would direct their nation’s armed forces in the event of a war with China. This facility, like many around the high-tech island, shows that when it comes to the defense of Taiwan, there is much more than meets the eye.

Known officially as the Tri-Service Hengshan Military Command Center, the sprawling tunnel facility stretches through the mountain in a line that starts near the Grand Hotel and goes down to the giant Ferris wheel in Dazhi. Built to defend against China’s growing fleet of ballistic missiles, this hardened nerve center is designed to allow Taiwan’s government (and thousands of military personnel) to live and work for months, riding out air raids above while organizing the defense of Taiwan from below.

Linked to a large network of subterranean command posts and military bases around Taiwan and its outer islands – as well as the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii – the Hengshan Military Command Center is the ultimate redoubt for Taiwan’s president. It is so important, in fact, that China’s strategic rocket force, the Second Artillery, has actually simulated missile attacks on the bridges that connect it to the Presidential Office.

On the other side of the city, buried inside a wet rocky outcropping near the campus of National Taiwan University, lies another tunnel complex, the Air Operations Center. Known affectionately as “Toad Mountain” by Taiwanese air force officers, this facility oversees one of the most robust air and missile defense networks on the planet. Fed vast quantities of information by airborne early-warning aircraft, long-range radars, listening posts, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites, Toad Mountain stands constant watch over all of Taiwan’s airspace, ready to scramble fighters or assign surface-to-air missiles to intercept intruders. And, like every other Taiwanese military facility, it has multiple back-ups. Just in case.

One of those back-ups is located on Taiwan’s east coast inside Chiashan or “Optimal Mountain,” not far from the mouth of a gorge cut through pure white marble. Unlike the gorge, however, no tourists are allowed inside this billion dollar bunker complex. According to first-person accounts, the base is an entire military city built inside a hollowed-out mountain. Not only does it have space inside for parking, arming, and repairing over two hundred fighter aircraft, it also has its own hospital and multiple gas stations serving jet fuel. With ten blast doors that exit out to multiple runways via a long taxiway that can itself be used as an emergency runway, it may be toughest airbase ever built.

India & China: The chill factor

Mohan Guruswamy

Sep 26, 2014

On September 21, President Xi ordered the PLA to follow the instructions of the President. But he also asked them to improve the PLA’s readiness to fight and win a limited regional war. Observers are still reading the tea leaves.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India was almost a back to back event following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful four-day visit to Japan from August 30.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, quite clearly spared no effort to make Mr Modi’s visit a success. He received Mr Modi in Kyoto and spent a day with him showing him the sights there. This is quite unusual given prevailing international protocol norms and Japan’s own traditional reserve. The following day both leaders met in Tokyo in an official setting and several major joint cooperation and assistance initiatives were announced.

The most notable of these was Mr Abe’s announcement of a $35 billion investment in India within the next five years. There also seemed a convergence on security perceptions and the Indian Prime Minister made a pointed reference to the expansionist tendencies of some nations. He said: “Encroaching on a country, entering into sea somewhere, entering a country and occupying territory — this expansionism cannot do good to humanity in the 21st century. The path of development is essential and I feel Asia has to lead the world in 21st century, and India and Japan will have to together add to the glory of the path of development.” It was quite clear he was alluding to China, with whom India has a long pending territorial dispute, as does Japan.

Mr Modi and Mr Abe quite significantly also agreed to look into upgrading to a “two-plus-two” format for security dialogue by teaming together their foreign and defence ministers. They also directed officials to commence working level talks on defence equipment and technology cooperation.

The visit of President Xi Jinping of China was originally supposed to begin on September 22 but it was brought ahead as his Pakistan leg had to be scrubbed with the capital of China’s principal ally in the region under siege by the government’s more militant opponents. This made it the first time a Chinese head of state or government visited India without a balancing visit to Pakistan. Chinese media tried to put a spin on this by suggesting that by not bunching India and Pakistan together, the Chinese leader was signaling a change in Chinese attitudes. Few in India were taken in by this.

The Chinese also made much of the fact that President Xi was beginning his official trip with a visit to Mr Modi’s hometown of Ahmedabad instead of the usual and formal first stop at New Delhi. But Indian media made it known that even President Barack Obama visited Mumbai before he came to New Delhi, and besides, Mr Modi himself went to Kyoto before Tokyo.

But many were taken in by the expectation that China will announce a much bigger investment package to trump the Japanese. A couple of days prior to the visit, the Chinese consul-general in Mumbai, Liu Youfa, told Indian media that Chinese firms were eyeing over $50 billion worth of investments in modernising the Indian railways and running high-speed trains. President Xi, he said, would bring with him $100 billion of investment commitments over five years, nearly three times as much as the $35 billion secured by Mr Modi in Japan.

Like Mr Abe did with him, Mr Modi pulled out all protocol stops to greet Mr Xi and his glamorous wife, the singer Peng Liyuan, and even accompanied them on a visit to the Sabarmati Ashram, where Mahatma Gandhi lived. Mr Modi also gifted Mr Xi with a Nehru style waistcoat that he wore for the rest of the day, much to the delight of the media, who saw in it a sign of warmth between the two leaders. But this didn’t last very long.

Combating the ISIS challenge

Sep 27, 2014

Talmiz Ahmad

Iran has been deliberately excluded from the coalition against ISIS. But Iran knows full well, as do the Americans, that it has a central role in promoting regional stability.

Barely three years after they withdrew from Iraq, US forces have once again unleashed their fire power in the region, this time not against an abhorred regime but on a non-state actor — the “Islamic State” (ISIS).

The US is not just attacking an Arab enemy alone; its aircraft are accompanied by war planes from allied Arab countries that have hardly ever participated in military assaults before. The Arab forces are all from Sunni countries and are attacking a Sunni enemy, a curious development in an environment fraught with sectarian cleavages.

The trail of this imbroglio goes back to two developments in West Asia: regime change in Iraq in 2003 and the Arab Spring.

The first empowered the Shias in Iraq, opening the doors to Iranian influence in the country. Over the next few years there was steady expansion of Iranian power across the region, and a “Shia Crescent” embracing Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon appeared to be a threatening reality. The Arab Spring only exacerbated the situation from the Saudi perspective by depriving it, first, of its principal strategic partner Hosni Mubarak, and then bringing the possibility of Shia ascendancy to its very door step in the shape of the reform movement in Bahrain, which it feared would advantage the majority Shia community. Saudi Arabia abandoned its traditional moderate posture in regional affairs and decided to confront Iran across West Asia, with regime change in Syria being a priority concern.

The post-Arab Spring strategic scenario was also characterised by Saudi estrangement from the US, which it blamed for not preventing

Mr Mubarak’s fall and for not bombing Syria to facilitate regime change. To compound Saudi concerns, from mid-2013 the US commenced robust engagement with Iran on the nuclear question, with every indication that this bonhomie could lead to a deeper relationship. In this bleak situation, another hostile element was injected: the jihadi “Islamic State”, which in the first six months of 2014 occupied territory in Iraq and Syria the size of Great Britain, with a population of six million, and threatened its Sunni and Shia neighbours in equal measure.

However, the regional scenario dramatically changed to Saudi advantage when the ISIS commenced public killings of Western hostages. Two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were executed on August 19 and September 2 respectively, and the video released on social media. The grisly images of these killings created a popular surge in the US in favour of an all-out war on these barbarians. American outrage over these executions swept the President in its wake: under attack from the Right-wing and facing mid-term elections in November, Mr Obama was compelled to undertake expanded military operations against the ISIS in Syria and Iraq so that it was “degraded and ultimately destroyed”. Air assaults began on September 21-22, with the participation of forces from the Arab monarchies of the Gulf and Jordan. The firepower is mainly American, but the Arab presence gives the operation a regional complexion so that it is not viewed as yet another unilateral Western attack on Muslims.