by Daniel Korski | Jul 29, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, North America, UK
National security reform is, I guess, one of the leitmotifs of this blog and both Charlie and I have written about this in its U.S and British forms.
Now, the U.S Project on National Security Reform (full disclosure: I advise the project pro bono) is about to publish its first report, Ensuring Security in an Unpredictable World: The Urgent Need For National Security Reform.
Based on research and analysis by more than 300 national security experts from think tanks, universities, federal agencies, law firms and corporations – it identifies the following major problems in in the national security system:
- Frequent feuding and jurisdictional disputes between cabinet secretaries and other agency heads that force the president to spend too much time settling internal fights, waste time and money on duplicative and inefficient actions, and slow down government responses to crises.
- Too much focus by the president and his top advisers on day-to-day crisis management rather than long-term planning, allowing problems to escape presidential attention until they worsen and reach the crisis level.
- An increasing number of political appointees who serve only briefly in top national security posts.
- A budget oversight process in Congress focused on individual agencies, crippling efforts to move quickly to fund emergency operations by multiple agencies.
- A Congress increasingly polarized along political party lines on vital national security issues.
PNSR member Thomas R. Pickering – who served as under secretary of state, ambassador to the United Nations and in other top posts in the State Department – has said:
Our national security system is broken and needs fixing. Agencies need to cooperate rather than compete with each other as they work to protect the United States from a broad range of new dangers never imagined when the National Security Act of 1947 was signed into law. This isn’t a Democratic or a Republican issue, but a challenge facing our country that must be met by America’s leaders on a bipartisan basis.
PNSR is scheduled to issue a final report in October recommending actions by Congress and the next president. The project is also expected to prepare draft presidential directives and a new National Security Act to replace many of the provisions of the one enacted 61 years ago. Now out of the presidential race, Senator Hillary Clinton is said to have taken a keen interest in sheparding legislation through Congress whilst both the Obama and McCain teams have had de facto representatives on the Project.
In other words: read the report available on here and watch this space…
by Alex Evans | Jul 28, 2008 | Africa, Economics and development
Flying politicians out to developing countries to see poverty at first hand – and what aid programmes are doing to tackle it – is pretty standard fare for development NGOs. But it’s slightly more unusual for politicians to take the chance to perform surgical procedures on people’s lungs.
That, however, is just what former US Senator Bill Frist (and yes, he is also a surgeon, you’ll be relieved to hear) did on a trip to Mozambique organised by the One campaign this month. Probably more use than the average political visit to a developing country – though this line caused my eyebrows to raise slightly:
I operated with Dr. Morais having been given full surgical privileges granted for the length of our stay. He spoke little English, and I speak no Portuguese – but luckily, cutting and sewing don’t require any talking!
Er…
by Daniel Korski | Jul 27, 2008 | East Asia and Pacific, North America, South Asia
Bill Emmott, the former editor of The Economist, has a great – if glibly-titled – piece in The Times today, articulating what I have thought for a while (OK – what I should have thought): that while Fareed Zakaria talks about a post-American order where U.S influence is giving way to the power of the “Rest” (China, India etc.) both Barack Obama and John McCain seem to live in a decidedly Euro-centric world.
Look at Senator Obama’s stops on his recent trip – Europe, the Middle East and, of course, Afghanistan. The itinerary is hardly any different from what Bill Clinton’s would have done in 1992 – that is, go to Europe, the Middle East and to where U.S forces are deployed. But, as Emmot says, the future of the U.S may be determined in Asia, not Europe or even the Middle East:
Three issues in Asia will be, or should be, high on the new president’s briefings when he enters office in January. In order of immediacy they are inflation, climate change and the balance-of-power politics.
So what do Obama and McCain say about a rising China, a resurgent Russia, rivalry between India and Pakistan Asian countries? Very little. Or, at least very little compared to what they say about other issues.
At the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Obama said:
In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges.
To deal with these, Obama will “forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.”
Nothing wrong with this, but a profound policy statement it is not. Nor does it deal with many of the gremlins in the U.S-China relationship like the trade balance.
McCain has been more forward on how he would deal with China and Russia. He has meet with the Dalai Lama and urged China to address human rights concerns and free Tibetan prisoners.
His tough-guy stance is even tougher on Russia. The U.S, says McCain, should respond harshly to Russia’s anti-democratic actions, and warns of the “dangers posed by a revanchist Russia”. On the campaign trail, McCain jokes that when he looks in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, he sees three letters: KGB.
But while the Arizona senator’s stance is tough and clear, he can hardly have thought through the implications of such a stance against Moscow, given the price of oil, the views of America’s allies etc.
Bottom-line is that while both candidate have talked about U.S relations with the “Rest”, both lag behind today’s leading foreign policy intellectuals in developing a serious set of U.S. policies towards the new powers and seem more comfortable in a Euro-centric mindset. That may be good for Europe in the short-term, but bad in the long-term. For the way in which the U.S and Europe relate to these new powers will determine how the world looks in the next 10 years.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 25, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, South Asia
Thomas Schweich, previously the Bush administration’s Afghan drugs “czar” has made a big splash in the New York Times by claiming that President Hamid Karzai supports the drugs trade and that aerial eradication of the crop is the only way ahead:
An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counterdrug program. And the rest of us could not turn them around.
Juicy stuff, no doubt. But Schweich has been challenged before, including by Barnett Rubin, a well-known Afghan expert.
Schweich’s argument seems to hinge on a central proposition: that insurgency, not poverty drives opium cultivation. But as a CN expert David Mansfield argues, this assertion is based on “the finding that households in these [poppy-growing] provinces reported higher average annual incomes ($3,316 for poppy-growing and $2,480 for others) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north ($2,690 for poppy-growing and $1,851 for others) or centre ($1,897 for poppy-growing and $1,487 for others).” He has further criticized the UN’s lack of reporting of sample size and statistical significance – both of which are necessary to determine the accuracy of the conclusion that poverty is not a factor.
In others word, the basis to argue that poverty does not drive opium-cultivation is weak. The link between opium and insurgency is also not as direct as Schweich imagines.
True, opium cultivation and insurgent violence are correlated geographically, and opium now provides the insurgents with a portion of their revenues. True, this portion may have increased as NATO pursues a decapitation strategy, trying to kill high-level insurgents. But the Taliban, al-Qaida and the other insurgent groups have many sources of revenue; and while a correlation exists between instability and opium cultivation, the causality derives from insecurity, not the other way around.
Why is is not possible to conduct aerial spraying then, as Schweich suggests? Simple. Afghan farmers do not use chemicals, so aerial eradication will likely be blamed as the cause of disease, premature deaths or crop destruction, which is a regular but unrelated occurrence in Afghanistan, as in any developing country. The Afghan government, already mistrusted, would suffer from any backlash.
For what to do, read this post.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 24, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, North America
While we while away the summer musing on fantasy cabinets, someone has more daring fantasies up their sleeve. A report in Izvestia that Russia wants to station nuclear-armed Tu-160 bombers on Cuba has created much excitement in the Washington Post (now this would boost McCain) and, er, the U.S. Air Force:
Gen. Norton Schwartz, whose nomination to become the Air Force’s top military officer is being considered by the Senate, was asked at his confirmation hearing what he would advise if Russia were to proceed with such a plan. “I certainly would offer best military advice that we should engage the Russians not to pursue that approach,” Schwartz told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And if they did, I think we should stand strong and indicate that that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America.”
Russian Defense Ministry officials have tried to pour cold water on the report, saying the newspaper story was written under a false name and quoted a source at an organization that did not exist.
In case one was feeling cheated, Russia’s erstwhile top brass have been on excellent form:
“Russian strategic bombers have the right to use airfields in any country, including Cuba, if the leadership of that country does not object. Therefore, Gen Schwarz’ statement can only be described as inappropriate and childish,” Anatoliy Kornukov, former commander-in- chief of the Air-Force, told Interfax AVN on Wednesday. At the same time, A. Kornukov doubts that permanent presence of Russian strategic bombers in Cuba is expedient from the military point of view. “If one has in mind facilities on the territory of the USA, there is no need at all to base aircraft ‘under the Americans’ noses’, where they will be within the reach of conventional missiles. A Tu-160 can launch its ammunition when it is thousands of kilometres away from the set targets.”
That’s OK then. But no Russian bombardier would have U.S. targets in mind, surely? Certainly not Mikhail Oparin, former head of strategic air operations:
“First, no-one has said that our long-range aviation targets facilities on the territory of the USA. On the other hand, the existing Russian-American agreements on strategic arms do not bar Russia from stepping up the capabilities of its combat aviation systems.”
And why might you want to do that then?
“The use of airfields in Cuba as forward staging bases, or to base our refuelling aircraft to provide support to our strategic missile carriers, could substantially increase the capabilities of our combat systems in terms of reaching remote military-geographic areas,” Oparin said.
Areas like, I don’t know, darkest Peru? Oops, just being paranoid…
The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Col-Gen Leonid Ivashov, described Schwartz’s statement as blackmail of Russia. “Many American military men suffer from paranoia. They want to be in charge of the whole world and are trying to impose their conditions on everyone. As regards Russia, such blackmail – Mr Schwartz’ statement cannot be viewed in any other way – will not work.”
Who knows, this may be a step towards the apocalypse. Or maybe a generation of strategic air types in both Russia and the U.S. suddenly feel like they matter again after a few years of having to surrender the spotlight to those close air-support guys and helicopter pilots, traditionally some rungs down the ladder. Which is, of course, an excuse to recall what Clemenceau once said about war…
[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY&feature=related]
