Month: December 2021
Stevenson’s army, December 7
– Putin & Modi made nice in advance of Biden call.
– NYT reports WH signals on Putin call.
– FP says Ukraine desperate for arms.
– WaPo notes discrepancies if not hypocrisy in summit of democracies.
– Politico sees irony in Biden foreign policy appointments.
– British parliament “rife” with drugs.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Getting back to the nuclear deal is the best option, the sooner the better
Iran is arguably already a threshold nuclear state. American withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran nuclear deal) in 2018 has allowed Tehran to enrich uranium to 20%, develop more advanced centrifuges, and likely make other technological process. It is now well within one year of being able to fabricate a nuclear weapon. What difference does that make?
Not much, yet. Possession of nuclear weapons is not a major factor in today’s geopolitics, because they are unusable. As Richard Burt put it a decade ago:
The currency of power has changed from [nuclear] military power to economic, technological competitiveness.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1230/the-new-geopolitics-why-nuclear-weapons-no-longer-serve-us-interests
Israel’s growing power in the Middle East is not due to its nuclear weapons, which represent a guarantee of its existence rather than a means of projecting power. Arab states are now cozying up to Israel because of its economic and technological prowess, built on top of its military strength. Nuclear weapons have given Pakistan a means of deterring a conventional Indian invasion but have not made Pakistan India’s equal even within South Asia. India is by far the greater economic and technological power. Russia’s resurgence as a great power is not based on its nuclear weapons, which Moscow possessed in the 1990s when it was an economic basket case, but rather on its economic recovery and willingness to project conventional military force into Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria as well as hybrid warfare in the Balkans, Belarus, and elsewhere.
Nuclear weapons are still important for deterrence, but they do little more than guarantee mutual destruction.
So what’s wrong with Iran getting nuclear weapons, or the technology to make and deliver them within a few months time? The answer lies in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, not in Israel. Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state will inspire, if it has not already, its regional rivals to do likewise. Both President Erdogan and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have both said as much. I’d guess Turkey is technologically capable on its own. Saudi Arabia may need to buy experts and technology abroad, but it is capable of doing so. Once four countries in the Middle East go nuclear, the risks of intentional or accidental nuclear warfare rise exponentially.
Bilateral deterrence works reasonably well, judging by experience not only with the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States but also with India and Pakistan, India and China, as well as China and the US. Multilateral deterrence poses much more complex issues, especially with countries that lack second strike capabilities and are geographically proximate. Preparation for launch of Iranian missiles that might (or might not) carry nuclear weapons could trigger responses not only from Israel, which in its submarines has second strike capability, but also from Turkey or Saudi Arabia, depending on the crisis du jour. Miscalculation is a key factor in war. The odds of a mistake are much higher the more countries are involved.
The question remains: can the world manage with Iran as a nuclear-threshold or even a nuclear country? The answer is yes, at least for a while, but that circumstance will not be in Iran’s favor. If it fails to negotiate a return to the JCPOA, the US will tighten its economic sanctions and apply them with more vigor. Israel will continue its “dirty war” of cyber attacks and assassinations of Iranian scientists. Europe and the UK will go along with the Americans, as their financial institutions and companies have too much to lose by displeasing Washington. Moscow won’t want Iran to go nuclear, but its companies may well be prepared to surreptiously help Tehran evade sanctions. Beijing may do likewise, as it has much to gain from acquiring Iranian oil at sanctions-induced relatively cheap prices.
The negotiations on return to the JCPOA adjourned Friday without progress and bitter words from both Washington and Tehran. Failure of the negotiations, whose aim is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state, will thus aggravate East/West tensions and vastly complicate US relations with both Russia and China, which won’t take kindly to the tightening of sanctions. Iran’s economy, already well on the way to ruin, will deteriorate further. Israel will find its dirty war progressively more difficult and less effective as the Iranians learn how to counter it. Washington will want try to restrain Ankara and Riyadh from acquiring all the technology needed for nuclear weapons but will find it increasingly difficult to do so.
Getting back to the nuclear deal is the best option. The sooner the better.
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– Former Senator Bob Dole has died at 98. He was a masterful legislator and a witty partisan. NYT has some of his quips.
– WSJ says US is trying to block Chinese efforts to build an Atlantic base in Equitorial Guinea.
– NYT says Syria is a narcostate with illicit amphetamines its biggest export.
– FT says US has been sharing intelligence on Russian threat to Ukraine, convincing allies.
– Dan Drezner parses the stories on Ukraine.
– Jim Fallows analyzes the threats to US democracy, sees protection of minority rights morphing into minority rule.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, December 4
-Despite the Senate’s recent dysfunction, the government is funded until Feb 18. We still don’t know how the debt ceiling will be handled — and the deadline could be as soon as Dec 21. Meanwhile, the armed services leadership, stymied by Senators insisting on having their amendments voted on, is looking to skip Senate amendments altogether. The leaders plan to work out a conference deal on the NDAA, let the House pass it as a new bill, and force the Senate to accept it. FYI, I like this bipartisan idea for the debt ceiling.
– In a very curious leak, WaPo says Russia has plans to invade Ukraine by late January. The story, attributed only to “US officials”, also included an unclassified document depicting Russian troop movements. The fact of such an unclassified document suggests to me that the administration wants to build a very public case against the Russian moves. Saying Russia has “plans” is also different from saying Russia has the clear intent to act. I suspect the IC has details of a basic plan, accompanied by realistic troop deployments as part of an exercise, which could be turned into an invasion.
-Politico has an unusual piece about Chancellor Merkel with more negatives than positive. Worth reading.
-Good for the EU: more convergence with US on China, and its own BRI.
– Civ-mil problems: dropping confidence in the US military and extremist sentiments in Army & Marine Corps.
– WSJ has section from Prof Brands’ new book on how to contain China.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Jaw-jaw is better
The Russian buildup on its border with Ukraine looks increasingly like a real invasion force. While Moscow has already built a bridge from Russian territory to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, President Putin would also like a mainland connection along the coast through Mariupol. Or he has signaled he might settle for an agreement with Washington that Ukraine and other immediate neighbors of Russia will never join NATO. The deployment of 100,000 invasion-ready troops is expensive, but Russia is still relatively flush despite the decline of oil from more than $80 per barrel to less than $70. Putin is using military threat to gain what the West has successfully denied Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago: a “near abroad” sphere of influence Russia regards as vital to its security.
Moscow claims it is reacting to NATO threats, but there is no real sign of those. Putin knows that NATO is an inherently defensive alliance, one ruled by consensus that is difficult to achieve. The Alliance will not deploy troops to defend non-member Ukraine. If the balloon goes up, it will be Kiev’s responsibility to respond to a Russian invasion. While it did poorly at that in 2014, when the Russians took Crimea as well as Luhansk and Donetsk, the Ukrainian army has improved since then and received a modicum of assistance from the US, in particular defensive Javelin missiles to counter Russian tanks. Presumably Washington is also providing Kiev with satellite and signals intelligence.
There is an obvious off-ramp from the current confrontation: the Minsk II agreement that provides for self-governance for Luhansk and Donetsk in return for re-establishing monitored control of the border with Russia and withdrawal of illegal armed forces from Ukrainian territory. But Russia has no interest in self-governance anywhere and uses proxy forces inside Ukraine to ensure that control of the border remains in exclusively Russian-friendly hands. The Germans and French led the negotiation effort that produced Minsk II, but they haven’t got the diplomatic clout to make it stick with Moscow. Even if the US were to weigh in heavily, it is not clear Moscow would be prepared to implement Minsk II.
While Putin’s statecraft in using the threat of military force may look promising, it could turn out badly. It is not clear Russia would win a war with Ukraine. Even without one, any patriotic Ukrainian might conclude from the current situation that membership in NATO and the EU is the most promising way of defending the country and enabling it to prosper. Russia is just too big and relatively well off for Kiev to confront alone. While Russia might bite off another morsel in Ukraine’s southeast, political and economic conditions in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine are miserable. Ukraine’s best hope will be to prove itself far better at governing and prospering than Moscow. That should not be impossible, as Russia is a declining petro-state of no particular distinction in benefiting its citizens.
In the meanwhile, the West will need to react to any military move on Russia’s part. The usual response is perhaps the best it can do: rhetorical condemnation, tightening and expanding sanctions, and increasing military, economic and political assistance to Kiev. The alternative is unattractive: agreement to close the doors of NATO and the EU to Ukraine, Belarus, and other neighbors of Russia. That would demonstrate that sabre rattling is a successful strategy and would no doubt lead to more of the same. We should not go to war with Russia over Ukraine, but nor should we cave to Russian intimidation. Jaw-jaw is better.
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