Tag: China

The troubles we see

This year’s Council on Foreign Relations Preventive Priorities Survey was published this morning. It annually surveys the globe for a total of 30 Tier 1, 2 and 3 priorities for the United States. Tier 1s have a high or moderate impact on US interests or a high or moderate likelihood (above 50-50). Tier 2s can have low likelihood but high impact on US interests, moderate (50-50) likelihood and moderate impact on US interests, or high likelihood and low impact on US interests. Tier 3s are all the rest. Data is crowdsourced from a gaggle of experts, including me.

We aren’t going to be telling you anything you don’t know this year, but the exercise is still instructive. The two new Tier 1 contingencies are Russian intervention in Ukraine and heightened tensions in Israel/Palestine. A new Tier 2 priority is Kurdish violence within Turkey. I don’t believe I voted for that one. Ebola made it only to Tier 3, as did political unrest in China and possible succession problems in Thailand. I had Ebola higher than that.

Not surprisingly, the top slot (high likelihood and high impact) goes to ISIS. Military confrontation in the South China Sea moved up to Tier 1. Internal instability in Pakistan moved down, as did political instability in Jordan. Six issues fell off the list: conflict in Somalia, a China/India clash, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo Bangladesh and conflict between Sudan and South Sudan.

Remaining in Tier 1 are a mass casualty attack on the US homeland (hard to remove that one), a serious cyberattack (that’s likely to be perennial too), a North Korea crisis, and an Israeli attack on Iran. Syria and Afghanistan remain in Tier 2 (I think I had Syria higher than that).

The Greater Middle East looms large in this list. Tier 2 is all Greater Middle East, including Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey and Yemen (in addition to Tier 1 priorities Israel/Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine). That makes 11 out of 30, all in the top two tiers. Saudi monarchy succession is not even mentioned. Nor is Bahrain.

Sub-Saharan Africa makes it only into Tier 3. Latin America and much of Southeast Asia escape mention.

There is a question in my mind whether the exclusively country-by-country approach of this survey makes sense. It is true of course that problems in the Middle East vary from country to country, but there are also some common threads: Islamic extremism, weak and fragile states, exclusionary governance, demographic challenges and economic failure. From a policy response perspective, it may make more sense to focus on those than to try to define “contingencies” country by country. If you really wanted to prevent some of these things from happening, you would surely have to broaden the focus beyond national borders. Russian expansionism into Russian-speaking territories on its periphery might be another more thematic way of defining contingencies.

One of the key factors in foreign policy is entirely missing from this list: domestic American politics and the difficulties it creates for a concerted posture in international affairs. Just to offer a couple of examples: failure to continue to pay Afghanistan’s security sector bills, Congressional passage of new Iran sanctions before the P5+1 negotiations are completed, or a decision by President Obama to abandon entirely support for the Syrian opposition. The survey ignores American “agency” in determining whether contingencies happen, or not. That isn’t the world I live in.

For my Balkans readers: no, you are not on the list, and you haven’t been for a long time so far as I can tell. In fact, it is hard to picture how any contingency today in the Balkans could make it even to Tier 3. That’s the good news. But it also means you should not be looking to Washington for solutions to your problems. Brussels and your own capitals are the places to start.

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Peace Picks November 24-28

  1. The Future of the Kurds in the Middle East | Monday November 24th | 12:00 – 2:00 | Rethink Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The threat of ISIS and the Kobane crisis have led to interesting developments in the region. Turkish government declared that it gives Peshmerga forces a passage to Kobane as a response to Washington’s approval of arms transfers to PYD. For the first time, White House publicly stated that PYD is different from PKK, and thus, not considered as a terrorist group by the United States. Recently, PYD and Syrian Kurdish parties reached a settlement in Dohuk in the presence of KRG President Massoud Barzani, reminiscent of the Erbil agreement two years ago. Will the United States support an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria? Is Dohuk agreement going to be effective under the pressure of ISIS threat? What is the stance of Turkish government toward PYD’s future? The speakers are Michael Gunter, a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University and has authored 11 books on Kurds in the Middle East, Vera Eccarius-Kelly, a professor of Comparative Politics and Associate Dean at Siena College and is the author of The Militant Kurds: A Dual Strategy for Freedom, and Sezin Oney, a columnist for Taraf daily in Turkey. The moderator is Mustafa Gurbuz, a fellow at Rethink Institute and a policy fellow at Center for Global Policy at George Mason University.
  2. Jihadist Movements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq: Inevitable Rise or Policy Failure? | Monday November 24th | 3:30 – 5:00 | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The growth of jihadist movements in the Middle East has fueled regional instability and captured global attention. Adam Baczko, Gilles Dorronsoro, and Arthur Quesnay will address their emergence in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. Based on extensive fieldwork, they will assess the failure of U.S. policy to anticipate current developments and suggest new orientations. They will analyze the similarities and differences between the Taliban and the Islamic State regarding military strategy, governance, and engagement with Western countries, as well as compare the respective levels of sectarian violence in Iraq and Syria with Afghanistan. Frederic Wehrey will serve as a discussant, and Frederic Grare will moderate.
  3. Iran-P5+1 Nuclear Negotiations: the Road Ahead | Tuesday November 25th | 10:30 – 12:00 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | A year of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 partners based on the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), adopted in Geneva in November 2013, has produced significant progress, but a comprehensive deal has so far proved elusive. With important differences reportedly remaining but with the parties actively engaged in the run-up to the JPOA’s current deadline of November 24, the outcome of the current phase of negotiations is uncertain—although the parties may well be headed for another extension. Brookings will host a panel discussion to evaluate where the negotiations stand, to consider prospects for the period ahead and to discuss how the U.S. Congress, key Iranian audiences and other interested parties may react in the current situation. The speakers are Gary Samore, Executive Director of Research at The Belfer Center, Harvard University, David Albright, Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security and Edward Levine, National Advisory Board Member at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The moderator is Robert Einhorn, Senior Fellow at Brookings.
  4. Corruption, Constitutionalism & Control: Implications of the 4th Plenum for China and U.S.-China Relations | Tuesday November 25th | 3:00 – 4:30 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The recently concluded 4th Plenum of China’s 18th Communist Party Congress focused on “governing the nation in accordance with law.” Reforms described in plenum documents seek to strengthen the institutional bases for economic and social reforms laid out at the 2013 plenum, and to build trust in the Communist Party’s ability to behave righteously and govern justly. Standards of righteousness and justice, however, like the meaning of “in accordance with law” and the status of the constitution, remain vague. The pace and direction of legal reform and the scope and methods of anti-corruption efforts, moreover, remain the sole province of the CCP, within which General Secretary Xi Jinping now exercises a singular influence. How will China’s attempts to rectify the Party and strengthen the legal foundations of its governance shape the nation during Xi’s tenure, and how should American leaders, corporations, and other institutions analyze and respond to Xi’s reform program? The speakers are Donald C. Clarke, Research Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School and Andrew Wedeman, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University.
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Lame duck flies

I’m no Asia expert, but President Obama’s performance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing last week, in Myanmar and at the G20 in Australia looks damn good to me. Besides sporting his Chinese getup better than most of the other leaders, he has managed some serious bilateral moves:

  • Prospective lowered tariffs on high tech between China and the US;
  • New commitments by the two countries to reduce carbon emissions;
  • Agreement with Beijing on avoiding military confrontations;
  • Agreement with India on its food subsidy system that will unblock trade negotiations;
  • Strong support for democratic transition in Burma/Myanmar;
  • Embarrassment of Vladimir Putin for continuing to assert Russian troops are not in Ukraine.

Foreign travel and foreign policy are not unusual moves for a president in trouble. This one has used them well to do things that were planned and executed carefully. He is not looking or acting like a lame duck, especially if you throw in his preparations for a major executive move on immigration, his apparent willingness (in my view unwise) to block the XL pipeline from Canada, and the prospect of a nuclear deal with Iran.

What he hasn’t done yet is to deal effectively with two current wars: against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and in Ukraine.

Despite Canadian Prime Minister’s blunt “you need to get out of Ukraine,” the Russians are still pouring men and materiel into separatist areas of southeast Ukraine. Putin was chivalrous in Beijing, offering of his coat to Xi Jinping’s wife. It behooves him to behave well towards the Chinese customers for Russia’s gas and oil.  But his best behavior did nothing to hide his decidedly aggressive stance in Europe, where Moscow is not only invading Ukraine but also challenging NATO’s borders with close approaches of aircraft. President Obama needs to think hard about whether there isn’t more we can do to respond to Russian aggression, whether by military or diplomatic means.

ISIS’ rapid advances have been stopped, but it is still consolidating its control over eastern Syria and western Iraq. It is making mistakes in doing so, including mass atrocities against Sunni tribes that will no doubt be motive for revenge by their surviving relatives. Some Sunni tribes are even welcoming Shia militias to help them fight ISIS. Iraqi government forces have reportedly broken the ISIS siege of the country’s only oil refinery, and Kurdish forces have retaken some towns in the north.

But there seems to be no hope for a serious Iraqi army offensive against ISIS before spring. While coalition air attacks make life tactically difficult for the caliphate’s fighters, they are not faltering strategically. ISIS is far more than the small terrorist group President Obama likes to talk about. It is a serious insurgency that will require someone–be it Iraqi government or Syrian opposition–to conduct a serious counter-insurgency campaign. Killing a few of its leaders and cadres is not going to turn the tide. There are reports this weekend of a plan to accelerate arming of the Syrian opposition. That is long overdue. A commitment to protect it when it moves into Syria should be forthcoming as well.

So yes, Mr. President, you had a good week in Asia. The lame duck showed he could fly. But things are still bad in Europe and the Middle East. Welcome home!

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Aye, there’s the rub

A nuclear deal with Iran is looking more likely than ever before. The P5+1 or EU3+3 (either way it is the US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) are making progress on issues related to enrichment and plutonium production and reprocessing. Verifying that fissile material, which can be used in an atomic bomb, is not diverted from those processes is a routine responsibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). If Iran will agree to limits on the number of its centrifuges, the degree of enrichment and the quantity of plutonium produced as well as fulfill its Safeguards commitments, the IAEA can verify that the limits are not exceeded and material is not diverted to a weapons program. If Iran were nevertheless to decide to “break out,” it would require six months to a year for it to do so, leaving time for both diplomatic and military efforts to prevent it from doing so.

The crunch issues lie in a different direction:  undeclared nuclear material and the related question of possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s past nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been making little progress getting from Tehran clarification of past activities that appear to have aimed at design of high explosives and other research on initiation of a nuclear explosion. Nor has it been able to ascertain that there are no nuclear materials lying outside its purview. The IAEA concluded in September (and repeated Friday, despite recent meetings at which PMDs were discussed):

the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.

In other words, a nuclear deal–even one with tight constraints on known facilities–could leave material and activities unaccounted for that are directed specifically at building a nuclear weapon in secret. Construction activity at a suspected site of clandestine nuclear activities (Parchin) has raised suspicions that Tehran is covering up past nuclear weapons research.

Some would like to forget about Iran’s past misbehavior, which reportedly stopped in 2003 in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq (when at least some in Tehran thought the Americans might come their way next). Ignoring past behavior and the possible existence of undeclared nuclear material would be unwise. Judging from past performance in other countries, development of nuclear weapons is far more likely to take place in parallel, secret efforts than in nuclear plants and activities under IAEA surveillance. If Iran wants the rest of the world to believe that it has seriously and permanently foresworn nuclear weapons, it needs to convince everyone that it either never did have a clandestine program or had one and gave it up.

This is difficult for Iran because of its government structure. President Rouhani is responsible for the nuclear negotiations. But the most likely sponsor of a clandestine nuclear program (past, present or future) is Supreme Leader Khamenei, who controls ample resources for such a purpose, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). That’s why President Obama writes Khamenei secret letters. The Supreme Leader has reportedly forsworn nuclear weapons in a fatwa:

the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.

The trouble is Islamic jurisprudence allows a fatwa, which generally has no official written form, to be changed or reinterpreted. This one was published in an official government press release in 2005 that has evaporated from the worldwide web. That does not inspire confidence. So one well-connected Iranian commentator living in the US suggests it be “secularized” as a criminal statute. Of course that could be changed as well, but the notion of getting Iran to pledge formally that it will not seek nuclear weapons could certainly be part of a nuclear deal.

It would not substitute for what some might regard as impossible:  proving the negative proposition that Iran does not have clandestine nuclear materials or a clandestine nuclear research program. “Coming clean” about past nuclear activities would certainly help. Continuing to stiff the IAEA on PMDs and the construction (now stopped) at Parchin does not. President Obama is presumably ready to justify to Congress and the American people a nuclear deal with Iran that allows it to continue peaceful activities (including enrichment) under tight IAEA surveillance, but he won’t get far unless he can also persuade them that there are no clandestine nuclear activities in progress. That’s what will give him pause.

PS: Tony Cordesman discusses in detail the difficult issues associated with clandestine research and development for nuclear weapons here.

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Hong Kong and the Arab uprisings

The Hong Kong protesters may be disappointed in their televised talks with the authorities, but I’m not. They have achieved something remarkable:  a widely disseminated (at least within Hong Kong) public effort by the authorities to justify their rejection of democracy. The fact of their  meeting with the students, whose side of the argument was apparently not broadcast by the authorities, speaks louder than words. This is an enormous achievement, even if the talks have inevitably failed to reach a compromise.

The contrast with what is going on in the Middle East could not be sharper. There Islamists are rejecting democracy and secularism, which they associate with autocracy and godlessness. In Syria, Libya and Yemen, large portions of the society (not everyone) have chosen violent means–or tact support for violent means–to achieve their political ends, while in Hong Kong only the police have opted for brutality.

This is as it should be. Nonviolence has a better chance of winning than violence, mainly because some of the forces of law and order will eventually hesitate to use violence against nonviolent protesters. Once a corner of the police is bent to sympathize with the protesters, the Hong Kong authorities will be forced either to call in the army or compromise with the protesters’ demands.

Calling in the People’s Liberation Army would be a clear signal of defeat for the authorities, who have made it clear they fear real democracy would open representation to the votes of the lower classes:

If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month.

This remarkable statement comes from the chief executive in Hong Kong, a loyal Beijing supporter. What has Communism come to?

There is room for compromise here. The nominating committee that is to vet Hong Kong candidates for Chief Executive, slated to be controlled entirely by Beijing, could be opened to broader representation and the criteria for rejecting candidates limited to malfeasance. Only a wide open electoral contest will satisfy student protest leaders, but something short of that might represent real progress in the right direction.

Protesters in the Middle East could learn a lot from their Asian counterparts. The disciplined commitment to sustained nonviolent protest in Hong Kong makes good sense, precisely because the authorities have overwhelming force at their disposal. The protesters have clearly thought this through and are looking to maintain mass support that would be l0st quickly if they resorted to violence. A few may lose patience and head in that direction, but so far at least they have mostly resisted a temptation that would inevitably give the authorities the upper hand.

Would that such discipline were available in the Middle East.

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Does size matter?

This week unexpectedly brought the inevitable news that China’s GNP exceeds US GNP.  The sky did not fall. In fact, the crossover likely happened some time ago. No one noticed. Nor does this development make China’s the largest economy on earth. The European Union still holds that trophy, if you count its 28 member states as a single entity. You should, at least for economic purposes.

That gives us a hint of whether size matters. No one even mentions when the EU surpassed the US, because it doesn’t really matter. Europe is still a pygmy in world power rankings. Its economy is large, but for the moment not growing fast (maybe not even growing), and its military capabilities are limited and shrinking. Power is in the eye of the beholder. What the world beholds in Europe is wealth but not power. It projects an image of success but stagnation or even decline. The world admires Europe, but it does not respect it.

The US, some would say, is in danger of falling into that same category. It is important for perspective to remember the last time the US suffered a panic about the growing economic power of a potential rival. That was the 1990s, when Japan loomed large. Clyde Prestowitz’s 1993 bestseller subtitled We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It now sells for a penny. The Japanese economy as stagnated for two decades as its population ages and declines.

China matters more than Europe and Japan, because it combines rapid economic growth with expanding military and technological capability. America has little to fear in the coming decade or so, so long as our allies in Asia do not trigger a crisis over some East or South China Sea island or reef. But if China continues to grow and invest as it has in the last ten years it will be a serious rival ten, or certainly twenty, years from now. There is no lack of American commentators warning us of this, the most recent Wes Clark in this morning’s New York Times.

Even then though the US will likely still be its military superior. The US is currently spending more than three times what China spends on its military (not corrected for purchasing power), which is close to twice China’s ratio of military expenditure to GDP. China has a long way to go still if it to catch up.

Military challenge is not however the big problem China poses. China will be far more problematic if it fails to grow and prosper. The Hong Kong “occupy” movement is promising because it opens a crack in China’s one-party autocracy. But it is also a warning that chaos in China is possible. Either slowing economic growth or growth so rapid that it ignites serious inflation could lead to eventual recession and growing unrest. China’s financial institutions are in no better shape than Japan’s were when it took a dive into no growth. No capitalist economy has proven itself immune to the business cycle. Even if growth remains strong, modernization theory predicts that China will face irresistible pressures to democratize. No autocracy has proven itself permanently immune to instability and middle class aspirations.

In any event, China will not grow at 7-8% forever. It is also aging rapidly, a result of its decades of one-child policy. This means real difficulty in meeting future social security needs of its elderly, and real limitations on its future labor force. This on top of structural problems in its financial sector, inefficient state-owned enterprises and other hangovers from the past make it unlikely the world can count on a China as reliable in its growth spurt as it has been for the last decade. And economic failure at home could give an autocratic China incentives to embark on adventurism abroad.

So size does matter, because Chinese economic failure of any sort in coming decades will make a big difference. A much more negative difference from the American perspective than its success.

 

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