27 August 2007

The Bad Decision Dinosaur (by Dorothy)


By Dorothy (found on catandgirl.com)
(If you can´t read it properly, click on it to open a bigger version)


This is, undoubtedly, one of the best comics/charges I ever put my eyes on.

The Bad Decision Dinosaur may look quite new to the reader, but I´m sure he has been near a few times, even if not properly noticed.

Here, for instance. Is quite hard to see him sometimes, but if you take a little time and effort staring...

Saw him here? I could spot him behind.


This is quite an old picture.
For as far as I know, Mr. Colin Powell resigned, and so did Mr. Donald Rumsfeld.

Nowadays, I imagine I´d see only Mr. Bush and the Bad Decision Dinosaur. But then again, I wish Mr. Bush gave a little time for the Dinosaur to visit some other "world leader in need".

Like Kim Jong-Il, e.g.

Awww...wishful thinking sucks!


With my best compliments.

P.S: This little piece of "IR amenities humour" is somehow a "firestarter" for a more technical and serious (yes, you heard me) accessment on Iraq, that shall be coming any time now.

20 August 2007

Bringing a shield to a missile fight?

A lot has been said about Bush's proposed missile shield to be deployed in Europe, the early-warning radar system to be placed in Eastern Europe, and Putin's reaction to it. But quite a lot has been left unsaid.

Official American statements call the missile defense system a precaution against “rogue states”. The Kremlin officially regards it as a threat to Russia's security and to the delicate balance of terror established during the Cold War. Despite the Bush administration's best efforts to reassure him, Putin has announced he is aiming missiles at Europe -- supposedly deactivated or redeployed since the end of the Cold War -- , buliding up his own air-defense system – so far unexplained – and withdrawing from the CFE (Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe). So, how much of that is justified, how much is overreaction and how much is Putin's way of cashing in on Bush's missteps? Our answer will be more inclined to the latter. Here's why.


First of all, the "delicate" balance of terror is not that delicate. In fact, the balance of terror is quite sturdy, and has proven to be so in the past half century. It has stood firm, despite repeated blows delivered throughout the years, ranging from the Berlin (1948-49, 1958-61, 1963) and Cuban (1962) crises; the emergence of new nuclear states (Britain 1952, France 1960, China 1964, India 1974 and Pakistan 1998); revolutions in warhead delivery and concealment capabilites (e.g.: the introduction of Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles - SLBMs - and Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles - MIRVs); the break-up of the USSR (and the dangers that ensued, in terms of misplaced weapons and "abandoned" silos and nuclear facilities); and, last but not least, the first attempts towards the deployment of ABM systems. To those we can add the several other situations in wich nuclear powers came to the brink of conflict or even engaged in limited direct (Chinese and US fighter jets in Vietnam) or indirect (US/UN troops and Soviet-backed North-Koreans in Korea) confrontation. Throughout all these tense moments in our recent past, the balance of terror has not only stood unshaken, but one can say with great certainty that the shadow of thermonuclear war contributed massively to the non-escalation of the above mentioned crises.


Second, ABMs (Anti-Ballistic Missiles) pose no real threat to the array of forces in place in Europe, or to Russian security writ large. That is so mainly for the following reason: ABMs don't work. At least not the way most people think, or the way the Bush administration would like us to think. ABMs are not meant to protect large, obvious targets like countries or even cities. They are meant to protect "hard" targets (as opposed to cities, which are "soft" targets), like underground silos and launchpads. When used to secure large areas, ABMs can be easily countered by a simple addition of deceptive measures or an increase in numbers of vehicles (individual missiles or warheads in MIRVs), both easily attainable for Russia and China (and even Pakistan!), thus proving itself a big waste of time and money. When used to safeguard silos, ABMs guarantee the safety of the deterrent forces reinforcing second-strike capability, and are thus a stabilizing factor, not the other way around.


It was mainly for these two reasons that President Putin was not the least worried and was in fact quite understanding when President Bush first approached him regarding the setup of a missile shield in 2001 and later withdrew from the ABM Treaty (a treaty signed in 1972 limiting the deployment of ABMs).


What changed? Why is Putin now bent on putting and end to American missile shield intentions? The answer is short: He's not. What Putin really wants is to safeguard the Russian sphere of influence. That means keeping the US as far away as possible from Eastern Europe, especially the Ukraine and Bielorussia (pipeline countries), halting NATO enlargement and pressing the US on the Caucasus (Georgia, Chechnya and the likes). The American proposal to install bases in Poland and the Czech Republic just gave him a perfect excuse to press the US and still leave some ambiguity as to the burden of the initiation of hostilities.


As a bonus, Putin can hope to succeed in gathering support at home (with his """""constituency""""") and among his peers at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Russian intentions in the latter should not be misread either. The Russians are just as scared of the Chinese military program and the Iranian bomb as are the hawks in the Pentagon, or even more so. They just found a better way to cope with it. "Keep your friends close", goes the saying.


Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher

10 March 2007

Nuclear Diplomacy of yore, today.

There is much controversy about the strategic impact of China's rise. Some optimists are led to believe that, despite its continuing efforts in modernizing the People's Liberation Army, China will be dissuaded to engage in direct confrontation and/or arms races with its peers due to the deep – and deepening – economic interdependence between Beijing and, well, the rest of the world, made clear by this week's stock sell-off.

While it is safe to say that an all-out war between China and the US or China and Japan is out of the question, an arms race in East Asia is not only coherent with China's economic situation, it is also consistent with the latest trends in Chinese military and defense R&D spending, augmented by approximately 400% in real terms over the last decade and scheduled to increase by another 18% or so in 2007.

21st Century China resembles, in more ways than one, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, in that it sees its relationship with the outside world changing as a consequence of changes both in its internal structure – a process of institutionalization and policy reform resulting from the death of its iron-fist-leader – and a considerable shift in their position in the International System due to a burst of economic growth. Both surges of growth are/were questionable in respect to their sustainability, albeit for slightly different reasons.

Another important parallel to be traced here is the incapacity of American strategic thinkers and foreign policy formulators to see the true quality of their peer's ascendence and, consequently, to correctly assess the changes – or absence thereof – in the distribution of capabilities.

The eagerness to overstate the USSR's capabilities and buy into Khrushchev's megalomaniac rethoric in the late 50's led the “best and the brightest” in the USA to believe in the formation of a “missile gap”, that is, a disparity in the warhead-delivery capabilities of the Soviet Union and the United States, with the balance tipping in favor of the former. Overreaction may have been limited by the shadow of massive retaliation, Mutual Assured Destruction, to use a term coined soon after, but nonetheless the world came close to nuclear apocalypse on more than one occasion as politicians played James Dean riding on ICBMs. Nuclear weapons became the primary object and instrument of foreign policy for both poles. Berlin (1958-1961) and Cuba (1962) were landmarks which persisted all through the Cold War and beyond it. Brinkmanship and diplomacy became synonyms.

As China converts the dividends of its economic opening (not to be confused with liberalization) into political and military power, the first signs of American exageration appear in the form of speculation about concealed spendings and the true magnitude of China's military build-up. Beijing's recent display of might, shooting down an orbiting weather satellite with an IRBM, hardly a surprise for those of us who are on the more skeptic end of the theoretical spectrum, raised a lot of doubt and worry. A more than expected reaction to the latest twists and turns of American outer space policy – the unilateral imposition of limitations regarding the use of space –, as well as to the Japanese deployment of anti-missile measures and signs of possible rearmament¹, this formidable exercise of power may seem bellicose at first. At closer inspection, though, it's clearly a message from Beijing. A sign of a new age of foreign policy. For the US, it could mean a return to nuclear diplomacy of the 1960's. It's Sputnik all over again.



[1] For a more exhaustive assessment of Asian strategic scenario see "Gol de Placa", below.

24 January 2007

Insert witty title here

It's practically common sense – outside neo-conservative circles anyway – that jihadist terrorism cannot and should not be regarded as a traditional security threat. There is, on the other hand, little agreement over what is the correct way to portray, and deal with, this phenomenon. While I suggest a few insights to the former, I do not claim to have answer to the latter. In fact, my point is quite the opposite. Underlying my main argument here is the belief that there is no single cocktail of sound policies applicable to all countries troubled by terrorism. What I do claim, however, is that most measures currently being proposed and employed by European authorities are dead wrong, for they ignore a crucial aspect of the nature of the threat they face: the proliferation and "target selection" of jihadists is like the spreading of a venereal disease, that is to say, social in nature.

EU-US relations today are a source of building tension and complication. Fruitful and longstanding economic, military and political partnerships notwithstanding, the old continent watches carefully – though not carefully enough – as the unchained Gulliver rampages on, in its battle against terror. Unable to constrain it, most european countries have chosen to either remain neutral or bandwagon and assist, each its own way, the rampant giant. Said assistance is looser than tradicional millitary alliances in time of war. It is also intermittent, going back and forth, back and forth, repeatedly, just like... well, you've got the picture. This trend is not all that recent and can be traced back all the way to the early years of the Cold War. In many ways, this recent drift closely resembles the one in the late 50's/early 60's. This oscilatory solidarity, as it has been wittingly called by some, can be seen clearly in the EU's September 14th joint communiquè in respect to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, followed by the invoking of Article 5 of the NATO Charter and limited participation in the war in Afghanistan, as well as, later on, in the refusal of most european countries, with important exceptions, to engage in military action in Iraq.

Two of the above referred exceptions, Great Britain and Spain, have been targeted by terrorist cells linked to Al Qaeda and/or inspired by Al Qaeda's particular brand of jihadism. Though the connection seems obvious enough, european counter-terrorist efforts consist not of disengaging from the US, and run in the precise opposite direction, that is, of intensifying transatlantic relations. As Gijs de Vries, European co-ordinator for counter-terrorism, stated: “Terrorism is a common and urgent threat for both Europe and America. We are in it together.[...] It will be a long and painful struggle for all of us. All the more reason to work closely together.” So much for prophylactics... As long as this line of reasoning is followed, Europol and Justice and Home Affairs measures – many of which are also quite destructive, yet more effective – will be canceled out by the continued transatlantic intercourse.

As said before, no single batch of measures will do when it comes to fending off terrorism, but by acknowledging it's true nature, one general directive can be derived; one that european leaders would do well to abide by: