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Cheers

Quick Post on the Iran and Iraq

In the Wretchard’s “The Coming of the Bomb” at Belmont Club, he excerpts from the US Army War College’s “Getting Ready For A Nuclear-Ready Iran” monograph:

“[An] ever more nuclear-ready Iran will try to lead the revolutionary Islamic vanguard throughout the Islamic world by becoming the main support for terrorist organizations aimed against Washington’s key regional ally, Israel; America’s key energy source, Saudi Arabia; and Washington’s prospective democratic ally, Iraq.”

The Wretchard extends this analysis to declare, “It could mark the final end of efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and provide Islamic terrorism with a nuclear deterrent.”

If the prediction above holds true than the Iraqi project will fail before it even has a chance to really succeed. The great hope for the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was to help galvanize democracy and openness in the Middle East with the chance to be a Shia counterweight to the mullahs in Iran and bring hope to the Iranian people by showing them an alternative route.

An emboldened nuclear Iran that would be able to leverage its nuclear power status to aggressively support Islamic terrorist organizations and would contribute to even more instability to the security environment in the Middle East and many Muslim nations.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intentions for the nuclear weapons are still not quite clear. His extreme rhetoric has caused much alarm and, indeed, the cause of the escalation of the crisis. Here are just some possible motives:
1) Deterrent against the US. The US surrounds Iran on three sides: Iraq in the west, Afghanistan in the south, and in the Persian Gulf where the US superior naval forces can be sent.
2) To generate a crisis that will consolidate Ahmadinejad’s political base? This would be in line with his stark political rhetoric, which has captured the political discourse.
3) Leverage to propel Iranian Republic as the revolutionary vanguard of Islam (despite the Shi’a vs. Sunni differences)?

I don’t think we have enough information on this to move beyond such speculation and until the only logical route with Iran is through engagement, exchanging the world’s acquiesce of Iran’s nuclear development for some sort of economic openness (a way to tie and restrain Tehran’s action). Short of a risky military action or regime change, we sadly have no options left.

PS: As a side note Officer’s Club (via DefenseTech) points to a Washington Post’s article on a “bolt-out-of-the-blue” plan for rapid global strike, a supposed plan called CONPLAN 8022 that deals specifically with Iran and North Korea. Unless the world stands behind the US (with the pen and the sword), such a plan would be very unlikely.

Introduction

Tom Friedman’s recent NYT column, “Axis of Order?”, is a very interesting article not because of its main topic, dealing with Iran, but its recognition that we need to adjust to new realities of the new-core states. In essence, the need for bringing in the new-core states like China, Russia and India into the interntional process to be stakeholders:

Why has this now become a stakeholder test for China, Russia and India? Because if the Iranian mullahs who are now awash in petro- dollars know one thing, it is how to read power and weakness. The Iranians know that the United States has already put all the sanctions on Iran that it can. They seriously doubt that the Europeans will ever impose sanctions. And this is the key even if the Security Council censures Iran, and Europe miraculously joins the U.S. in imposing sanctions, the Iranians assume that China, Russia and India that’s half the world will never follow.

Only if China, Russia and India make it clear that they are not only willing to let Iran’s case be taken up by the Security Council, but that they will also join in stringent economic sanctions, will Iran back down. Western threats, which Iran’s radical president dismissed with the back of his hand Thursday as some little “fuss,” are no longer credible.

Communist Russia and China opposed the United States during the Cold War, and socialist India was neutral. But since the end of the Cold War, all three countries have embraced capitalism and become huge players and beneficiaries of today’s global economy, with Russia providing oil and gas, China manufacturing and India software. All three now have a huge stake in the stability of the international system.

But these countries have basically been cruising along as free riders on a stable international order, which has been maintained largely by the United States, with help from the European Union, NATO and Japan. Both Russia and China have actually used their clout at times to protect international bad actors like Iran, Sudan and North Korea out of a narrow economic self-interest and a kind of residual third-world, gotta-counter-the-Americans reflex.
…
That helped keep Iran on the fence for a while. But now Iran has gotten off the fence, and so must Russia, China and India. For their own sakes, if not America’s, these emerging big three have got to become the Axis of Order. The old cops on the beat can’t deal with the Axis of Evil alone anymore. Pay attention to how this one ends, folks. The structure of the whole post-Cold-War world is at stake.

Commentary

On the Evolving International System

Friedman is correct that the Iran Crisis will be an interesting test on how the new New Core members - India, China, and Russia - will react to a major crisis that is ocurring in: 1) near their neighborhood; and 2) a country with which they have substantial energy and financial connections with.

Calling the trio of New Core states to be an “Axis of Order” is cute, but doesnt address the bigger questions: How do these New Core states fit in to the international system? And, how do we ensure that these New Core states will adjust to the new international system in a way beneficial to the United States and the world?

For the United States, at the very least we need a Big Four Alliance system composing of the UK-US-Japan-India. Thomas Donnelly at AEI has written an excellent essay, Big Four Alliance on this. The only fault is that Donnelly’s focus is too narrow - focusing on anglosphere countries and it needs to be more ambitious. There should be a “Big Four Alliance” for sure, but this should be part of a larger framework of institutions that include the Big Four, as well as, Russia, China and Brazil.

On Iran and Nuclear Proliferation
The bigger question to ask in Iran is: Can we honestly say we can stop nuclear proliferation? And if not, what are our options?

In The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 06), William Langewiesche correctly argues in “The Point of No Return” that in this current world we cannot stop proliferation. Here’s a choice anonymous quote from the article:

You cannot have a world order in which you have five or eight nuclear-weapons states on the one hand, and the rest of the international community on the other. There are many places like Pakistan, poor countries that have legitimate security concerns—every bit as legitimate as yours. And yet you ask them to address those concerns without nuclear weapons—while you have nuclear weapons and you have everything else? It is not a question of what is fair, or right or wrong. It is simply not going to work.

Indeed, the world has changed and with it - to quote Thomas Barnett - we need new “rule-sets”.

Related:
If you would like a good roundup on events surrounding Iran, I suggest checking out this excellent posting by The Moderate Voice by Joe Gandelman.

Introduction: Chinese and Indian Energy Cooperation

India and China kicked off their “Year of Friendship” to a rather good start. Only a few days ago (Jan 9), China and India’s respective state-owned oil companies agreed on a joint venture on the purchase and development on oil assets in Syria. And now China and India agreed on sharing bid information on bidding on foreign hydrocarbon fuel (to avoid driving prices unnecesarrily) and to encourage joint ventures.

The document that China and India signed, the two most populous states, outlined “cooperation in upstream exploration and production, refining and marketing of petroleum products and petrochemicals, oil and gas pipelines, research and development, and promotion of environmentally friendly fuels.” (source) The document also included agreements on coopertion on the production of biofuels.

In a visit to China, the Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar stated:

“We look on China not as a strategic competitor but a strategic partner,” said Aiyar in an exclusive interview in Beijing. “It is clear to me that any imitation of the ‘Great Game’ between India and China is a danger to peace. We cannot endanger each other’s security in our quest for energy security.”

Aiyar also brought up the idea of joint pipeline connecting India and China, but this is something India has brought-up in the past as well without substantial response from China.

Motives and Benefits?

On the surface, this partnership is quite puzzling. This movement towards cooperation would benefit India far more than China:

• India is more dependent on imported oil (China’s 30-40% to India’s 70%)
• Indian oil companies have been repeatedly outbided by China, so why the need for China to cooperate?
• China’s “Go-Out” oil strategy has been thus far successful with its connections in Central Asia, South American and from Sudan to Iran. So why would China cut a deal now?
• China and India have gone through minor wars in the past and unresolved border disputes. How will these issues loom over China and India’s ability to cooperate?

However, China and India have cooperated in some major instances, such as China’s support of India for permanent membership in the Security Council and in the Russian-Chinese led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), India sits as an observer and a potential future member.

But in a larger context, Chinese would be foolish to stand-by as US and India continue to forge a closer tie, esp. with word last year about the Bush Administration wishing to “help India become a major world power in the 21st century”, which has mainly manifested itself in the US willingness to help India’s civilian nuclear energy program despite the nuclear testing in 1998.

Broad energy cooperation from China (successful so far in its “Go Out” strategy) would prove very significant for an equally energy hungry India. Indeed, one could say that using energy cooperation would present a more enticing carrot than what the US can offer India: military equipment and nuclear energy technology.

Additionally, engaging and building relationships with neighboring partners would fit into China’s strategy of “Raising Peacefully”. China is continuing to build regional institutions to project its power, such as through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the recent Easts Asia Summit.

Some would perhaps point out that any partnership would never work between India and China, as they are economic rivals. This is true in the area of energy resources, but when it comes to their economies, the two are very different. China is concentrating on manufacturing where as India moving ahead to high-tech software area and providing advances services, such in the financial industry.

Conclusion

With the exception of Japan (which even signed a $3 billion deal for Iranian oil), things are looking rather lonely for the U.S. in Asia. US must more vigorously appraoch India as natural partners, in its shared Anglo-heritage and as the world’s largest democracy. India can help share the burden as one of the pillars of security in the Middle East and Central Asia. And China too should be approach and incorporated under a new security framework in East Asia, with the United States and Japan.

The U.S. needs to lead in incorporating China, India and other emerging New Core powers into international organizations, as prescribed by Thomas Barnett. Else, these New Core states will look to seize the initiative and form their own alliances and institutions that will increasingly sideline the United States. We can help lead the future or sit back and watch as others make it for us.

PS: Why the lack of any coverage in this on New York Times, Washington Post etc? I am writing this on 1/13/2005 12:36AM, Pacific Time. Only the Financial Timeshas something major so far.

Summary

Declining birthrates in places like Europe, Japan and Russia and increasing immigration in once homogenous states (like France) is becoming an issue of mainstream discussion. Just last week (January 04 & 05), the WSJ and the Economist both ran articles on the issue of demographics, commenting on the opposite ends but equally faulty premises. One seeing immigration and demographics change as signaling the decline of the West (WSJ) and the other tends to underplay the challenge of declining birthrate and changing demographics (Economist).

The impact of changing demographics are analyzed through the New Republic’s piece on the Netherlands, on the effects of Muslim immigration and the socio-political upheaval (a turn to the Right) it has caused in a state stereotyped as an uber-liberal country.

The challenge facing Netherlands (and other countries) is a major one: it is the challenge of successfully transitioning from a nation-state to a market-state. Indeed, Philip Bobbitt has already foresaw such issues in his seminal work The Shield of Achilles:

“Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen…The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.” (Emphasis mine)

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Weekend Reading: Thomas Friedman on Energy Gluttony and Security in the Middle East and Beyond
In Yesterday’s New York Times, columnist and author Tom Friedman writes calls for a mature U.S. energy policy as central to the US and global security. Unfortunately, the piece is behind New York Time’s firewall, but thankfully it is freely available from my city library’s online database.

Most strikingly Friendman states that “A democratization policy in the Middle East without a different energy policy at home is a waste of time, money and, most important, the lives of our young people.”

In a sense he is correct. Reform in the Middle East will be more about economic diversity/connectivity rather than democracy. As we know petrol states suffer from lacking both, but economic connectivity (beyond just state oil companies selling black gold abroad) will help foster political moderation and pull these states from Gap to the Seam and to the Core (to use Thomas Barnett’s terminology).

Here’s an excerpt from Friendman’s article, “Being Green is the New Red White and Blue“:

The biggest threat to America and its values today is not communism, authoritarianism or Islamism. It’s petrolism. Petrolism is my term for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices — in oil states from Russia to Nigeria and Iran — that result from a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. Petrolism is the politics of using oil income to buy off one’s citizens with subsidies and government jobs, using oil and gas exports to intimidate or buy off one’s enemies, and using oil profits to build up one’s internal security forces and army to keep oneself ensconced in power, without any transparency or checks and balances.

When a nation’s leaders can practice petrolism, they never have to tap their people’s energy and creativity; they simply have to tap an oil well. And therefore politics in a petrolist state is not about building a society or an educational system that maximizes its people’s ability to innovate, export and compete. It is simply about who controls the oil tap.
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Quick Weekend Reading Post (Update 01)

Just added: Check out Foreign Policy (Jan/Feb06) on “China Rising” with contribution from Zbigniew Brzezinski, John J. Mearsheimer, Minxin Pei and the like. Definately worth the lengthy read.

Victor Davis Hanson’ s “A Letter to the Europeans” - A nice “State of Europe” piece by the ever controversial VDH.

Dan tdaxp: “Good News from Iraq” - Excellent argument for the dividing of Iraq in the context of Thomas Barnett’s Core-Gap perspective.

Dan tdaxp: “Mother’s MILC and the Department of the MISCellaneous” - Highlighting events in South Korea, China and elsewhere, Dan puts forward the the need for a “Military-Industrial-Leviathan-Complex” all within the context of Thomas Barnett’s “Reverse Domino Theory”.

More to come…

Complimentaring StrategyUnit’s post on the Russia-Ukraine Gas sega, StratFor’s Peter Zeihan has an interesting perspective on the possible role and orientation of Dimitri Mendevev, Putin’s newly selected Prime Minister, and his in the Ukraine-Russian Gas issue.

StratFor’s article is interesting because it takes account to the role of Mendevev, whereas Jamestown Foundation, Eurasianet et al have been more focused on Putin or Russia itself.

So, who is this Medvedev?

In mid-November, Russian President Vladimir Putin named Dmitry Medvedev as first deputy prime minister. Medvedev is a rather rare personality in Russian politics, in that he is a modernizer who has not become unrealistically optimistic about Russia ever looking like — much less joining — the West, and a nationalist who has not fallen prey to the debilitating paranoia that often characterizes Russian policy. He also happens to be Putin’s protégé and the board chairman of Gazprom. The Ukraine natural gas crisis was his first Russian foreign-policy initiative.

Medvedev, like all Russians, recognizes that his country’s long-term prospects without Ukraine are, at best, bleak. That means that Russia’s European relations have become of secondary importance — they are no longer an end in their own right, but rather a means to other ends.

According to Stratfor, Medvedev’s motivations are similar to what was mentioned in StrategyUnit’s article: a method to reassert Russia on the world stage, taking advantage of the G-8 chairmanship to set the tone of its chairmanship. In this case it is to force Europe to consider Russia’s interests, power and importance seriously.

Prior to the Jan. 1 shutoff, the Europeans had become complacent, unappreciative of the scope of their dependency upon Russia or how much they have taken a “friendly” Moscow for granted since the end — or even before the end — of the Cold War. Energy supplies to Europe continued throughout the Afghan war, the 1983 war scare, the Moscow Olympic boycott, the putsch against Gorbachev, the Soviet breakup, the Chechen war, the Kosovo war, and the enlargements of NATO and the EU. The Europeans grew confident that as far as energy supplies were concerned, the Russians — while unpredictable in their rhetoric — were rock-solid in their reliability.

Medvedev’s primary goal was to redefine European perceptions of Russia. As of Dec. 31, Western Europeans perceived Russia primarily as an easily dismissed, benign former foe. But with the Gazprom cutoff — which diminished gas supplies needed for heating in the middle of winter — Russia proved itself not only sufficiently erratic to be taken seriously, but also capable of inflicting very real pain with a modicum of effort.

Now, did the Russians want to hurt the Europeans? Of course not. Europe, particularly “old” Europe, remains a potential partner for Moscow, and there is no reason for the Kremlin to introduce spite into an already complex relationship. But did the Russians want the Europeans to know that the Kremlin has the capacity and chutzpah to turn the screws? Absolutely. And doing so at a time of year when the wind whipping off the North Sea is anything but balmy adds that ever-incisive Russian touch.

This is not about establishing trust, but about establishing in Europe a respect for Russia’s strengths and an awareness of Russia’s concerns.
…
The elegance of Medvedev’s strategy lies in the fact that simply causing the Europeans to think about Russian interests means that the Kremlin has driven a wedge not only between the Europeans and the Ukrainians, but between the Europeans and the Americans. If Russia is to recover what it has lost in geopolitical stature these past 15 years, this is precisely the sort of policy that will give it a fighting chance.

The entire article has more details regarding Ukraine’s motivations and calculations as well as its historic importance to Russia. Most interestingly it points to Yushchenko potential use of the gas issue as a way to play the “anti-Russian” card to boost his popularity for the upcoming March parliamentary elections.

If someone would like to see the article, please let me know and I can forward it. I am unsure if its available freely online.

Updated December 03, 2006
—————–

Introduction

With the breakdown in price negotiations during recent days, Russian state-owned Gazprom choose to cut the gas deliveries to Ukraine, the main conduit for exports to the rest of Europe. This is a critical situation because, as mentioned by Bloomberg, “State-run Gazprom supplies about a quarter of gas consumed in Europe and ships about 75 percent of that volume through Ukrainian pipelines.”

Washington Post provides further details on the outcome: “On Sunday, with no agreement on a new price, Russia cut by 120 million cubic meters a day the volume of gas it sent down the Ukrainian pipeline — Ukraine’s share. But there were soon reports that the volume of gas reaching Austria, Italy, France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Croatia at the other end had fallen by as much as 40 percent.

Gazprom claimed that Ukraine was stealing gas — about $25 million worth on Sunday alone, according to Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom’s deputy chairman”

Russian Climbdown

But only one day after cutting the gas supply, Russia has been forced to restore the supply with mounting criticism from Europe and US on Russia’s ability to be a reliable energy partner. Gazprom, however, tried to square all blame on Ukraine:

“With the aim of preventing a possible energy crisis caused by Ukraine illegally taking gas, Gazprom has taken the decision to deliver additional gas into the gas transport system of Ukraine,” the company said in a statement.

“We stress that the additional delivery of gas is not designed for Ukrainian consumers but is meant for transit through the territory of Ukraine for delivery to consumers outside the borders of Ukraine.”

Europe, IEA and the US are placing blame on Russia for the current crisis, demonstrating the limits of Russia’s “Petro-Power”.

Russian Stabs Itself and Stumbles

In the long term, Ukraine will have to come to a compromise with Russia leading to higher prices. But more substantially, Russia’s heavy handed tactics against Ukraine will backfire throughout Europe and Russia’s energy customers. What Russia has seeming underestimated is the reaction from Europe because of its actions against Ukraine. What Russia’s hardball tactics has done for Europe is to:

1. Highlight Europe’s dangerous energy dependency on an increasingly authoritarian Russia
2. Confirm the fear that Russia will turn to its energy resources as its main leverage of power in the global stage
3. Encourage European states to find alternative energy sources, away from Russia (Neighboring Finland is already building its first nuclear to move away from Russia)
4. Highlight that Putin and Russia cannot be trusted in other important issues like Iran, North Korea et cetera
5. Encourage speeding the process to include Ukraine in western institutions like NATO and the EU
6. Underline that the Russian-German gas pipeline (expected to be completed by 2010) is a naked attempt by Russia to consolidate its power and influence in Europe
7. Seals Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder image as sell-out for Moscow, as he is now working on Gazprom’s Russian-German Gas Pipeline
8. Draw increasing criticism to Russia for its increasing authoritarian use of power, such as the banning of NGOs, that will only grow as Russia assumes head of the G-8 this year.
9. Increase calls for Russia to be removed from the G-8 for not being a major world economy, a democracy or even a free-market state

This arrogant move against Ukraine amid recent criticism for restricting NGOs and holding the G-8 chair may be a signal that Putin’s consolidation of power is leading Russia to a belligerent authoritarian state, rather than a corporatist Russia (think Singapore) that can help consolidate Moscow’s power before Russia deteriorates and bring Russia back economically.

Conclusion
Ukraine and Russia are still a long way from resolving the issue, but so far we can conclude that even if Russia gets what it wants from Ukraine, it still come out loser on the world stage and its reputation as reliable energy partner is soiled. At this point in the situation, it is difficult to see how Russia stands to benefit against Ukraine and the world stage. The loss in international standing is costing a lot more than any possible gain from Ukraine.

Post-Script: A Contrarian View, Russia Exerts Power?
To keep the analysis balanced (since events are too early to call), Putin could be purposely timing the move against Ukraine because of its G-8 chairmanship.

It is possible that Putin wants to demonstrate that Russia is willing to flex its economic muscle regardless of its cost to the world stage and that in the face of an increasingly energy vulnerable Europe, Russia’s power is very much real. True, states like Finland are increasingly promoting nuclear energy as an alternative, but they take years to build and Russia has the largest natural gas reserve while Norway and the UK’s has dwindled.

In short, this event could be a move to show that Russia is not to be taken for granted as the world “natural gas tank station” to be tapped freely by Europe or its other customers. Raw/Single commodity export states are viewed somewhat disparging as backward states for advanced states to exploit - this is something that obviously Putin would not like Russia labeled as.

However, such increase in fear and power would only be a short/medium term gain. In the long run, such hardballing tactics would likely motivate Europe to move away from Russia - be it using nuclear power or alternative sources of natural gas. Thus, this is a risky gamble for Russia to make, if indeed this is Putin’s intentions.
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Winter work break is a good time to do some catch-up reading. Just in case youre curious, here’s the reading list. It ranges from the political stuff to Arthurian romances to SU’s obligatory readings in Slavic literature.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to mention them in the comments section.

“The Complete Romances of Chretien De Troyes”	“Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating” by Thomas P.M. Barnett
“Why Geography Matters : Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism” by Harm de Blij	“The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850″ by Brian M. Fagan
“Oblomov” by Ivan Goncharov	“With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies ” by S. Morris Engel

StrategyUnit will be back sometime later…nothing major until after the New Year.

Happy Holidays and Have a Happy New Year

Introduction
Everyone is talking about China as the raising superpower, with growing voices of China as a threat to the United States. There is not doubt that if China’s economic course continues, it will be a regional than global challenger to the U.S.

But what is generally never discussed or even ignored is China’s geopolitical challenges.

(Map showing major countries surrounding China)

China is Surrounded?

• To the East, there is China’s Japan (its archrival) and South Korea.
• In the North, there is Russia, a weakened state, but may revive in the future.
• To the West, there is a raising India, that may align themselves with the rest of the Anglosphere.
• To the South (technically the southeast), there is some space for China to maneuver though the region borders Australia.

Look past the landmasses and to the oceans, we see that in the Indian Ocean, critical for energy supplies from the Middle East, the United States remains dominant. This is one reason why China will have to create a blue-water navy and why it is building a port in Gwadar, Pakistan.

There is also Japan’s navy to contend with, which packs quite the punch. Keep in mind that Japan’s military has one hand tied behind its back because of the Constitution, which may change in the intermediate future. Indeed, China and Japan are now in a diplomatic spat - with China asking Japan to “explain” its military posture and Japanese FM calling China a threat. China raise to power is being met by hawkish nationalism in Japan.

Conclusion
There are at least three conclusions to derive from the map:

1. If you look at the map, the idea of containment of China by a US-Japan-Indian plus Russia group almost appears possible. I find this idea of “containing China” utterly dubious, but the map demonstrate that some natural constraints to China’s power.

Perhaps if China was still a closed economy, containment would be possible, but too much money is at stake for anyone, even Americans, to ignore.

2. Surrounded by such major states, we would expect China to be insecure in its own neighborhood. After all, there are US bases in Japan, Korea, Guam and formerly in Uzbekistan, along with US-India military cooperation. Is there a Chinese military base in Mexico?

So when we hear of China’s growing influence in the world, just remember China’s neighbor to better appreciate its own regional challenges.

3. If China ever aligns with one of its major neighbors, the U.S. will truly have a big worry on its hands. India, Japan and S. Korea are not possible partners at this point, but Russia (despite its fear of the Yellow Scare) is a potential partner.

Like China, Russia has been criticized for its lack of democracy, transparency and human rights; such criticisms, may drive the two to uniting. Indeed, if Russia follows a “Primakov Doctrine” of seeking a multi-polar world, it follows that Russia should help prop up China to challenge the U.S.

China would supply the capital and discipline, while Russia would provide access to its military technology and raw commodities. On a lower level, this is already happening, but a full blown alignment has yet to happen any time soon.

Introduction
I wrote a paper some years ago that I’d like to bring out to StrategyUnit, since I feel there is still a lot of room to discuss the (mislabeled) Global War on Terror (GWOT). Indeed, I believe that there is a supreme lacking in the mature development of a conceptual framework to understand the Global Islamist Insurgency (GII). Theoretical and conceptual frameworks are needed; it functions as a systematic “outline”, on which we can organize a strategy and devise proper policy. What follows before is shortened version of the original 20+ page paper.

The Premise
In the formulation of my own conceptual framework for understanding GWOT, I submit the following general premises:
1. The need to look beyond the traditional levels of analysis of international relations - personal, state and system level – and to take account local and transnational social cleavages.
2. Instability today is principally caused by the lack of “global connectivity” in certain counties and societies, resulting in local and regional crises and conflicts.
3. Variants of Salafi-Jihadi/Pan-Islamism have conflated these crises and conflicts as a global conflict against Islam and the Ummah by the “Other.”

Of course, there will alway be outlier cases, but the premises serves to cover the vast majority of situations relating to GWOT.

Thomas Barnett v. Samuel Huntington

There is no current theory or framework that can easily match with these premises. However, we can build this framework by synthesizing Barnett and Huntington. Below is a mini-review of their concepts and some of their shortfalls when taken alone.

Thomas Barnett declares that the amount of global “connectivity” in the world defines security issues in the international environment. It is the amount of connectivity a state possesses – in the transnational flow of trade, media, finances, information, culture et cetera – that distinguish between a peaceful, integrated “Core” state and a hostile or unstable “Gap” state. As Barnett states, the “new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root [the Core] and where it has not [the Gap].”(1) In short, the level of strategic regional and global security is directly linked to the level of globalization. This is no difference.

While Thomas Barnett presents a long term “big picture” framework for understanding the source of instability in the world, it cannot alone fully describe the nature of GWOT. It does not explain why certain peoples in certain regions are engaging in a confrontation against the members of the Core. In other words, if the international security environment is defined by those in the Gap and those in the Core, why were the majority of the 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia, and not shamans from Indonesia or Orthodox Christians from Belarus?

The essential variables that need to be added to Barnett’s framework are those of religious and ultimately of socio-cultural factors.

While Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” goes to the extreme in treating cultural regions as nearly monolithic political blocks (that is, civilizations), Huntington does well in thrusting cultural, religious, social, and historical as variables in the calculus that influences the foreign policy orientations of states and non-state organizations. Indeed, Huntington must be acknowledged as prescient in declaring the revival of religions, particularly non-Western religions, as remerging as an important cultural and political force in the world.(2)

Huntington-Barnett with a Social Level of Analysis: Gap Societies?
I agree with Barnett on the instability of regions lacking “global connectivity” and Huntington’s emphasis on cultural and religions as important variables in international politics and his concept of “civilization faultlines.” Barnett’s builds a framework for understanding all global and local conflicts in the long term. Huntington emphasizes culture as the central factor.

Barnett and Huntington’s frameworks are not mutually exclusive and this paper builds on their scholarship and research to explain the nature of this war. Both Huntington and Barnett rely on system – Civilization vs. Civilization, Core vs. Gap – and state level of analysis, where does one place non-state groups like Al-Qaeda, Al Takfir Wal Hijra, Hizb ut-Tahrir and including their support structures and sympathizers? Additionally, how we explain the presence of such groups in the Core states of Western Europe or within the Western Civilization?

An elegant solution to this problem is applying social cleavages as another level of analysis complementing the state and system level of analysis. Organizations like Al-Qaeda to Hizb ut-Tahrir are not just “terrorist groups” or “Islamist extremist,” but groups that represent a worldwide social movement that transcend nation-states, Core or Gap states or civilization blocks. Thus, there is a need to focus on different social groups inside Core and Gap states that are disconnected from the larger society and how they related to other states and societies globally.

Towards a More Total Concept of Warfare
Beyond abandoning the Western concept of state-to-state warfare, this is conflict where the enemy employs a new “combined arms” strategy beyond the traditional means of Western warfare and follows John Robb’s “Global Guerilla” on the more tactical and operational level.

In traditional military usage, the term “combined arms” is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as “The full integration and application of two or more arms or elements of one Military Service into an operation”(3) -such as the integrated and coordinated use of infantry, tank, precision bombers, and reconnaissance under one unified command. As war on the social level against the states and other societies, we see “combined arms” taking not only a purely military dimension but the integration of a full spectrum of human concerns – political issues, social issues, cultural issues, religious issues, etc – under the banner of a unifying ideology. In this case, this ideology is religious in nature.

GWOT as a Radical, Global and Muslim Social Movement
The use of social, cultural and religious issues as important dimensions of the war has it roots in the religious nature of this war – that is, religious as defined by the enemy. Stemming from its roots from Islam, Salafi-Jihadist share the tradition of embracing religion as a totality inseparable from any social sphere. In contrasts with the Peace of Westphalia that helped brought about the separation of the Christian church away from the state in the West, Islam has kept itself as the sole truth for all totality – it applies to and encompasses all aspects of human activity. In the West, the Muslim Brotherhood was most famous in emphasizing this fact of Islam, with its statement of recognizing “Islam as a total system” and the “final arbiter of life in all of its categories.” The most famous quote by the Muslim Brotherhood was its founder’s, Hassan al-Banna, proclamation that “Islam is a faith and a ritual, a nation and a nationality, a religion and a state, spirit and deed, holy text and sword.”(4) Indeed, other Muslim scholars, such as Sayyid Qutb, have criticized the West for its corruption of Christianity with its “schizophrenic” separation between the secular and the sacred, between church and state.(5) In contrasts to Christianity today, he declares Islam as a “system [that] extend into all aspects of life; it discusses all minor and major affairs of mankind.”(6)

Indeed, by actively uniting and linking all human activities to a single religious belief, it is easy to see how local conflicts affecting Muslims can be exploited to be seen as an attack on the entire global Muslim community – the Ummah. This combined with the concept of jihad al-asghar (lesser jihad) explains the confluence of local conflicts involving Muslims – Chechnya, Palestinian Issue, Moro in the Philippines – to being seen as a global conflict against Muslims.(7) And borrowing from John Robb, we see how quickly the conflict can become a social movement and a “Global Swarm”.

The relationship between social conflict and the fanatical organizations that exploit these conflicts are not only self-reinforcing, but help export and spread instability in the region and internationally (as illustrated above). In the primary link, each local conflict begins to be linked to a cause (Islamist jihad) and is transformed to being seen as one of many conflicts (reaching towards secondary linkage). This conflation of the socio-political and socio-economic issues with the Islamist movement reaches the point that, in some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between what are social problems and what is part of the war.

Conclusion
As this war is more of cross between an insurgency and a social movement, there maybe no clean cessation of violence in the near or distant future. And in this conflict, there will be no battlefield,s, but rather our adversaries will be attached as a Global Swarm as Global Guerillas.

If the U.S. and it allies achive victory (how can we even defien this?), there will be neither a ceremony on USS Missouri nor televised collapse of an “Evil Empire”. In the words of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, “Some people see war and peace as a light switch. When the lights are off, it’s peacetime. When the lights go on, it’s wartime. I see more of a dimmer switch. We’ll see the intensity wax and wane, but there will always be some level of conflict going on.” (8) Let us hope that the United States and its allies dims that switch, least it will be a long hard slog.

—–
Sources
1. Barnett, Thomas P.M. “The Pentagon’s New Map.” Esquire. March 2003. (17 November 2003).
2. Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 95-101.
3. United States of America. Defense Department. DOD Dictionary of Military and 3. Associated Terms, 30 November 2004, (04 September 2004).
4. Daniel Pipes, “Fundamentalist Muslims Between America and Russia”, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1986, Accessed Online: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/279 (04 February 2004).
5. Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 89.
6. Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, (New Jersey: Islamic Publications International, 2000), 32.
7. For a comparative to the Islamic concept of jihad al-asghar within the Abrahamic religions, see the Judaic concept of milchemet mitzvah (obligatory war) and the Christian concept of Just War as described in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
8. No Author. “Changing and Fighting, Simultaneously”, 30 October, 2004, National Journal, Available at (03 January 2005).

This week begins the first East Asia Summit (EAS) with over 16 countries invited, representing “3 billion people and one-fifth of global trade“. As the Washington Post writes:

As proposed by Malaysia and championed by China, the summit was conceived as a way for the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to cooperate with China, Japan and South Korea — but not the United States — on security, social and economic problems. Many officials viewed it as a vehicle for Chinese leadership, making China the motor of an Asian bloc with a voice distinct from that of other Asia-Pacific groupings that include the United States.

Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea were some of the major nations invited to EAS. Russia was invited as well as an observer, making it all the more striking that the US wasnt.

Despite the growth in China’s clout in its region, the U.S. is still the de facto security guarantor of the region. While East Asia Summit, like ASEAN, will probably be mired by discord and inability to create concrete action, the fact that the U.S. is not part of the discussion in Kuala Lumpur is the ill-gotten fruit of our publicly voiced insecurity regarding China.

All this talk of China as the threat is driving China to play the game in Asia as zero-sum: its either the U.S. (pun intended) or China.

Given geography and culture, the East and South-East Asia is not the “natural” sphere of influence for the U.S. and we need to be reminded this. World War II gave our position in Asia, we should be careful not to squander it by driving China to carve its sphere and fight for influence at our expense.

Instead of containment in China, we should encourage tying China in to a mesh of pan-Asian institutions that will help China gain confidence in the region despite U.S. presence, while also constrain its range of maneuver.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Central Asia is a demonstration of China ability to create its own regional institutions as a tool to challenge the U.S. We need to build our own tool by putting China and the U.S. together in it.

Additionally, India is also looking to assert itself globally, we encourage and guide them on this process as partenrs, least they form their partnership with states that hold interests contrary to ours.

Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong of Singapore was quoted as saying : “We have little choice but to construct a new architecture for East Asia…If East Asia does not coalesce, it will lose out to the Americas and Europe…The key question is not whether East Asia will integrate. It is how quickly and the form East Asian regionalism will assume.”

Indeed, Gok Chok Tong is correct and it is even more the reason the U.S. needs to be able to partipate in these dicussion (EAS specifically and the future of Asia in general). We cannot ignore a region as sizeable and vibrant as Asia.

Someone needs to ask why what’s going on in the State Department and why isnt President Bush at the EAS?

As in update to my previous posting “Barnett’s Path to a U.S. Grand Strategy in Three Paragraphs“, Curzon at “Coming Anarchy” has an excellent post (”The New Allies”):

The United Kingdom is our main ally inside the EU. Althouh a part of the union, Britain does not use the Euro and emphasizes the “one market” aspect of the union, not a unanimous foreign policy. There is no better way to limit EU meddling than by allying with a powerful country inside the union that wish to limit the scope of its power.

Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic Three fear Russia and yet are wary of Franco-German dominance in the EU. The US has brought all these countries into NATO, Poland has the fourth largest number of troops in Iraq, and Bulgaria and Romania are in the final stages of negotiating the installation of US “lilypad” bases.

Ukraine and Georgia look to the EU and the United States as their possible protectors in the face of Russian aggression.

Strong relations with Vietnam, Mongolia, and Japan can be attributed to the fear of China flexing its muscle in the region.

All of these countries save Vietnam have troops in Iraq.

Though its a great overview, I think Curzon could have gone in greater depth in analysis. Most suprisingly for me is his omission of India from the map. Here’s my initial response to his posting, which attempts to inject further analysis on this topic:

The majors players working with the US are the major players of the Angolosphere (India, UK and Australia) and US former quasi-colonies in the East (Japan and possibly Philippines). Israel is also a strategic partner.

The other states are to all some degree buffer states with Poland the exception. In Europe, the Baltic states are too small to matter, while Romanian and Bulgaria don’t count so much other than possible military bases. With its internal political issues, Ukraine is a toss up at this point. Poland is still out to make a name for itself within a New Europe, but I dont know if it’ll ever have even comparable clout to Germany, France and the UK. Not until Poland can pull its GDP up.

The mentioning of Mongolia etc as part of the “Coalition of the Willing” is a joke. Only the UK, Poland, formerly the Ukraine and 1-2 other countries contributed substantial troops. Mongolia sent a token force of less than 300 troops. And the Ukrainian troops were famous for retreating under fire from the Insurgents.

Overall, the map looks pretty lonely. What about Turkey, South Korea, Latin America (lots of lng and oil) or Canada (possible large source of future oil)?

Heck, what about China as a limited partner? We have common interests in the security of the sealanes (where oil is transported); stability in the Korean Peinusula and also in the overall world; our mutual economic relationship direct and indirect; and stability in energy supplies.

Also, the question of where Russia fits into the “New World Order” is still in question. Russia has historically needed to expend its sphere of influence to feel secure. Indeed, the U.S. needs a stronger Russia to keep Central Asia and the Caucasus in line, while also holding a check against China.

Iraq maybe a future partner, but only fools would consider this so early in the game. Overall, we are pretty isolated in the Middle East, Israel excepted. With Iraq, Iran is a major puzzle to U.S. foreign policy there.

In the future, China may or may not be the next superpower, but no doubt it will be an even bigger player in the world. We need a major player in every region, especially those growing in power, e.g. China and Brazil. We can either ride the wave to the future or try to stubbornly stop it like fools.

Overall, the US is in a diplomatic low point, but it also presents the real partners we can depend on, mainly the UK and Austrialia. I would hope that soon we can add India (a new raising power) into this category.

Sorry for the very late posting, work has been extra busy with the coming holidays. I am working on 2-3 articles, but for now here is an interesting development via AsiaTimes’s “The foundations for an Asian oil and gas grid“:

Stung by the rising international price of oil and domestic shortages coupled with high requirements of a growing economy, India has revived a plan for an oil and gas grid for the Asian continent.

The grid is part of a two-fold strategy by the two top Asian oil guzzlers, China and India, to ensure reliable delivery networks and energy security. The other element involves acquiring stakes in production and exploration projects for which New Delhi and Beijing continue to cooperate as well as compete.

The emphasis on the grid comes in wake of reports that India and China, the most aggressive shoppers for oil and gas assets in the world, are coming together to put in a joint bid. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), two of the most high-profile emerging global oil companies in the past year, could jointly bid for Petro-Canada’s $1-billion oil and gas fields in Syria. Both India and China feel the strategic need to diversify their energy sources from the current dependence on West Asia.

It will take years before this project turns into fruition if it ever gets there, but such a bold statement alone is a testament of new realities that the Bush Administration nor any political leader in the U.S. have began to address.

More on this later…

Too many people are stuck in the old ways of thinking, be it ideaologues like neoconservatives to International ANSWER or jingoism of the Anti-China folks. Thomas Barnett is not one of them.

In his blog posting today, Thomas Barnett succinctly offers a very different perspective and game plan on what the U.S. must pursue to adjust to a true “New World Order” (in the words of Bush senior):

We should be promoting India as a regional security pillar in the Middle East, but we do not. We should be pushing hard for Russia’s fully admittance into NATO and some prioritized pathway into the EU, but we do not. We should be encouraging China’s use of the ASEAN group to create the genesis of an Asian Union, with us included in a special status, but we do not. Instead, we promote China’s encirclement through military alliances and then express surprise that China seeks to do the same to us.

The dynamics of the 21st century security environment will inevitably push the U.S. to greater reliance upon, and alliance with, Russia, India, China and Brazil. This is simply too big of a change for the current administration, just too far of a conceptual leap. So we end up waiting out the second Bush administration, hoping that we don’t fall too far behind, strategically speaking, in this process.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to look ripe for the connecting. When your best and brightest all seek to make a run for greener pastures, like Dubai just across the gulf, then it’s clear the current regime is failing. We can either prop it up by obsessing over the WMD issue, repeating the same myopic focus we had with Iraq, or we can judge the case on its merits and kill that tired authoritarian regime with economic and social connectivity.

Gone are the days when we think of state power in a state v. state way.

As mentioned earlier in StrategyUnit (”Events in Context: Paris Riots and SAFTA“), globalization has forced the national-state to evolve. While I think the overall Weberian notion of the nation-state still hold, nation-states must include greater connectivity (internall, externally and overall in the world) as part of its security considerations, and an increasing one at that.

Introduction

Koffi Annan’s push for UN reform has come and gone. Indeed, as the Washington Post reported last week, there are already moves to push for candidates as Annan retires on December 2005.

But it’s unlikely that Koffi Annan can make any reforms in his remaining tenure; and indeed, it must be said that it is also unlikely for any future Secretary General to enact any ambitious reforms. It’s a Herculean task that is highly improbable, unless the big 5 work in concert.

In today’s NYT, Ruth Wedgwood (from John Hopkins University) purposes to bring market forces to reform the UN:

Monopoly can be corrosive for any institution, and many of the problems addressed by the United Nations can be and have been handled in other forums. Washington and Turtle Bay would both be aided by recognizing the virtues of “competitive multilateralism.”

Wedgwood goes through the two main benefits of “competitive multilateralism”: 1) More policy options for the U.S. instead of a “Go with the UN or go it alone” strategy; and 2) that competition would reinvigorate the UN:

If the United Nations can’t reform on its own, America needs to support other multilateral venues. In fact, our seeking parallel paths to international intervention can help the United Nations as well.
…
The idea of competitive multilateralism avoids the stark choice of going alone or going to the United Nations. America must still support the purposes of the United Nations; it is a historic alliance, a product of World War II, and remains the only all-inclusive political organization around. America enjoys prerogatives as a permanent Security Council member that would be hard to gain again. But we do have some flexibility in how we choose to approach international cooperation.
..
In the Internet age, there is no single venue for cooperation. This is true for politics and business alike. The United Nations may gain a second wind and a youthful gait if it discovers that it has some real competition.

Commentary

While I find Wedgwood’s perspective very interesting, there several weaknesses I need to point out:

1) I am not sure how the UN responds to any sort of “market pressure” - the pressure that creates innovation in a marketplace. It is not a single organization with one voice per se, but rather represents (or the result of) 191 different nations vying for a voice and power in a large international organization.

In a normal market situation, if say the U.S. (the “customer”) stopped paying attention to the UN, the UN might make concessions to bring the U.S. back. But at this current trend of anti-Americanism around the globe, no one can honestly see China, France and Russia (UK maybe excepted) offering concessions for the U.S. to come back.

When Wedgwood speaks ‘The idea of competitive multilateralism avoids the stark choice of going alone or going to the United Nations”, I would assume that she alludes to the War in Iraq. But, what organization could the U.S. have reached out to? NATO? OSCE? League of Arab Nations?

Indeed, President Bush said that UN action on Iraq would define its legitimacy. But in the end, the U.S. went along with its “coalition of the willing” and it is the U.S. that today has no legitimacy.

2) Who wants a stronger UN? In any area, some nation would lost out. Stronger intervention powers for the UN would not be in US interests when Indonesia annexed East Timor. I doubt China would be too eager for the UN to intervene in Sudan, where it gets its oil. If more transparency is provided, that would limit the ability for nations to use cloak-and-dagger tricks to gain the upper hand in the UN.

In an effort to fit every nations’ interest, the UN is left to be the lowest common denominator - rarely doing anything bold that would upset any of the powers or a bloc of smaller ones.

3) States are already using organizations outside the UN. When the U.S. led an intervention force against Yugoslavia over Kosovo, it was done under the NATO - not UN. When China and Russia issued a statement asking the U.S. to leave Central Asia, they did it under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - not the U.N.

Sometimes the U.S. has been somewhat successful such as with U.S.-led NATO action in Kosovo and other times lukewarm to disastrous like the “Coalition of the Willing”.

Ruth Wedgwood is right to say the U.N. should not have a monopoly in what defines the international community and the U.S. should nurture relationships with other international organizations for its own foreign policy goals. But, it wont be catalyst for U.N. reform.

Indeed, it can lead to the fragmentation of the international community space - with major power getting “legitimacy” for its policies from whatever regional or international organizations out there.

In the end, its not impossible to reform the U.N. - but U.S. using the dynamics of competition and market forces will not be the answer.

NAZI! Communists! Hippies!

Its easy to hate and focus on someone when you have a nice quick, short name for them. Lashing out against “Nationalist Socialist”, “Total Socialist System under Centralized Planning” and “Free Spirited non-Conformist” is not easy to do. (And yes, I know some of my descriptions are not absolutely accurate and I included hippies as a joke.)

But same goes for what we are fighting against in this “Global War on Terrorism”. Just who are the bad guys? And what makes them different from the other past bad guys?

I think there is a true strategic and psychological weakness on our side to accurately name our adversary. The guys on the other side can do it easily, condemning us as secular, western, infidels, non-believers and so on. But what are they? How can we fight an enemy when we cant even describe them.

Islamists? “Those that hate our freedom”? Salafist? Global Guerillas?

Islamist or Muslim Fundamentalist sound fine, but we are not fighting some national Muslim Brotherhood movement. We are fighting 1000s of Islamicly inspired groups with a diverse range of immediate goals, motivation, tactics, doctrines…but a common enemy - the West.

There is a constant struggle to define our enemy (which is more of a “swarm” than a singular organizational entity) and we are unable to even define a name for it. This leaves us intellectual and conceptual vulnerable to the enemy.

In my future postings, I’ll dive through this issue deeper and try to offer some suggestions. It will definitely take some time for me to write on this.

This posting was inspired by a commenter on this blog who asked me why I used the word “Islamofacist” and by Dan Darling and John Robb who touched on this issue this week.

Introduction

The Oil Drum has an excellent post covering the recently released findings over the major drop (30%) in the temperature of the the Gulf Stream, the warm currents that from the N. America flow east to warm Europe. (Note that this report was curiously timed against current discussion in Montreal on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.)

Immediate Implication

What are the obviously implications if the Gulf Stream deteriorates further?

1) Emphasizes the growing need for a stable energy supply to warm a chilling Europe, while the oil peak grows ever nearer and UK is already facing a potential energy crisis this winter.

2) As best said by Oil Drum’s Stuart Staniford:

That’s the warm water that didn’t go to Europe, and is now coming back into the tropics. Where’s it going again?

Smack into the region where North Atlantic hurricanes form, that’s where it’s going.

So if this result holds up and these trends continue, I think we can expect to see plenty more of this in the future: [Staniford shows a picture of wrecked oil rig in the Gulf Coast]

Broader Implications

The changes in the Gulf Steam is a microcosm for the broader implication of climate change:

1. There will be more extreme weather - very cold and very dry/hot. Both will lead to the increase use of heaters on one side and the use of air conditioners on the other. All energy hogs.

2. Extreme weather (like hurricanes) will make it more difficult and *expensive* to extract hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas etc) and difficult to transport.

Closing Remarks
In the distant land of Sudan (distant for the West, that is), a prolonged and extreme drought is partly to blame for the genocide, as conflict for water and land between herders and peasants gave with to a more ethnic conflict between Arabs (mostly herders) and Furs (mostly peasants).

While the role of climate change is little mentioned in the ongoing Darfur Genocide, with the climate change now bearing its weight to Europe we should expect to here more on this. While I doubt Europe will descend so easily to genocide, Sudan represents the extreme changes in human behavior to government policy that are possible and caused partly by climate changes.

Intoduction
(Via John Robb) Martin Van Creveld, military strategist who foresaw the raise of non-western warfare (e.g. War on Terrorism) to the shrinking of the tradition role of states, has written in Forward Newspaper (Major Jewish-American publication) an gives his pessimistic analysis on the War on Iraq:

[A] divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets’ nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah’s name.

While coming from one of the brightest minds in military thinking, Van Creveld’s opinion is neither unique nor shocking. But what struck me was how John Robb headlined that particular excerpt above: “Iraq in turn destabilizes the region as global guerrillas spread out.”

In the words of Thomas Barnett: Its about Connectivity, Stupid!

As mentioned in a paper I wrote, the principal argument I had made on supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom was that “U.S. intervention aiding in the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq is key in bringing not only liberalism to the region, but in essence exporting a new regime of strategic security to the Middle East.” In short, a liberal Iraq would reach out and bring economic connectivity to the stagnate Middle East region and with it a new security regime.

On the opposite end…One of the more saner arguments against the war, as Van Crevald said, was that the intervention would ultimately fail, launching hundreds of mini-Zarqawis and min-Bin Ladens all over the Middle East.

But in essence, these two arguments are the one and the same and I agree with both:
1. A free, liberal and democratic Iraq can act as a hub to further economic (and maybe even political) connectivity in the region stimulating economic growth and with it regional stability.
2. A divided, failed Iraqi state can act as a hub (a “bazaar of violence” in John Robb’s term) that will reach out to export instability to neighbouring countries while also attracting many to join Al-Qaida-related groups in Iraq.

Its about all connectivity, but different sides of the same coin. Thus, as made time and time again by many - the question is not if we will withdraw from Iraq, but as the Economist puts it “Not whether, but how, to withdraw“.

The War in Iraq is about connectivity. Originally, it was under the idealistic impression that the only connectivity possible was the championing of liberalism in the Middle East, but in the current sobering reality - we know that connectivity cuts both ways.

What connectivity will the New Iraq ultimately bring to the Middle East?

One thing for sure is, if we withdraw unilaterally now, we’ll surrender the chance for liberal connectivity.

Introduction
A week back, John Robb did a concise overview of Moises Naim’s Illict:

“Moises copiously documents how globalization and rampant interconnectivity has led to the rise of vast global smuggling networks….He shows how these networks make money through an arbitrage of the differences between the legal systems (and a desire to prosecute) of our isolated islands of sovereignty. He also shows how their flagrant use of corruption can enable them to completely take over sections of otherwise functional states. ” (Emphasis mine)

As mentioned in Paris Riots: Welcome to Netwar?, Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency” gives an example of what Naim describes - but in the context of netwar, fourth generation gangs and the nexus between narco-gangs and weak governments.

While Manwaring gives examples of distant states in Central America and South America, Ted Carpenter brings the issue a little closer in his 15 Novmeber 2005 article: “Mexico Is Becoming the Next Colombia“.

Indeed, he points to the example of Nuevo Laredo. In June 2005 this year, the Mexican federal government effectively lost control of Nuevo Laredo, a city of over 400,000 (just across Laredo, Texas), and had to send over 800 federal troops to effectively regain control from the narco-corrupted local government and law enforcement. This led to a short-lived gun battle with the Nuevo Laredo police and the federal troops.

”Mexico Is Becoming the Next Colombia”

Here’s a general synopsis of Carpenter’s article:

The Colombian-ization

Militarization of Cartels. Cartels are increasingly employing former military elite forces, Mexico’s Special Mobile Force, as their assassins and hitmen. Carpenter warns this increasingly resembles Columbia in the 1980s and 1990s, which proved disastrous for Columbia’s government and people.

Corruption and the Decline of Government Control. Carpenter cites the showdown between federal troops and law enforcement authorities in Nuevo Laredo as a completely breakdown of authority of the government and its ability to maintain effective independent control from the narco-traffickers. Carpenter goes on to cite maybe other examples, including more commonly known cities like Cancun and Tijuana.

While an extreme case, the temporary loss of Nuevo Laredo has shown that nacro-corruption is endemic in Mexico – resulting in losing government control of a major city. Indeed, in 1997, the Mexican drug czar General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested after three months his appointment for taking bribes the drug lord Amado Fuentes.

Consequences

Deteriorating Cycle.More corruption – unaddressed – only leads to more corruption. And with the nearly bountiful supply of funds and resources of the narco-gangs, this will simply lead to a further spiraling effect that weakens the state of independent control and makes it more beholden to narco-gang interests.

Spillover Effect. Carpenter notes that violence has already been spilling over to the southwestern US states, with law-enforcements officials in Dallas particularly seeing gang violence. Carpenter also cites problems in New Mexico. While not particularly mentioned by Carpenter, there is the fear of such groups linking up with Al-Qaida or similar groups for attacking the United States.

Commentary

Carpenter’s article caught my attention because it strongly relates to: 1) Moise Naim’s “Five Wars of Globalization” article; 2) The Unwinnable Escalation of the “War on Drugs”; 3) Manwearing’s article on Netwar – focusing on nacro-gangs in Central/South America; and 4) Andrew V. Papachristos on the Viral Growth of Gangs.

1. Globalization Wars

In February 2003, Moises Naim wrote “The Five Wars of Globalization Wars”( http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2&page=0), outlining other major challenges globalization present to states, other than that of Al-Qaida and global islamist terrorism:

1. War on Drugs
2. Arms Trafficking
3. Intellectual Property
4. Alien Smuggling
5. Money Laundering

Naim lists the characteristics network-based of these groups, giving them a great advantage over the state:

1. They are not bound by geography.
2. They defy traditional notions of sovereignty.
3. They pit governments against market forces.
4. They pit bureaucracies against networks.

The narco-gangs in Colombia to Mexico definitely hit on all four points.

2. Escalation of the Drug War. “Plan Colombia” – placing Colombian troops on the offensive with U.S. support and with an attempt to offer alternative crops to plant - has not resolved the overall goal of curtailing supply, only serving to shift the cocaine production from Colombia to other places in the Andes.

By forcing on escalating the Drug War on mainly militarily terms, it has also only serves to force the narco-gang networks to evolve more sophisticatedly and drive deeper in bed with corrupt officials.

Here’s a quick except on the growing sophistication of these narco-groups:

Feeding this habit is a global supply chain that uses everything from passenger jets that can carry shipments of cocaine worth $500 million in a single trip to custom-built submarines that ply the waters between Colombia and Puerto Rico. To foil eavesdroppers, drug smugglers use “cloned” cell phones and broadband radio receivers while also relying on complex financial structures that blend legitimate and illegitimate enterprises with elaborate fronts and structures of cross-ownership.” (1)

Escalation of this was is not the goal, it should be 1) de-escalation of the war; and 2) shifting the way the war is being fought (away from military means).

3. Third Generation gangs. The nacro-gangs in Mexico are turning to classical 3rd Gen Gangs. Third Generation gangs operations at a global level and political goals. In most cases, the political goals were focused on helping attain market protection for these organizations. As expounded in more depth by Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency”:

This political action is intended to provide security and freedom of movement for gang activities. As a consequence, the third generation gang and its leadership challenge the legitimate state monopoly on the exercise of control and use of violence within a given political territory.

The infiltration and alignment of parts of the governments in the Central and South Americas (at the differing times) with nacro-traffickers/narco-terrorist are examples of this. Unfortunately, so was the dire situation in Nuevo Laredo. Indeed, we cannot simply call the narco-traffickers as pure non-state actors, as with time – they evolve to corrupt and control elements of the states.

(As to not repeat previous material, I strongly suggest checking out Paris Riots: Welcome to Netwar? for brief over and links to more indepth material.)

4. US Policy and the Viral Growth of Gangs. While not directly addressed by Manwaring, Naim or Carpenter - the U.S. policy of deporting gang members who are illegal aliens has only led to the proliferation and globalization of gangs:

“Since the mid-1990s, U.S. immigration policy has dramatically boosted the proliferation of gangs throughout Latin America and Asia by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records back to their home countries each year, including a growing number of gang members. In 1996, around 38,000 immigrants were deported after committing a crime; by 2003, the number had jumped to almost 80,000.
…
In the case of MS-13, the U.S. government has deported hundreds of members, many of whom continue to illegally migrate back and forth, often carrying goods or people with them. Those that remain in their home countries are almost sure to connect with other deported gang members, and authorities in these countries say they are responsible for a large upswing in crime and violence. In a sense, U.S. immigration policy has amounted to unintentional state-sponsored gang migration. Rather than solving the gang problem, the United States may have only spread it. ” (2)

Closing Remarks

The U.S. and its “War on Drugs” are partially the cause of the escalation of the drug war. The US and other states have escalated the war, only to encourage the development and spread of fourth generation gangs, increasing the corruption of governments - and the growing nexus of gangs and corrupt officials leading to a narco-state.

Naim has stated that “in 1999, the United Nations’ “Human Development Report” calculated the annual trade in illicit drugs at $400 billion, roughly the size of the Spanish economy and about 8 percent of world trade.” (1) So, there are a vast group of quasi non-state actors – the Nacro-Network – with a GDP equivalent to Spain.

With the economy the size of Spain at stake, any attempt to diminish to reach of these narco-gangs will have to be found in inventive ways beyond military means.

In February 2005, the Economist declares that: “In five years, Plan Colombia has offered no evidence to weaken The Economist’s conviction that cocaine should be legalized (though its use, like that of tobacco, should be discouraged).”(3)

Indeed, if the United States was to take the Drug War in a big picture view of security threats, they may have to consider some sort of decriminalization of drug use as the means to undercut the power of these gangs.

The El Rukns gang in Chicago represents the worse that can happen. In 1986, El Rukn were contracted out by Libya to carryout acts of terrorism, but were caught before their plans were enacted.

Remembering El Rukns, there are fears that Al-Qaida will attempt similar plans with narco-gangs. There have been rumors of secret talks between MS-13 (orignally based in Honduras) and Al-Qaida on smuggling material and persons in to the United States. Ironically, the deportation of MS-13 members by the U.S. has helped grow the network.

If Mexico slides towards Colombization, two threats will gather strength: 1) the number and strength of potential gangs that could work with groups Al-Qaida will increase; and 2) the spill over of violence and nacro-trafficking from Mexico to the southwestern U.S. states.

While Mexico isn’t Colombia yet, these major threats are more than sufficient enough for the U.S. to strongly reconsider its approach to the War on Drugs and its own domestic drug policies.

Sources:
(1) Moises Naim, “The Five Wars of Globalization Wars, Foreign Policy, February 2003
(2) Andrew V. Papachristos, “Gang World”, Foreign Policy, March/April 2005
(3) “The drug “war” in Latin America”, Economist, 10 February 2005

Howdy All Y’All…Happy Thanksgiving Day.

Here’s quick Weekend Reading…just in case you need a break from all that turkey and gravy. By the way, I’ve been doing some light posting this past two weeks, but I’ll start going back to the normal beat of things soon.

OxBlog on Jame’s Fellow’s “Why Iraq Has No Army” in December’s Atlantic Monthly

David Adensik does an analysis of James Fallows’ cover story in the Atlantic monthly “Why Iraq Has No Army”. The article has caused such a buzz that even “George Stephanopoulous attempted to use the article to cross-examine Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday morning.”

I agree with David Adesnik that despite the hype of a title, Fallows doesnt really say anything new nor goes into depth about anything groundbreaking. Adesnik also the lack of definately strong position in the article (from critical/pessimistic to hawkish) as reflective of the overall difficult position of the Democrats:

“So is there a third way that will allow Democrats to both criticize the war and be seen as hawkish? Yes there is. They can click their heels three times and say “I agree with John McCain.”"

The article is available for subscribers only, but if you would like a copy let me know and I can email it over. And, dont forget your local library (via online database) may carry a copy.

Oil Drum’s “There’s A New Kid In Town — Iran Versus Kazakhstan”

I’ve done an extensive research on Kazakhstan’s foreign policy and energy resources as part of my thesis in college, so its interesting (but not too surprising) to see Oil Drum’s “There’s A New Kid In Town — Iran Versus Kazakhstan” - which boldy proclaims the growing importance of Kazakhstan OVER Iran on energy resources:

Iran is still a giant and Kazakhstan is a middle tier country among the world’s oil suppliers. Iran produced 4081/kbd in 2004, 5.2% of the world’s total while Kazakhstan produced 1295/kbd, a paltry 1.6% percent of the whole. Iran has 132.5 billon barrels in proven reserves, 11.1% of the world’s total while Kazakhstan has 39.6 billion barrels, a 3.3% world share. But let’s look into our chrystal ball to see what the future may look like.
…
Around the years 2008 to 2009 period, Kazakhstan is exporting more total oil supply to the OECD countries, China and (perhaps) India than Iran is (Empahsis mine)

Eurasianet’s “China joins the Central Asian Base Race”

Stephen Blank of Eurasianet writes on China’s recent move to secure a military base in Kyrgyzstan and even in Uzbekistan, which the US has recently been kicked out from.

While Blank focuses on Chinese miltiary presence on Central Asia, we should not forget the joint Chinese-Pakistan naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan.

Beijing’s search for a base has occurred against a backdrop of growing regional militarization and an intensification of great power rivalry in Central Asia. Thus, China’s requests of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, even if made sotto voce, have served to heighten the geopolitical jockeying in the region. It also suggests a growing willingness entertain the use of the military instrument to address regional issues. This cannot be considered a good sign.

While SCO (which includes Russia, China all all major Central Asian states) asked for the US militray to leave Central Asia, Blank correctly points out that Russia come out more strongly against a Chinese over a US presence in Central Asia.

In the UK: “Gas industry on brink of winter crisis”

The OilDrum and EnergyBulletin have been covering the less known natural gas issues that faces the US, UK and others, but here’s a mainstream news on UK’s winter energy crisis:

The country’s gas industry is on a knife edge this winter and could tip into crisis if there is a major breakdown in its ageing North Sea fields and pipelines, analysts said on Thursday.

Europe’s biggest consumer is fast running out of gas from the fields that once made it self sufficient and kept prices among the lowest in Europe. Today, UK gas is the world’s costliest fuel and winter supply will be the tightest in memory.Government ministers are under pressure to explain how one of the world’s richest nations has left its energy policy hostage to the weather and ageing North Sea equipment.

Weekend Reading on the Cossack Revival

Since the fall fo the Soviet Union and more prominently under President Putin, there has been a great revival (See Radio Free Europe’s Piece) of the Cossack culture and increasing political clout including a movement to reassert their role as a security/military instrument of the state. And already it seems like they are back to performing ethnic cleansing duties in Russia.

Why is Putin using an old Imperial Russia approach to solving his country’s ills? Or is enigmatic Russia to be held by a different standard?

• From MosNews, “Russian Parliament Approves Law on Cossack Service“, 11/09/05
• From WaPo, “Revival of Cossacks Casts Muslim Group Out of Russia to U.S.“, 11/18/05
• From the RFE, “Russia: Moscow Opposes Don Cossacks’ Demand For ‘Own’ Oblast“, 11/08/05

Just last week, a bill pushed by President Putin was approved by the Duma approving for essentially the reinstating of the Cossack military role in the Russian State:

“According to the bill, Cossacks are to be sent for military service, as a rule, to military units with traditional Cossack names, to border units and the Internal Troops. Cossacks can also participate in the military and patriotic upbringing of young people, preventing and handling the consequences of emergency situations and natural disasters, guarding the state border and combating terrorism”

And week later, the Washington Post reports on how this Cossack revival is already showing its ugly self in the role of Cossacks in “soft” ethnic cleansing:

Thousands of Muslims from a small ethnic group known as the Meskhetian Turks are fleeing this Black Sea region for the United States. The exodus is caused by what human rights groups call a campaign of persecution sanctioned by local authorities and spearheaded by the Cossacks, a Russian militia that fought for the czars and is being revived.

In the past year, just more than 5,000 Meskhetian Turks have resettled in the United States as refugees, and 4,400 have approval to immigrate, according to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Another 7,000 have filed applications that U.S. officials are reviewing.

Keep in mind that the Cossack has been pursuing for a greater role in the North Caucasus - where troubled Chechnya lies and the place of the “Nalchik Raid“. If armed Cossack were brought to the North Caucasus, this would escalate an already deteriorating situation. Russia needs a holistic socio-economic, political and military solution to the Caucasus region, not the brute force of the Cossacks.

Meanwhile the Don Cossacks are trying to reassert themselves by pushing for recognition of their own oblast (province). They are trying to take advantage of Putin’s initiative to reduce the number of oblast in Russia, currently over 80 to a more manageable 20-30 oblast.

The Russian authorities will formally reject any request by the leaders of the State Register Don Cossacks to recreate the Don Cossack Oblast that existed a century ago by merging the present-day Rostov and Volgograd oblasts, “Nezavisimaya gazeta” reported on 3 November.

In the 16th century, Cossack settlers founded the republic of the Don Cossacks on the steppes along the lower and middle course of the Don River.

A spokesman for the Don Cossacks, Vladimir Ryabov, told that paper that the Don Cossacks intend to hold a referendum next year on merging the two regions. He also said that the Cossacks will revive their demand, first raised in the early 1990s, for the Cossacks to be given the status of a distinct ethnic group within Russia.

Polish Plumbers: Handsome and Good for the Economy?

From the BBC: The “Polish Plumber” was the catch-phrase of the French “Non” referendum on the constitution, and later became a tongue-in-cheek slogan for the Polish tourist board.

Out of all the arguments against immigration, economic fears - from “natives” losing their jobs to wage depression - seems like one of the more reasonable “anti” arguments, especially when compared other arguments that touch on racism and xenophobia.

Thanks to the recent EU Enlargement, the world had a chance to have a sample lab on immigration: 1) England, Ireland and Sweden who let in EU Central/Eastern Europeans 2) The rest of the EU, fearing “Polish Plumbers”, did not

Via Virginia Postrel, Thomas Fuller of IHT reports on the results so far of the experiment:

It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a half after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans have washed into Britain.

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain’s decision to allow unlimited access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the EU last year.

They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders, and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.

But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and economic growth continues apace.

Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be one of the great migrations of recent decades.

Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields like nursing and construction.
(more…)

Summary
In November 10, General John Abizaid, Chief of U.S. Central Command visted Kazakhstan (America’s best friend) and stated that US presence in Central Asia is in no way part of “a repeat of great games of the 18th and 19th centuries”.

Indeed, he is right, this is definately not Arthur Conolly’s “Great Game”. In the latest alliance shift between the US, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were just as active in the game as were the major players (China, Russia and the US). And specifically for the US, its hand is rather weak to play such a game.

Indeed, the West should stop its obsession in painting the situation in Central Asia as some Great Game with the Central Asian states as pawns played by China, Russia and the US. The situation is more complicated with the US in a weak position and the Central Asian states are by no means passive.

First Uzbekistan drops the US and finds a new friend in Russia…
Not too long ago, Karimov’s Uzbekistan was the “bully” of Central Asia, out to make a name for itself as the hegemone. It’s the largest nation – more than half of Central Asia’s +50 million inhabitants live in Uzbekistan – and has the largest military force among the Central Asian states. Uzbekistan military has unilaterally mined along disputed borders and cut off gas supplies to neighbors during disputes.
(more…)

Quick Posting

The Strategic Overview: Tigerhawk’s Update

Back in 2003, Den Beste of USS Clueless wrote the greatest touchstone piece on the *Islamofacist war, writting out in a relatively short 20 pages the strategic overview of the war.

Today, Tigerhawk writes an excellent update to Den Beste’s essay. Its a must read piece.

Econbrowser on Peak Oil

Econbrowser blogger, James Hamilton economics prof of UCSF, speaks at the American Enterprise Institute on Peak Oil. Check out his transcript at Peak Oil News. Hamilton gets to the finer points on how the oil market works, the power of the market to manage Peak Oil (it wont be like the Long Emergency) And in the end, we’ll see three things:

• We’ll rely on “cruder” oil (more sulpher) which means more expensive to process to refine with stricter enviormental standards
• Intead of getting oil from Texas (which once pumped more oil than Saudi Arabia), we’re now relying on the Middle East…and after that’s done think Nigeria and Central Asian states or rough enviorments difficult places like ANWR
• All this points to higher likelihood of supply disruption and higher oil prices

*Some have asked why I haved used this term. I will post up a reply on this topic.

While abating (only 400+ cars burning a night), the Paris Riots continue passing a two-week milestone.

As I have mentioned, the rioters use of blogs and sms-texting for coordination and planning have been a demonstration of “netwar” on a small scale. Many have taken the next logical step and declare the Paris Riots as another example of the “decline of the state”. Indeed, pundits have long been proclaiming that Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) as an excellent example of this, and only made possible by globalization (specifically the proliferation of low-cost technology).

The recent Amman Bombings in Jordan, a state which possesses a strong security apparatus, fell victim to another non-state actor, Al-Zarqawi.

And so, many procliam that very definition of a state (Max Weber’s notion of the legitimate monopoly of force over a given territory) maybe losing some sway and with it withers the nation-state…

But while the monopoly of violence and information seemingly grows less, in the other direction we have been seeing an increasing in regionalization – that is, countries forming in to blocs. These blocs are typically economic (NAFTA) but can take security-related or political dimesions (EU and SCO).

Just yesterday, Prime Minister Dr. Singh of India called for the creation of the South Asian Free Trade Association (SAFTA), which would include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Maldives. The Prime Minister declared:

Regional economic integration is more about finding an engine of growth rather than just promoting trade. Countries — developed as well as developing — have looked to regional economic integration as a means of strengthening their economic competitiveness and as an engine of economic growth in the recent years. (source, hat tip to Publius Pundit.)

(more…)

It is on this day that the Great War (World War I) ended and so everyone thought all wars would come to an end. And, it is for this day we commemorate Veteran’s Day.

But, unfortunately, wars are still being fought…and now we are fighting in the Global War on Terrorism (Or the “Long War” as Ginrich calls it) and the War in Iraq.

While remembering those who have fought for America for generations past, don’t forget those who continue to serve this country today.

Check out Winds of Change to see how you can Support the Troops!

Winds of Change provides a list of charities and organizations that you can support to, to Support the our Troops. Please check it out and donate what you can.

After 11 plus days, the French government sent in the Gendarmerie (Military Police) and enforced curfews…and thus, the riots appear to be abating. Sending in the military-police and curfew - as I mentioned at GlobalGuerillas - was something the French Government should have done during day 2 or 3.

The rivalry between Interior Minister Sarkozy and PM De Villepan could have led the government to delay action to make Sarkozy look bad. Or simply, the French government feared that such measures would escalate the issue. Either way, the real issue (and it always has been the issue) has been the consequences of the riots.

StrategyPage has a similar take my posting on “Paris Riots: Welcome to Netwar?”:

[the] street violence is partly a lark, because the kids know the cops are not going to use lethal force, and anyone who gets caught will, at worst, do maybe a year in the slammer (for burning cars looting stores). The drug gangs encourage the violence as a way to intimidate the cops. When the violence dies down, the gang bosses can threaten the local cops with a revival, if the cops do not back off (when it comes to the drug trade).

There are some Islamic radicals running around in all this, but they are a minority. The Moslem kids like to talk about respect and payback, but very few see this as a religious war. It’s become a sport, with various groups competing to cause the most destruction. Text messaging, Internet bulletin boards and email made it possible for the rioters to stay in touch and compare notes. The media coverage also encouraged the violence, giving the kids some positive (for them) feedback.

But now, nearly two weeks of street violence have thoroughly embarrassed the government so much that curfews and more arrests have taken some of the joy out of these Autumn antics. But it’s not jihad, and never has been. (Emphasis Mine)

I think I have empathized points similar to StrategyPage’s in my postings. The real question is will the Paris Riots give haste to the raise of the Muslim Street? Will it push France to concede more power to the Islamic Councils at these banlieue. Or will it simply fade from memory?
——————————————
Update from CounterTerrorism Blog:

Most of the rioters and especially the gang leaders are for now secular and very materialistic, but they will most probably join the rank of jihadis within three to five years if nothing is done.
The usual scenario goes like this: either the rioters end up in jail and are easily converted right there to Radical Islam or an imam from the banlieue convinces them to join the Jihad. At first, family, friends and cops find the transformation almost miraculous. From a drug trafficker, alcohol-drinking, girl-chasing individual, the thug becomes religious, even reserved, adopts a quieter lifestyle and no longer gets in trouble with the police. But this is a transfer of violence: instead of burning cars, the youngster focuses his hatred on the West and becomes a jihadi.
It is no coincidence that scores of French citizens are in Iraq fighting coalition troops (at least half a dozen Frenchmen have died in this fashion).

Again, what will happen is partly up to the French Government…

Quick Posting Only…
The blogsophere, myself included, have been guilty on focusing too much attention on the Paris Riots. Meanwhile, China looks like its taking steps to protect itself from any looming energy crisis and threats…and such a potential crisis is far larger of a strategic threat than the riots in France.

China has made two recent announcements this week:
1. Earmarking 180 billion USD for Renewable Energy
2. Push Towards Building Sustainable Cities (first by 2010)

1. The 180 Billion USD Push for Renewable Energy

From China Daily “Renewable energy gets huge outlay“:

Up to 1.5 trillion yuan (US$184 billion) will be invested by 2020 to achieve China’s plan to boost renewable energy consumption to 15 per cent of the country’s energy mix by the benchmark year.

“We are committed to our promises,” said Zhang Guobao, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission. “Our renewable energy law will take effect beginning next year, and we aim to increase our renewable consumption in the energy mix from the current 7 per cent to 15 per cent by 2020.”

WSJ’s “Beijing vows to increase use of clean energy” points to the practical reason for energy diversification - security and environmental issues (which is also security related):

China has increased its emphasis on the use of alternative power sources out of concern for both the environmental costs of the country’s heavy use of fossil fuels and the security risks of its growing reliance on imported oil. But oil and inexpensive, but dirty, coal still account for most of the energy consumption in China, the world’s second-largest producer of greenhouse gases after the U.S.

Yet even on the issue of the environmental issues, environmental pollution has become an issue of domestic stability. Pollution from factories and power plants have prompted mass protests against the government. The Chinese Government has responded and is well aware of the danger of pollutions issues potentially igniting massive unrest. See my post “China - Environmentalism as a National Security Issue”

There is obviously a good amount of spin in the story, but regardless China’s announcement demonstrates that China is looking to confront energy security issues with greater resolve than the US has done with its latest energy bill.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has been rightfully criticized for heavily subsidizes businesses in developing existing energy types (oil and nuclear) and makes exceptions on environmental regulation for various energy-related construction. China seems to be really pushing the development of new and more efficient, clean and renewable energy resources in a bid to avoid dependence on oil (and the global oil prices that dictate oil-based energy cost).

The Energy Bill does state, however, that 10% of energy from utility companies must be from renewable sources by 2020; China appears to be 15% by 2020, but China doesn’t give much detail on what that exactly means.

In addition, the Senate just passed a bill allowing the drilling of Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). While I think the US Government should always reserve the right to exploit readily available energy resources when needed, government attention would be better served to pushing for hybrid vehicles or at least more gas-efficient vehicles.

2. Push Towards Sustainable Cities
A British consulting firm, Arup, has won a contract to build sustainable cities in China - with the goals of sustainable energy and water use and zero emissions for its transportation system. See the article here at the Guardian’s “British to help China build ‘eco-cities’” for more information:

British engineers will this week sign a multi-billion contract with the Chinese authorities to design and build a string of ‘eco-cities’ - self-sustaining urban centres the size of a large western capital - in the booming country.

Arup, the London-based consulting firm that has already signed up for one such project near Shanghai, will announce it has clinched a deal to extend the concept into a string of cities around China.
…
The Dongtan development, on an island in the mouth of the Yangtze river near Shanghai, aims to build a city three-quarters the size of Manhattan by 2040. The first phase will accommodate some 50,000 people. It is on target to be open by the time of the Shanghai Expo trade fair in 2010
…
The eco-cities are intended to be self-sufficient in energy, water and most food products, with the aim of zero emissions of greenhouse gases in transport systems.

Some hints of the technologies involved are mentioned at Arup’s Press Release, “Arup unveils plans for world’s first sustainable city in Dongtan, China“:

The first phase of Dongtan is planned to be completed by 2010 when the Expo will be held in Shanghai. This phase will include a wide range of developments with urban parks, ecological parks and world class leisure facilities. Priority projects include the process of capturing and purifying water in the landscape to support life in the city. Community waste management recycling will generate clean energy from organic waste, reducing landfills that damage the environment. Combined heat and power systems will provide the technology to source clean and reliable energy. Dongtan will be a model ecological city, and its buildings will help to reduce energy use, making efficient use of energy sources and generating energy from renewable sources.

Again, surely a good amount of spin is involved, but I am not hearing anything remotely similar to this in the United States with such a high level of government involvement. Would the US Government at least try to make suburban sprawl areas more self-sufficient and sustainable?

Conclusion
I have no time to go to any deep analysis at the moment, but sufficient to say that the United States would be foolish in not taking concrete steps in addressing its energy security issues and taking a look at what China is doing.

Energy security can potentially be a more existential threat than terrorism, but its not being fully addressed by the US. In this regards, China is strengthening itself as compared to the US – at least in its stated goals.

More thoroughly analysis later…

Introduction
While I still have the fear that we are seeing the raise of the Muslim Street in Europe, it is still far from the “Jihad in Europe” and “French Intifada” that we often see it described in the blogosphere. As of now, it still seems like male juvenile violence at a massive scale, only possible in the age of globalization (which provides for cheap and high-tech communication).

Christopher Dickey at Newsweek correctly describes the rioting as “incendiary flash-mobs”:

But by using cell-phone text messages to coordinate their incendiary flash-mobs, rioters in the city’s suburbs managed to burn thousands of cars, as well as buses, warehouses and stores

Back in 2001, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt at RAND, published “Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy”, which described the phenomena of Netwar in the context of transnational gangs to flash mobs and the Seattle Riots to Zapatistas. On Hooliganism in England, Netwar states:

Firms of opposing hooligans now use wireless technology and the Internet (email, etc.) for both marshalling their own combatants and challenging their opponents. For example, Milwall’s Bushwackers are believed to have used Internet tools (an interactive web site and real-time messaging) to organize and coordinate the violent activities of hooligans traveling to a match in Cardiff, where 14 people were hurt and 6 arrested.

Sounds familiar to anyone?

Welcome to Netwar.

Arquilla and Ronfeldt define Netwar as:

[The term] netwar refers to an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age.

These protagonists are likely to consist of dispersed organizations, small groups, and individuals who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an internetted manner, often without a precise central command.
…
This includes familiar adversaries who are modifying their structures and strategies to take advantage of networked designs—e.g., transnational terrorist groups, black-market proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), drug and other crime syndicates, fundamentalist and ethnonationalist movements, intellectual-property pirates, and immigration and refugee smugglers. Some urban gangs, back-country militias, and militant single-issue groups in the United States have also been developing netwar-like attributes.

Like the rivaling English hooligans the Paris Rioters are doing battle – but unfortunately, its on the scale of bragging who burned the most cars, the most:

On Internet websites, young arsonists brag about their successes. Rioting, it seems, has become a trend sport, as youths in immigrant areas of provincial cities begin to rally to the call from Paris (source)

John Robb at Global Guerilla suspects that the riots are not solely motivated by the mindset of simple juvenile violence. What he sees is that in response to French Interior Minister Sarkozy campaign to crackdown on violence, the criminal elements took advantage of the death of the teenagers to help launch a loosely coordinate rioting to force Sarkozy to back down.

John Robb’s unique analysis on the Paris Riots is a breath of fresh air compared to the “Jihad in Europe” meme we are continually seeing or the social/cultural explanations. Robb’s view is very probably on the mark, but its impossible to tell (thus far), how involved the criminal elements are. Indeed, it would be naive to think there is no amount of criminal gangs supporting the rioters.

From: Netwar, p. 103

To return to Networks and Netwar and assuming that criminal gangs leveraging street mobs, we are seeing a combination of First Generation Gangs and most likely nascent Thirst Generation gangs – Hooligans and Drug Lords.

The difference between Second and Third Generation gangs is operations at a global level and political goals. In most cases, the political goals were focused on helping attain market protection for these organizations. As expounded in more depth by Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency”:

This political action is intended to provide security and freedom of movement for gang activities. As a consequence, the third generation gang and its leadership challenge the legitimate state monopoly on the exercise of control and use of violence within a given political territory.

Linking between Third Generation Gang, Rioters and Islamofacist Organizations
There has always been a fear of a linkup between gangs and terrorist organizations and indeed in South American, there are often one and the same. “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency” goes into great length describing case studies in Central and South Americas.

The pervasiveness of the gangs and the narco-corruption influence it carries are some of the factors that lead to the empowerment of the third generation gangs in the Americas. Fortunately, the same cannot be said of France. These gangs have limited territory and the government is not so much paralyzed by narco-corruption but a lack of political will.

Besides the unknown factor of the criminal gangs in influencing the rioters, there is still the question of the potential role of Islamists. There are methods by which we can possiblely see a link up:

1. Outright collusion of the criminal element (and its rioters) with the Islamofacist.
2. Islamic Fundamentalism could be promoted to various ghettos as a method to “clean” the streets of gang and mob violence – a method of social reform. Indeed, this is an often heard argument of Islamic Fundamentalist – that they are simply trying to reform society and cleanse it of corruption (be it a woman’s ankle seen naked in public to narco trafficking). While reforming the ghettos - such reformist organizations could still keep the connections of the criminal elements to attain weapons and other materials for carrying acts of terrorism.

Amir Taheri takes a possible third route (Hat Tip to Belmont Club):

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the “millet” system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
…
“All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

In essence, the Islamofacist and the French Government could settle on a political agreement: the Islamofacist will “keep the peace” in the neighborhoods to quell the rioting. The French will get back their facade of domestic harmony. The Criminal Gangs secure their turf and have Sarkozy stopped (for now). The Islamofacist attain the position of power as the mediator between the ghettos and the French Government.

So what exactly will happen? Things are still too early and information is far too little. But in the end, I am optimistic that the French will pull through and find a proper strategy.
——–
Update:

Today’s Wall Steet Journal (Nov. 07) echoes similar remarks. Here’s an excerpt from “Muslim Groups May Gain Strength from French Riots“:

…
As France enters its 12th night of rioting, Islamic organizations like the Tabligh, which originated in the 1920s in India, stand to benefit from the unrest and emerge strengthened from it. The Tabligh advocates a strict adherence to Islam but also a disengagement from society.

While gangs of disaffected youths, mostly from Muslim families, continue to rampage, burning thousands of cars and ransacking entire neighborhoods, some of these organizations are positioning themselves as mediators who can bring back the order the government has been unable to restore.

These groups don’t preach violence, but they do advocate something that is troubling Europe’s secular democracies: that Muslims should identify themselves with their religion rather than as citizens. Effectively, they are promoting a separate society within society and that brand of Islamist philosophy is seeping into many parts of Western Europe. Countries from France and Germany to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands haven’t succeeded in integrating their Muslim minorities — and Islamic organizations have carefully positioned themselves to fill the breach.

The riots “are a blessing for them because it gives them the role of intermediary,” says Gilles Kepel, a scholar who has studied and written extensively about the rise of Islam in France. That, in turn, puts them in a stronger position “to force concessions from the state,” such as demanding a repeal of the law France passed last year banning headscarves from public schools, he says.
…
There isn’t anything inherently Muslim about the violence: Islamic groups appear to have played no part in stirring up the trouble, and few rioters seem to be using Islam to justify their attacks. On the contrary, many Islamic groups say they are trying to calm things down. But the bleak projects that ring Paris and France’s other big cities have long been fertile recruiting grounds for Islamic groups that preach a fundamentalist form of the religion that is often hard to square with Europe’s pluralistic societies.

While their mediation seems helpful in the short-term, these Islamic organizations end up further alienating Muslim youths from mainstream society because they teach an ideology that is in conflict with France’s secular ideals, says Malek Boutih, a former head of human-rights group SOS Racism. “They recruit, they teach the Quran and they try to orient everything around the mosque,” says Mr. Boutih. “That’s it.”

That is especially true of the Tabligh group here in Clichy. Founded in India in 1927, the Tabligh sends its missionaries to Islam’s troubled frontiers: Central Asia, Africa and Europe. Although it preaches a peaceful brand of Islam, some of its former members have founded terrorist groups and been expelled from countries like Kazakhstan for engaging in radicalism. French intelligence officials say up to 80% of Islamic extremists in France were once Tabligh members and have dubbed the organization the “antechamber of fundamentalism.”
[Fury in the Suburbs]

The group’s influence has grown even as France has tried to integrate Islam by giving Muslims a political voice. In 2003, the government set up a body meant to represent the Muslim community to the state, called the French Council of the Muslim Faith, and held elections to it. The government hoped the council would be a moderating influence. Instead, it has been riven by divisions and has given official representation to some of the most radical Islamic groups in the country.

Introduction
For many weeks we’ve heard murmurings about a new strategy from the Bush Administration on Iraq. From Condi Rice’s testimony to the Senate to Khalilzad on Newsweek, now we see may a glimpse of that with the recent launch of “Operation Steel Curtain.” In essence, the strategy in Iraqi is moving from a “search and destroy” to a “clear, hold and rebuild” strategy.

As part of Operation Steel Curtain, 2,500 US and 1,500 Iraqi troops were deployed to the Anbar region in a bid to secure porous Syria-Iraq borders ahead of the December elections. Tribal militias were also said to be involved to support the US-Iraqi troops. The first phase appears to be to dislodge the insurgents from Husaybah (city of 30,000) and secure the city.

Instead of launching major offensives (seemingly every three months) to “break the insurgent’s back” as we all too often hear about, the new strategy is to this is to clear a region of insurgents; deny territory and resources to insurgents; and to rebuild the region to win local support. This strategy is, of course, nothing new.

Added to this, is the inclusion of tribal militias to augment and support the Iraqi government troops in the areas that are cleared.

Clear, Hold and Rebuild
Elaine M. Grossman from Inside Washington Publishers writes a length account of change in strategy. Here is a lengthy excerpt:

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StrategyUnit Note: Finally a posting that only mentions France for its take on food, not immigration or riots.
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Source

Introduction

One of my favorite dishes is steak tartar (raw ground beef with raw egg and spices). I know its probably not healthy nor safe - but I accept responsibility for whatever happens. That’s the red-meat Jacksonian self-made man part of me.

But, what happens when one person’s foolishness becomes a nation’s? And creates negative repurcassions on a national level?

Call me crazy, but I am talking about diet and obesity as cross-spectrum national issue for the US (and other states).

Since 1980s, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the US. Approximately two-thirds of Americans are said to be overweight or obese and has been correlated with the increase in weight.

Taking a pessimistic view, obesity can translate to: diseases and loss productivity (sick days), less quality manpower for the military, higher energy/transportation cost and with that pollution.

Does this warrant sufficient intervention by the Government? And is there a point when it does?
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Quick Posting for Today…

I’ve been reading alot lately of the portrayal Paris Riots as the Intifada - and I don’t buy it yet. While the rioters appear to be mostly run by Muslims immigrants, the attacks so far has been of random violence and at most against symbols of the state (Trains, Police etc). I don’t see youth with green flags burning churches yet. Heck, I haven’t heard any reports of anyone carrying a political banner yet or shooting a political slogan yet. Have you?

I think much of the blogosphere is jumping the gun on the Intifada slant - but its definitely a realistic fear of what may come if things in France and Europe don’t change soon.

The violence has so far ranged from the usual stone throwing and molotov cocktails to evil and mindless:

A handicapped woman was doused with petrol and set on fire by youths during another night of rioting in Paris.

The 56-year-old suffered third degree burns to 20% of her body in the attack.

Witnesses said a youth poured petrol over the woman and then threw a Molotov cocktail on to the bus she was travelling on in the suburb of Sevran.

Over at Instapundit, a reader, David Mosier, attempts to bring some greater context for the riots:

If the rioting goes on for another couple of nights and spreads to other areas of the country, you’ve got 1968 all over again. France is ready to explode, as it was in 1968, and the all-night riots are lighting the fuse. Will Chirac be able to prevent an explosion that shakes the whole country? I doubt it. There’s too much pent up frustration in France, and not just among young Muslims. They might be the group that kicks off the insurrection, but once it’s kicked off, everybody in France with a beef (and that’s everybody)will join in. Just like they did in 1968. University students started it with student strikes in Nanterre (note, not in Paris)and it spread from there. Before it was done, almost every organized, or unorganized, group in the country had joined in to bring down deGaulle. It would seem Chirac’s time is short. France hasn’t had a proper Gallic explosion since 1968; it’s long overdue.

I am unaware if a large cross-segment of France shares some sort of frustration at the government or the state of the nation. But, I can image that if the riots take a political tinge - antiglobalization, anti-immigration laws etc - then we’ll start to have ourselves a major movement similar to the May 1968 scenerio Mosier is talking about.

On the other side, I am sure there are radical Muslims in France and beyond considering taking advantage of this raw violence and “Islamofacist-ify” the violence.

But the more realistic scenario I still see is that if violence continues to be principally perpetuated by Muslim youth is beginning of Europe’s Muslim Street.

So which scenario will happen? May 1968? Intifada? Muslim Street? Nothing? We’ll have to keep watch.

Day 7 of the Paris Riots

AP 11.03.05 Christohe Ena

Paul Belein has an excellent commentary on the Paris Riot (and in Demark) and what it means for Europe’s future and what is holding Europe’s politicians back . Hat tip to Instapundit for the link to Paul.

There are always talking heads and pundits analyzing the “Arab Street”. They have spread the constant fear of a US going so far as to upset the “Arab Street”, igniting radical revolutions against the authoritative governments throughout the Middle East. This fear is heard countless times from US support of Israel, authoritative governments and from Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War) to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

All experts speak of this powerful “Arab Street”. Thomas Friedman mentions it countlessly. George Tenet in his “World Threat 2001” briefing before the Senate talks of “The recent popular demonstrations in several Arab countries—including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Jordan—in support of the Palestinian intifada demonstrate the changing nature of activism of the Arab street”.

But now we see we’ve been looking at the right religion, but wrong ethnicity and region. We should be worried about Europe’s growing Muslim Street.

An “Arab Street” revolt is simply a revolt in an Arab state – states in a region already hostile to the West. But, a revolt of Europe’s Muslim Street threatens to constrain the birthplace of Western Civilization itself.

Here’s an except from Paul, touching on why the Europe’s politicians have been hesitant and constrained in their actions against the growing problem:

The first one is that the Muslim population in Western Europe has become so large that politicians fear what it might be capable of.
…
A second reason why some politicians try to appease the Muslims is that these are now a substantial segment of the voting population. Demographics are deciding the fate of Europe’s democracy.

Europe has already been hesitant in pursuing any bold policies that involve Muslims and Arab nations, unlike the United States. After the Paris Riots - there will be no doubt that Europe would bulk at any risk of upsetting its “Muslim Street’.

Will this further isolate the United States on its “Global War on Terrorism”?

In terms of openly stated policy and openly seen actions by Europe’s leaders - the answer is yes. But, when it comes to Europe’s domestic security services - undoubtedly, they will step up their efforts, which currently are far more extensive than the U.S. (If some Americans fear the Patriot Act and Bu$h Hitler Police State ™, they would shriek at horror at France and UK’s anti-terror policies).

The War on Terror is also a war on political will between the Islamofacist and everyone else – this is something Europe has been short on and now it will be shorter still.

Until the day Europe comes around, the Paris Riots mean further isolation for Bush’s policies and a set-back against the War on Terror (to use the US Govt’s term).

Some have argued that the Paris Riots will awaken the French and Europe population to the growing issue and threat they have failed to confront decisively. Judging from what we hear from the French Press (specifically from opposition party leaders), it seems its Sarkozy that is under fire for trying to lay down the law. A bad sign of things to come…
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Update: Belmont Club has just posted its own (and opposite) take:

“What events in France have done is discredit the liberal recipe so badly that even those who are not prepared to admit that American policy may have been right must now root around for an alternative theory. “

I hope he’s right, but I am pessimistic. Maybe in the long term, it will.

The following is more of a commentary/opinion rather than StrategyUnit usual goal of analyses on issues and policies related to security issues.
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Update 10.03.05 - A Retraction and Correction:
1) After reading, researching and looking into the issue, I would like to retract my position of countering The Wretched at the Belmont Club
2) After reviewing the comment by Carsten Agger below, I have to put in question the reports of the riot in Denmark. Carsten has mentioned that this could really be a simple situation of alienated and jobless youth. Until, I can verify from additional sources - I’ll hold on the Denmark Riot issue. Thanks Carsten for your input.
3) Check out the follow-up posting “Paris Riots - Raise of the Europe’s Muslim Street, not Middle East’s Arab Street”
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A Restive Population in Europe
It is now day five of the riots in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb outside of Paris, which has now spread to other suburbs, Sevran, Neuilly-sur-Marne and Bondy [1]. The riots was sparked when allegedly two immigrant youths were electrocuted after coming into contact with a transformer while under fleeing from the police. During the riot on Sunday, a tear-gas that launched at a mosque serving only to exacerbate the riots.

At the same time, sectarian riots have sparked in Denmark:

“Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. “This area belongs to us”, the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack.
…
We are tired of what we see happening with our prophet. We are tired of Jyllands-Posten. I know it isnt you, but we wont accept what Jyllands-Posten has done to the prophet”, he says aggressively, and the others nod approvingly. [2]”

The last bit is a reference to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which recently has been sent death threats over a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad by a cartoonist.

While those that support Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” would not be surprised, those on the other wide would disagree. They would point to social issues being the root cause: from the plight of the immigrant community in the slum housing in French suburbs to the general alienation and seemingly self-segregation of Muslim immigrant community throughout Europe. What I’ve learned from my own study of this- both views cannot be discounted nor are they mutually exclusive.

From Discontent to Jihad
Taking from the “Other Side” Robert Leiken (Foreign Affairs Aug 05) recently wrote: As the French academic Gilles Kepel acknowledges, “neither the blood spilled by Muslims from North Africa fighting in French uniforms during both world wars nor the sweat of migrant laborers, living under deplorable living conditions, who rebuilt France (and Europe) for a pittance after 1945, has made their children … full fellow citizens.” [3]

With no support network and a sense of alienation among the youth, radical Islamic foundations would only welcome them with open arms. It is no surprise that France has been repeatedly targeted for bombings, including more recently a plot to shoot down aircrafts in France.

Alienation of Muslim immigrants goes on to link up with the Global Islamofacist Movement and Insurgency, a self reinforcing network linking all oppression of Muslims (real and imagined) as part of a global struggle:

(More on the explanation behind this graph in part 2)

Robert Leiken goes on to divide the jihadist into two types of immigrant: outsiders and insiders. Outsiders were the newly arrived immigrants who served as the grunts and cannon-fodder (sometimes literally) of the jihadist organization; some of them may be radical imams seeking asylum but with funding from Saudi Arabia and seeking to start a jihadist network. The insiders are second generation immigrants, who are westernized in education yet anti-western and generally the leaders (think Zacarias Moussaoui).

Yet unfortunately the story doesn’t stop there…
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Jamestown Foundation’s Chechnya Weekly issue places the Nalchik Raid and the greater conflict in the Caucasus in Russia’s past imperial history. For anyone familiar with Russian history, this is not exactly news, but it helps bring some barring that Chechnya Conflict in and the Nalchik Raid is nothing new and should be expected.

Here’s what Jamestown’s Andrei Smirnov has to say:

The current Chechen policy of mobilizing other Caucasian nations in the struggle against Russia is not new. The Chechens have always tried to use this strategy to weaken the Russian offensive on Chechnya and strengthen their own forces.

In 1785, Sheikh Mansur, the leader of the first organized rebellion of the Chechens against Russian domination in the region, marched with his forces to Kabarda to persuade the locals to join him and spread the anti-Russian revolt to the western part of the North Caucasus. [This largely failed]

[Smirnov goes on to mention another attempted upraising in 1846 by Imam Shamil]
…
[Contemporary] Chechen commanders did not send squadrons of Chechen militants to other regions, but instead welcomed volunteers who wanted to help the Chechens fight against Russian troops.
…
Now, there is no longer any need for Basaev to deploy Chechen groups to attack outside of Chechnya. He can go individually to any of the neighboring republics and recruit as many local men as needed to conduct a large-scale operation. This ensures that Basaev does not have to divert his Chechen forces, which immobilize the best-trained Russian troops and who are stuck in a quagmire of endless guerilla war. The new tactic allows the insurgency to open new fronts without weakening their struggle in Chechnya itself. This is the worst scenario the Russian authorities could imagine.

Conclusion
The Importance of Historical Context
This first lesson from this article is that while Islamic terrorism of the Salafist/Wahhabi/Global Guerilla kind is new, the conflicts in Chechnya and the Caucasus are not. The Caucasus has always resisted Russian rule – whether it be an imperial, soviet or other incarnation of Russia. Indeed before Russia, Chechnya was busy resisting the Ottoman Turks. Thus even without the radical Islam element, we would expect some conflict against Russian rule.

Amy Chua in “World on Fire” argues that sudden transition to free-market democracy can spark ethnic hatred - she cite’s the ethnic riots againt the Chinese in Indonesia after Suharto’s fall. While she’s speaking of a very specific case, the greater macro level analysis is the renewing and eruption of ethnic hatred once the stability of the old and iron-fisted regime is gone. For Indonesia it was Suharto and for Russia it was the fall of USSR.

True there were Chechen revolts under the USSR, but back then the Soviets could act with ruthless abandon (mass deportation) - today, this has changed with a Russia constrained by new international norms and weakened by its deteriorating state.

From Chechen Upraising to Global Guerillas
As mentioned by Smirnov, compared to centuries past, the structure of the Caucasus insurgency has changed from mainly Chechen based forces to Chechen-led forces with volunteers from throughout the Caucasus region.

From there, it isn’t much a leap to begin to see leaders beyond Basaev and Chechens, bringing forth a fully decentralized insurgency. Without a doubt, John Robb’s Bazaar of Violence will appear in Russia in full form, if it hasn’t already.

Attempting to find a political solution in Chechnya was complex enough, doing the same from the entire Caucasus may prove impossible.

Related StrategyUnit Links:
- Guerilla War in Kabardino-Balkaria , Another Chechnya Erupts
- Green Revolution in Russia - Part II
- Nalchik Raid- Russian Civil War in the Caucasus

Still on light posting mode…but I think this should be noted in contrast to the Oil Drum’s recent discussion I noted on Saudi Oil.

From Reuters:

Russian oil output could peak at more than 510 million tonnes annually in 2010, or 10.2 million barrels per day (bpd), Russian Energy Minister Victor Khristenko said on Monday.

“It will reach a certain plateau of production within the time frame of 2010,” Khristenko told reporters. That plateau would be about 510 to 520 million tonnes a year, he said, or the equivalent of about 10.2 to 10.4 million bpd. In September, Russia produced 9.53 million bpd, which was a post-Soviet high, according to Energy Ministry data.

And let’s not forget that Russia currently is neck-and-neck with the Saudi’s on oil production:

Russia is chasing Saudi Arabia’s title as the world’s top crude oil producer. Saudi Arabia pumped 9.6 million bpd of crude oil in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But unlike the Middle East’s oil giant, which chooses not to pump at full capacity, Russia is keen to see production hit record highs. Saudi Arabia has surplus capacity of up to 1.4 million bpd, according to the EIA.

More oil worries to ponder on.

A couple of days ago, I posted “China - Enviormentalism as a National Security Issue“, which highlighted China’s growing pollution issue becoming more than just a purely enviormental issue, but also sparking domestic unrest and a potential source of conflict with its neighbouring states.

Last week’s Economist points to China’s attempt to address the issue of pollution by including the enviorment as one paremeter in assessing some of its civil servents and party leaders. Check out the article here: The Greening of China

AN ELABORATE points system that determines the careers of officials is often blamed for many of China’s problems. In their drive to meet targets for economic growth, local mandarins squander money, ride roughshod over citizens and ravish the environment. So now China is trying to devise and embed into its assessment of officials a way of calculating a “green GDP”—which allows for environmental costs in national accounts—to help mitigate some of these excesses.

President Hu Jintao first endorsed the idea in March 2004, in a speech about the need to foster a “scientific concept of development”, a slogan intended to suggest that in pursuing growth China should pay more heed to such issues as the environment and the depletion of natural resources. Last February, the government said that ten regions, including Beijing, were carrying out a pilot project in green GDP assessment.

While this is marked progress, China is attempting the impossible in trying to quanitfy the unquantifable: what is the financial cost incurred with the lost of some perculiar speices of tree frog, how you assess the financial cost of a lost forrest, etc. Such calculations would most likely end up being mired in bureaucratic squabbling.

Indeed, the Economist article itself ends in a rather sobering note:

China’s top leaders themselves may be getting cold feet. A draft of the national economic-development plan for the next five years, published this week, stresses the need for an “a resources-saving and environment-friendly society”. But it makes no mention of a green GDP.

My blogging has been on a very light schedule as I’ve got the cold. Its days like these I wish there some fellow contributors for this blog. That said, Here’s a list of what I think should be required reading for this weekend:

Tdaxp – a New Blog (new to me)
This is a new blog by a guy named Dan. Great blog with interesting, analytical and unique perspective on a host of issues. Just keep on scrolling.

Especially interesting to me are:

• The Future That Might Have Been
• The Failure of Global Guerrillaism: Democracies Withstand Economic Pain (Disclosure: I posted on the thread on Global Guerillas, 4GW v. 3GW)
• Speaker Hastert Attacks Oil Company Record Profits (Blog Network Attacks)

Hello Saudi Arabia, Hello Oil Peak!
Here’s something I found at NYT that is not receiving enough attention, but is discussed at the Oil Drum:

“a senior intelligence official, who insisted on remaining anonymous because he was not permitted to speak publicly on the issue, said that the Saudi plans to increase production by nearly 14 percent in the next four years were not enough to meet global demand. Even the Energy Information Administration recently scaled back its expectations of how much more oil the Saudis could pump in 20 years.”

Check out The Oil Drum’s coverage here. The Oil Drum also covers other news over doubts of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco on how much reserve and capacity remains in Saudi Arabia.

China is an Unstoppable Graduate Student Factory (or not?)
In “Anoint no economic superpower before its time”, Daniel Drezner has a very good roundup putting some doubt on the opinion that China’s is churning out far more and better engineering students than the US - helping lifting China to superpower level and eventually surpassing the U.S. and the West.

Daniel Drezner’s posting is a great follow-up to my previous post, “China the Roaring Economy - Or Maybe Not “, which points to some doubts on China’s consistently astronomical GDP growth figures.

I was just about to follow-up on my previous Russia and Eurasia post when CS Monitor (CSM) today published “Russia, China looking to form ‘NATO of the East’?” and opens with this foreboding paragraph:

Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say.

(Source: Wikipedia. Blue = Member, Green = Observer)

Pretty scary stuff, eh? Its an enticing leading paragraph, but the truth is a little milder.

Brief History of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
The Shanghai Five, as it was originally called, was originally comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and founded in 1996; it was later renamed the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, when Uzbekistan joined in 1999. Originally established to counter Islamic terrorist threats located in the Western China and its neighboring countries, SCO has increasingly become a vehicle to:

• further China’s quest for securing oil resources;
• enhance its role as a major player in regional security;
• and, to a lesser extant, as a united Sino-Russian bloc against growing U.S. presence in the region.

(From an old paper of mine)
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In the simplistic view of things, there are the tree hugging hippies who care about the enviorment and “pansie” issues above all else with the opposite side you have the realist obssessed with state power.

But as one partial to the realist camp, I believe this sort of simplitic portrayal needs to be rejected. State power can be defined not only by the number of tanks and guns a country has nor oil, but the number of colleges, schools, hospital, energy conservation and, yes, the state of the enviorment. Case in point, check out Slate’s “As Green as a Neocon Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses“.

There many reasons to support enviormentalist causes: 1) Less pollution => healthier people => healthier and more productive workforce + potential source of manpower 2) If we perform energy conservation instead of drilling Alaska’s ANWAR means less dependence on foreign oil and puttings some oil reserve (ANWAR) “in the bank”, for when we really need the oil. 3) Investing in alternative energy sources now, allows us to help withstand the coming oil shock that will also effect our enemies. And so on…

Then, there are the more practical concern like simply antagonizing the people of the state. See this Washington Post report back in June 2005:

[Up] to 20,000 peasants from the half-dozen villages that make up Huaxi township had responded to the alarm, participants recounted, and they were in no mood to bow to authority. For four years, they had been complaining that industrial pollution was poisoning the land, stunting the crops and fouling the water in their fertile valley surrounded by forested hills 120 miles south of Hangzhou. And now their protest — blocking the entrance to an industrial park — was being put down by force.
…
The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest. Peasants and workers left behind by China’s economic boom increasingly have resorted to the kind of unrest that ignited in Huaxi. Their explosions of anger have become a potential source of instability and a threat to the party’s monopoly on power that has leaders in Beijing worried. By some accounts, there have been thousands of such protests a year, often met with force

In this week’s Jamestown Foundation China Brief, Nathan Nankivell covers a piece on the linkages of China’s pollution issue with local unrest and geopolitics:

[Economic Effect]

[Cost] of environmental destruction could, for example, begin to reverse the blistering rate of economic growth in China that is the foundation of CCP legitimacy. Estimates maintain that 7 percent annual growth is required to preserve social stability. Yet the costs of pollution are already taxing the economy between 8 and 12 percent of GDP per year [1]. As environmental problems mount, this percentage will increase, in turn reducing annual growth.

[Geopoltical Effects]

In addition to the concerns already mentioned, pollution, if linked to a specific issue like water shortage, could have important geopolitical ramifications. China’s northern plains, home to hundreds of millions, face acute water shortages. Growing demand, a decade of drought, inefficient delivery methods, and increasing water pollution have reduced per capita water holdings to critical levels. Although Beijing hopes to relieve some of the pressures via the North-South Water Diversion project, it requires tens of billions of dollars and its completion is, at best, still several years away and, at worst, impossible. Yet just to the north lies one of the most under-populated areas in Asia, the Russian Far East.

In an extreme situation, such as national water shortages, social unrest could generate widespread, coordinated action and political mobilization that would serve as a midwife to anti-CCP political challenges, create divisions within the Party over how to deal with the environment, or lead to a massive show of force… Though most violence would be directed toward dissident Chinese, a ripple effect would be felt in neighboring states through immigration, impediments to trade, and an increased military presence along the Chinese border. All of these situations would alter security assumptions in the region.

The United States faces its own issues with resources, enviormentalism and especially energy. While globalism and being a global player make it all but impossible for major states in pursue autarky (full indepedence, as in no dependence on other states, in economic issues), the more a state depends on resources for its growth the more vulnerable it is to shocks in the market - such as an oil shock. The continual and growing issue of water in the westerns states of the U.S. are also a source of contention, constraning the growth of cities and with it the growth of the economy.

Enviormentalism needs to broaden its focus beyond “saving the Earth” merely for its own sake or some concept of “saving for the future generation”, but rather direct and visible impact on the state in the long term - in the health of the people (workforce), economic security, energy security et cetera.

PS: On a darker note to be fair as I mentioned taking a realist position, a country could intentionally poison a weaker state through dumping waste in/directly on a weaker state or provoke a state in to conflict.

Rosa Parks helped spark the flame that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.

The Washington Post looks - in memoriam

Back at San Francisco State University, I wrote and published a paper titled “In the Midst of the Swarm: Reconceptualizing the (Mislabeled) Global War on Terrorism” (April 2005), where I stated:

“For all of Moore’s cheering of a grand social movement of social justice from those from the liberal end of the spectrum, it is the Islamist global guerillas that have gained the spotlight in the creation of a global social movement.”

Moore is the guy who wrote “The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head”, championing anti-globalization crowd as being the Second Superpower.

Stopping by VodkaPundit today, I came across this mention of Mark Steyn’s article at the Telegraph:

Indeed, when you look at it that way, the biggest globalisation success story of recent years is not McDonald’s or Disney, but Islamism: the Saudis took what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practised by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Leeds, Buffalo. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop. And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalised insurgency.

What’s the bigger threat? A globalisation that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalisation that exports the fiercest and unhealthiest aspects of its culture? Far too many American conservatives still think the dragons are at the far fringes of the map - that, in the 21st century, America can be a 19th-century republic untroubled by the world’s pathogens because of its sheer distance from them.

Good to see this idea picking up more speed.

In any grand strategy discussion for the United States, EU, Russia - or any country for that matter - China is seen as the raising power (welcomed or not). Quarter after quarter comes news about its explosive GDP growth and the new buildings sprouting over coastal China, especially Shanghai, have been a testament to this.

But despite all this - people forget that China is not infallible. And while growing, we cant assume its stated spectacular growth is always on the mark - just because the officials say so. Just like most do not take for granted what China says about its defense spending, we should always been suspect about taking China’s self-reported GDP numbers for granted. There is of course real growth occurring, but the Chinese Government has an image to maintain to the world and its people and feels it can’t afford to show even a normal cyclical downturn.

From Simon World

Over at Econbrowser, James Hamilton points out to some interesting data bringing some interestingly scrutiny to that data:

Consider Simon’s graphs at the right. The first shows the levels of various Chinese GDP components, which might look reasonable at first blush. But when you subtract investment, net exports, and government spending from GDP, you arrive at what should be the sum of consumption spending plus inventory investment, represented by the magenta curve (which Simon helps the color-vocabulary-challenged to identify as “the line in the ugly colour”). Trouble is, this ugly magenta line clearly trends down, and that can’t remotely be explained by inventories. The implausible behavior is even more clear when plotted as growth rates as the red line in the second graph.

Read the entire post at Econbrowser…

Conclusion
Many on the “China as the new USSR” should take note that just like the threat and might of the USSR was sometimes overplayed (remember Kennedy during the election?), so is China sometimes played the same way. The point of the matter is simply this: the changes in China are far more complicated than can be placed in simple headlines proclaiming “The Raising Dragon” and the like.

Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Monitor and RFE/RL has a good roundup of the Nalchik raid. All of them supporting StrategyPage’s position of another guerilla war coming to Russia

Key quote from a Russian legislator:

“It was more like a mutiny, an attempt to seize power in the city, and we should label it properly.” Ilyukhin added that the Russian security agencies cannot guarantee that there won’t be a repetition of the Nalchik events somewhere else in the North Caucasus and that the situation in the region, in his opinion, has no military solution.

From the Duma Security Committee member Viktor Ilyukhi, after meeting with the Interior Minister, the Director of the FSB and others on Nalchik
(RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 9, No. 198, Part I, 20 October 2005)

Jamestown’s round-up confirms that Nalchik is part of a wider guerilla war, albeit still in its early stages, at least for Kabarindo-Balkaria:

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Update 01: See Dan Darling’s response here at Winds of Change.

As you can tell from my postings, I haven’t made much commentary regarding the situation in Iraq. This is chiefly because others (see the links on the right) already do a great job at analyzing the situation and the situation in Iraq is at many times too fluid and opaque for me to make heads or tails of it.

Here’s an example, which I pointed out in a comment at WoC, both from October 23, 2005.

This is a comment by Dan Darling, in a posting discussing the Iraqi Referendum:

I actually think that violence has been going down (at least from where it was when the insurgents started mounting attacks in a big way in April) for a longer period than that, particularly with regard to the number as well as the scope of mass casualty terrorist attacks in the country.
…
That said, a drop in violence is still a drop in violence, as is the fact that a lot of Sunnis are now engaged in the political process, even as an opposition force, rather than operating outside of it. As I think Eric has noted in the past, there are definite fault lines between the various insurgent groups, some of which are far more open to political participation than others.

And over at Global Guerillas, John Robb mentions, while discussing a recent halt in Iraqi oil exports:

On a side note, the US military’s inability to reverse neither the Iraqi insurgency’s tempo of operations nor its rate of innovation has created a stressed system that may result in a moral turning point. As one analyst suggested to me, it is only a matter of time now before Iraqi guerrillas overrun a US fire-base. The loss of life and drama from that event could cause a rapid collapse in our moral cohesion.

So, which is it? To be fair, Dan Darling mentions that the insurgents seem to shifting from targeting Iraqi civilians to U.S. military. Regardless, Dan Darling points to a drop of violence and possible political engagement with certain segments of the insurgents. John Robb blatantly states that the tempo of the insurgents haven’t decreased, that they have crippled Iraq’s oil operations and that it was only a matter of time before the insurgents overrun a U.S. firebase.

So, which is? Is it either/or? Or perhaps oddly, are the insurgents becoming more political open as their tempo of operation increasing? What is going on there in Iraq?

PS: From my understanding, Firebase (FB) is a temporary forward encampment providing artillery support.

I’ve been following the ICANN issue pretty closely but there’s not too much to say until the scheduled UN meeting next month. (Check out previous posting on this blog “Will the Internet Remain Truly Global“and Battle for the Internet - Update 1.)

But, I did come across a great article by Kenneth Cukier of the Economist in the November/December 2003 Foreign Affairs that is worth reading for a thorough overview of what is going happening regarding the UN and ICANN.

Here is a great excerpt of a historical comparison to the Cold War, US maneuverings and how the current US system, while should be continued for now, isn’t sustainable in the long term:

[The] very countries that most restrict the Internet within their borders are the ones calling loudest for greater control. As other countries sharpen their diplomatic knives for the final round of the summit in Tunis in November, the dispute is echoing an earlier battle at Unesco in the 1980s over the so-called New World Information and Communication Order, which led the United States and the United Kingdom to pull out of the organization. Then, it was the Soviet Union,its satellites, and the developing world that called for controlling media activities and funding the development of media resources in developing countries; today, some of those same nations seek power over the Internet, as well as financial aid to overcome the digital divide. (Emphais mine)

Washington’s new position shrewdly mixes a few carrots in along with the big stick. It formally acknowledges that countries have “sovereignty concerns” about their national two-letter address domains — a mealy-mouthed nod toward granting countries control over them, which is only appropriate. Although this will invite problems, such as with Taiwan’s “.tw,” these can be sidestepped — just as the allocation of telephone “country codes” to territories does not confer diplomatic recognition, neither does the allocation of country domains need to. Washington also supports the continued discussion of broader Internet governance issues in multiple forums, which could restrain the creation of a cumbersome and monolithic Global Internet Policy Council (which was among the UN working group’s proposals). It may also keep politicians from trespassing on ICANN’s more purely technical areas, which could harm the network.

Nevertheless, although the new U.S. position may be the least bad alternative in the short term, it will almost certainly be unsustainable over the longer term. For the moment, there is little other governments can do to rebel. Unless they feel their concerns are being addressed, however, they are likely to try to set up a parallel naming and addressing system to compete with ICANN-sanctioned domains. Technology abhors homogeneity; differing technical standards are the norm rather than the exception. The ongoing scuffle over the creation of Galileo, Europe’s challenge to Washington’s Global Positioning System, is one example; the battle over third-generation mobile-phone standards is another. The danger, however, is that two different addressing systems on the Internet may not interoperate perfectly. If it wants to preserve and extend the benefits the Internet currently brings, Washington will have to come up with some way of sharing control with other countries without jeopardizing the network’s stability or discouraging free speech and technical innovation.

Ultimately, what is playing out is a clash of perspectives. The U.S. government saw the creation of ICANN as the voluntary relinquishing of a critical source of power in the digital age; others saw it as a clever way for Washington to maintain its hegemony by placing Internet governance in the U.S. private sector. Foreign critics think a shift to multilateral intergovernmental control would mark a step toward enlightened global democracy; Washington thinks it would constitute a step back in time, toward state-regulated telecommunications. Whether and how these perspectives are bridged will determine the future of a global resource that nearly all of us have come to take for granted.

Read the whole thing (free for limited length of time) at the Foreign Affairs web site.

This is continuing with yesterday’s post “Great Game Revisited (again) and the Green Revolution“.

On the Caucasus
Any attention the U.S. press pays attention to the southern Russia is only limited to Afghanistan and more to Central Asia, with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. But not enough attention is paid to the deteriorating situation in the Caucasus and the dangerous consequences that it may represent.

As I’ve written in a recent post, the scale (over 200+), composition (local) and targets (security installations) of the Nalchik Raid in southern Russia represents a huge blow to Russia’s control over its troubled Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya. Indeed, while Putin and the Russian elites fret over the Color Revolution (Orange, Tulip, Rose) that has reverberated throughout the former Soviet Space, a Green Revolution is increasingly destabilize southern Russia thanks partly to Russia’s own ineptness:

Accepting that post-Soviet revolutions are not organized from outside but driven by public anger against corrupt authoritarian regimes is all but impossible for Putin and his courtiers. It would inevitably lead to the conclusion that the street battles in Nalchik were not a terrorist attack but an outburst of accumulated rage caused by police brutality and officially sanctioned persecution of Muslims (Vremya novostei, October 14). (Jamestown Foundation, emphasis mine)

Drawing from the Nalchik Raid, Andrei Smirnov at Jamestown gravely stated regarding the state of security in the Caucasus:

The Nalchik attack showed that the rebels in the North Caucasus maintain sufficient military capabilities to attack and temporarily hold one of the largest cities in the North Caucasus and could have enough capability to seize control of a whole region in the near future. The attack on Nalchik sent a clear warning to Putin and his team that they are outgunned in the Caucasus. (Jamestown Foundation, empahsis mine)

To add to that, the Nalchik Raid demonstrates that the Islamofacist have the intiative. They can choose when and where to attack, putting the Russian security forces on the defensive.

The Kremlin and the local governments inaptness in the Caucasus combined with the situation in Chechnya Conflict risk spilling an arc of fire across the region - where the vacuum of Russian power and legitimacy would lead to the raise and spread of radical Islam, as a significant movement.

Once reaching a sizable movement any turn to suppress them violent by Russian forces would be seen, not only as harsh and repressive, but also taking on the same tinge of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. That would be the tipping point, where the Caucasus would be lost to everything, but the radical extremist.

It would lead to the creation of a region far worse than Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, closer to Russia (obviously), closer to Europe and closer to the enormous energy resources and pipeline infrastructure in the region and in close-by Central Asia.

Central Asia and the Caucasus share the pecular trait of being important geopolitical points, yet so little understood or cared about in the mainstream media. To do my part in remedying that, I’d like to point out to a great article on Central Asia (which more often gets some U.S. media coverage) and contrast that with recent events in the Caucasus (which rarely ever does).

On Central Asia
Tech Central Station has a new article by Ariel Cohen, of the Heritage Foundation, featuring the (tired) title “The Great Game Returns“, where he covers Condoleeza Rice’s imporant trip throughout Central Asia.

Central Asia is the important flash point for the United States, China and Russia (its former imperial power) for several reasons:

• Most hot on everyone’s mind is the resurgence of Islam and the threat of radicalization - of a reason known to embrace sufism and a distinct school of Islam
• Central Asia, while landlocked, has a enormous amount of natural gas resource and a good amount of oil. Kazakhstan alone is set on an ambitious path to exceed the production of the North Sea

Key points from Ariel Cohen:

[On the Purpose of the Condi Rice Trip]
The visit demonstrated Sec. Rice’s balancing act skills. On the one hand, she needs to propel further President Bush’s democratization agenda. But on the other, just like in the Middle East, the imperatives of the war on terrorism and U.S. energy security dictate a more Realpolitik approach.

The stakes are high. Afghanistan and Central Asia are where the rubber of President Bush’s democratization doctrine meets the rocky road of authoritarianism. What’s more, Central Asia is important as a major source of oil and gas. By 2015, the Caspian Sea basin, including Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, will produce four million barrels a day — more than Kuwait and Iraq today combined. The region is also surrounded by the emerging giants, energy-starved India and China, and bordered by key Islamist states Iran and Pakistan.

[On the challenge from Russia and China]
In August SCO sent a strong message to its Central Asian members when they conducted unprecedented joint military maneuvers in the Far East. The new de-facto Moscow-Beijing bloc is aimed at U.S. “hegemony” as well as to American rhetoric of democracy.

In the meantime, Islamist radicals are spreading their tentacles in the impoverished and drug-ridden villages and slums of the region. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Sunni clandestine organization which aims to overthrow secular regimes and create a Califate, has made Uzbekistan its primary target. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is allied with Al Qaeda and active in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border areas.

[Reason for the Special Rice Visit to Kazakhstan]
…
Kazakhstan may be a key to U.S. interests in the region. As Nazarbaev announced in his September speech to the parliament, in ten years his country may surpass Kuwait and Nigeria as an oil exporter, pumping over 2.5 million barrels a day.
…
One hopes that Sec. Rice also encouraged Mr. Nazarbaev to finally authorize construction of a pipeline connecting Kazakh oil fields to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which takes Caspian oil to the Mediterranean and global markets.

She could also praise and encouraged Kazakhstan to promote its unique model of peace and harmony among Muslims, Christians and Jews around the Islamic world. Finally, she could encourage Kazakhstan to sponsor the U.S. gaining observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, so that Washington can alleviate Beijing and Moscow’s fears as to its intentions in the heartland of Eurasia while continue playing an important role there.

I think its a great summary, but on Kazakhstan, I ‘d like to add one more thing to place Kazakhstan’s relationship with the U.S. in greater context: President Nazarbayev has almost alwaysed followed a multi-vectored foreign policy, trying to balance all the major powers in the region:

• Nazarbayev has sought good terms with Russia, its larger and power neighbor in the north and also the original homeland for a sizeable number of Russians in Kazakhstan
• At the same time, Nazarbayev has reached out to China. This year China and Kazakhstan completed the creation of a major pipeline expected to deliver a million bbl of oil per day to China. Before the Sino-Kazakh pipeline, Kazakhstan was wholely dependent on Russia for export of its oil. They are also looking to export Kazakhstan’s natural gas through China.

With Kazakhstan already playing well with Russia and China, naturally Kazakhstan needs to pay attention to the other player in Central Asia: the United States. Especially with the lost of Uzbekistan as a partner in Central Asia, U.S. is in dire need of finding other partners - although Kazakhstan would probably never reach the level of military cooperation with the U.S. that Uzbekistan once did.

And with all this in mind, we move on to the Caucaus…

On the Caucasus
Check back tomorrow…

It looks like Thomas Barnett’ s publisher is in full PR swing in anticipatian of his new book, “Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating“.

I’ve mentioned Barnett in several of my papers and a posting here regarding “Open Source Warfare“.

Check out the United Press Article, with the humble title Military theory superstar unveils new book:

[Barnett] advocated re-structuring the military into two forces. The first, “leviathan,” would include the military’s nuclear arsenal and traditional war-fighting elements, and would be aimed at deterring other nations, as well as providing the capacity to rapidly intervene to change, shore-up or eliminate unstable regimes.

The second, more numerous, “systems administrator” force, would be focused on the post-war phase of such interventions — on counter-insurgency and nation-building.

In his new book, Barnett offers a detailed plan for putting his ideas into action, including a six-point program for transforming politically bankrupt states. “Bad states go in, better states come out,” he writes.

Thomas Barnett, noted writer and blogger who served in various areas in the DoD, shot off a rebuttle against John Robb’s Open Source Warfare article I mentioned last weekend in “Open Source War, Global Guerillas in Iraq“.

For those unfamilar with Barnett, he is famous for his article, now book , entitled “Pentagon’s New Map”, which interprets the world as caught between the Core and the Gap, with each at the opposite end of the pole of global connectivity; he uses a state’s level of connectivity as a measurement of how stable states and regions are with the evidence that the these “Gap” (low connectivity states) are those that are often in trouble.

Here’s Barnett’s response to John Robb:

Creating better rules is how we win. By doing so we attract good citizens and good states, slowly but surely. Killing symmetrically is gratifying, but ultimately pointless. Reformatting their world so that their cause dies is the real victory. Not a matter of making it like our own, but simply making it connective in a deep sense with the outside world, so that individuals can choose their level of connectivity no matter what the authorities say or do.

So I say, bet on numbers. Bet on bigger networks. Bet on growing the Core and, by doing so, restricting the enemy’s operating domain.

Information technology analogies are great, but they do not constitute tactics, much less strategy. The winning remains the same: kill their bad guys and replace bad governments with good. Don’t confuse the friction with the formatting. Don’t confuse skirmishes with campaigns. Don’t confuse their asymmetry with our disadvantage.

In the end, we win as we always do: with stuff. Capitalism bribes off its enemies with wealth. Worked in 1848 in Europe and it’s worked ever since.

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Introduction

Last week, we see yet another violent manifestation of Russia as a deteriorating state in the Nalchik Raid; Nalchik is the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, about 870 miles south of Moscow. Unlike in Beslan or the Moscow Threatre, this time it was a large force of 300 fighters concentrating their attack police stations and other government and security related facilities

As I wrote on “Eurasia” earlier, the Southern front was Russia’s soft underbelly with a growing EU/NATO in the Western front and a raising East in the Eastern Front (see map below). Proponents of the “Clash of Civilizations” would say this is another case of Islam’s bloody borders. This are unfortunately more complicated.

As reported by WSJ, “officials in Nalchik said almost all the rebels were from Kabardino-Balkaria.” The attacks were on symbols and instruments of state authority: the “three police stations, the headquarters of the local FSB (the former KGB), the interior ministry building, the offices of the city’s prison guards, a military unit guarding the airport and a counter-terrorism centre.” (link.)
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Everyone has this topic covered, so I decided to post this one picture from Iraq The Model’s web site:

“Father and son, post voting.”

Links to check out:
Winds Of Change - “The referendum: the beginning of the end”
Oxblog - “WaPo VS. NYT: WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IN IRAQ?”
Belmont Club: The End of th Beginning

One of my first few postings (here and here)were about a recent spat between the US control over ICANN and pressure from the EU and UN (most vocally Brazil, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia) to bring control of ICANN, with a further rounds of meetings planned for November at Tunis.

Here are three updates - including our first correction!

EU’s New Friends on the Internet - Iran, China and Saudi Arabia

While taking lead charge against the US, EU has continously stated they wanted to take a middle ground calling for multi-latera approach, but not meddling with the Internet’s free access (which many folks worry that Iran, Saudi Arabia etc want):

But EU negotiators are adamant that they reject calls for state control of internet content. “None of this is about content and that is a big difference between the EU position and the position of China and Brazil,” one negotiator said. (Link)

While the stated intentions of the EU maybe true, what would the EU really do if the say China (a major economic power) and Iran demanded some greater control and access over the Internet through the proposed UN body? Could the U.S., EU and the Anglosphere stand behind adamently against a country that proposes possible restrictions of the Internet? Or would they be deterred by charges of “Western Neo-Imperialism”?

And is it strange that the biggest proponent of the UN control are the less then free countries? The former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt recognizes, such a problem as mentioned in his blog: “It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours. We really can’t have a Europe that is applauded by China and Iran and Saudi Arabia on the future governance of the internet. Even those critical of the United States must see where such a position risks taking us.”

According to the WSJ, some European telecom companies are also a little worried about EU’s position:

However, some telecom companies have objected to the European Commission’s latest move. “I’ve been getting urgent calls from our members, and they are upset,” says Michael Bartholomew, director of the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, which represents 42 major companies in 35 countries. (”Europe Telecoms Object to EU Plan for Policing Web“)

EU Warns, “The Internet will break apart by November!” Not really
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As you can tell from my postings, John Robb at the Global Guerillas Blog is one of my favourite analyst when it comes to fourth generation war and views on the war in Iraq. Today, Robb writes an excellent op-ed in the New York Times on the nature of the adversaries in Iraq and why putting down the insurgency will be so difficult for the U.S. and the Iraqi Government.

In a few days, I’ll put my two-cents on the “El Salvadore” option that he mentions.

First, out-innovating the insurgency will most likely prove unsuccessful. The insurgency uses an open-source community approach (similar to the decentralized development process now prevalent in the software industry) to warfare that is extremely quick and innovative. New technologies and tactics move rapidly from one end of the insurgency to the other, aided by Iraq’s relatively advanced communications and transportation grid - demonstrated by the rapid increases in the sophistication of the insurgents’ homemade bombs. This implies that the insurgency’s innovation cycles are faster than the American military’s slower bureaucratic processes (for example: its inability to deliver sufficient body and vehicle armor to our troops in Iraq).

Second, there are few visible fault lines in the insurgency that can be exploited. Like software developers in the open-source community, the insurgents have subordinated their individual goals to the common goal of the movement. This has been borne out by the relatively low levels of infighting we have seen between insurgent groups. As a result, the military is not going to find a way to chop off parts of the insurgency through political means - particularly if former Baathists are systematically excluded from participation in the new Iraqi state by the new Constitution.

Third, the United States can try to diminish the insurgency by letting it win. The disparate groups in an open-source effort are held together by a common goal. Once the goal is reached, the community often falls apart. In Iraq, the original goal for the insurgency was the withdrawal of the occupying forces. If foreign troops pull out quickly, the insurgency may fall apart. This is the same solution that was presented to Congress last month by our generals in Iraq, George Casey and John Abizaid.

Unfortunately, this solution arrived too late. There are signs that the insurgency’s goal is shifting from a withdrawal of the United States military to the collapse of the Iraqi government. So, even if American troops withdraw now, violence will probably continue to escalate.

What’s left? It’s possible, as Microsoft has found, that there is no good monopolistic solution to a mature open-source effort. In that case, the United States might be better off adopting I.B.M.’s embrace of open source. This solution would require renouncing the state’s monopoly on violence by using Shiite and Kurdish militias as a counterinsurgency. This is similar to the strategy used to halt the insurgencies in El Salvador in the 1980’s and Colombia in the 1990’s. In those cases, these militias used local knowledge, unconstrained tactics and high levels of motivation to defeat insurgents (this is in contrast to the ineffectiveness of Iraq’s paycheck military). This option will probably work in Iraq too.

Back in 2001, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt at RAND wrote a monograph entitled “Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy” wrote on the future wave of conflict and organization around the concept of “Netwar”:

What distinguishes netwar as a form of conflict is the networked organizational structure of its practitioners—with many groups actually being leaderless— and the suppleness in their ability to come together quickly in swarming attacks. The concepts of cyberwar and netwar encompass a new spectrum of conflict that is emerging in the wake of the information revolution.

Indeed, Bill Clinton spoke in 1998 warning of “reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals.” (Empahsis Mine, link here). Back then, Bill Clinton was speaking of Iraq as part of an “unholy axis” network.

But the network is everywhere, not just in Clinton’s Unholy Axis of Iraq, network-based warefare, the Seattle Protest, or in modern logistical chains (think Amazon.com, Dell or FedEx). It is in flash mobbing, online collobration software (writely), social networking web sites like del.icio.us, LinkedIn to more obsecure ones like Coastr (Beer Social Networking).

Today, the CounterTerror blog has two back-to-back articles relating the “network” to security issues:

1) North Korean Counterfeit Ring:

The leader of the gang, Sean Garland [is the leader of “the old style IRA”]. Allegedly, the profits from the illegal enterprise went back into the Official IRA. The indictment is the result of a long investigation through the Russian Mafia - one of the defendants is Russian, and Garland allegedly traveled to Russia, Belarus, and Poland often - and found the gang using false identities, dummy couriers, codewords, money laundering techniques, and secure communication methods. No North Koreans were named, but the indictment states that “North Korean nationals acting as ostensible government officials engaged in the worldwide transportation, delivery, and sale of quantities” of the $100 bills. Last month, the Washington Times reported on the arrest of a Taiwanese national who was involved in the counterfeiting scheme. (Emphasis Mine)

Official IRA, Russian Mafia, and Taiwanese National all invovled in a sophisticated international mony laundering/counterfeiting scheme with North Korea. Andd this links back to what is North Korea and the IRA doing with the money? What are they buying and where from?

2) Iraq: Insurgest, Terrorist and Organized Crime:

Hezbollah-style explosives are being used in Iraq by Zarqawi’s group, bringing new sophistication and lethality to many of the operations; cars stolen in the United States are turning up as vehicles used in suicide attacks in Iraq, shipped from the West Coast to Syria, then driven into Iraq; possible ties, now the subject of several investigations in Europe, of important leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, through leading European banks, to laundering large sums of drug money for radical Islamic groups. Much of this appears to be coordinated through activities in the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Panama and Isla Margarita off the Venezuelan coast. (Empahsis Mine)

In Iraq, we are not only fighting insurgest and terrorist from former Baathist or neighbouring Arab fundamentalist, but also a stolen car/smuggling network in the West Coast of the USA, drug money from Islamist group with European Banks as conduits, and a network spaning five countries in Latin America.

The Network is Everywhere.

I strongly suggest reading John Robb’s “THE BAZAAR OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ” and “THE BAZAAR’S OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM“. It is required reading in my book.

The threat of Islamofacism (using Christopher Hitckins’s term) is what appears on the new everyday. Most recently, we’ve seen the arrests in France over bombing plots against the Metro and the terror alert in New York City.

While the Public is fearful of the next Bali Bombing or Madrid Bombing, a truly global catastrophe would result from a disruption in the global energy infrastructure; Energy is Modernity’s Achilles Heel. Energy concerns have been growing over unease over dependence on Middle East oil and raising oil prices. But what should be the biggest concern is the threat of Peak Oil changing the geopolitical landscape and attacks on the oil infrastructure.

Bombings targeting the deaths of civilians are all tragic in the sense of the direct effect on human lives – but a major energy crunch could bring modernity to a halt and surely fuel (no pun intended) wars over energy resources. Indeed, Hurricane Katrina and Rita demonstrated the vulnerability of the U.S. oil infrastructure system – lost oil rigs, refineries offline, fuel shortages and scenes of cars running out of fuel as people attempt to evacuate.
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Ben Paarmann recently posted an excellent overview of the Eurasian Idea (specifically Dugin’s version) and its role in Russia today. I’d like to take Paarmann’s post further and provide some greater context for the Eurasian Idea, why its still important for Russia today, the different Eurasian flavors and attempt to provide points about where Russia must go. (Ambitious, I know!)

Eurasian Idea in Greater Context
The question “What is Russia?” is a question that continues to shadow Russia and its long history. Russia cannot continue to leave this question unanswered while it attempts to rebuild itself from its Soviet-past and as the state continues to deteriorate. Putin, as Paarmann mentions, has so far taken a pragmatic approach towards the East and West
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Recently Fitzgerald at Jihad Watch criticized the short comings of the term “Clash of Civilizations” to describe the “Global War on Terror”, offering the alternative view that “truthful description of the conflict as one motivated by a belief-system, the belief-system of Islam”. (link)

I took a differing view on this at Jihadwatch here…and here is a rebuttal by a follow poster.

The term “Clash of Civilizations” and the “Global War on Terror” are short-sighted and misleading. I think Fitzgerald and I agree on that.

But, Fitzgerald and I differ when he states that the “truthful description of the conflict as one motivated by a belief-system, the belief-system of Islam”.

Au contraire, I think its far more complicated than that…

Islam is being exploited as a vehicle for fighting what many see as their continuing oppression of Muslims by non-Muslims and/or oppressive governments. Look at Thailand, Philippines, Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Kosovo, Muslims in Eurrope and so on. Conflicts there can be easily seen (true or not) as a conflict between oppressed Muslims and non-Muslims or the government. Additionally, in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, Islam is seen as the alternative and solution to an otherwise corrupt and inept government system.

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Interestingly enough, around the same time I posted my concerns on the ICANN issue, WSJ posts an excellent opinion piece by the co-writters of “Who Rules the Net?” - follow the link here. Here’s what Thiere and Crew sums up nicely:

The Internet helps overcome artificial restrictions on trade and communications formerly imposed by oppressive or meddlesome governments. Allowing these governments to reassert control through a U.N. backdoor would be a disaster.

Indeed.

The Guardian has released a similar article “Breaking America’s grip on the net”, but showing a greater sense of urgency on the matter.

“Information wants to be free” was the mantra of the dot-com days, the days when Wired Magazine saw the Internet as the gateway to transcendence.

But now, the currently unfettered nature of the Internet is at stake. Through the creation of the Arpanet (precursor to the Internet) by the DoD, the U.S. has retained control of the Internet; today, its run by the Department of Commerce via ICAAN. This is now being challenged with the U.S. standing alone with no allies:

The European Union has backed an aggressive push by the United Nations to end US control of the internet and bring it under international law following concerns by countries like Iran that the Americans could pull the plug on them at any moment.
link

What is at stake are some of the key parts of globalization: the freedom of information and the blurring of borders. The Kantian Peace was never really about a Family of Democracies but unfettered trade links and now information is part of that link. The hope of globalization would be to increase these links, enhancing security and building a path to the fabled to the Kantian Peace.

Acquiescing control of the Internet to an international consortium would open the way for censorship by a U.N.-led consortium, which includes countries like China, Iran and Libya – hardly the light of liberty and freedom. Even member countries of the E.U. have their limitations on the freedom of speech.

Also at issue are types of business and applications that undermine the state monopoly on information – think the banning of VoIP and Skype to protect a government telco company.

If the U.S., E.U. and the U.N. fail to reach an agreement, we can see the beginning of the end of the Internet. The U.N. and go ahead and make its own ICANN giving way to an Internet that is fractured, no longer free and no longer global. Has the tower of Babel has befallen us again?

Welcome to Strategy Unit.

While there are many blogs covering the global issue of terrorism, I started this blog to attempt to deepen the discussion of international and domestic affairs beyond terrorism to the host of global, regional and domestic issues that effect in/directly issues of security. Indeed, the dimensions of a sovereign nation’s security are many: economic, resources, information (media, flow of information), defense, technological, cultural and so on. More humbly, this blog will help facilitate my own research and interests in this area.

As I follow the maxim “blog what you know about”, regionally this blog will mainly focus on the United States, Europe, the Former-Soviet Space and Southeast Asia.

Cheers!

DJPR