by Alex Evans | Aug 25, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Middle East and North Africa
Over the weekend, Richard blogged about the Iranians’ scary new bomber drones, and their uncanny resemblance to Thunderbird 2. Alas for the Iranians, the project has been set back by some bad news:
A few weeks ago, according to official and private reports, the Iranian air force shot down three drones near the southwestern city of Bushehr, where a Russian-supplied nuclear reactor has just started up. When the Revolutionary Guards inspected the debris, they expected to find proof of high-altitude spying. Instead, the Guards had to report to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that the air force had blasted Iran’s own unmanned aircraft out of the sky.
Apparently, according to official Iranian press accounts, the Iranian military had created a special unit to deploy the drones—some for surveillance and others, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged on Sunday, to carry bombs—but hadn’t informed the air force.
GD readers will doubtless share a particular appreciation for the fact that in the middle of the world’s most unstable neighbourhood, with Israel straining at the leash to let loose its F16s, the Iranians’ nemesis emerged to be… their own lack of policy coherence.
by Richard Gowan | Aug 25, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security
This is my 300th post on Global Dashboard. My first, posted on 15 November 2007, was about how peacekeeping was in a troubled state, with senior UN officials warning of “failure” in Darfur. And here we are almost three years later and I’ve recently been blogging away about, er, the possibility of a peacekeeping failure in Darfur…
This could be proof that, while things are bad out there, peacekeeping has proved more resilient than doom-sayers like me predicted. Yes, there was a near-catastrophe in the Congo in 2008, but it was averted. Yes, the Darfur mission exists in state of permanent crisis, but it’s still there. And there have been successes (like the UN’s ability to hold it together in Haiti after the earthquake) and the great rickety mechanism of UN operations somehow grinds on, with 100,000 personnel worldwide.
Perhaps I’m just congenitally alarmist. When I penned an article about “Peacekeeping in Crisis” two years ago, some blue-helmetists argued that peacekeeping always seems to be in crisis. And yet… if you advocate the “muddling through” view of UN ops, you have to contend with stories like this from today’s Guardian:
200 women and four baby boys were gang-raped by Rwandan and Congolese rebels in a brazen attack near a UN peacekeepers’ base, aid workers have reported. Victims described four days of sexual violence that was unusually vicious even by the standards of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, notorious for the use of rape as a weapon of war. The impunity of the assault is likely to refocus attention on the effectiveness of the world’s biggest UN peacekeeping mission, which has been strongly criticised by human rights groups.
There have been efforts to sort out UN ops in the last couple of years – and, sitting in NYC, I’ve been able to make a few direct contributions – stories like this keep coming back to haunt us. Earlier this year, I began to despair and focus on the tragic nature of the UN’s efforts in places like Darfur. But, if it’s acceptable to talk about the end of humanitarian interventionism these days, I’m not ready to give up on it quite yet.
If we’re going to stick with program, we need to work out a much stronger strategic – and, indeed, humanitarian – logic for why we’re doing so. I’ve had a few ideas about this recently, but need to think them through a bit more… I’ll be away from the blog for a week or so now, but when I come back I’ll try and lay these ideas out more clearly.
Afterthought: while I’m sure readers are very excited at the thought of more posts on peace ops, I should note that my most-read post of the 300 to date was “How UN Consultants Get Laid”. Sadly, I have no exciting new insights to offer on this.
by Richard Gowan | Aug 24, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America
Are emerging great powers like Old Etonians or street-fighters? Or, to be a bit more literal, should we expect great powers to emerge out of privileged, prosperous backgrounds with lots of resources and few natural enemies? Or will they punch their way out of tough, highly conflictual regions? If you look at the first decades twentieth century, the U.S. obviously benefited from having a benign neighborhood, while Germany’s rise was complicated by the ring of unfriendly powers around it.
Looking at the world today, strategists get very excited by the potential for Sino-Indian rivalry to constrain one or both of those powers. (Brazil is, by contrast, the Old Etonian amongst the BRICs, with no serious long-term rivals in its region.) Over on his blog “Polaris”, Dhruva Jaishankar highlights how this worries Indian policy-makers:
One of the few points of consensus at a conference on India I helped organise in February was that India would find it difficult to escape its region unless it were able to establish peaceful relations with (and stability within) the countries in its immediate neighbourhood, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The feeling was that India would be tethered by disputes with these smaller states, and adversely affected by the instability spilling over from them. This would, in turn, compromise India’s great power ambitions. A similar logic underlies Pakistan’s longstanding policy of attempting to destabilise India through asymmetric and unconventional means.
But Dhruva can think of quite a few big powers that came out of tough neighborhoods:
Exhibit A. Europe. For much of modern history, the only powers capable of global reach were located in Europe: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France, and subsequently Germany and Italy. The close proximity of these states to one another, and the presence of strong second-tier states in their immediate vicinities, meant that at no time were the fates of these countries secure at home. This did not stop any of them from seeking conquests and projecting power on multiple continents.
Exhibit B. Japan. The rise of Japan in the late 19th century after the Meiji Restoration coincided with unstable politics at home and in the region. Nine years into the new era, the Japanese ruling oligarchy had to crush the Satsuma Rebellion in the south. Japan went on to fight wars against China and Russia, and annexed Korea and Formosa (Taiwan). In the midst of almost continuous regional conflict, Japan was accorded all the trappings of a great power, including seats at the League of Nations and the Washington Naval Conference.
Exhibit C. China. The growth of China is a remarkable story, but once again it has come despite—not because—of its political relationships with its neighbours. Certainly, China has not had a significant conflict since 1979 and it has settled many of its land boundary disputes. However, it continues to have uneasy relations with almost all its neighbours, including a sizeable dispute with its largest regional competitor, India. It also has one of the most unstable states in the world—North Korea—immediately bordering it. And the military presence of the world’s preeminent power in its region severely limits its actions. None of this has stopped China’s rise.
As Dhruva recognizes, this doesn’t mean that India – or indeed China – can ignore bad stuff on its borders. But it’s an interesting reminder that, while Western strategists worry about the erosion of the liberal order, today’s rising powers may be able to tolerate a pretty high degree of disorder as they assert themselves…
by Richard Gowan | Aug 24, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, UK
In the 1950s, British naval strategists briefly adopted the notion of “broken-backed” warfare, by which they meant fighting on after an atomic strike on the UK. The charm of this idea – if you were making a case for spending on the Royal Navy – was that ships at sea would be the only military tools left to the UK after a nuclear exchange.
This concept didn’t appeal to anyone likely to be on land during World War III, and it collapsed under the weight of its horrible silliness. I bring it up for the sake of a cheap pun, because today (you see where this going) the Royal Navy isn’t contending with broken-backed warfare but the “Brokeback Coalition” and its proposed defence cuts.
It’s unclear whether the Navy or the Air Force will suffer most from the cuts – the Army will suffer too, but is protected by the need to slog on in Afghanistan. This seems to be Fleet Week in the defence debate, with RUSI publishing an article arguing that Britain can’t leave the sea lanes to “pirates, terrorists and opportunist governments”:
Article authors Vice-Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and professor Gwyn Prins argue that with over 90 per cent of the UK’s trade carried by sea, the country must ensure the navy has the ‘presence’ to protect shipping routes. “Real world tasks urgently require significantly more surface combatants, of lower cost and capability,” write Blackham and Prins. “Use of the sea demands presence along the sea routes. Presence is the prerequisite for the silent deterrent messages that naval force alone can articulate.
“…Presence demands numbers. The ability to mass and to surge a force demands numbers. Numbers are also essential for replaceability. If you cannot afford to lose a ship you cannot afford to use it. Presence is the indispensable prerequisite for deterrence.”
The article warns that at the current rate of decline the Royal Navy fleet will have only nineteen frigates in ten years’ time and that many of them will be at the “effective end of their useful lives”. By that time, Prins and Blackham argue, the fleet will be “inadequate for the most fundamental, enduring and vital tasks”. The article calls for at least ten new cheaper and lower capability oceangoing frigates to preserve the “silent deterrent” of a “lower-intensity daily constabulary” force patrolling the major sea routes.
The full article is a curious piece of work, combining some pretty detailed technical and statistical stuff about ships (I assume that’s mainly from the Admiral) with sweeping statements on issues like the fading of the UN and the failures of the EU (I guess that’s mainly from Gwyn, who waxes lyrical on such topics a good deal).
Ultimately this mix of broad and detailed analysis does not convince. The authors seem to be arguing for a strategy that might best be described as “21st Century Francis Drake”. The UK needs a cheap-ish fleet of latter-day privateers that can pop up off the Spanish Main or Far Tortuga as and when a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, comes flying from far away warning “Terrorist ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!” (If this means nothing to you, brush up on your Tennyson, you chump.)
This is all well and good, and I accept the argument for a naval presence. But, like it or not, Britain’s ability to provide “daily constabulary” on the seas is, and has long been, dependent on America’s willingness to provide the SWAT Teams, i.e. aircraft carriers, etc. And this is not 100% guaranteed. This point is brought home in an article by Seth Cropsey in the current American Interest, which I strongly recommend:
The size of a fleet is by no means a perfect metric for a nation’s naval strength; numbers do not equal power, reach or technological capability. But numbers are a good enough measure of where a fleet conforms in rough shape to national tasks and expectations. And for the United States, the numbers aren’t adding up. In the year following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. combat fleet numbered 466 ships. By 2001, it had shrunk to 316. The decline continued throughout George W. Bush’s two terms to the current level of 285 ships. Since February 2006 the Navy has consistently maintained that it needs at least 313 ships to perform the missions assigned to it.
You can read this in two ways: (i) “Oh God the Yanks are deserting us, let’s buy every frigate we can!”; or (ii) “If the U.S. is drawing back from its global role, then extra British boats won’t matter, unless there’s an alternative strategic framework to plug into”. I’m with (ii), and (as I’ve noted before) I’m drawn to the ideas of James Rogers, whose views on EU naval cooperation are best described as “21st Century Tirpitz”…
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by Mark Weston | Aug 23, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security
Back in March of this year, I spent a couple of weeks in the far north of Burkina Faso. I slept under the stars on the edge of the Sahara, was offered a live goat at Dori’s spectacular weekly livestock market, and discussed the upcoming hunger season with nomadic Fulani herders. I also spent money (although not on the goat) and contributed a little to the local economy.
Today I could do none of these things. The whole northern half of this beautiful, welcoming country has been declared off limits by the British, American and French governments. Last month, the US evacuated dozens of its citizens from north-western Burkina. Last week, France withdrew twenty-five students from the city of Fada N’Gourma, near the Niger border, and sent them back to Europe. Across that border, in southern Niger, NGO workers helping to deal with that country’s hunger crisis (a crisis which my Fulani interlocutors had foreseen) have been recalled to the capital, Niamey, for unspecified ‘reasons of security.’
Were I to go back to northern Burkina and fall sick or have a traffic accident (statistically by far the greatest dangers to my person), my insurance would not cover the costs of recovery. Were I to be kidnapped by elements linked to Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which the European governments see as the greatest threat to my safety, nobody would pay my ransom and, like the tragic Briton Edwin Dyer last year, I might well be murdered.
My first reaction to this expansion of the already large map of forbidden West African territories was one of anger. So far, two of the dozens captured by Al Qaeda have died. Edwin Dyer was executed because his government refuses to negotiate with terrorists, and earlier this month the 78-year-old French humanitarian worker Michel Germaneau, whose own government normally has no such qualms, either met the same fate or died of natural causes (it is not yet clear). When I compare this figure to the annual number of deaths in car crashes on the M25, on which the Foreign Office is happy for me to drive, or stabbings in London, which I can freely visit, it seems a disproportionate response to tell all foreign visitors that they must avoid northern Burkina and most of Niger, thereby impeding the famine relief effort, hobbling the fledgling tourist industry, and deterring any foreigner thinking of doing business there.
But on reflection, I wondered whether I would be brave enough to revisit the region myself (as I plan to do next year). In March I did not feel in any danger, but if the intelligence the Europeans and Americans claim to have received is correct and AQIM is actively hunting for foreigners to kidnap, would it not be foolhardy to ignore the warnings? In my two weeks, after all, I did not see a single other white face: it would not have been difficult for a desperate local wanting to earn a fast buck to find me and sell me on to the extremists. Perhaps I was lucky not to be snatched myself, although it did not feel that way and no local people seemed concerned that there was any threat. (more…)
