NATO has just finished another formal summit of member foreign ministers yesterday and several interesting issues were debated. Going into the summit were the central issues of Georgia and Ukraine’s future membership, the US missile defense system in Eastern Europe, relations with Russia (connected to the previous two), and the war in Afghanistan.

Weeks ago i discussed here, how the Bush administration was making a strong push for a more rapid acceptance of Georgia and Ukraine into the Alliance. Much has been made of Germany’s leader Angela Merkel’s resistance to such a maneuver, arguing that it would just incite Russia and would need to wait. Germany, along with other European states, has many reasons to desire to go slow on Georgia and Ukraine’s membership as the country is strongly tied to Russia in energy and other business ventures central to its economy and national well-being. Trade between Russia and Germany increased by over 25% last year and Merkel probably fears further antagonizing Moscow into further destabilizing actions, as the joining of NATO by its former vassals Georgia and Ukraine would likely do.

Now the US’s Bush Administration wants to give no concessions to what it has described as a ‘newly aggressive’ Russia. By outwardly supporting the integration of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO it is sending a message to Moscow that the Alliance cannot be intimidated or have its decisions made from an outside power. Of course, the fact is that Russia is a great power that matters greatly to NATO, as the military alliance would not exist without it. Basically, Germany is advocating ‘guiding’ Russia and the US ‘containing’ it.

What happened at the NATO summit was a little bit of accommodation and containing regarding relations with Russia. Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated the Alliance would begin “a conditional and graduated reengagement” with Moscow, saying that “Russia is such an important factor in geopolitical terms, that there is no alternative for NATO than to engage Russia.”

In terms of the ascension of Georgia and Ukraine, the Alliance members reconfirmed that the two states would eventually become full-fledged members and that cooperative reform programs, like the NATO-Ukraine Commission and newly formed NATO-Georgia Commission, would be accelerated. This outcome has to please Germany and other members who desire a more moderate growth strategy, and I would think placate the US, as progress toward the two’s acceptance is at least involving other mechanisms besides the lengthy Membership Action Plan. Russian Ambassador to NATO Mr. Rogozin told his home audience back in Moscow that this signaled a break or a weakness in the Alliance: “there is an open split within NATO and it will widen if NATO tries to expand further. The schemes of those who adopted a frozen approach to Russia have been destroyed.” It should be noted that as members of NATO are having this debate, the people of Georgia are still dealing with a rather menacing Russian force on and in some places inside their newly reduced borders.

The US defense missile defense shield (MDS) was also a topic of debate during the summit and this brought unquestionable good news for the Bush Administration. In the final communique of the summit, all foreign ministers gave their unanimous support for the Czech and Poland based MDS, calling it a ‘substantial contribution’ to Western defenses. The communique also called for Moscow to embrace American proposals for greater cooperation regarding the system. In this debate, Moscow clearly suffered a setback, at least for the moment.

Lastly, Afghan troop levels were discussed in the light of the upcoming Obama administration arrival in January. Secretary General Scheffer stated in an interview; “It’s crystal clear that we need more forces in Afghanistan.” Scheffer also stated that he was sure that leaders’ phones would be ringing all around Europe soon after the inauguration, with Obama on the other line asking for troops and money. The consensus seems to be that these leaders may have a harder time saying ‘no’ to a newly elected Barack Obama then to a lame duck Bush, but I’ll believe this only when I see it. I’ll leave you with a call to action by Scheffer to all his members:

“The allies need to do better. I want to see the balance in this alliance. I don’t want to just see more American troops. It has to be a combination of a military and civilian surge, and what slightly concerns me is that allies on this side of the ocean will have difficulty in matching the extra effort a new U.S. administration might put into Afghanistan.”

Though I know the big news today is Obama’s announcement and introduction of his national security team, I would like to first discuss a story that’s been sitting in my ‘post queue’ for quite some time, the releasing of US National Security Agency (NSA) archives, and I will get to the new Obama team either later today or tomorrow.

National Security Agency headquarters, Fort George Meade, Maryland

In response to a declassification request by the National Security Archive, the NSA has declassified large portions of a four-part, top secret study, American Cryptology during the Cold War.  The declassified information was put in the hands of NSA historian Thomas Johnson, who then researched and published a large report of his findings.  According to Matthew Aid, a National Security Archive visiting fellow and author of the forthcoming The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency, the three parts released so far provide a ‘frank assessment of the history of the Agency and its forerunners, warts-and-all.’  

The released documents discuss the beginning signal intelligence (SIGNIT) and communications intelligence (COMINT) challenges for the organizations, especially in regard to breaking Soviet codes.  Johnson’s report goes over the Agency’s greatest successes (predicting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and some of its key failures (the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba).  Here is a list of some of the more interesting findings released:

• After the end of World War II, with Soviet codes still unbreakable, the U.S. Army and Navy SIGINT organizations had relatively little to listen to. Johnson’s history reveals that as of mid-1946, the most productive source available to the U.S. Army SIGINT organization was French communications, which accounted for half of the finished reporting going to intelligence consumers in Washington.
• SIGINT coverage of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China by the Air Force Security Agency (an NSA predecessor) during the early 1950s was so bad that a senior CIA official referred to this period as “the dark ages for communications intelligence.”
• The discovery of high-level Soviet spies operating inside the Australian government in 1947 led the U.S. to cut off Australian access to classified U.S. government information, which was not resumed until two years later in 1949. Full SIGINT cooperation with Australia did not resume until 1953.
• Relations between senior officials at the CIA and NSA were at times so bad that they impeded cooperation between the two agencies. The CIA deliberately cut NSA out of the famous Berlin Tunnel operation (1954-1956), with NSA’s director, General Ralph Canine, finding out about the operation from the New York Times after the Soviets discovered the Tunnel in April 1956.
• By the early 1960s, the NSA was beginning to encounter information overload as more and more intercepted messages were stored in huge warehouses of magnetic tapes. According to Johnson, “the volume of unprocessed … tape was becoming difficult to manage technically and was embarrassing politically.”

Though I know many will still desire a greater amount of transparency from American intelligence groups like the NSA and the CIA, there are obvious reasons why certain items need to be kept hidden for lengthy periods of time.  I am encouraged at this seemingly unfiltered release of previously classified Cold War material and look forward to more in the future.  Many will also be interested to know more about the NSA’s current role in domestic wire tapping, but I doubt any information about this will be released anytime soon.  For those interested in reading more about the history and current work of the NSA, I recommend James Bamford’s ‘The Puzzle Palace,’ ‘A Pretext for War’, and his forthcoming ‘The Shadow Factory.’ 

(Photo Source: The National Security Archive)

A few years back, several former US Secretary of States and Defense, including Kissinger, Perry, Nunn, Schultz, wrote an op-ed advocating the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons from our world.  I read the editorial, but was still far from convinced that such a policy was feasible or even desirable.  I have been eager to read more about the ‘end all nukes’ campaign and in this regard just finished reading Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal’s ‘Logic of Zero: Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons‘ piece in Foreign Affairs proscribing such a policy.  

Kabloooeeyyy!!!

To get to the point, I found their arguments and logic underwhelming.  They stress that the US needs to lead the way by reducing their nuclear stockpiles to around 1,000 and announce that their use was only for the purpose of stopping the use of nukes by others, slowly gather up key allies and those other states that have already chosen not to attain nukes themselves (Brazil, South Africa), and build up a strong Non-Proliferation Treaty-type organization that would be able to verify all nation’s stockpiles and nuclear enrichment activities.  Daalder and Lodal argue that this needs to and can strategically happen because the greatest strategic threat to the US is a ‘terrorist nuclear bomb.’  With all the aforementioned steps taken and strong leadership and diplomacy by the US, these authors believe a world without nukes is possible.

Unfortunately, I believe Daalder and Lodal’s prescriptions and strategic logic are extremely lacking in several areas, mainly reality.  The idea that Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, India, France and the list goes on would be willing to forfeit their right to their greatest security guarantee is hard to take seriously.  Just as the idea of the irrationality of Iran or Saddam working so hard to get nukes and then handing them off to terrorists, one must assume that the world’s strategic actors operate outside of the real world.  A world where states still fear for their lives.  Surely, Daalder and Lodal have a point that a terrorist with a nuclear device is probably the greatest threat to US national security today, but what about tomorrow, or the day after that?  World politics is near impossible to predict and I would not want to be that one state who gave up its nuclear arsenal only to be confronted by newly formed existential threat years down the road.  

At the same time Daalder and Lodal are advocating the reduction and future elimination of the entire US nuclear arsenal, an arsenal that protects not only the US homeland, but also Europe, Japan, Korea, Israel, Canada, etc, Russia is strengthening and updating their own.  

I want a world without the threat of nuclear annihilation, but I just don’t see our world structure is set up for this to be possible anytime soon.  States and leaders still live in an anarchial world where states cannot fully trust each others actions.  Interesting enough, is the argument that the existence of nuclear weapons actually create a more stable and peaceful world.  IR scholar Kenneth Waltz and many others credit the mutually shared destruction MAD between the Soviets and Americans for a lack of serious or worldwide wars during the Cold War.  There is a famous debate between Waltz and fellow IR scholar Scott Sagan about whether the existence of nuclear weapons is more positive and negative, with Sagan of course in the Daalder and Lodal camp.  Waltz believes, that if spread in a slow, meticulous, nuclear weapons can bring greater stability and end serious hot wars.  I saw a debate between the two once in person and after listening to Sagan express his valid fears of a nuclear accident or war, Waltz just ended his argument in reference to a world with more and more nukes by saying ‘sleep tight, I will.’

So who’s side do you side with?  Do nuclear weapons bring more stability/peace to this world or more danger?  Should states announce an official policy that they will only use their nukes in deterrence?  Or should the nuclear taboo be tossed away?

In a surprise move for a president being called the lamest of lame ducks, the Bush administration is making a hard push to get both Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The diplomatic push is not just advocating the acceleration of the MAP method, a slow process of aligning military and political structures between a state and NATO, but is in fact pursuing the outright immediate acceptance of each of these Russian neighbors.

This is a surprise move for several reasons. The US tried to go through the usual Membership Action Plan (MAP) process back in April during a NATO Summit in Bucharest, but Germany, France, Spain, Italy and several other members opposed even this, apparently fearing antagonizing Russia. For these NATO members, there was not many positives to come out of such a move. Does this current US move therefore mean that the Bush administration believes something has strategically or politically altered this position? Or is this just a last minute effort by the Bush administration to get these allies and Russian neighbors into the Western alliance?

This diplomatic move by the US comes just days and weeks after reports that the government of Georgia was guilty of an aggressive attack in South Ossetia that no doubt helped provoke a Russian counterattack and from bellicose statements by President Medvedev regarding the US missile shield in Poland and Czech. This seems indeed like a gambit by the Bush administration. While everyone has been talking about a return to an ‘old world order’ and a setback for US democratic and strategic gains, the Bush administration seems bent on showing the opposite. Most foreign policy scholars and pundits all asserted that the US overreached in its encroachment into Eastern Europe and that it would be forced to back down to Russia’s ‘sphere of influence’, but the near opposite seems to be occuring as the US has stood strong on the missile shield, given Georgia $1 billion dollars in aid, and now is asking its NATO partners for a Ukrainian and Georgian shotgun wedding.

Man oh man, what do you think France, Germany, and other NATO members who were against Georgia and Ukraine’s membership think about this new purposal?  Is there a chance they could change their mind?  What does the US have to gain by this move?  Is this just a hopeless last gasp by the Bush administration?  Does Bush fear that Obama may not pursue further NATO membership and therefore wants to get it done or at least started before he leaves office?  And most intriguing, what would Russia do if Ukraine and Georgia were all of sudden in NATO?

This is truly a gambit by Bush, one that may have some very important implications for NATO and European security :

“This is a real turnaround of the U.S. position,” said a senior NATO diplomat who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “We reached a compromise in Bucharest after much haggling. Now, we are being asked to cancel it and effectively discard the MAP program. This is putting the unity and credibility of the alliance at stake.”

To no one’s surprise, President-elect Obama has been riddled with foreign policy advice from a myriad of sources.  Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and the Taliban have each put forth threats and hopes for reconciliation with the newly elected US president, though the latter come with caveats that Obama change the country’s respective missile defense and military presence in Afghanistan policies.

In the academic world, the journal Foreign Affairs has been featuring advice for the to-be president for going on 2 years now, and finally has a name to put to its policy recommendations.  On the site, they currently feature an old essay by Dean Rusk, who would become JFK’s Secretary of State, describing what he sees as the President’s role in foreign policy.  Barack Obama himself put forth his own foreign policy beliefs and views in an earlier article for the magazine.  Lastly, Peter Beinart describes what he calls a ‘liberal foreign policy’ under Obama.

Foreign Policy Magazine also has some interesting articles advocating policy recs for the big O.  The most interesting pieces were ‘Five Physics Lessons for Obama‘, featuring the issues of nuclear terrorism, global warming and space, neo-con Richard Perle’s 7 recommendations, and another piece calling for Obama to ‘go for it‘ on many vital and challenging issues.  FP also asks several experts to pick their diplomatic Dream Team for the administration.

And who better, I know a lot of you would say ‘anybody!’, to give advice to the new administration than the current Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.  Rice gives her thoughts and advice in a lengthy New York Times Magazine article.  It is fascinating to see just how different the challenges facing Obama’s administration are from the one’s President Bush’s faced on his inauguration day in 2001.  

In one bit of good news for world stability and for the current Bush and future Obama administration is the approved security pact between the US-Iraqi government, providing a legal standing to the presence of US troops in the country until 2011, when they will be nearly mandated to leave the country.  

Lastly, geez I can’t stop, here is a transcript from Obama’s 60 minute interview last night, though they only discuss foreign policy for a few moments.

Tomorrow, leaders and representatives from most of the world’s most powerful states, 20 to be exact, will convene in Washington DC to see what they can do to stop the present economic bleeding and protect against future breakdowns. These leaders face quite the challenge, as the Economist has pointed out in great depth, and I for one am not expecting Bretton Woods II. However, a lot of good can come out of this summit, stronger international financial systems with a greater mandate for action, a greater shared understanding of domestic problems, and a renewed sense of global cooperation that can be transferred to other problems with global reach, aka climate change, terrorism, poverty. According to the Economist, this summit at the very least provides a bull market for new schemes for global economic governance.

Browsing through the American newspapers and television news channels, I could not find much coverage about this weekend’s summit to my chagrin, they were too busy speculating on Hillary Clinton’s role in Obama’s administration. An important subject undoubtedly, but the current economic crisis and its affects spanning the entire globe take precedence. Here is a telling quote from Kevin Warsh, a Federal Reserve governor:

“We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of every asset everywhere in the world. The establishment of a new financial architecture, thus, is the essential policy response to the greatest economic challenge of our time.”

Now, the issues to be covered at the conference, the regulation and restructuring of international and domestic financial and banking systems, is mostly beyond my expertise for me to comment further, but what I do know is geopolitics, and oh baby does this economic downturn have some consequences in the world of interstate and intrastate conflict.

A world facing a shrinking global economy or one barely growing is a world with a greater amount of dissatisfied states and citizens. In other words, there is less of the pie to pass around within and among states. In some ways, this may lead to more measured and cautious policies, as is the hope with Iran and Russia, with their dwindling energy supply returns, but this is no guarantee. When it comes to China, the world should definitely be concerned of a dramatic domestic economic crisis as its government’s legitimacy is tightly tied to economic progress. All of a sudden, internal unrest may foment to ever greater degrees, destabilizing the country, East Asia, and the rest of the globe.

WR Mead, a primo expert on US foreign policy, argued in his book ‘God and Gold‘ that the greatest fear for world security was not the rise of China or India, but in fact the failure of one. This would mean that East and Southeast Asia would be an off-balanced region, which may be prone to conflict, a la Europe in the early 20th century. Of course any conflict in East and Southeast Asia would involve the US, which is the guarantor of security for several key states in the region.

This short list of possible conflicts exacerbated or brought on by the economic crisis, is just that short, and unfortunately it is more likely that smaller, but still quite deadly and destructive conflicts, could occur in Africa, Central Asia, etc.

So let us hope that the leaders of the DC Summit can get to work and mitigate the effects of this crisis.

(Photo Source: The Economist’s Bill Butcher)

Update: The Washington Post wrote and excellent piece detailing some of the US intelligence communities strongest security concerns related to the economic downturn. Examples are fears that China’s gaining geopolitical leverage and that Al Qaeda may use security holes created by governments facing budget difficulties, on border security for instance. Check it out: Experts See Security Risks in Downturn: Global Financial Crisis May Fuel Instability and Weaken U.S. Defenses

Yesterday, I attended a conference about the next US administration’s foreign policy challenges at San Diego State University. The conference featured seven SDSU political science professors who each spoke about a particular region of expertise. The conference will soon be put on a podcast.

Here are some of the highlights:

Professor Lei Guang, a Chinese expert, began his talk by stating that if he were to talk for as long as both presidential candidates did on China, it would be only 30 seconds. I nerdily laughed out loud, for this was my greatest complaint about the presidential debates, No Questions, Discussion, or Views on China! This is indeed unfortunate as US-China relations will most likely be the most crucial aspect of world politics and peace for years to come.

Professor Latha Varadarajan, spoke about the US-India Nuclear Cooperation Act that recently was passed by both governments. She laid out the strategic partnership side of the story, a side I am sympathetic too, but was going to end up denouncing the treaty, basically for its weakening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but unfortunately she ran out of time.

Dipak Gupta, a rather famous scholar and the one responsible for the event, came next and discussed Pakistan/Afghanistan. He referred to Pakistan as the ‘most dangerous’ place on the earth and warned Obama to be cautious in fomenting greater instability in the country, specifically referencing Obama remarks about attacking targets in Pakistani territory.

Last to speak was Russia expert Professor Mikhail Alexseev, who was quite the orator, moving all about and getting the whole audience to repeat his main points about Russia being a ‘post-superpower’, ‘post-imperial’ dictatorship. The best part of his talk was how he hammered in just how powerful Russia was and they were America’s only real true competitor on the world stage, totally discounting the radical Islamists (though he forgot China). He mentioned Moscow’s nuclear armaments and their recent investments in more modern missiles, ships, and submarines. He was optimistic that though Medvedev and Putin would be a major test for the Obama administration, that they were up to the task. He especially warned Obama not to follow in Bush’s steps of looking too deeply in Putin’s eyes. Good advice indeed.

Slate’s Christoper Beam has written an interesting and informative piece that does not just touch on China, the US, and other’s attempts of cyber warfare, but explores the question as to whether the activity crosses the line of state to state war. This analysis of course comes right after Newsweek reported that both Obama and McCain’s computers were infiltrated by what was called a ‘foreign power’, though there was no evidence of any specific state entity.

Beam acknowledges that under current national and international policies, invading another government’s information systems is not an act of war, but he is right in that the situation is getting muddier and muddier to discern. Every day modern governments depend more and more on computer systems for the holding and transferring of information and therefore each state power becomes more and more susceptible to a damaging cyber attack.

US-China — CyberWar

Beam states that the US Pentagon, while acknowledging that they do not have an official cyber-doctrine, believes the Chinese government has a declared intent to achieve “electromagnetic dominance” over its opponents. I tried to find the Pentagon report, but have not found it as of yet, but will keep trying. There is no doubt that the Chinese have been active in infiltrating US computer systems, but finding concrete evidence of specific government to government attacks is difficult to prove, and even if they could be proved each side has little to gain at the moment in advertising these instances.

The Bush administration is aware of this modern day great power challenge and earlier this year signed a directive ordering the nation’s intelligence agencies to take stronger measures to protect its systems. President-elect Obama will no doubt be challenged by this new strategic tactic and hopefully this directive is a decent starting point for him to build upon.

Cyber warfare between states will be an evolving, vital, and provocative issue to follow for years to come. This short little ditty barely covered this ‘electric’ topic (Dennis Blasko at the China Defense Blog has some good info) and I look forward to further exploring these questions regarding cyberwarfare and great power relations: Which Great Power uses cyber tactics the most effectively? If a major cyber attack occurs, how can a state 100% verify who the guilty party is, as this will have major ramifications in deterrence and return actions? Will national or international strategies ever be able to effectively curtail such attacks? Can regional or international organizations force these actions to the limelight and make them unacceptable in modern international politics?

Within hours of Barack Obama’s presidential election victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a national speech where he stated his government’s intent to deploy short range missiles near the Poland border. Needless to say, Medvedev and the Russian government are upset with the US-Poland-Czech missile defense agreement (Missile Defense System MDS). This of course comes just a month after Moscow announced it was to begin a ‘wholesale renovation‘ of their nuclear deterrence capabilities.

The Bush Administration’s decision to install these missile defense systems in Eastern Europe and the Russian response have so far, and should continue to be, intriguing great power vs. great power behavior to watch. The situation begs many questions: Why is the US doing this? Can the missile shield system even work? How should/are the Russians viewing this? What effect will this have on Iran’s nuclear policy, as the missile shield is largely aimed at them? What’s in it for Poland and Czech? Will Barack Obama continue this policy? I cannot tackle all of these today, but in due time, my friends.

On the technical side of the issue, aka whether or not the Poland-Czech, or any other, MDS will actually work, is not my expertise. I have been informed that many in the physics and science (a little broad) community argue that the MDS have never shown an ability to work in a real-time situation and are mainly just a waste of tax dollars. Here is a quote by Frederick K. Lamb, who co-chaired a 2003 American Physical Society study on boost-phase intercept systems for missile defense.

“Not a single test of this system has ever been carried out under realistic combat conditions,” said Lamb. “To assume it is going to work under realistic conditions with only a few minutes warning is like assuming a gun that has only been fired against a single, carefully arranged target in a brightly lit firing range is going to be successful in a fast-moving night battle against many enemies.”

On the other hand, the US military has argued that the shields show great promise and have actually worked, only they (thankfully) haven’t been put into play in a real life situation.

But putting aside the MDS actual capabilities, why would the US want to do this? The Bush administration has not been shy in arguing that they will help protect or deter the use of nuclear or conventional attacks on Europe from rogue states, mainly Iran. Another explicit and implicit reason would be that the systems pull Czech Republic and Poland closer to the United States. Now these states are already in the NATO alliance and for the most part are not in danger of moving into Moscow’s sphere, but in international politics, nothing is forever, and one can view this as the US doubling-down on the partnership. While, how could this be positive with Medvedev and Putin’s rhetoric and recent provocative moves, as in, isn’t the US just getting Moscow anger and forcing them to push back for very little gain? Good question. Moscow is indeed gaining strength and have not been afraid to show it, Georgia, Venezuela, Central Asia, and many have argued that this MDS is still treating Russia like the weak country it mainly was for the last fifteen years. But I would challenge this assumption. Russia is indeed much stronger today, and their successful military moves in Georgia require respect, but the US should not feel the need to pull back, and this includes in deep Eastern Europe. Russia may be moving missiles closer to Poland, but they will not dare to actually do anything. The MDS agreement with Poland was basically a security pact, calling for the US to come to its aid if under attack. Moscow’s power has largely risen from a booming economy and those days are largely over with gas and oil prices starting to plummet.

Medvedev and Putin have proven themselves to be adept geopolitical players and the US must be careful in all their moves in Moscow’s sphere, for instance, the US should back off from Georgia’s admittance into NATO, but since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has made amazing inroads into Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia and it should not relinquish these easily. We all know that Russia plays hardball, and by standing tall on Poland and Czech’s missile system the US is crowding the plate, so we’ll just see if Russia’s down to throw one high and inside.