Busy Brazil

Attention to South American security politics tends to gravitate towards its most colorful and belligerent constituent state, Venezuela. With its oil reserves, multi-billion defense contracts, vocal opposition to US and Colombian policies, and occasional saber-rattling, it is easy to overlook the emerging power broker on the continent and wider Latin American affairs (besides, of course, the US), Brazil.

When Manuel Zelaya chose to return to Tegucigalpa, he did not go with Hugo Chavez, who previously threatened to militarily depose the transitional government. He stays in the embassy of Brazil. While controversy follows Venezuela's decision to purchase old missiles, tanks, and aircraft from Russia for $2.2 billion, Brazil is making a $4-7 billion deal to purchase state-of-the-art Rafale fighters from France, and is also seeking to buy submarines. Of course, Brazilian procurement politics mean efforts to produce its own nuclear submarines and helicopters will intensify, and fears of a Latin American arms race have ensued.

Most recently, the Brazilian Vice President, Jose Alencar, suggested that Brazil should seek nuclear weapons. Alencar has served as defense minister and ideologically, is a businessman of the Brazilian center-right, who Lula de Silva brought on to calm fears of his leftism. He is not the final word on Brazilian policy, but given Brazil's history and its current arms buildup, it is an opinion worth considering.

Brazil and Argentina pursued sophisticated and simultaneous nuclear arms programs during the Cold War. They bilaterally chose to scale them down for peaceful purposes, the but the capability to militarize these efforts remains. Taken in context with Brazil's role in the Honduran dispute and its military build-up, government officials pondering a nuclear program is an important reminder that even in a relatively peaceful region, military strength is still a vital element of national power. Democratic states pursuing idealistic goals (like supporting democracy abroad) are not content to rely on their virtue or economies in the pursuit of their national interest.

That Brazil might seek nuclear arms and a strong military, the accoutrement of a "20th century" power, even though the thought of this clearly bothers its neighbors, while seeking a greater role in Latin America and in the world (perhaps as a Latin American UN Security Council representative), is hardly contradictory. While the US declares a new "21st century" of shared interests, cooperation and de-nuclearization, Brazil seeks to be recognized as a great power on its own terms. Of course, Brazil is not about to embark on a war against anyone. But as new powers rise, let's remember that hard power, not just wealth or international goodwill, is still on the agenda.

Really?

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a fascinating celebrity delusion. Charlie Sheen won't drop the 9/11 truth bollocks. I have a question for Charlie Sheen (I won't pretend to interview him). In the minds of the 9/11 truthers, the attack was all government pretext for the invasion of Iraq and the broader crusade in the Middle East. So, Mr. Sheen: if 9/11 was staged to go to war with Iraq, and our own government couldn't come up with anything linking "staged" 9/11 attacks to Iraq, why didn't they write the conspiracy to actually implicate Iraq? Couldn't they have had some fake Iraqi hijackers? Or heck, throw in some Iranian ones to get that war going too.

CS – Mr. President, I implore you based on the evidence you now possess, to use your Executive Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact, care. Create a truly comprehensive and open Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the American people and the rest of the free world deserve the truth. Mr. President -

(He pauses. We shake hands).

CS – Make sure you’re on the right side of history.

(The President breaks the handshake).

PBO – I am on the right side of history. Thank you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch.

(I watch as he strides gracefully out of the room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his side; in the hand of providence.)

You know who else were obsessed with being on the "right side of history" and thought they were doing providence's work too? The dreaded "neoconservative cabal." (They also both probably liked Red Dawn.) Please stop attempting to influence public affairs.

Furthermore, there is a dependent clause after that semicolon.

Going ballistic

In the midst of this President's emphasis on Russian relations, the Afghan war, and now perhaps Arab-Israeli talks as his foreign policy keystones, it is perhaps too easy to forget the one country that might present a "peer competitor" to the US, China. Though China is far from replacing the US as hegemon, China's combination of rising wealth and military modernization are not cause for alarm, but certainly demand consideration. The US has been doing a relatively poor job of maintaining its status as hegemon. It has mired itself in debt, two wars and on top of that, its military procurement system has encouraged budgetary bloat and all too many weapons systems that neither meet the needs of present wars nor seem to have much use for the future.

It is important to note that the term "asymmetry" has more application in warfare than the counterinsurgency and guerrilla wars that occupy our current thinking on defense. The goal of any belligerent is to create an asymmetry over the enemy, whether it is the Taliban creating asymmetry through the use of IEDs in Helmand or the US creating asymmetry through overwhelming air dominance in its own combat operations. This understanding of asymmetry informs the People's Liberation Army as it seeks to develop "assassin's mace" capabilities, technologies and tactics that would allow it to defeat a qualitatively superior force. These technologies range from electronic countermeasures that addle our air strikes to ballistic missiles appropriated for conventional strikes against US airbases and carrier groups.

Keep in mind that while the US is experiencing "relative decline," it still maintains overwhelming air and naval dominance across the globe. China's "assassin's mace" technologies, while we ignore them at our own peril, are not cure-alls. Chinese electronic jamming, for example, may not be able to defeat current generations of American missile guidance systems. Chinese weapons systems, when measured against their US equivalents, are still a generation or more behind. Nevertheless, this dominance, particularly in the naval and air capabilities the US would first bring to bear against China in any conceivable war scenario, has spurred development in ballistic missile technologies. These could be a potential "game changer" in a US-China war.

Why? No other country currently employs ballistic missiles against mobile naval target, nor do many other countries have the ballistic missile capabilities to challenge the United States. Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) are much faster than cruise missiles, making them harder to intercept. They can be launched from land, unlike many anti-ship missiles, so US air-sea dominance will have less capability to counteract them. Other conventionally-armed ballistic missiles could be targeted against US airbases at Kadena, Okinawa, South Korea and Guam to achieve theatre-wide air dominance in an operation against Taiwan.

Notably, the PLA artillery command and the PLA Navy do not agree on the utility of these missiles. So let's not single out US procurement for having inter-service politics (the PLAN opposes ASBMs in part to preserve the importance of the navy) guide procurement. Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of things like US tanker capabilities, basing rights, and electronics (among many other factors) to the complexity of warfare at land and sea. It's not hypocritical to be worried about Chinese capabilities but think our resources are not best spent on the F-22 and other defense industry pet projects.

What overstretch really means

I read Obama's address last night, I didn't listen to it. I don't plan on writing too much about it, because other commentators have done a better job of assessing its technical issues than I could. I'm not even going to get into the horse-race or narrative debate. That said, I'd like to take issue with a few key lines from the speech, not in the context of health care, but of the implications of our domestic expenditures on our national power.

Obama boldly declared, "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." Well, I would hope he has a lot more in the way of reform that this bill has outlined. Because while his plan may cover more uninsured, it does nothing to address the very real threat that Medicare cost increases pose to the budget. Are we really supposed to believe that Obama will keep his promises (or more realistically, that Obama's successors will keep Obama's promise) to cut programs to keep the health care plan deficit neutral? The plan, by CBO estimates, is likely to inflate costs and push out the cost curve, not reduce it. That's not even getting into the problem of Medicare spending growth.

Now, Obama retorts (and Steve Walt agrees) that his new health care plan costs less than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, we shouldn't worry about entitlement spending, because we fight wars, and as Dwight Eisenhower said, our wars steal from public programs at home. This is true. But it's disingenuous to think that we could pay for our public programs if only we weren't fighting so many wars. Political Math breaks it down, and the implication is clear: defense is not the monster gobbling up our budget the way it was in the '40s and '50s, when Eisenhower spoke of the military industrial complex. The reality is that all wars end. Even Afghanistan will end. Mandatory spending, which health care will contribute to, not reduce, does not end. It won't be enough to cut the new health care spending, existing government spending in the form of Medicare is a major long term problem. On top of that, TARP and the stimulus package have created additional budgetary complications.

American overstretch is not simply about fighting too many wars, or even the costs exacted on the military. The US military survived Vietnam, it will survive Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost in human life is tragic, but it is not insurmountable. The appropriation of these wars for domestic policy rhetoric, though, is largely erroneous. Military spending is not the main threat to domestic spending, our debt is. Military spending is not driving our debt, domestic entitlements are. But this crushing debt is also a threat to our military capabilities, and more broadly, the strategic position of the US. Our eroding economic foundations both inhibit the US in absolute terms by harming our long-term economic outlook and in relative terms by constraining our ability to leverage our economic might. While we might argue that our economic situation makes wars like Iraq and Afghanistan prohibitively expensive, it is our domestic irresponsibility, not these wars themselves, that make the costs of our foreign and domestic endeavors prohibitive. To think we can wade out of the mess we've made for ourselves without taxes or budget cuts in both defense and domestic programs is simply kidding ourselves.

(and for the record, I still don't think Obama's health care plan will be the last. Or at least I hope it isn't.)

Afghanistan and false compromises

Unsurprisingly, more Americans are starting to realize just how much of a challenge winning the war in Afghanistan will be. The "US Out of Afghanistan" crowd encompasses growing segments of the American left, traditional and paleoconservative voices like George Will and writers at The American Conservative, and realists like Stephen Walt. The mainstream consensus of this group is that America's military role in Afghanistan should be sharply reduced, and that we can accomplish what we want merely by picking off al Qaeda and Taliban from afar with drones, CIA operatives, and special forces soldiers. This would be plausible had we already not pursued this policy when the Iraq war diverted troops from Afghanistan. Trying to simply keep the Taliban and al Qaeda from taking over by killing the right people does not work.

For example, take the example of the Bundeswehr, which killed dozens of Afghans, many of them civilians, by bombing tankers it feared would become suicide bombs. Intercepting the tanker with ground troops would have been one thing, but simply letting an F-15 deal with it was the wrong choice. Or take our policy of "offshoring" Afghan policy in the late '90s - Bill Clinton took all the right steps of relying on intelligence and cruise missiles to retaliate for the embassy bombings, and of course we ended up with the USS Cole and September 11th. Sending special forces teams to shoot up AQ along the Durand Line did not do anything to stop the Pakistani Taliban and instead led to Pakistani border patrols shooting at our helicopters. McChrystal, our Afghan commander, was previously renown in military circles for his high-intensity campaign of targeted killings by special forces in Iraq. Yet McChrystal, elevated to command of the entire Afghan war, has emphasized counterinsurgency doctrine, not enemy-centric, highly kinetic special operations. Do George Will and other Afghan war skeptics understand something about the efficacy of special forces this veteran commander does not?

In reality, America and its allies tried and failed to halfway fight the war in Afghanistan. Over-reliance on airstrikes has had terrible consequences for civilians, and the enemy leaders we have eliminated has only left us with the war we are fighting now. The same goes for reliance on special forces. To once again invoke Sherman*, "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster." We attempted to fight terrorism easily and safely throughout the '90s, and the Taliban easily and safely during much of our time on the ground. The killing-on-the-cheap model Will proposes has already failed.

That said, does this just mean America should entirely pull out of Afghanistan and leave the whole country to rot? I disagree - leaving Afghanistan now would be a humanitarian disaster and at best mark a return to the civil war we left the country in after Soviet withdrawal. From a pragmatic perspective, leaving Afghanistan would also leave open the possibilty of more terrorist attacks originating from revived training camps. No, withdrawing will not dry up the well of terrorists - the al Qaeda members who attack the US are not poor, uneducated Pashtun farmers who have lost a family member to American bombs. They certainly do contribute to the Taliban, but AQ's deadliest members are self-selected and educated who seek combat.

That said, there are two issues that I might qualify as necessary conditions for the war effort. One is regional stability. If US efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were to destabilize things to the point where the collapse of the Pakistani government is imminent, it might be better to have the usual Taliban in power than loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan. However, this is a difficult line to cross and even if US presence did seem destabilizing, leaving at that point might make things worse. The other thing that scares me about Afghanistan is how much we've let our efforts get tied up in Karzai, who is on the road to becoming Afghanistan's Ahmadinejahd in terms of legitimacy. If we are completely done with the war and think there is no way to solve Afghanistan's problems or protect our limited interests there, that one matter. It is another matter to assume we can solve those problems or protect our intrests them with past errors.

*It seems both Robert Gates and I are fond of using the same quote. I hadn't read that issue of Foreign Affairs until now, I promise...

Truth in advertising

The Yemeni government has blamed deceitful insurgents for the collapse of its hours-long ceasefire in the north. In fairness, Yemen self-titled its efforts "Operation Scorched Earth" and it's rare to see states talking about their efforts much more honestly than that.

Other items of note:

Joshua Foust calls out the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. I've earlier argued that our European allies aren't nearly as interested in fighting Obama's war as they are in praising his words. We should also recognize the US has come a long way in crafting counterinsurgency doctrine, and other NATO members may not be interested in reforming their own military forces to fight wars their governments aren't particularly interested in.

Support for organized labor in the US drops. Whether or not this was a new great depression, it's certainly clear that whatever progressive reforms are made will not follow in Roosevelt's footsteps. I remain skeptical that popular and legislative support, even should they return, can resuscitate organized labor's strength in the absence of effective industrial policy (which may be an oxymoron at this point in history).

Arming a declining power

Although Biden has rightly highlighted the myriad weaknesses of Russia's socio-economic foundation, it's worth noting that Western powers have always been economically superior to Russia, and yet fears of rising Russian power persist throughout recent Western history. The ever-resurgent Russia threatened Britain in the mid-19th century, Germany (particularly Bethman-Hollweg) leading into WWI, and of course the US in the Cold War and now again in its wake.

Simplifying (crudely), many Russia hawks fear Russian military power enough to justify pushing NATO expansion further eastward, but believe Russia's latent weaknesses will grant the US leverage to undercut the Kremlin's response. Russia is up to little good, but this perspective is flawed. Russia has demonstrated throughout history its ability to function as a great power despite weak economic fundamentals. Not only that, but attempting to exploit Russian weakness to press further into its self-declared "sphere of influence" put us exactly in the situation we are in now.

Russia's declining economy can no longer support its massive Soviet-era military. The Russian government has both realized this, and realized it no longer needs to do so. Much like the United States, Russia has realized that its future battles will not be in the plains of Central Europe, and it is adjusting its procurement accordingly. For the first time in years, the Russian navy is purchasing new ships - not Russian designs, of course (the Russian defense industry is decrepit, especially shipbuilding), but French Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. Russia is downsizing its army and creating more permanently-staffed units. While in previous decades the USSR has relied on maintaining divisions that exist only as officer corps and equipment and then calling up troops to staff them, this strategy of mass mobilization is now obsolete. Instead, Russia is modeling more of its units along the lines of its airborne troops (and that of professional Western military forces) to ensure the capability for rapid response and expeditionary missions.

This leaner military is, to paraphrase Spengler, for war, and it may want war. Russia's strategic deterrent remains its nuclear arsenal, which is why up until now most Russian naval efforts were directed (not always successfully) towards strengthening its submarine-based nuclear arsenal. Now, rather than fielding an army useful only for or deterring against mass invasion, Russia wants a force for waging short, decisive wars. Russia has learned from its experiences in Georgia, where the paratrooper forces were immediately deployed and effective in combat. So, let's remember that even though the old Russian way of war may not be economically feasible, Russia is certainly adapting its forces to compensate for past weaknesses. Russia may not overcome its faults, but it is certainly trying to adapt. Russia's military reforms demonstrate it will not simply roll over to Western demands and retains a strong national interest in a sphere of influence.

The Mistral, though, raises an interesting question. What sort of countries does Russia need an amphibious assault ship to fight? The first possibility would be the Ukraine, and the Crimea in particular. Coming on the heels of Medvedev's heated rhetoric and accusations of Ukrainian nationalists (probably true) and government soldiers (less likely) participating in the Georgia war, Russia may be trying to scare the Ukrainian government (or perhaps the population) into a less anti-Russian stance. But that's a possibility that needs to be addressed on its own.