The gap in the New Map on Palestine.

Not everybody agrees with Dr. Thomas Barnett's New Map.

New Map, Same Bad Destinations, Karen Kwiatkowski, AntiWar.com, June 7, 2004

Barnett is adamant that barriers must come down, that engagement and integration must happen; he spends several pages explaining that he dislikes the divisiveness of the term "arc of instability." Yet, in the case of Israel, he advocates a wall separating the West Bank and Gaza from Israel, "to keep suicide bombers out while creating a de facto border between the two states, separating a demographically moribund Israel from a youth-bulging Palestine."

I agree. As long as Palestine remains poorly connected to the rest of the world it will remain a threat to American national security.

-HJC

The Answer is No.

The Proliferation Security Initiative: Can Interdiction Stop Proliferation?

What PSI cannot be viewed as is a substitute for these other elements of a nonproliferation policy. No interdiction effort can be 100 percent effective. Intelligence will not always be accurate, ships may only dock in ports of states that do not subscribe to the initiative, and the indigenous capability to produce WMD components without foreign assistance is rapidly spreading.

Correct, but the but the advantage of the PSI is that it makes operations harder for the bad guys and so makes it more likely that they'll trip up.

-HJC

Insecurity Council

Arms trade 'hurting development', BBC, 22 June, 2004

The largest arms-trading nations globally are the US, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China, according to Oxfam.

Which are exactly the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.

It's not so much the foxes guarding the hen house as a practical measure. If one of these countries really wanted to subvert a UN action, they could provide arms to the other side.

It was only the boycott of the UN by the USSR that allowed a security council vote to protect South Korea in 1950. (The People's Republic of China was not recognized at that time.)

-HJC

This means war?

Taiwan defense minister confirms computer simulation games successful

The Chinese-language newspaper China Times reported that the Americans were training Taiwanese officers to use the U.S.-designed computer system as a prelude to a joint U.S.-Taiwan simulated war game next year.

You cannot declare that a group is in rebellion against a government that you recognize and then expect that your arming and training them should not be seen as a nonhostile act.

The One China policy is not consistent with treating Taiwan as an ally.

-HJC

Barrel, scraping bottom of.

Fort Irwin 'not closing,' Lewis told, Claire Vitucci and Tammy Mccoy, The Press-Enterprise, Friday, May 21, 2004

About 150 soldiers of the 58th Engineer Company, which supports the 2,500-member 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, are scheduled to deploy sometime in the next 70 days, said Maj. Chris Belcher, Fort Irwin's public affairs officer.
...
But the Army is considering sending some or all of the regiment to Iraq, Lewis said.

It's unclear when that decision would be made, Lewis said. But if it does happen, reservists will first come and train with the unit, also called the Army's Opposition Force, and then fill in when the regiment is deployed.

That way, specialized training for armored units could continue at Fort Irwin, Lewis said.

If the Army is cutting into their training facilities in order to deploy troops then nobody can complain about their own tour of duty being extended for a few years.

But it does bring up the question of whether the United States was prepared to open this second front as Bush proposed and Kerry voted for.

-HJC

Torpedo the dam?

Taiwan, China gear up for arms race, CNN, 18th June 2004

Reference was made to Taiwan's so-called "Scorpion Strategy" under which Taipei would lob missiles at not only big cities such as Shanghai but also major infrastructure such as the newly built Three Gorges Dam.

China told to use nukes if Taiwan hits dam, Straits Times, 19th June 2004

China should withdraw its undertaking on no first-use of nuclear weapons should Taiwan try to blow up the Three Gorges Dam, according to some parliamentary delegates.

The call was made by them - as well as some who sit on the country's top political advisory body - in the wake of a recent US Defense Department report which suggested that Taiwan could target the dam in a pre-emptive strike.

China general threatens war if Taiwan targets dam, Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters, June 16th, 2004

Liu said no country had conventional warhead missiles capable of critically damaging the dam - made of concrete with a maximum thickness of more than 100 meters (328 feet).

I have to agree, the dam attack comment in the Pentagon report gives no details of how this attack would take place other than "Leaders have publicly cited the need for ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles" which seems to call for a nuclear attack and Taiwan does not currently have a nuclear weapons program.

Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted, David Albright & Corey Gay, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1998

-HJC

The sinking of the Silent Service.

Navy may shrink fleet of attack subs, David Lerman, Daily Press, June 11, 2004

Despite a surge in defense spending since the Iraq war, Navy leaders have begun rethinking the rationale for subs that cost upward of $2 billion a copy.

A Navy report cited by O'Rourke - one that hasn't been released - is said to conclude the military could make do with as few as 37 attack subs if some intelligence missions were handled by other means, such as satellites and unmanned vehicles.

This has been one of the biggest underreported military stories of the last several years.

The US Navy has been retiring old subs faster than new ones are built and the case isn't being made for why they need submarines at all.

So far in the Global War on Terrorism, the sub force hasn't done much more than launch cruise missiles at "empty tents" and the naval actions against terrorists have consisted of boarding actions which submarines do poorly at and even billion dollar DDGs are overkill.

But there are other countries with naval forces and some of these aren't always on the same page as the United States.

These potentially hostile forces can track the American surface fleet fairly easily, but before they launch any naval aggression they first need to ask where the American submarines are and the Silent Service will not answer.

-HJC

Dean Acheson's green light district.

Confusion in the South Korean ranks, Bruce Klingner, Asia Times, Jun 17, 2004

South Korean officials, however, have grown increasingly concerned that the United States has begun to marginalize South Korea in its Asia policies. Policymakers, perhaps fearful of a repeat of secretary of state Dean Acheson's infamous 1950 speech delineating Korea as "outside our defense perimeter", cited a recent speech by the head of the US State Department Policy Planning staff that failed to include South Korea among "key bilateral relationships" as indicative of a fundamental shift away from the bilateral alliance and toward a broader focus on China and Japan.

Failing to mention Korea was not the same as giving a green light.

Historians debunk some popular myths about the war, Bruce Steele, University of Pittsburgh, June 22, 2000

But they do have a point about America returning to familiar patterns.

Korean War and Japan's Recovery, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State

Acheson signed the San Francisco Treaty on September 8, 1951, the same day he and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru signed the United States-Japanese Security Treaty. The treaty allowed the United States to station troops in Japan, and made the Japanese islands into an important facet of America's global containment structure.

It's more like a global containment web these days, where every potentially hostile state sees American bases in every direction.

-HJC

The Three-Block Small Wars

Avoid pre-Iraq mistakes in military, Palm Beach Post Editorial, Friday, June 11, 2004

Troops are asked to be warriors one moment and peacemakers the next.

Yes, but we've got a force that has been training for this...

The Marines' Three-Block War in Iraq, Global Beat Syndicate, October 28, 2003

The U.S. Marines have a name for a combination of operations like those going on in Iraq: a "three-block war." That term was first coined by Gen. Charles Krulak, Marine Corps Commandant from 1995-1999, to describe scenarios where troops are engaged in a spectrum of operations, from humanitarian missions, through peacekeeping and peace enforcement-type actions, to full-blown combat -- possibly within the space of three city blocks.

...since at least 1940.

Small Wars Center of Excellence.

-HJC

Jimmy Carter's Military Buildup.

One bit of propaganda that the media in general has swallowed hook, line and sinker is that Carter cut the military budget and then Reagan increased it.

This is part of a pattern that paints the Democrats as weak on defense and haunts John Kerry today.

It might just be true, except for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which seemed to turn Carter around.

Jimmy Carter's Legacy, Angelo Codevilla, The Claremont Institute

We should not forget that it was Mr. Carter who began the great anti-Soviet military buildup generally attributed to his successor. Mr. Carter would have built 200 MX missiles; Ronald Reagan meekly accepted 50. Mr. Carter imposed the grain embargo on the Soviet Union; Mr. Reagan lifted it. Mr. Carter kept Americans out of the 1980 Summer Olympics. Mr. Carter sent weapons to the Afghanis. Mr. Carter's National Security Council, not Mr. Reagan's, stated the goal of forcefully changing the character of Nicaragua's Sandinista regime.

-HJC

Congress Backs Pentagon Budget Heavy on Future Weapons

Dan Morgan, Washington Post, June 11, 2004

As Congress moves ahead with a huge new defense bill, lawmakers are making only modest changes in the Pentagon's plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism.
...
The defense budget before Congress looks far different from the one Rumsfeld envisioned when he first came to office. At that time, he was pushing the armed forces toward a "transformation" creating lighter, faster, electronically networked and smaller forces. That approach already has resulted in plans for the Army's Future Combat Systems and the Navy's proposed Littoral Combat Ship
...
The House-passed defense authorization bill reduces funding for developing the Littoral Combat Ship and the next-generation DD(X) destroyer.

It's hard to tell from this article whether the LCS has any place in the global war on terrorism.

The answer is yes.

Littoral Combat Ship Sensors Pose Integration Challenges, Sandra I. Erwin, National Defense Magazine, December 2003

As to whether other ships, such as destroyers or cruisers, could be assigned to littoral warfare missions, Spicer said that would be wasteful. The Navy’s billion-dollar multi-mission warships are not "optimized" to take care of missions such as mine and submarine detection, or maritime interdiction, he said. "Everything points to a smaller, high speed more agile combatant."

If you're going to catch terrorists traveling in small ships in congested waterways, you're going to need a small fast ship.

-HJC

Taiwanese insist on building submarines in US deal

Daily Press June 5, 2002

"This will not only help save on maintenance expenses but will also invigorate Taiwan's shipbuilding industry," lawmaker Lin Yu-fang has said.

So, rather than being a vital part of their defense it's now a jobs program, at US expense?

-HJC

The Stryker is not a tank.

The Economist: Restructuring the superpower

The Stryker is a new, wheeled vehicle with tank-like armour and weapons, but lighter (and thus easier to transport) than the mainstay Abrams battle tank. The Stryker is at the centre of the transformation of America's military championed by Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary.

Even with the chicken wire up, the Stryker is nowhere near as well protected as any tank since WWI.

Oddly enough, the entire American military is not deploying Strykers. For the moment the Strykers are US Army only, and only a stepping stone to their Future Combat Systems (FCS).

The Stryker itself is a development of the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) that the USMC has been using for years.

Each of the other armed services sees Military Transformation as a buzzword to cover their own pet projects, but if any one system could be said to represent the term it would be the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) which the USAF, USN and USMC intend to use.

If you dig a little deeper you will find the actual vision each service has, such as the Marines' Operational Maneuver From The Sea with the V-22 Osprey, the Navy's Sea Power 21 with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) or even the Coast Guard's Deepwater with the National Security Cutter (NSC).

How this all will play together is anybody's guess.

-HJC

Jimmy Carter as James Bond

The media coverage, Former president, first lady christen USS Jimmy Carter, seems to be overlooking exactly what this new sub will be used for.

USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23)

but on 10 December 1999 Electric Boat was awarded an US$887 million extension to the Carter contract to modify the boat for highly classified missions and testing of new submarine systems, missions previously carried out by Parche (SSN-683).

The exploits of the USS Parche(SSN 683) have been partially revealed in Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage.

-HJC

The difference between the bases in Korea and Okinawa

Capability buzzword in Pentagon jargon. Tsutomu Ishiai: The Asahi Shimbun

Seen from this standpoint, U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture allow for quick deployment to the Korean Peninsula as well as to the Taiwan Strait and Afghanistan.

That is why Rumsfeld apparently views the U.S. military presence in Okinawa as a ``very helpful base.'' The role of U.S. forces there is expected to continue even after the global realignment is complete.

The reduction in the U.S. troop presence in South Korea does not necessarily translate into a cut of U.S. forces in Japan

The US forces on Okinawa have always had an external focus. The island chain was only captured to provide a stepping stone for an invasion of the Japanese mainland and they have been used as forward bases in every war since.

Most of the forces on Okinawa are part of America's expeditionary armed force, the United States Marine Corps.

The difference is in Korea where mostly Army bases will now be used as staging bases to project force further out rather than as the static defensive positions they started out as. This parallels what has already happened with the bases in Germany that started out near the front lines and are now used to support operations deep in Asia.

But this pattern was established a long time ago. The American bases on Puerto Rico have just started to close down after a century long stay.

Isn't it a measure of success that bases are realigned and closed when the countries they were built in become stable well connected democracies and the front lines in The Pentagon's New Map of the war against oppressive disconnection are drawn further out?

-HJC

Does the Great Leader even have enough troops to conquer South Korea?

Channelnewsasia.com: Withdrawal of 12,500 US troops draws mixed reactions in South Korea

Others say they should leave, accusing the US of being in the way of reunification between South and North Korea.

-HJC

The big shuffle of American forces.

NYT: A Pentagon Plan Would Cut Back G.I.'s in Germany

The Pentagon has proposed a plan to withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany and undertake an array of other changes in its European-based forces, in the most significant rearrangement of the American military around the world since the beginning of the cold war, according to American and allied officials.

This is overdue, the United States in a new war and needs to shift her forces to deal with it, but not without talking to the allies she will depend on.

Korea Herald: Signs of friction in South Korea-U.S. alliance

The Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld has been so single-mindedly pursuing the transformation of the U.S. military into a leaner, meaner, more mobile force that they have proceeded without adequate consultation and input from allies. Similarly, Gen. Campbell's impolitic remarks revealing intentions to expand the role of U.S. Forces Korea beyond the Korean Peninsula were totally insensitive to the fact that any redefinition of roles requires the consent of the Koreans.

-HJC

Singing Japanese sailors to fight pirates?

Japan Today - Picture Of The Day - The Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) is airing this 15-second promotional ad 30 times a day on three billboards in Shibuya. The song-and-dance routine ends with the sailors chanting "We love Japan. We love peace.

Japan may use military to fight pirates

Although international law guarantees Japan's right to come to the military aid of an ally, the Japanese government interprets Japan's pacifist constitution to mean that the country cannot actually exercise that right.

Other countries in the region may also recall the last time Japan patrolled the Pacific.

-HJC

Back door draft.

Kerry says he would update military

Pointing to a plan that could extend the terms of active-duty and reserve forces headed for Iraq and Afghanistan even after their voluntary tours end, Kerry accused the administration of starting a "back-door draft."

I don't think so.

Everybody who volunteered for the US military did so with the understanding that in times of war their service would be rather open ended.

Where they may have an argument is whether Senator Kerry and the other members of Congress took their constitutional war declaration powers seriously enough.

-HJC

The Pentagon does China.

FY04 REPORT TO CONGRESS ON PRC MILITARY POWER

Great stuff, don't let the media filter it for you, though naturally the Pentagon folks have their own blinders on.

Other OIF “lessons learned” impacting PLA thinking include the integration of psychological operations with air and rapid ground operations designed to target enemy leadership, its ability to communicate, and its will to fight.

Looks like they're still trying to push Shock and Awe.

-HJC

UK Royal Marines invade Spain again.

Royal Navy says sorry after Spanish arrest SBS pair

Two members of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service have been arrested while driving on the Costa del Sol carrying military equipment.

It's been over two years since the last time Britain invaded Spain so it was about due.

Spanish smiles over invasion gaffe

Red-faced Royal Marines have been forced to beat a hasty retreat after storming a Spanish beach resort instead of the fortress rock of Gibraltar.

-HJC