It has been two years since Ma Ying jeou was elected president of Taiwan. As he approaches the mid-term milestone, President Ma’s record is puzzling. On the one hand, he has made significant progress toward his most important goals. First, he’s stabilized cross-Strait relations. The tension that gripped Taiwan and China during the Chen years has abated, high-level visits have become routine and the two sides are engaged in energetic negotiations on a wide range of issues. Also, after taking a hard hit in the global economic downturn of 2008, Taiwan’s economy is bouncing back. Exports in December 2009 were almost 50 percent greater than December 2008, and economic forecasters predict a 2010 economic growth rate between 4 and 5 percent, although unemployment remains high. Ma has also rebuilt the all-important Taipei-Washington relationship, culminating in the Obama administration’s recent announcement that it would complete a long-awaited arms sale to Taiwan.
What is puzzling is that these successes have failed to endear President Ma to his constituents. On the contrary, his popularity has plummeted since the election, and today his personal approval ratings hover below 30 percent. The dissatisfaction extends to his party as well, and it’s been manifested concretely in elections. Ma’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT), won a far smaller share of the vote in December’s local elections than it captured in the previous round, and it lost 6 out of 7 legislative by-elections in January and February. Municipal elections at the end of this year already are being touted as a bellwether for the 2012 presidential race, when Ma is expected to seek a second term, and the trends do not look good. Hence the conundrum: Why are Ma’s successes in areas believed to be important to voters – reducing cross-Strait tension and reviving the economy – not boosting his approval ratings or his party’s political fortunes?
When Ma Ying-jeou was elected president two years ago, there was a widespread feeling that Taiwan would “get back to normal.” From 2000 to 2008, relations between Taipei and Beijing stagnated, mainly because PRC leaders refused contact with Taiwan’s Sino-skeptical president, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Chen Shui-bian. For eight years, neither Taipei nor Beijing was interested in taking the political risks that reaching out to the other side would have entailed, and in the absence of progress, tensions increased. Thus, the return to power of the KMT, Taiwan’s long-time ruling party, was a welcome development in Washington and Beijing – and in Taiwan, where voters gave Ma 58 percent of the presidential vote as well as a legislature in which his party controlled almost 75 percent of the seats.
If Ma’s election meant things were “getting back to normal,” two years into his presidency we have a clear picture of what “normal” really means in the Taiwan Strait. In Taiwan’s domestic politics, “normal” is a highly-competitive democracy in which the executive is forced to accommodate an active and activist legislature while defending its positions from an energetic – and politically viable – opposition. In cross-Strait relations, “normal” means little overt tension, but no great breakthroughs to permanently resolve the conflict between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
To understand the state of play in the Taiwan Strait it is helpful to keep in mind Robert Putnam’s “two-level game” metaphor for international negotiations. Beijing and Taipei are working together to design a framework for relations that allows for mutually-beneficial economic and people-to-people interactions while balancing the two sides’ long-term goals regarding international status and potential unification. Some of this work is conducted by representatives of the two governments in high-level, formal negotiations. The content of those negotiations is shaped and constrained by what Putnam calls “level two” interactions – more commonly known as domestic politics. In Taiwan’s case, Ma’s domestic weakness constrains the pace and content of cross-Strait rapprochement.
Under President Ma, elite-level interactions have been smoother than ever before, but that only accentuates the ways domestic politics limit Taiwan leaders’ options. Those limitations are more evident today in part because the game was suspended for most of the Chen era. When Chen took office, PRC leaders paused the game because they perceived little benefit in negotiating with Chen, whom they believed was irreversibly committed to a pro-independence line. In their view, a small group of “stubborn independence elements” had wrested political control from the pro-China mainstream. They hoped that refusing to deal with Chen would help to restore the mainstream to power.
When Ma was elected, Beijing was happy to resume play. In the view of Chinese leaders, Ma was an improvement, not only over his immediate predecessor, but over the previous president, Lee Teng-hui, too. To give Ma a solid start, Beijing was prepared to concede important points. Rather than repeating their demand that Taiwan agree to their One China Principle as the basis for reopening negotiations, PRC leaders accepted Ma’s endorsement of the 1992 Consensus (a bit of verbal hand-waving in which the two sides agreed to set aside the problem of defining the “one China” they both claimed to believe in) as “close enough.”
Once it restarted the game, Beijing quickly discovered that having the right elite-level interlocutor was only the beginning. Many Taiwanese found Chen’s Sino-phobic policies unnecessarily provocative, but that did not mean they were ready to support blindly whatever policy the next administration proposed. As the pace of elite-level interactions accelerated, the focus of the domestic political debated shifted from restraining Chen’s provocations to scrutinizing Ma’s performance. At first, voters gave Ma the benefit of the doubt, but new government’s record was disappointing, and voters began to lose confidence.
A number of factors contributed to the public’s waning trust in Ma. The lack of transparency in decision-making has been a particular concern. DPP leaders suggest high-ranking KMT cross-Strait specialists might be willing to compromise Taiwan’s autonomy in order to reach an agreement with Beijing. They argue that the government’s closed cross-Strait decision-making is dangerous, because these specialists, whether out of perfidy or naïveté, might fail to protect Taiwan’s interests.
To protect Taiwan from a badly-negotiated deal, Ma’s critics are demanding ECFA be subjected to formal ratification, either by popular referendum or in the legislature. Legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng, a KMT member, has said the legislature might overrule the ECFA deal if it does not meet lawmakers’ standards. President Ma chairs the KMT, so the lack of support for his policies within the party reinforces the sense that he and his inner circle lack a firm hand for dealing with opponents – and a firm hand is exactly what they need to deal effectively with the ever-tough negotiators from Beijing. Several of the KMT’s recent electoral set-backs resulted from local politicians rebelling against Ma’s attempts to clean up local politics, a development that further reinforces this impression.
Declining confidence in the Ma government also reflects the public’s sense that their leaders have not responded well to domestic crises. The government’s reaction to the disastrous typhoon last summer attracted enormous criticism, much of it focused on the perception that Ma had failed to register the impact of the disaster and react swiftly and proportionately. The government also has been hammered for dismissing popular fears about H1N1 vaccine and beef imported from the U.S.
Paradoxically, Ma’s political weakness at home may help him protect Taiwan’s interests in negotiations with Beijing. Taiwan’s economic, political and military power all are declining relative to the PRC, so the negotiations are in danger of becoming perilously uneven. The practical difficulty of ratifying a cross-Strait deal in Taiwan’s nervous domestic climate helps balance that asymmetry. In his discussion of two-level games, Putnam argues that authoritarian states are at a disadvantage in international bargaining for precisely that reason: they cannot plausibly claim that certain agreements will fail the test of domestic ratification. Leaders from democratic states can make that case, and they can extract concessions from the other side on those grounds. The dynamic that Putnam describes may benefit Taiwan, but it is no fun for the man caught in the middle: President Ma Ying-jeou.
Beijing is unlikely to find any Taiwanese leader easier to deal with than Ma, so it is in China’s interest to keep the relationship on a positive track – even if that means accepting slower progress than it would like. That logic helps to explain why, even as Chinese leaders fulminated against the U.S. for its decision to follow through on arms sales to Taiwan, they chose not to direct their venom at Taipei. Likewise, the PRC continues to send high-level representatives and delegations to Taiwan despite large protests, including one in November 2008 that trapped PRC representative Chen Yunlin in a hotel for hours. And in December 2009 the two sides signed three technical agreements, even after Taipei nixed a fourth proposal.
Beijing has even made limited concessions on Taiwan’s demand for international space, which Ma stated last year: “There is a clear link between cross-strait relations and our international space. We’re not asking for recognition; we only want room to breathe.” The two sides are conforming to a tacit “diplomatic truce” proposed by Ma shortly after his inauguration; neither has poached a diplomatic partner from the other since that time. In 2009, Beijing even withdrew its opposition to Taiwan’s efforts to secure observer status at the UN World Health Assembly. The Ma administration touted that development as a breakthrough, but his political opponents took him to task for the opacity of the process and for overstating the benefits Taiwan derived from the deal. In fact, the WHA decision was less a precedent-setting breakthrough than a one-off deal that could be revoked in the future – but the alternative was continued exclusion and isolation.
In sum, Beijing is so far tolerating the measured pace of cross-Strait engagement imposed by Taiwan’s domestic politics. PRC leaders seem confident that over time, their position will strengthen, so there is no need to push for faster progress now. The slow pace works well for Taiwan, too, where even baby steps make many people nervous. Still, there is a sobering side to this picture. If the process slows too much, PRC leaders may determine that no Taiwan leader, including Ma, is capable of delivering any of what Beijing is seeking and so lose patience. That would mean game over for the Ma Ying-jeou approach to cross-Strait rapprochement.
Read more!
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14
Tuesday, December 15
Pashtunistan and The Tournament of Shadows
The plan Obama unveiled last week for Years 9 and 10 of the war in Afghanistan left a basic question begging for an answer: If Al Qaeda is the threat, and Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, why send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
Read more!
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
Read more!
Saturday, December 5
Would Britain and US let Africa be Nuclear-weapon-free?
On July 15, the Pelindaba Treaty, which established Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone, finally entered into force. The treaty is the latest regional agreement to ban nuclear weapons in its area of application.
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
Friday, November 27
Obama and India
It was fitting that the first state visit to be received by the Obama administration, with a formal dinner held Tuesday, would be that of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Relations between the United States and India are of critical and increasing importance to both nations.
India is the world's second most populous country, a rising economic power and a functioning and stable democracy. It is also perfectly positioned - geographically, economically and politically - to be of help with a number of issues important to the United States. While hardly identical, U.S. and Indian interests intersect in ways that, for now at least, make the two nations natural allies.
The longstanding animosity between India and Pakistan is a festering problem that from time to time threatens to erupt into full-scale war. Given that both have nuclear weapons, this has the potential for disaster.
But the tension between those two nations also means India has an even greater interest than the United States in keeping the Taliban or al-Qaida from gaining more power in Pakistan, and in working toward stability in Afghanistan. In that Pakistan's leadership apparently sees continued unrest in Afghan-istan as in its interest, India has all the more reason to back U.S. efforts to stabilize that country. India is already one of Afghanistan's biggest donors.
Plus, so long as Pakistani leaders are wary of India, they are deterred from making too many demands of the United States, such as more vehemently insisting on an end to U.S. drone strikes that have proven so effective in killing al-Qaida leaders.
India is also the only country in Asia with the political will and the economic heft to serve as something of a counterbalance to China. It is already a major U.S. trading partner - to the tune of $61 billion in 2007 - and is rapidly emerging as a global leader in technology.
And in an important subtext, the visit also marked the furtherance of a civilian nuclear agreement between India and the United States, entered into by then-President George W. Bush. That treaty ended India's nuclear isolation - a policy enacted in response to its testing of a nuclear device in 1973 - and could allow it to set up a regional center for reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Again, the alternative would appear to be China, a country the United States considers guilty of helping to spread nuclear weapons technology.
At the televised press conference, Obama referred to the United States and India as “nuclear powers," phrasing that signaled both recognition of that reality and U.S. acceptance of it. Obama wants India's help in a nuclear security summit he reportedly wants to hold next spring in Washington.
“As nuclear powers," the president said, “we can be full partners in preventing the spread of the world's most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear material from terrorists, in pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons."
India is home to one of the world's greatest and most ancient civilizations, as well as the birthplace of several of humanity's most influential religions. The clear message of this meeting is that India is now also recognized as one of the world's great powers.
There is every reason to hope that common issues and values will also allow India to be this nation's great friend.
Read more!
India is the world's second most populous country, a rising economic power and a functioning and stable democracy. It is also perfectly positioned - geographically, economically and politically - to be of help with a number of issues important to the United States. While hardly identical, U.S. and Indian interests intersect in ways that, for now at least, make the two nations natural allies.
The longstanding animosity between India and Pakistan is a festering problem that from time to time threatens to erupt into full-scale war. Given that both have nuclear weapons, this has the potential for disaster.
But the tension between those two nations also means India has an even greater interest than the United States in keeping the Taliban or al-Qaida from gaining more power in Pakistan, and in working toward stability in Afghanistan. In that Pakistan's leadership apparently sees continued unrest in Afghan-istan as in its interest, India has all the more reason to back U.S. efforts to stabilize that country. India is already one of Afghanistan's biggest donors.
Plus, so long as Pakistani leaders are wary of India, they are deterred from making too many demands of the United States, such as more vehemently insisting on an end to U.S. drone strikes that have proven so effective in killing al-Qaida leaders.
India is also the only country in Asia with the political will and the economic heft to serve as something of a counterbalance to China. It is already a major U.S. trading partner - to the tune of $61 billion in 2007 - and is rapidly emerging as a global leader in technology.
And in an important subtext, the visit also marked the furtherance of a civilian nuclear agreement between India and the United States, entered into by then-President George W. Bush. That treaty ended India's nuclear isolation - a policy enacted in response to its testing of a nuclear device in 1973 - and could allow it to set up a regional center for reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Again, the alternative would appear to be China, a country the United States considers guilty of helping to spread nuclear weapons technology.
At the televised press conference, Obama referred to the United States and India as “nuclear powers," phrasing that signaled both recognition of that reality and U.S. acceptance of it. Obama wants India's help in a nuclear security summit he reportedly wants to hold next spring in Washington.
“As nuclear powers," the president said, “we can be full partners in preventing the spread of the world's most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear material from terrorists, in pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons."
India is home to one of the world's greatest and most ancient civilizations, as well as the birthplace of several of humanity's most influential religions. The clear message of this meeting is that India is now also recognized as one of the world's great powers.
There is every reason to hope that common issues and values will also allow India to be this nation's great friend.
Read more!
Wednesday, November 18
India and the CTBT: The debate in New Delhi
An article by By A. VINOD KUMAR in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Nov 2009
From the very start of the nuclear age, India was a vociferous proponent of a nuclear test ban. To wit, in 1954, India initiated a global call at the U.N. Disarmament Commission for an end to nuclear testing and a freeze on fissile material production. Likewise, in 1978 and 1982 at the Special Sessions on Disarmament, India proposed measures for banning nuclear testing, and in 1988, it introduced the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. These proposals were shaped by the belief that banning nuclear testing would be an irreversible step toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons within a specific time frame. However, after co-sponsoring a resolution for a test ban treaty in November 1993, India reversed course and tried to block the treaty text that was negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament. This stance was actually ideologically consistent, since India felt that the treaty was flawed because it wasn't linked to a time-bound disarmament plan.
Another crux of India's argument against the CTBT was the perilous security environment in South Asia, in which India had limited options as a non-nuclear weapon state to deal with the lurking challenges from China's nuclear arsenal and Pakistan's nascent weapons program. By signing the CTBT, India would have foregone the right to test nuclear devices, yet its primary nuclear-armed adversary, China, would be able to retain its nuclear weapons under the treaty and could even upgrade them through subcritical experiments. Pointing to this disparity, an Indian representative told the U.N. General Assembly in September 1995: "[We note that] nuclear weapon states have agreed to a CTBT only after acquiring the know-how to develop and refine their arsenals without the need for tests. . . . Developing new warheads or refining existing ones after [the] CTBT is in place, using innovative technologies, would be . . . contrary to the spirit of [the] CTBT." Later, New Delhi demanded a "complete cessation of nuclear tests in all environments and for all time" and "a binding commitment . . . within an agreed time frame, toward the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world."
Specifically, New Delhi felt that the CTBT was inadequate in terms of securing disarmament commitments from the nuclear weapon states under declared deadlines. It saw this as a discriminatory replication of the imbalance inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime, in which nuclear weapon states are weakly obligated to disarm and non-nuclear weapon states are strongly obligated to remain non-nuclear. The lack of commitments by the nuclear weapon states to eliminate their nuclear weapons under a declared time frame also compelled India to oppose Article XIV of the NPT, which stipulates the CTBT's entry into force after 44 "Annex 2" countries sign and ratify it.
Clearly, much has changed since then. India's 1998 nuclear tests, growing nuclear arsenal, and partial integration into the nonproliferation regime via the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) waiver that was part of the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal--along with the Obama administration's moves to revive the treaty--have caused New Delhi to reconsider its approach to the CTBT. Although opposition to the treaty remains, several domestic justifications for a nuclear test ban have emerged. For example: In addition to the pressure likely to be placed on India to join the ban if the United States and China ratify the treaty, there is also apprehension in New Delhi that prospective supplier states will stipulate India's commitment to a test ban as a precondition for nuclear trade. Such concerns are underscored by the fact that many NSG members, while granting the India-specific waiver, wanted India to convert its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing into a legal pledge by signing the CTBT.
Many in India do continue to cite the lack of sufficient disarmament commitments as central to their opposition to the CTBT, but today this argument is weaker--especially because India is now a de facto nuclear weapon state. The shift from being a nuclear "have-not" to a nuclear "have" dramatically altered the Indian perspective on the CTBT. Consequently, it will no longer be tenable for India to hold on to the old argument of discrimination against have-nots. Instead, like other nuclear weapon states, India will have to ensure that the CTBT (and any other nonproliferation mechanism) will not impinge on its strategic weapons program. In other words, India's status as a de facto nuclear weapon state now places it in the same mode of thinking that the NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states held during CTBT negotiations in the mid-1990s.
Test ban opponents in India defend this position by arguing that its strategic program needs to be safeguarded until a credible disarmament process begins. On a sublime note, some in India will contend that the CTBT remains improvident until the nuclear weapon states commit to a time-bound disarmament framework. Yet to get the ball rolling on eliminating nuclear weapons, India passes the responsibility to the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council (the five nuclear weapon states recognized under the NPT). India has few justifications for its disinclination to propose any initiatives for a phased, definitive disarmament process--although a reasonable rebuttal would be its June 1996 statement to the Conference on Disarmament: "Countries around us continue their weapon programs. . . . India cannot accept any restraints on its capability if other countries remain unwilling to accept the obligation to eliminate their nuclear weapons."
Such arguments notwithstanding, the strongest hindrance to Indian support for the CTBT today revolves around two questions that have perplexed Indians over the past decade. First, does India really have a credible minimum deterrent that would allow it to continue to abstain from further tests? And second, is India's nuclear establishment capable of improving its existing arsenal without the aid of nuclear testing? Though the public is assured that a credible minimum deterrent does exist, some analysts passionately contend that India's purported deterrent has not yet matured to that point in terms of number or yield. India's arsenal, they argue, must be improved--especially its thermonuclear devices--via further testing, and hence, a global test ban cannot be joined. Similarly, an influential third party in the scientific and strategic communities assumes that full-scale nuclear testing will be needed for future weapon designs and argues for keeping the testing option open. That Chinese military modernization is in full swing empowers this faction to obstruct progress toward an Indian test-ban commitment.
During the debate in New Delhi over the U.S.-India nuclear deal, worries about India's freedom to conduct future nuclear tests and potential complications in nuclear commerce were prominent. To soothe these fears, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government assured the Indian Parliament that the nuclear deal wouldn't preclude India's ability to undertake nuclear tests. Singh reportedly also assured a group of disgruntled nuclear scientists that the strategic nuclear program was safe and promised to secure the wherewithal for its future augmentations.
Such promises have hampered the scope for positive political action in India on the CTBT; the government now will have a tough job convincing parliament of the prudence of signing the treaty. Even a mere political call to abdicate the right to future testing will happen only after the nuclear scientific establishment, as well as the national security establishment, certifies the credibility of the existing arsenal, and the former verifies that the nuclear complex is capable of subcritical testing and simulation-based improvisations. Getting the nuclear establishment's support for the CTBT, however, may not be difficult, considering that by endorsing the CTBT it is basically confirming its capability to refine the arsenal without full-scale nuclear testing and its confidence in the Indian minimum deterrent. Further, a forceful political push could neutralize the naysayers even within the establishment.
A greater political challenge could be how to justify stepping away from New Delhi's past history of disarmament advocacy, because India's accession to the CTBT in its present form could imply an abandonment of its disarmament ideals or even contradict its own disarmament activism at previous CTBT negotiations. As a result, it will be difficult for New Delhi to support the CTBT unless the treaty adopts structural changes with new, clear linkages to a time-bound disarmament process.
Any Indian decision ultimately will be influenced by the ratification process in the U.S. Congress. Many in India profoundly believe that some in the U.S. military and Republican Party might resist and stall the ratification process. The reported proposal to reinstate the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program is seen as an illustration of the U.S. military's mindset on nuclear weapons. There is a dominant feeling among New Delhi's strategic analysts that the U.S. military will use the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review to push for the modernization of its nuclear forces, an effort that could have implications for the CTBT ratification process.
However, if Congress manages to resist such pressures and ratifies the CTBT, it could trigger a domino effect among other non-signatories. India would then be left with few options but to truly reconsider its official stance regarding the CTBT.
Read more!
After Kim Jong-il ?
On June 1, members of the South Korean National Assembly's Intelligence Committee received some clarity about who would replace Kim Jong-il as North Korea's leader. A high official in Seoul's National Intelligence Service informed them that Kim had designated his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. According to the National Intelligence Service, Kim Jong-il had ordered the North's military, politicians, and officials in overseas missions to swear allegiance to Kim Jong-un after Pyongyang's May nuclear test. This succession plan wasn't entirely surprising. In his 2003 memoir, Kenji Fujimoto, the Kim family's longtime chef, predicted that Kim Jong-un would replace his father, explaining that he was Kim Jong-il's favorite. According to Kim Jong-il's Chef, Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son, lost his father's confidence after being deported from Japan for using a false passport in May 2001, and Kim Jong-chol, the second son, was seen too weak to lead.
A few months earlier, Kim Jong-il supposedly had appointed Kim Jong-un as inspector of the country's prominent National Defense Commission, which supervises Pyongyang's national defense and which Kim Jong-il chairs. The inspector is a low-level position, but Kim Jong-un's position is expected to soar--much as his father's did in the 1960s and the 1970s. (Kim Jong-il was named inspector of the Workers' Party in 1964, and eventually, he was appointed to its second highest position.) To further bolster his son's standing, prominent Kim family members were named to the commission at about the same time. Specifically, Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and a department director of the Workers' Party, became a member of the commission and appears to be Kim Jong-un's patron, and O Kuk-ryol, another department director of the Workers' Party, became the commission's vice chairman.
To say the least, Pyongyang has a unique political culture that's hard to understand by any outside standard. It is a pre-modern dynastic state founded in 1948 by Kim Jung-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who ruled the country for the next 46 years. As a result, most of its prominent political and military appointments are intertwined and based on family networks. For instance, Kim Kyung-hee, Kim Jong-il's younger sister, controls the country's Department of Light-Industry, which directs ministries in the cabinet related to the production of smaller industrial goods; her husband, Jang Song-taek, oversees an important department in the Workers' Party; and Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il's half brother is ambassador to Poland. Meanwhile, Choe Ryong-hae, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hwanghae Provincial Committee, is the son of a former minister of the North Korean Armed Forces; and Hong Sok-hyong, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hamgyong Provincial Committee, is the son of a former vice prime minister.
Such familial networks extend across the North Korean government and help explain its recent provocative behavior--such as its April rocket launch, May nuclear test, and June threat to enrich uranium.
The country's elites constantly worry about the security of their positions if a successor were to arise from outside the Kim family. At the moment, their fears are particularly acute because Kim Jong-un's position isn't secure. His ascension to power has been rather quick, leaving little time to consolidate support, unlike Kim Jong-il who spent decades following a detailed succession plan outlined by his father. (Kim Jong-il's succession had three stages--first, in 1974, an informal decision was made that he would succeed his father; second, in 1980, he became a standing member of the Workers' Party Political Bureau; and finally, in 1993, he took his father's place as chairman of the National Defense Commission.) To ensure a smooth transition, the North's elite is willing to do whatever it takes to strengthen Kim Jong-un in the eyes of those in the country's government and military who aren't blood relatives. The result is a deliberately tense atmosphere intended to strengthen internal solidarity and bolster the succession. This tension will remain until Kim Jong-un is accepted by the military, Workers' Party, and cabinet.
In this way, it's not unlike the final moments of Kim Jong-il's ascension to power, where confrontation with the outside world was used to forge favorable conditions for domestic political change. In April 1993, a month before Kim Jong-il succeeded his father as National Defense Commission chairman, North Korea proclaimed a "state of semi-war" after disputes with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Washington concerning special inspections of its suspected nuclear sites. Two weeks later, the North declared it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The importance of the North's nuclear weapons.
If the North cannot secure long-term regime stability by manufacturing external strife to engender internal solidarity, it will do so by continuing its nuclear program. Although Pyongyang's nuclear activities date back to the 1950s, the 1994 Agreed Framework curbed its nuclear ambition with promises by the United States to provide light water reactors and by seemingly offering a path toward normalized U.S.-North Korean relations. But once George W. Bush took office and preemption became an official U.S. policy, the North renewed its push for nuclear weapons. And while U.S.-North Korean relations seemed to warm late in the Bush administration's tenure, in the summer of 2008 any and all perceived political gains disappeared when Pyongyang met its Six-Party Talks obligations and demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear site but the Bush team demanded still more concessions before it would fulfill its own obligations.
A few days later, Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, and the regime's interest in nuclear weapons intensified. Now regime survival was the primary issue. In particular, the North's second nuclear test in May was interpreted by experts in South Korea as a sign that Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear capability unless it received a guarantee that the regime's future was secure. Moreover, after the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution condemning the nuclear test and expanding sanctions against the regime, Pyongyang vowed that it would never give up its nuclear program. Although the North's nuclear ambitions originally stemmed from external threats--e.g., the United States--it now has two additional functions: (1) to strengthen the regime's control over its people; and (2) to be used as a bargaining chip for continued international aid.
Ultimately, Pyongyang wants to be treated like Pakistan and India, both of whom possess nuclear weapons outside of the framework of the NPT while still maintaining normal relations with Washington. Pakistan, for instance, receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid despite its nuclear arsenal, and India's economic ties with the United States only grow stronger even as New Delhi remains firmly opposed to joining the nonproliferation regime in any formal sense. Last year, Washington even agreed to lift its 30-year moratorium on nuclear trade with India, allowing it to assist with New Delhi's civilian nuclear energy program. North Korea wants similar accommodations.
Whether or not it receives such a deal, history indicates that some sort of negotiations will restart eventually. In 1998, the North began talking with Washington about a missile moratorium even though it had just recently launched a long-range missile. Pyongyang also came back to the Six-Party Talks after another long-range missile launch in July 2006 and a nuclear test that October. The real difference today is the transition in leadership to Kim Jong-un. Because the 26-year-old isn't established domestically yet, he is probably more apt to rely on the military's support and back policies that it favors. To truly become a viable leader, though, he should focus on developing the country's economy, which is in shambles. Obviously, reengaging with the United States and South Korea would help achieve this end. (It's worth noting that unlike his father, Kim Jong-un was educated abroad, and therefore, he might be more open to negotiating with the international community.)
At the moment, the North appears interested in talking to Washington. In August, an official from Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations visited New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to convey that the North wanted bilateral talks with Washington. This could be interpreted as evidence that Kim Jong-un has established himself in the domestic power structure.
How China and Russia fit in.
Beijing has been reluctant to comment on the North's leadership transition, hoping it can be accomplished without incident. This might explain why it strongly denied that Kim Jong-un had visited China in June, describing such reports as "a story like a 007 novel." Kim Jong-un's closest aide did visit China recently, however. It's likely that he was tasked with informing Beijing about the leadership change, as his visit coincided with Kim Jong-il's order for overseas North Korean officials to swear their allegiance to his son. Eventually, North Korea also will need Russia's help to facilitate Kim Jong-un's ascension.
Until now, Beijing and Moscow have tried to implement a balanced policy toward Pyongyang. But if the North remains reluctant to rejoin the Six-Party Talks or to take part in a meaningful dialogue with the United States, Chinese and Russian support will weaken. It's doubtful that North Korea could overcome such a split with its patrons, especially China. Beijing accounted for 73 percent of Pyongyang's annual foreign trade in 2008. China also provides enormous food and energy aid to the North. After North Korea's second nuclear test, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that Beijing was "resolutely opposed" to the test and demanded an end to any activity that might worsen the situation. Beijing is concerned that North Korea's aggression could cause Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea to develop either nuclear weapons of their own or elaborate missile defense programs--with the help of the United States, something that makes China particularly uncomfortable. In the meantime, Beijing is worried about the potential in North Korea for domestic tumult and the enormous influx of refugees it could bring. This helps explain China's reluctance to impose tough sanctions on North Korea.
In the context of succession, North Korea (and Kim Jong-un specifically) will need to rely on Beijing more than ever before, as it is the only economic and diplomatic partner Kim Jong-un has in the short-term--along with Russia, of course. Plus, Chinese and Russian support will be crucial to legitimizing him both domestically and internationally.
Barack Obama weighs in.
During its first year in office, the Obama administration has carefully watched the situation in North Korea. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the region in February, she specifically mentioned that a crisis was possible when the leadership transfer formally took place. Likewise, at a June conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a U.S. official who was quoted anonymously said that he didn't believe North Korea would return to the Six-Party Talks until succession was settled. It would appear that the U.S. administration is taking a wait-and-see approach and adjusting its diplomatic strategies accordingly.
That could be part of the reason why the Obama administration has been sending contradictory messages to the North. On the one hand, it frequently talks about how it won't reward North Korea's provocative behavior; yet on the other hand, it states that it won't abandon diplomacy. An example of this helter-skelter approach in practice: In March, Washington offered to send its special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang to discuss the nuclear issue. But once Pyongyang accepted, the United States reversed course, insisting that the North return to the Six-Party Talks first.
Obama must face one reality, however: It will take a long time to fully complete the leadership transfer from Kim Jong-il to Kim-Jong-un because the elder Kim's health isn't critical at the moment. (Kim Jong-il met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in August for more than three hours, and he frequently visits industrial areas throughout the North.) Therefore, the current U.S. "wait-and-see" strategy could backfire, as Washington might be waiting for a very long time to see the younger Kim take control. In the meantime, the North Korean nuclear program could reach a point of no return.
Read more!
A few months earlier, Kim Jong-il supposedly had appointed Kim Jong-un as inspector of the country's prominent National Defense Commission, which supervises Pyongyang's national defense and which Kim Jong-il chairs. The inspector is a low-level position, but Kim Jong-un's position is expected to soar--much as his father's did in the 1960s and the 1970s. (Kim Jong-il was named inspector of the Workers' Party in 1964, and eventually, he was appointed to its second highest position.) To further bolster his son's standing, prominent Kim family members were named to the commission at about the same time. Specifically, Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and a department director of the Workers' Party, became a member of the commission and appears to be Kim Jong-un's patron, and O Kuk-ryol, another department director of the Workers' Party, became the commission's vice chairman.
To say the least, Pyongyang has a unique political culture that's hard to understand by any outside standard. It is a pre-modern dynastic state founded in 1948 by Kim Jung-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who ruled the country for the next 46 years. As a result, most of its prominent political and military appointments are intertwined and based on family networks. For instance, Kim Kyung-hee, Kim Jong-il's younger sister, controls the country's Department of Light-Industry, which directs ministries in the cabinet related to the production of smaller industrial goods; her husband, Jang Song-taek, oversees an important department in the Workers' Party; and Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il's half brother is ambassador to Poland. Meanwhile, Choe Ryong-hae, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hwanghae Provincial Committee, is the son of a former minister of the North Korean Armed Forces; and Hong Sok-hyong, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hamgyong Provincial Committee, is the son of a former vice prime minister.
Such familial networks extend across the North Korean government and help explain its recent provocative behavior--such as its April rocket launch, May nuclear test, and June threat to enrich uranium.
The country's elites constantly worry about the security of their positions if a successor were to arise from outside the Kim family. At the moment, their fears are particularly acute because Kim Jong-un's position isn't secure. His ascension to power has been rather quick, leaving little time to consolidate support, unlike Kim Jong-il who spent decades following a detailed succession plan outlined by his father. (Kim Jong-il's succession had three stages--first, in 1974, an informal decision was made that he would succeed his father; second, in 1980, he became a standing member of the Workers' Party Political Bureau; and finally, in 1993, he took his father's place as chairman of the National Defense Commission.) To ensure a smooth transition, the North's elite is willing to do whatever it takes to strengthen Kim Jong-un in the eyes of those in the country's government and military who aren't blood relatives. The result is a deliberately tense atmosphere intended to strengthen internal solidarity and bolster the succession. This tension will remain until Kim Jong-un is accepted by the military, Workers' Party, and cabinet.
In this way, it's not unlike the final moments of Kim Jong-il's ascension to power, where confrontation with the outside world was used to forge favorable conditions for domestic political change. In April 1993, a month before Kim Jong-il succeeded his father as National Defense Commission chairman, North Korea proclaimed a "state of semi-war" after disputes with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Washington concerning special inspections of its suspected nuclear sites. Two weeks later, the North declared it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The importance of the North's nuclear weapons.
If the North cannot secure long-term regime stability by manufacturing external strife to engender internal solidarity, it will do so by continuing its nuclear program. Although Pyongyang's nuclear activities date back to the 1950s, the 1994 Agreed Framework curbed its nuclear ambition with promises by the United States to provide light water reactors and by seemingly offering a path toward normalized U.S.-North Korean relations. But once George W. Bush took office and preemption became an official U.S. policy, the North renewed its push for nuclear weapons. And while U.S.-North Korean relations seemed to warm late in the Bush administration's tenure, in the summer of 2008 any and all perceived political gains disappeared when Pyongyang met its Six-Party Talks obligations and demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear site but the Bush team demanded still more concessions before it would fulfill its own obligations.
A few days later, Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, and the regime's interest in nuclear weapons intensified. Now regime survival was the primary issue. In particular, the North's second nuclear test in May was interpreted by experts in South Korea as a sign that Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear capability unless it received a guarantee that the regime's future was secure. Moreover, after the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution condemning the nuclear test and expanding sanctions against the regime, Pyongyang vowed that it would never give up its nuclear program. Although the North's nuclear ambitions originally stemmed from external threats--e.g., the United States--it now has two additional functions: (1) to strengthen the regime's control over its people; and (2) to be used as a bargaining chip for continued international aid.
Ultimately, Pyongyang wants to be treated like Pakistan and India, both of whom possess nuclear weapons outside of the framework of the NPT while still maintaining normal relations with Washington. Pakistan, for instance, receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid despite its nuclear arsenal, and India's economic ties with the United States only grow stronger even as New Delhi remains firmly opposed to joining the nonproliferation regime in any formal sense. Last year, Washington even agreed to lift its 30-year moratorium on nuclear trade with India, allowing it to assist with New Delhi's civilian nuclear energy program. North Korea wants similar accommodations.
Whether or not it receives such a deal, history indicates that some sort of negotiations will restart eventually. In 1998, the North began talking with Washington about a missile moratorium even though it had just recently launched a long-range missile. Pyongyang also came back to the Six-Party Talks after another long-range missile launch in July 2006 and a nuclear test that October. The real difference today is the transition in leadership to Kim Jong-un. Because the 26-year-old isn't established domestically yet, he is probably more apt to rely on the military's support and back policies that it favors. To truly become a viable leader, though, he should focus on developing the country's economy, which is in shambles. Obviously, reengaging with the United States and South Korea would help achieve this end. (It's worth noting that unlike his father, Kim Jong-un was educated abroad, and therefore, he might be more open to negotiating with the international community.)
At the moment, the North appears interested in talking to Washington. In August, an official from Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations visited New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to convey that the North wanted bilateral talks with Washington. This could be interpreted as evidence that Kim Jong-un has established himself in the domestic power structure.
How China and Russia fit in.
Beijing has been reluctant to comment on the North's leadership transition, hoping it can be accomplished without incident. This might explain why it strongly denied that Kim Jong-un had visited China in June, describing such reports as "a story like a 007 novel." Kim Jong-un's closest aide did visit China recently, however. It's likely that he was tasked with informing Beijing about the leadership change, as his visit coincided with Kim Jong-il's order for overseas North Korean officials to swear their allegiance to his son. Eventually, North Korea also will need Russia's help to facilitate Kim Jong-un's ascension.
Until now, Beijing and Moscow have tried to implement a balanced policy toward Pyongyang. But if the North remains reluctant to rejoin the Six-Party Talks or to take part in a meaningful dialogue with the United States, Chinese and Russian support will weaken. It's doubtful that North Korea could overcome such a split with its patrons, especially China. Beijing accounted for 73 percent of Pyongyang's annual foreign trade in 2008. China also provides enormous food and energy aid to the North. After North Korea's second nuclear test, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that Beijing was "resolutely opposed" to the test and demanded an end to any activity that might worsen the situation. Beijing is concerned that North Korea's aggression could cause Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea to develop either nuclear weapons of their own or elaborate missile defense programs--with the help of the United States, something that makes China particularly uncomfortable. In the meantime, Beijing is worried about the potential in North Korea for domestic tumult and the enormous influx of refugees it could bring. This helps explain China's reluctance to impose tough sanctions on North Korea.
In the context of succession, North Korea (and Kim Jong-un specifically) will need to rely on Beijing more than ever before, as it is the only economic and diplomatic partner Kim Jong-un has in the short-term--along with Russia, of course. Plus, Chinese and Russian support will be crucial to legitimizing him both domestically and internationally.
Barack Obama weighs in.
During its first year in office, the Obama administration has carefully watched the situation in North Korea. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the region in February, she specifically mentioned that a crisis was possible when the leadership transfer formally took place. Likewise, at a June conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a U.S. official who was quoted anonymously said that he didn't believe North Korea would return to the Six-Party Talks until succession was settled. It would appear that the U.S. administration is taking a wait-and-see approach and adjusting its diplomatic strategies accordingly.
That could be part of the reason why the Obama administration has been sending contradictory messages to the North. On the one hand, it frequently talks about how it won't reward North Korea's provocative behavior; yet on the other hand, it states that it won't abandon diplomacy. An example of this helter-skelter approach in practice: In March, Washington offered to send its special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang to discuss the nuclear issue. But once Pyongyang accepted, the United States reversed course, insisting that the North return to the Six-Party Talks first.
Obama must face one reality, however: It will take a long time to fully complete the leadership transfer from Kim Jong-il to Kim-Jong-un because the elder Kim's health isn't critical at the moment. (Kim Jong-il met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in August for more than three hours, and he frequently visits industrial areas throughout the North.) Therefore, the current U.S. "wait-and-see" strategy could backfire, as Washington might be waiting for a very long time to see the younger Kim take control. In the meantime, the North Korean nuclear program could reach a point of no return.
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Nuclear Notebook: Worldwide deployments of nuclear weapons
An article by By Robert S. Norris & Hans M. Kristensen in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Nov 2009
By far the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons reside in Russia and the United States, which possess 96 percent of the total global inventory (91 percent if you count only operational nuclear weapons). In addition to the seven other countries with nuclear weapon stockpiles (Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan), five non-nuclear NATO allies (Belgium, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) host about 200 U.S. nuclear bombs at six air bases.
The United States.
At the end of the Cold War, the United States maintained thousands of nuclear weapons outside of its borders on land and on the high seas.2 Ever since, however, Washington has significantly consolidated its arsenal—a trend that is likely to continue. For example, the single remaining nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany is in stark contrast to the estimated 75 distinct nuclear weapons storage facilities that were located there in the mid-1980s. Today, U.S. weapons are stored at a total of 21 locations in 13 states and 5 European countries.
Russia.
We estimate that Russia stores nuclear weapons permanently at 48 domestic locations, a dramatic reduction compared to the roughly 500 storage facilities it used before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union’s collapse and the end
of the Cold War triggered a withdrawal of Soviet nuclear weapons from forward locations in Eastern Europe, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In all, Moscow consolidated to less than 250 sites by the mid-1990s, fewer than 100 sites by 1997, and about 90 sites by 1998.
Since then, additional consolidation has taken place because of (1) the declared completion of the movement of all nonstrategic warheads to central storage locations by 2002; (2) consolidation of warhead production at two facilities; and (3) additional strategic force reductions under the Moscow Treaty.4 (Russia provides information about the location of deployed strategic nuclear weapons accountable
under the 1991 START treaty. The locations of other categories of nuclear weapons and their warheads, however, are not disclosed.)
Many sites that once stored weapons are still maintained because a nearby base—such as bases for Tu-22M Backfire and Su-24 Fencer bombers or Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft—continues to have a nuclear strike mission. The Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Ukraine also has a nuclear capability, but the weapons probably have been withdrawn to central storage in Russia. If the fleet relocates to Novorossiysk
when the lease of the Sevastopol area expires in 2017, a nuclear weapons storage facility might be built there as well.
Russian permanent nuclear weapon storage locations fall into three main categories: operational warheads at Strategic Rocket Force, air force, and navy bases; reserve/retired warheads at national-level storage sites; and warheads at assembly/disassembly factories.
One uncertainty when counting Russian nuclear weapons storage sites is whether the number includes overall sites or individual storage facilities co-located within a site. For example, the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Program statement in 2000 indicated that Russia had 123 nuclear weapons storage locations where it has requested security assistance, apparently counting separately fenced
areas within large national storage facilities. As a result, a large storage site with eight separately fenced areas would have been counted as eight sites instead of one.6 Using similar counting methods, the National Nuclear Security Administration recently listed 73 Russian warhead sites, including 39 navy sites, 25 Strategic Rocket Force sites (on 11 bases), and nine 12th Main Directorate sites.7 Our best estimate is 48 permanent nuclear weapons storage sites, many of which include several individually fenced storage bunkers.
Britain and France.
London and Paris have reduced the size of their arsenals and limited where their weapons are deployed. Britain only has one type of nuclear weapon, the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), since nuclear-powered ballistic submarines located at two facilities in Scotland. Facilities that previously housed navy strike and depth bombs and air forcebombs have been closed. France has retained two types of nuclear weapons: SLBMs at a submarine base in Bretagne and air-to-surface missiles for aircraft located at three air force bases and one
naval base.
China, Pakistan, and India.
Beijing, Islamabad, and New Delhi are quantitatively and qualitatively increasing their arsenals and deploying weapons at more sites, yet the locations are difficult to pinpoint. For example, no reliable public information exists on where Pakistan or India produces its nuclear weapons. Thus, we have used commercial satellite images, expert studies, and local news reports and articles to make the assumption that nuclear weapons are likely to be at, or near, wherever nuclear-capable weapon systems are deployed.
Whereas many of the Chinese bases are known, this is not the case in Pakistan and India, where we have found no credible information that identifies permanent nuclear weapons storage locations. (Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances; India is thought to store its nuclear warheads and bombs in central storage locations rather than on bases with operational forces.) But, since all three countries are expanding their arsenals, new bases and storage sites probably are under construction.
Israel and North Korea.
Israel is a wild card because of the opacity of its nuclear weapons program. In other words, it’s difficult to know whether or not there are any changes in its nuclear arsenal. If so, they seem to be modest and probably rely on existing facilities. Either way, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances. We are not aware of credible information on how North Korea
has weaponized its nuclear weapons capability, much less where those weapons are stored. We also take note that a recent U.S. Air Force intelligence report did not list any of North Korea’s ballistic missiles as nuclear-capable.
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Monday, November 9
DEFENDING THE NUKE ARSENAL
An article by Pulitzer Prize Winner Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker on 9th Nov 2009
"In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.
On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”
The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”
Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”
The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)
A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”
The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved."
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"In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.
On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”
The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”
Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”
The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)
A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”
The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved."
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Monday, October 12
Way out from Af-Pak Strategy
THE KEY to getting out of Afghanistan without turning Kabul over to the Taliban lies in replacing the failed US “Af-Pak’’ strategy with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China - all opposed to a Taliban takeover - join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.
The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
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The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
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