'Each man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world'
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

'Artists are tricky fellows sir, forever shaping the world according to some design of their own'
-- Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Friday 28 October 2011

China and the European arms embargo

When you're going cup in hand to a country, it's very difficult to maintain the moral high ground. For a state, economic prosperity allows "ethical dimensions" to foreign policy (in theory). Now that China will almost certainly take a stake in the E.U through the sale of bonds, China will ask serious concessions of Europe, including a lifting of the arms embargo that Europe placed on its trade with China, after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 when several hundred unarmed civilians protesting peacefully for democratic reform were killed. There were later reports that troops searched the main Peking university campus for ringleaders, beating and killing those they suspect of co-ordinating the protests.


The European arms industry is notable in that in includes a large amount of American spin-off technology and joint-concept development. American military spin-off technology is always entering the media, for example this woman's artificial exoskeleton enabling her to regain movement in lower limbs. But after 9.11 a significant portion of greater budgetary allowances went in Homeland Security - in particular, developing methods to combat chemical and biological weapons, or coping with dissemination, or of nuclear fall outs.


Even so, the US military research and development budget is peerless. But it's projected that research and development as a percentage of total defense spending is set to fall from 34.4% in FY2011 to 34.0% in FY2012, and that is set against a total reduction in defense spending. The conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation proposed this scenario under a re-elected Obama:






The conservatives rail against the differing trajectories of the United States and China and the EU developments will be vilified in the right-wing media. But the US defense budget, now running at about 5% of GDP (it was 4.7% in FY2010) became inflated after 9.11, pursuing two foreign occupations and concerned about the use of CBN weapons on its own soil. The U.S. defense budget is still about six times that of China but the generational gap in technology is closing. Given the aging population in the United States as the baby-boomers hit retirement (lucky them) there is teh requirement for a correction in spending. Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is still historically low for the United States (it hit 3% in 1999-2001 as there became a vacuum of perceived threats) which reached as high as 9.4% on the Vietnam war. True, Europe spends as nations anywhere between 1 and 2.5% of GDP on military, but it was not a superpower in the Cold War, forced to alloy its military-industrial complex into foreign policy.


Yet there are problems with the EU-China development. With technology, China, like Israel in the specifically military sphere, and India is a leader in reverse engineering (reverse engineering,  Guochanhua, also has a subsidiary area related to copyright and computer code called Clean Room Design or Chinese Wall). Reverse engineering requires creativity and innovation. With today's technology, it also requires vast computational expertise which fits and compliments China's designs on building a peerless cybercapability. The danger isn't at all that China will procure European military hard and software, but that its brilliant reverse engineering will create a second generation of these acquisitions, rendering obsolete the equipment the European's sold. 


Robert Gates, concerned with the lack of interoperability between the ever advancing United States and his European allies offered a plaintive critique in Munich shortly before he left his post as Secretary of Defense. Nato had a "dim if not dismal" future because of European penny-pinching. In the current list of priorities with the European Union, Nato isn't top. "It's the economy, stupid." People must eat before they can go to war.


If the arms embargo is lifted it will certainly show that American hegemony has disappeared because at the height of their power in the 90s they would never have allowed such a move. Further, if the arms embargo is lifted (and surely the European Union will not lift all aspects of the embargo) the conservative commentary in America will paint Europe as set to become a military research and development laboratory for China. This will further lead to fragility in Nato. Presumably the UK, out of the Euro, may retain some independent juristiction on its arms trade, but it works hand in hand with so many European partners that this may be a moot point. 


Of course, wealth is relative and not homogenous in a society. In fact in several new authorative reports the very rich in society have not just got relatively richer, but absolutely wealthier, despite the economic downturn. I'm writing a blog on this in the next couple of days. 


Today, the words of Eisenhower as he warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex seem ironic:



"we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."



This economic development could very much shift the strategic landscape. The United States, which really underpinned materially the Libya adventure, and without which, the Gadaffi regime would probably still be in existence in some form, could step back from European military assistance in the future. Consider the furore over the stealth helicopter crashing in Abottobad and the fears of Chinese reverse engineering. Given that mindset, why would the U.S. give Europe cutting-edge technology in the future? Joint Strike Fighter? What Joint Strike Fighter?

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Podcast on research agenda

Ali Hawks kindly invited me to participate in a quick podcast discussing aspects of my research at the recent War Studies PhD conference at Cumberland Lodge. I'm constructing a sizeable post on intrastate inequality, in the meantime, here's the podcast. The paper for the talk I gave can be found at this site.

Tuesday 11 October 2011

WMD? Supposed Iran-sponsored assassination plot has a twist

The most fascinating part of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's revelation today was that of one of the charges being "conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction".


Since the Iranians were apparently hoping to pay a member of a Mexican cartel 1.5 million dollars (to carry out the assassination?) it begs the questions what WMD did they believe the Mexican gang member could obtain? My guess is this is some sort of chemical weapon, sarin perhaps. Then an assassination could be a blanket attack over a larger area that includes the open air location of the Saudi ambassador. 


But we shall see, as and when more details emerge. Since WMD carry with them a normative prohibition this works as excellent propaganda - the Iranians using outlawed weapons of indiscriminate killing in order to carry out an assassination. 

Monday 10 October 2011

The Shabaab

I took my niece to Water Babies in central London earlier this month. It was during the heatwave. The sun was beaming in a cloudless sky which represented the height of the British summer this year. It was early October, which was quite normal for Britain. As they'd say on operations, no doubt, SNAFU.


After Water Babies, I sat in the lounge, rocking the pram, waiting for a friend to come out of the changing room. At the kiosk were the administrators (two) and beside them were cleaners (two). They were talking in heavily accented English and their conversation was concerning the Shabaab (the Youth, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, "The Mujahideen Youth Movement" حركة الشباب المجاهدين‎). Like the rogue I am, I listened in - I'd say eavesdropped, but they were speaking so loudly, only Rihanna's 'Man Down' on iPod may have prevented it from reaching my eardrums.





One of the cleaners was a great fan of the Shabaab, in particular their attempt to implement sharia. She was no fan of the anti-Shabaab forces, which include Western special forces trainers and advisors and an American private contractor, Bancroft Global Development. It makes me think how devalued the al-Qaeda brand has become in the decade since its apogee, 9.11. The Shabaab are coherent and geographically distinct. They are a high value Islamist brand. They have an expansive and expanding propaganda network and they published the first volume of a jihadist/Islamist magazine in late 2008, titled Millat Ibrahim.


The power of the Shabaab brand is well known. Al-Awlaki before his death by droning praised the "bullets" of the group and the magazine of AQ in Afghanistan last month urged supporters to similarly embrace the Shabaab.  In return, the Shabaab have pledge allegiance recently to Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Shabaab seek to control territory, to rule it, or terrorise it, depending on your interpretation, and are actively involved in a conventional-esque clash with pro-interim authority forces across Mogadishu. It's easier for the cleaner to support Shabaab, whose fortunes and misfortunes are much easier to gauge than it is the shadowy idea that is al-Qaeda.

So highly thought of are the Shabaab in the U.S. that the country has become the sixth and latest theatre of operations for Obama's drones, operating out of either Ethiopia or Djibouti, depending on the source you subscribe to.   Of course, Somalis have substantial populations in Canada, U.S. and Western Europe. I've little doubt that the cleaner was a Somali, her knowledge of Shabaab stories, showing them in a positive light, wasn't great, but it didn't need to be. She regaled the administrative staff with stories of their sharia justice and their fighting the Kenyan forces. Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, has warned of the threat of returning British Somalis who have trained with the Shabaab. All of which makes the Shabaab the jihadist brand of the new decade.

Writing a critique of de Beauvoir's eulogy to the Marquis de Sade (Le Temps, 1951/52), D.J. Enright in 1966 (Conspirators and Poets) argued that 'Bored and uneasy with our little lives we resort to the greater amplitude of symbols. Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle.' The Shabaab take their place in that pantheon now, too. 

Sunday 2 October 2011

Displaced Persons: Afghanistan

Statistics on Afghanistan tend to favour either the financial drain or the dead and seriously wounded. Yet the raging decade long conflict between insurgent, puppet Karzai government and ISAF counterinsurgency forces have created a vast number of displaced people. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre gives a damning verdict (.pdf here):

"The UN and ICRC have recorded that 730,000 people have been internally displaced in Afghanistan due to conflict since 2006, an average of 400 a day. At the end of January 2011, 309,000 people remained internally displaced due to armed conflict, human rights abuses and other generalised violence. This figure was higher than at any time since 2005.
While armed opposition groups have been responsible for the majority of killings, most of the documented mass displacements have occurred as a result of offensives by international forces."

Perhaps most of the documented mass displacements are a result of offensive by ISAF forces because they document these displacements for more thoroughly or perhaps because it's easier to cite foreign intervention rather than Taliban generated displacement. But most likely, the escalation of bombing to win has created uninhabitable settlements. Look here at a Paula Broadwell blog post on airpower.

Recent drought in Afghanistan has similarly led to migration. We tend to think of Afghanistan as a "security situation" but drought in northern, north-eastern and western provinces of Afghanistan means that three million (of the twenty two million population still inside Afghanistan's borders) face severe food shortages. Insecurity means that aid to the afflicted regions is extremely difficult:

But in the face of continuing conflict, it becomes difficult to effectively operate, say observers in Kabul. “Billions of dollars have been sunk into Afghanistan in search of durable long-term solutions, but until the security question is solved, little can be achieved,” an international aid worker told IRIN.

A Food Security Risk Index of 196 countries released on 31 August by Maplecroft, rates Afghanistan number nine. It says the country faces extreme food insecurity and that a major driver of this is conflict and displacement.