A letter to Tehran?

I’m beginning to think no-one has actually read the GOP Senate letter to Iran. Nowhere does it say “don’t negotiate with the US” or the President. Nowhere does it say lets start a war.

The clearest statement I’m getting out of it is “an agreement that includes Congress is much more durable than one that doesn’t.” But Obama has already told Congress that this agreement is none of their business, they have no place in it, and he won’t need them to consider it or take measures to implement it. So is the goal of this effort to pressure Iran? Or is the goal to pressure the president to include Congress in the process. Or to be less charitable, a group of Senators are impotently stamping their feet at the prospect of how irrelevant they are to the ongoing process of reaching an agreement.

Of course President Obama has clearly determined that there is no way he will be able to get any agreement he arrives at through Congress. Which isn’t necessarily a reflection of the general objection to anything proposed by the President. After all, it is not as if the only opponents of the proposed arrangement with Iran and the President’s plan to exclude Congress are Republicans.

Having said all of which we are still stuck with a situation in which the President and his core leadership team are committed to making significant changes to the U.S. relationship with Iran and are making no public effort to persuade, explain, or prepare the public in order to expand the potential base of support for the eventual agreement. Instead we are informed that the only alternative to whatever agreement is arrived at is war, (which represents a rather extraordinarily binary outlook) and that any discussion, dispute, or disagreement over the terms of any potential agreement undermines the President and is tantamount to treason.

This stance implies that there is only one possible negotiated outcome and that no alterations in negotiating positions or approaches could generate a different agreement that better addressed the concerns of the various involved or affected parties. It further implies that the President and his team have lost the capacity to recognise that even friends and allies may legitimately disagree about an issue. A recognition that lies at the heart of a functioning democracy or republic. In essence, a loyal opposition.

Iron Domes and Maginot Lines

Writing for War on the Rocks Mark Stout criticizes Israel’s development and use of the Iron Dome anti-missile system as a strategic failure. The core of his argument is that Iron Dome is a system of dubious tactical significance that nevertheless served a useful political function for Israel in 2012 by minimizing pressure for a more thorough-going assault on Hamas positions in the Gaza strip. This effect was a product of the system’s capacity to make the Israeli people feel somewhat defended from the random threat posed by Hamas’s arsenal of unguided artillery rockets.

However in the wake of the 2012 campaign he contends that Iron Dome became a strategic failure for Israel because it compelled Hamas to seek a new way to attack Israel. This new way proved to be the construction of large numbers of deep tunnels that would allow Hamas to infiltrate significant numbers of personnel into Israel in the event of a renewed active conflict. Reasonably enough he expresses some doubts about the contention that Israel was totally surprised by the revelation of these tunnels but the essential point remains, the tunnels neutralize any benefits associated with the use of Iron Dome.

There are several weaknesses in his analysis, most of which derive from an exclusive focus on the Israeli side of the Israel/Gaza dyad.

The first is that Hamas clearly did not feel that Iron Dome neutralized the threat posed by artillery rockets. Having said which it is possible that Hamas is making a use of artillery rockets similar to Israel’s use of Iron Dome. Specifically, demonstrating to the people that something is being done in such a way as to minimize political pressure in the face of impotence.
A more important objection is that the perceived effectiveness of Iron Dome inflicts a serious strategic blow on Israel by creating the impression in the international community that the threat from Hamas is essentially non-existent. This feeds into existing anti-Israel narratives that portray Israel as a powerful force regularly oppressing a weak and largely harmless neighbor. In this context Israel would benefit strategically from having large numbers of Hamas rockets strike its cities and civilian population. The drawback of course would be that Israel would probably find itself obliged to strike much harder to neutralize the threat.

More significantly Stout fails to note that Iron Dome forced Hamas into a major strategic misstep. Hamas chose to construct large numbers of tunnels into Israel at great expense. By aiming these tunnels at Israeli villages and farms in proximity to Gaza, Hamas has provided some concrete support to the Israeli contention that Hamas’s goal is simply to kill Israelis, especially civilians, a contention that was already well-supported by the use of unguided rockets to strike at Israel. Furthermore, the tunnel building activity supports the contention that allowing building materials into Gaza simply enables Hamas to build better military facilities without yielding any significant benefit to the civilian population. If we presume that Israel was in fact aware of this tunnel activity, although perhaps ignorant of the full scale of the effort, it is likely that Israel chose to strike at Gaza before the tunnels, and whatever operation they were intended to support, was fully prepared. As a result Hamas has invested substantial resources into an effort that has yielded little, if any, substantive result. However the threat posed by the tunnels has resulted in a much more intense Israel operation by Israel that has devastated a significant portion of Gaza’s infrastructure and inflicted heavy losses on both Hamas and the Gazan population. If they are unable to secure some gains through negotiations for an end to hostilities Hamas’s tunnel-building effort will have secured zero advantages at very high cost, both in terms of resources applied to the effort, and in terms of destruction in the course of the latest conflict.

Syria and MANPADS

An article in the Wall Street Journal came to my attention today. In the article it is reported that Saudi Arabia and other parties supporting the anti-Assad opposition intend to start supplying the rebel forces “for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads.”

The announcement is interesting, but also curious, as it has been clear to any interested observer that the opposition forces have had access, even if only to a limited degree, to Chinese MANPADS for some time. Brown Moses’s blog, which has been doing a very nice job of highlighting footage of Syrian opposition weapons, noted the presence of FN-6 (also known as (HY-6) units in Syria in early 2013. Since that time there have been a number of additional sightings. How these missiles were reaching the opposition forces was not immediately clear, but it seems unlikely that they were purchasing them directly on the open market. This missile type has definitely been effectively employed on at least one occasion which implies that the supplier is also offering training. (The missile employed is revealed at 0:24 in the linked video)

The majority of MANPADS seen in the Syrian conflict to date have been examples of Soviet types that have been widely exported and copies or derivatives of which are manufactured in a number of countries, including China. Without getting a close look at the packaging or the missile markings it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern the manufacturer of these missiles from a distance and there is no way of determining whether or not these weapons are imported or obtained from Syrian arsenals. In contrast, the appearance of FN-6 is quite distinctive* and their presence was clearly quickly noticed. As such it is an interesting choice of weapon. It is likely that whoever chose to supply FN-6’s to the rebels wanted this new supply of weapons to be noticed.

Given the established presence of Chinese MANPADS in Syrian opposition hands since at least early 2013 the assertion that the  rebels will be receiving these systems for the first time is clearly false. By openly announcing their intention to supply these systems to the opposition at this time the Saudi Arabian government is clearly trying to send a message. At the same time the statement raises the possibility that Saudi Arabia was the original supplier of these systems back in 2012. At this point we can only hope that the Saudi Arabians make a determined effort to keep track of these weapons once they are in the field. These missiles are significantly more capable than the ubiquitous SA-7 variants that turn up in almost every conflict or insurgency, and many of which likely fell into rebel hands at the start of the Syrian conflict and which may also have been supplied to them from Libyan and other arsenals.

* The key recognition element is the cube-like feature at the forward end of the launch-tube.

Ukraine and impotence

I’ve been seeing a lot of criticism over President Obama’s Friday evening statement on the Ukrainian situation. Generally complaints that it is too weak, etc.

What do these critics expect from the President and his administration? Do they expect the US to threaten some sort of military intervention against Russia? And if it did, do they seriously expect the threats to be carried out? Do they think that Putin will be swayed by firm words backed by, nothing? This administration has built up a bit of an image of being one in which the US makes strong statements threatening firm action if certain events should occur, only to reinterpret those threats or warnings in such a way as to preclude action when the events do occur.

Contrary to the assessments of those on the right this does not reflect some unique tendency on the part of the Obama administration to refuse to assist US allies, or an unwillingness to defend US rights. To a significant degree the problem is one of making threats that can’t, or were never intended to be backed up by actions. Although such an approach may be effective against weak opponents or those lacking commitment to their own cause, it is very unlikely to result in effective outcomes when employed against ruthless actors determined to protect their perceived core interests in an area of peripheral US interest.

To date there has been no substantive response to what is, so far, a non-violent, military effort by Russia to seize control of portions of Ukrainian territory. This should not come as a surprise. Nothing was done for Georgia when it encountered a very similar situation under the Bush administration. Why would the Ukrainian situation be different?

Czechoslovakian dispute and chose to apply pressure to their ally to surrender important territory critical to their defense inhabited by a substantial minority population with strong connections to a neighboring. All in order to stave off an immediate larger conflagration Part of the tragedy of the event was that a conflagration at this point would have occurred on terms more favourable to the West and would have been considerably less destructive that that which occurred only 1 year later.

One of the more interesting outcomes of this episode will be the impact on the governments and populations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. These states have made a strong commitment to realign their interests with NATO and the European Union, partially in the hope that this effort will provide a basis for their protection from a resurgent Russia if such a state should ever arise.

It is difficult to see how the current Ukrainian events will not have a significant impact on Poland, Romania and the Baltic States. At a minimum those of the Baltic states with significant Russian minorities will be quite disturbed. Equally Poland cannot be indifferent to a Russian intervention in Ukraine, even it only limits itself to trimming the eastern and southern fringes off the Ukrainian state. If NATO fails to take any action whatsoever the political impact in these countries will be even greater.

Although President Obama’s Friday statement could hardly be construed as an ultimatum, or strong, it is at the same time another statement in which threats are made that are unlikely to be backed by substantive action. In this case the statement asserts that there will be real costs for Russian military action. The immediate back-channel substance given to those threats was the suggestion that the US and EU might not attend the June 2014 G8 summit scheduled to take place in Sochi. Making threats of symbolic action against an actor determined to achieve concrete territorial and political objectives is like waving a used tissue at a bull.

Finally, one of the more troubling aspects of this entire crisis is the extent to which the US government appears to have once again been caught flat-footed. The impression given, rightly or wrongly, is that Russian military action against Ukraine was not anticipated (or if it was, the possibility was taken seriously) and that no serious thought was given to working out US responses in advance. Instead the US leadership, including the military and intelligence arms, appear at least in public, to have been taken completely by surprise.

U.S. strategic shift to the Pacific?

Over the last few month there has been a fair amount of attention devoted to the Obama administration’s announcement that the U.S. government is shifting its strategic focus from Europe and the Middle East to the Pacific. The primary consequence of this announcement appears to have been a series of overwrought articles denouncing the efforts of the U.S. miliary-industrial complex to paint China as an enemy of the U.S. so as to justify increases in military spending. These anticipated increases are expected to be for the development of exotic weapons to support an operational concept known as Air-Sea Battle.

The general tenor of the discussions has been one in which the U.S. is presented as adopting new measures that seek to encircle and contain China as a first step to limiting its growth and influence in the world, presumably as the first steps in a risky new Cold War. In this context U.S. expressions of support for long-standing allies in Southeast and Northeast Asia are seen as supporting this containment effort. When the U.S. calls for China and is neighbors to work out disutes in a cooperative and multilateral way this is seen as an unwarranted intervention in Chinese affairs.

The shift to the Pacific and Asia is seen as provocative and a casual observer might conclude from this that the U.S. military is engaged in a massive realignment of its substantial forces from other regions to the Pacific. The problem is that force planning does not support this conclusion. A helpful outline of U.S. naval planning for the period up to 2020 was provided by Information Dissemination at the end of July. In his post the author points out that the total forces redeployed as part of this grand realignment of U.S. forces “ends up being 4 Littoral Combat Ships, 3 amphibious ships, and 2 Joint High Speed Vessels.”

The JHSV is a pure logistical vehicle with no combat capabilities. The most it can do is move around small bodies of troops and their equipment. The LCS is a highly controversial warship program producing a number of vessels with limited self-defense capability but no offensive punch. They will be incapable of challenging, or even threatening, Chinese aircraft or naval vessels.

There will be additional changes as the U.S. introduces a variety of long-range airborne surveillance systems such as the P-8 but none of this poses a substantial military threat to China and is contingent upon continued budgetary support for the navy’s current shipbuilding plan, which is far from certain.

Regarding encirclement by U.S. allies, the U.S. government has not needed to take any substantial actions as the Chinese gvernment is doing all that is needed to breathe new life into these relationships by engaging in surprisingly unsophisticated bullying of its neighbors.

Things you find #1 – LIFE and Nazi Gas

Looking for something else entirely I was surprised to come across this July 1950 report in LIFE introducing the horror that is Nerve Gas; another Nazi horror discovered in the last weeks of WW2. The article has a set of helpful illustrations explaining the mechanism by which this powerful new agent affects its victims.

Unfortunately it is a little off-base when it points to the ability of the agents “to destroy the will of enemy troops to resist by literally paralyzing them.”

Ominously it is noted that “some German chemists who worked on the gases are in Russia, developing them for the Soviet.”

The second page helpfully outlines (with newly released photographs) how Allied Forces disposed of the Nazi stockpiles, using “nervous germans” to load the weapons onto trains and then naval gunfire to sink the ship carrying 6,750 tons of nerve gas in the Atlantic. If the germans engaged in the work had any idea what the were working with it is hardly surprising that they were nervous given their total lack of protection.

The nice feature about this is that it uses photos I had not seen in my previous searches for information on historical CW ocean-dumping.

http://books.google.com/books?id=fUoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA67&dq=poison/gas/intitle%3Alife/intitle%3Amagazine&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=true

Iran & nuclear sales?

I’ve been wondering for a little while now how long it will be before Iran will become an active marketer of its enrichment technologies. Although the original equipment was obtained through a secret deal with Pakistan (government agency or rogue actors – depending on stance) it is now openly employed and subect to verification by the IAEA.

As far as I know there is absolutely nothing to stop the Iranians selling this technology to any country it so desires that is not currently under UN Security Council sanctions, provided that the sale is declared to the IAEA and the new facilities in country X, Y or Z are subject to IAEA verification.

The Iranian argument in doing this would be that it is fulfilling its international obligations by enabling developing countries access to the benefits of nuclear technology, access that is denied by an oppressive and imperialistic West. Such an approach would probably be quite as difficult to publicly counter as Iran’s nuclear program has been to date.

Bad MANPADS Day.

Working my way through Youtube videos posted from Libya and I came across a set of three videos recording abandoned and looted weapons at a dump outside Sirte in Libya posted by a US reporter who travelled to Libya.

Kudos to Kevin Dawes for going to Sirte, filming the site and then uploading the footage for folks like me to take an interest in.

At first it didn’t seem like anything too exceptional, yet more mortar bombs and SAM-7 Strela’s. The SAM-7s are nothing to be blase about but in truth they pose a very limited threat to any modern military aircraft and without proper training and good placement they represent a limited threat to civilian aircraft.

Having said that, at about 1 minute into the second video we get a good shot of the markings on the side of one of the crates and the news is not pretty. The label on the crate is 9M342 which means that this missile was an IGLA-S, one of the latest models of Russian MANPADS (NATO designation SA-24). This is a much more capable missile that is significantly less vulnerable to the usual anti-MANPADS counter-measures such as flares. Its capability against civilian aircraft, which generally lack even the most basic countermeasures, is likely to be much greater than that of the SA-7.

Skip forward to 3 minutes into the video and we get excellent closeups of the various stencils and ID plates on the crates, something which is a little harder to find on the internet than you might initially expect.

The possibility that any number of these missiles is now circulating in terrorist or other non-governmental circles constitutes a significant increase in the MANPADS threat, initially in the Eastern Mediterranean but more than likely globally over time. The current disorganization in Libya, combined with the weakness of the Egyptian state, adds to the problem by potentially making it easier for the weapons to leave Libya destined for any of a number of different conflict zones.

It is not unreasonable to assume that if these abandoned crates are lying about totally unsecured there is a better than even chance that additional crates, in better condition, have left the area. I expect that the Libyan civil war has those folks working the MANPADS proliferation issue tearing their hair out.

The increasingly likely prospect of a syrian civil war can’t be making things look anymore positive either.

Update

SA-18 gripstock case

Here we go. The third video features a lot more MANPADS footage, though the missiles look more like SA-7s than SA-24s. Also note the silver missile tube at the 18 second point. This is an inert training round definitely looks like a SA-7.

There were two things I did not notice in either of the videos, or to put it another way, I noticed their absence. There were no battery / cooling units and no gripstock / launcher units. These elements in working condition are much more valuable than the missile tubes. I have actually inferred the presence of at least a few gripstocks, probably for the SA-7s from the fellow at 21 seconds who has what look a lot like the standard Strela goggles around his neck. These are found in the briefcase like box that contains the gripstock.

Falkland’s War Benefits

I have just finished reading “One Hundred Days” by Admiral Sandy Woodward. The book is an account of his experience leading the British fleet that recovered the Falklands from the Argentinians in 1982. The book itself is absolutely gripping, and a fantastic insight into the decisionmaking involved in running a naval operation on a shoestring at the other end of the world.

I’m just old enough to remember this little war and one key point that Woodward constantly drives home, which was not clear to the casual observer at the time, is how much of a near-run-thing it all was. By the end of the war the remaining ships of the original force that the British had sent to the South Atlantic were literally falling apart. Throughout the operation they were always one bad day away from failure, living in constant dread of battle damage to HMS Hermes, the largest of their small aircraft carriers.

It strikes me that quite apart from the boost that the war gave to British national pride it also produced some very real benefits for NATO in its standoff with the Soviet Union.

No doubt at the time it seemed to be a bit of a NATO disaster given that the British effectively withdrew the bulk of the Royal Navy from its NATO roles so that its ships and men could be deployed in support of a minor conflict in the South Atlantic. The problems caused were no doubt exacerbated by the loss of a number of warships, either sunk or heavily damaged. Most of the remaining ships sent down as part of the initial fleet that were not sunk still suffered battle-damage to one degree or another, all of which would ensure they could not immediately return to service in the North Atlantic. On top of these losses it is important to keep in mind the disruption of normal refit cycles and the extensive damage inflicted on all of the vessels caused by keeping them at sea for a much longer period than was usual. All of this wear and tear in the form of hull-cracks, worn out guns and engines, broken propellors, unserviceable electronics and a million other things had to be addressed before the ships could resume their normal duties.

Despite all of this however the war produced very real benefits. As the first significant naval conflict since 1945 it tested a great deal of untried equipment and demonstrated the need for numerous changes.

The most important benefit without any doubt has to have been its demonstration of the gross ineffectiveness of the British naval anti-air capability. By revealing flaws in both the hardware and software of the Sea-Wolf and Sea-Dart systems Britain was able to make corrections that would never have happened. Without those changes the Royal Navy would in all likelihood have suffered very heavy early losses in the initial stages of any conflict with the Soviet navy. These two missile systems were so ineffective at first that guns and Seacat missiles proved much more useful. Furthermore it is very clear that in the absence of the small force of Sea Harriers the Royal Navy would have suffered crippling losses and failed to recover the Falklands.

The inability to mount an effective defense against the Exocet cannot have inspired confidence in the fleet’s chances against a determined Soviet anti-ship missile attack. Indeed the difficulties encountered in protecting the fleet against this relatively simple subsonic missile inevitably leads to questions about the ability to defend against the latest generations of Russian supersonic missiles which represent a much more challenging threat. Inevitably it must also raise questions about the capabilty of the U.S. Navy to defend itself effectively against a determined attack, an experience that as far as I know it has not had since the end of World War Two.

I got my copy from the local friends of the library booksale but it is also available on Amazon and is most definitely worth a read.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Hundred-Days-Falklands-Bluejacket/dp/1557506523/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

Iran and Nuclear Ambiguity

Today on the Arms Control Wonk website there is fresh discussion of the current buzz suggesting an imminent attack upon Iran intended to damage its alleged Nuclear Weapons programme. Included in the discussion of Iran’s posssible intentions and goals is a quote from a 2007 piece by Avner Cohen.

The route of ambiguity is very convenient for Iran precisely because it  is a signatory to the NPT. It will gain the political advantages of  having a nuclear option, deterrence and prestige, and it will attempt to  reduce its friction with the outside world. Iran will continue to claim  that its program is for peaceful purposes only, and it has a right  according to the NPT to control all the components for producing nuclear  fuel, but at the same time it will encourage the rumors that it is on  the verge of producing weapons (or even that it has a bomb in the  basement), and therefore it should be considered a nuclear nation for  all extents and purposes.

The suggested strategy makes a great deal of sense for Iran. It is also clearly framed to place Iran’s enemies in the uncomfortable position of being obliged to consider accepting a likely Iranian nuclear weapons or attacking what may simply be a potential nuclear weapons capability. If they do the latter it will be difficult to make a convincing case that Iran ever had, or intended to have, a nuclear weapon thus putting the attacker in a very vulnerable diplomatic position. Alternatively, if they accept Iran’s opacity and assume that a useable Iranian nuclear weapon exists they find themselves in a position where Iran is able to significantly constrain their freedom of action while expanding the space in which Iran’s various agencies can pursue their own international goals.

As such it sounds exactly like the sort of sophisticated position that the Iranian leadership would adopt.  But that is not my interest today.

What seems to be somewhat overlooked, or downplayed, is the impact on the NPT of an existing member adopting a nuclear ambiguity strategy. Drawing parallels with the instances of India, Israel or Pakistan miss the key point that none of these states were signatories to the NPT. As such none of them even have been subject to the obligations and restrictions of that treaty. It is difficult to see the continuing value of the NPT if it allows member states to seek and obtain a credible state of nuclear ambiguity. As such Iran continues to undermine the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Acceptance of Iranian nuclear ambiguity would be also acceptance of this undermining. Acceptance would include continuing to treat Iran as being in good standing relative to its NPT and IAEA safeguards obligations. Although Iran’s primary goal for some time now has appeared to be putting in place a nuclear weapons capability I increasingly suspect that a further long-term goal has been undermining the foundations of the NPT.