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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Flawed NPT reporting

The Independent is running a report on looming problems at the NPT Review Conference with the alarming title Iran sanctions ‘holding up nuclear treaty negotiations’. This report, which ran in today’s edition is a classic example of reporting that doesn’t help. It makes me wonder if the reporter, or perhaps his editor, fully understands the issues that they are writing about. Indeed it almost suggests that the reporter has an agenda that he is trying to push. The problem is not entirely the article, although there are problems, rather it is the relationship between the article and the headline.

Specifically, Iran sanctions “holding up nuclear treaty negotiations” implies, or at encourages the reader to infer, that the developing difficulties at the NPT Review Conference are a direct result of the U.S. government’s decision, which has indeed been criticized, to pursue a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing tougher sanctions against Iran while the Review Conference is underway in the same building. Although this decision does seem more than a little odd the fact remains that there is very little content in this article to support the headline.

The first supporting element is a statement by a NGO representative speaking on behalf of an organization that has a long history of criticizing U.S. government policy and diplomacy in the areas of nonproliferation and disarmament. Although they do good work, criticism of the US. government from this source is hardly surprising. The quote:

The unveiling of the Iran sanctions resolution “has changed the atmosphere here”, noted Anne Penketh, programme director with BASIC, the British American Security Information Council, who is monitoring the view. The conference, she noted, “has been on a knife-edge from the get-go and I think it still is”.

The only other voice highlighting how this resolution is making a failure of the conference more likely is that of the Iranians. Specifically President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s senior adviser Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi who is quoted as saying that “[t]he draft being discussed at the UN Security Council has no legitimacy at all.” Not exactly earth-shattering and very much in the “well you would say that wouldn’t you” category.

The thing is, the first half of the report contains that actual meat of the issue and clearly indicates that the problem has nothing to do with Iran.

Egypt, backed by most of its Arab neighbours, is threatening to hold the so-called review conference in New York hostage to its demand that firm steps be taken towards establishing a nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, as promised in a special resolution at the end of the 1995 review. Unless some deal can be reached on moving forward on the plan, there is a “strong likelihood” the whole review conference will unravel, a senior Western diplomat said last night.

This development was always a danger at the conference and it is not the first time that the Egyptians, and the rest of the Arab bloc, have held a NPT Review Conference hostage over the issue of Israel. The U.S. failure at this point is nothing less than providing the Egyptians, and their cohorts, with a way to evade criticism for taking a position that threatens a failure of the NPT Review. The U.S. government could have chosen to wait a few more weeks before moving forward on the Iran sanctions resolution.

As an aside, yesterday, the Guardian ran a report addressing the exact same issues and concerns entitled US nuclear talks risk collapse over Middle East plan. In this instance the only problem is the claim that the NPT Review Conference represents U.S. nuclear talks rather than U.N. nuclear talks.

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Iranian CW Facilities: Damghan

I’m doing some work on this topic at the moment. The usual sort of thing; trawling through open-source material to find evidence of Iranian chemical weapons production facilities (CWPF). In this instance I am making an effort to confirm long-standing claims regarding the existence of particular facilities in particular locations.

Unfortunately this process is doing what can only be described as violence to established wisdom.

As an example, for more than 20 years the city of Damghan has been described as hosting a facility that either produces chemical warfare (CW) agents or fills missile warheads with agents produced elsewhere. The initial reports date back to 1988 with one source (Die Welt) claiming the existence of a filling facility, and another (The Observer) claiming a CWPF capable of producing as much as 5 metric tons of CW agent per month. The initial certainty with which this facility was described made its existence seem incontestable. In June 1995 a Jane’s Intelligence Review Special Report even took the trouble to print a (rather grainy) satellite image of the reported locality which they claimed illustrated the facility’s existence. This was accompanied  by a detailed description of the facility (unsourced of course, after all it is Jane’s). Specifically the facility in Damghan was suspicious because

“it has several characteristics of chemical weapon plants: isolation, links to transportation lines, and security. The facility at Damghan is hidden by trees, downwind of town, surrounded by fallow fields and linked to the railroad by a spur.”

The claims as to the facility’s existence were regularly repeated and duly picked up by the NGO community and nonproliferation analysts; examples being the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), the Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS) and of course the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which was probably the most prolific purveyor of this claim, if only because of the large number of publications that CSIS produces on the topic.

In 2005  Anthony H. Cordesman’s Iran’s Developing Military Capabilities listed Damghan as a possible CWPF, a charge that was repeated in 2006’s Iran’s Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities, the same year’s Iran’s weapons of mass destruction: the real and potential threat, 2009’s Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Birth of a Regional Nuclear Arms Race. An interesting sidebar to this parade of books is that in 1999’s Iran’s Military Forces in Transition Cordesman suggested the reports of a CWPF at Damghan might not be true (p. 342-43); a position that was clearly abandoned.

The thing is, it seems in all these years no one has troubled themselves to take advantage of new tools such as Google Earth. If they had done they would have discovered firstly, that even if there was a rail spur leaving the main track just to the east of Damghan at the location indicated by Jane’s in 1995, there certainly isn’t now. They might also have encountered some difficulties actually locating a chemical factory of any sort in the area indicated, which appears to conform with the village of Varmarzan ( 36°10’46.53″N,  54°25’57.02″E).

Equally if anyone had bothered to actually dig down into the references for this purported facility they might have discovered that everything about this facility ultimately sources back to Die Welt, the Observer and the Iraqi News Agency (INA) all of which are listed in the indispensible Burck and Floweree. Unfortunately the wonders of modern technology are making it difficult for me to access the 1988 editions of Die Welt or the Observer, which makes it impossible to identify the sources for their stories. However, I would not be at all surprised to discover that they too ultimately track back to Iraqi sources.

So what are we left with. Essentially 22 years in which an assertion of potentially dubious origins has been endlessly repeated. In the course of those 22 years the various analysts or commentators that have repeated the story have themselves come to be seen as sources, meaning that the story seemed to have independent confirmation. But in truth there were never more than 3 source stories for the claim that Damghan was a CWPF or alternatively a facility for filling warheads with CW agents. And given the proximity* of the stories printed by Die Welt and the Observer I would not be at all surprised to discover they drew on the same source, meaning there were only ever 2 original sources.

*There is a problem with Burck and Floweree’s sourcing in this instance. Although the story by Die Welt is dated to March 1988 in their text (p. 255) the footnote for this item references a story published on 26 August 1988. Presumably one of these is incorrect. I am surprised that no one has ever, at least so far as I can tell, noticed this and remarked upon it in relating the story of the Damghan CWPF.

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Arms Controller of the Year

The Arms Control Association is having its annual Arms Control Person of the Year competition again. There is a good selection of people and organizations on the list which can be broken down into those who done something and those who have proclaimed something.

I think Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk summed things up quite nicely with his post lamenting the eagerness of those voting to pile in on behalf of Barack Obama. The contrast between Senator Richard Lugar and President Barack Obama is actually that much clearer given that Obama, during his none-too-long stay in the U.S. Senate actually took a trip to Russia with Lugar to look at the work being done under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program.

Senator Lugar has been working on CTR issues for the better part of two decades now and has helped to sustain this program in the face of indifference or even opposition from the Executive Office. He has kept his eye on the goal and although it is a pity the Russians are more willing or able to pay up to fulfill their treaty obligations the important point has been and continues to be that we all benefit by Russia destroying its stockpiles of chemical and nucelar weapons. In contrast the Obama adminstration has no arms control acheivements or accomplishments to its name after almost a year in office. Apart from some widely reported speeches and expressions of intent in the nuclear weapons area the main accomplishment has been to aggravate those seeking to make the Biological Weapons Convention more robust by adopting a public position that is essentially that of the Bush administration.

 So I am going to join Jeffrey in voting for Dick Lugar, and recommend that anyone who is remotely interested in these issues go to the Arms Control Association’s website and do the same.

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Old Media continues its stumble towards the grave.

For some time now we have been hearing about how unjustly the traditional news media is being treated. Cruelly undermined by a new media that is indifferent to the high standards of sourcing and quality writing that outlets such as the NY Times have upheld for generations. Of course that is nothing more than self-serving claptrap on the part of the NY Times.

As an example we have this snippet from a story about an impending meeting between Iran and the group of six.

Mr. Ban met with Mr. Mottaki on Tuesday, just four days after a similar session with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Mr. Ban again told the Iranians that Security Council resolutions required the disclosure of any new nuclear plant when construction began, he told reporters afterward.

“If you were a normal country, you would declare it all beforehand,” a senior United Nations official said Mr. Ban had told Mr. Mottaki. “That is why you have Security Council resolutions against you, because you try to hide stuff.”

There are several problems with the rather confusing excerpt. First of all we are linking together a statement directly attributed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon (he told reporters afterward) in the first paragraph with a statement attributed to an unnamed “senior United Nations official” in the second. If you don’t closely read the two paragraphs you could easily conclude that the quoted statements are actually Mr. Ban’s. Which leads us to the primary problem, placing statements in quote-marks in a misleading way.

An initial reading of this statement leads the reader to think that Mr. Ban met with an Iranian official and then in a subsequent press conference said, presumably paraphrasing himself; “If you were a normal country, you would declare it all beforehand, . . . That is why you have Security Council resolutions against you, because you try to hide stuff.”

However this is not the case. At best the quote is from a UN official paraphrasing the words of Mr. Ban. It is second-hand and probably should not be treated as anything more than hearsay. If nothing else it seems unlikely that the UN Secretary-General would be telling Iranian diplomats to not “hide stuff.”

Perhaps the reporter used this “quote” because he wanted something pithy and informal that sounded a little tougher than we are used to hearing from the UN. Although the reporter has earlier quoted Mr. Ban he still feels it necessary to quote someone else repeating what they claim to be Mr. Ban’s words. The “quote” creates a somewhat different impression to that given by Mr. Ban’s words at the press conference. The reporter’s creativity is further underlined when he writes that “Mr. Ban said that he had also complained to Mr. Ahmadinejad about human rights violations.”

It is not clear when Mr. Ban made this statement that he had “complained” to the Iranian President but the structure of the article implies that Mr. Ban made this statement on Tuesday. However it certainly was not in the press conference of September 29th. Indeed the only references to human-rights issues in that press conference were to a issue raised by the Iranians and concerns over the situation in Sri Lanka.

If this report is the sort of thing that the NY Times thinks represent its strengths in reporting and analysis it is not all that surprising that the paper is rapidly declining. The article is nothing more than a jumbled pastiche of misleading “quotes'” and untraceable statements embellished by editorializing by the author. In this day and age, when a reader can much more easily get hold of copies of source material like official statements or press conference transcipts you might expect newspapers to try harder to ensure that their quotes a relevant and accurate and that they don’t misrepresent the tenor or content of statements. Apparently I am expecting too much.

In my experience “new media,” particularly high-quality blogs are doing the newspapers jobs much more effectively. And that is why old media is dying.

PS: I have noticed this for a long time now and had hoped that it would change at some point, but again, I appear to have been expecting too much.  Why is it that when the online versions of newspapers and other old media run stories that refer to press conferences, or the release of official documents, or even interesting reports or analyses by non-profits or think-tanks, they neglect to include links to the relevant source material either in the body of the article or at least in a sidebar. Is it really asking so much? This is pretty unforgivable in 2009. All it really does is make them less useful as a source of information and highlight their inability to adapt.

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Iran's backup enrichment facility.

This issue is getting a lot of play today, rightly enough. Arms Control Wonk has some useful thoughts on the topic while ISIS has linked to the official US government talking points about the facility which definitely should serve as a starting point for all further readings and discussion.

The Iranian official line seems to be that the facility is a pilot plant which is all very well except that you usually build a pilot plant before you progress to the main industrial facility (Natanz) rather than after it is already operating. So, either we politely ask the Iranians to reconsider their “pilot plant” story or alternatively ask that they elaborate on just what it is they are doing here that is so different to the operations at Natanz that a new pilot facility is required. I expect that at the same time we can ask where the primary facility that this is a pilot for will be located and why this, presumably 3rd enrichment plant is required.

I am particularly interested in Geoff Forden’s observation at ACW that the Iranians may have been using Natanz as a training facility, even at the expense of getting the facility up and running at maximum efficiency. Technical projects in developing countries often suffer the ill-effects of a shallow pool of technicians and expert personnel. In much of the public discussion of potential scenarios for the bombing and presumably damaging of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure it is presumed that attacks of this sort would do little more than impose a temporary delay on the program while providing incentives for acceleration of any weaponization efforts. It seems to me that such discussions assume that Iran would still have its cadre of experienced qualified technicians, engineers and scientists after an attack and that these personnel would be able to swiftly restore the program. Probably not an unreasonable assumption in these days of precision bombing designed to minimize civilian casualties. However Forden’s observation, if it is correct, suggests that the Iranian government is not willing to rely on an attacker resisting the temptation to kill as many of its trained personnel in an attack as possible.

Air raids aimed at killing large numbers of technical personnel engaged in secret work on high-technology projects are not unprecedented. The most relevant case is probably the August 18, 1943 R.A.F. raid on Peenemunde. Due to the technical difficulties of successfully pulling off a night-time precision bombing attack in 1943 the raid did not achieve its goal of killing the leading engineering personnel or inflict substantial damage on key facilities. Nevertheless the goal of the operation was sound and if the initial targeting had been more effective it would have been difficult for Germany to continue with its A-4 missile program.

In the context of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure the enrichment plants, and the factories that produce centrifuges may be less valuable targets for an attacker than dormitories and residential facilities. However with the passing of time and the continuing expansion of the Iranian nuclear program the value of any particular individual will continue to decrease as they become less and less irreplaceable.

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Nonproliferation Conference

I have returned from the Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference in Washington. A good time was had and some interesting questions arose for me. Several of the panels raised important issues that will need to be addressed much more rigorously by the nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament communities as nuclear numbers continue to come down. At present it is difficult to avoid the feeling that at a community level, if not an individual one, many of these issues are simply being dismissed or waved off as though they do not matter. Such a position may have been justifiable in the days when tens of thousands of NW were deployed by both the USSR and USA but it is difficult to sustain now.

I also got to talk to some very interesting people about a range of issues including the state of the nuclear energy industry, missile proliferation and deterrence issues.

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