Naval War College Foundation's Global Hotspots Symposium 2015 In San Francisco

I attended the Naval War College Foundation's annual San Francisco seminar last month.  This is the third time I've attended and this year's "Global Hotpots Symposium" delivered my money's worth.  The photos below depict the day's action at the Marines' Memorial Club.  The comments below are paraphrased from the speakers, with my own thoughts in bold text.

The first speaker described the insecurity plaguing the Middle East.  Her factual descriptions of conditions in the region were impeccable.  The story of ISIS's rise from the remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria is well-documented.  The Assad regime's brutal suppression of its own people was a factor the West must acknowledge.  ISIS captured billions in wealth from looting Iraqi assets in Mosul and draws fighters from around the world.  Disproportionate numbers of wanna-be jihadis are coming from Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon.

I disagree with expert assessments of ISIS's tactical and operational prowess.  Photos of their "technical" gun trucks with anti-aircraft weapons hastily placed in pickup trucks show an amateurish approach to fire support.  The gunners in the truck beds aim wildly without even using iron sights.  They exhibit no evidence of combined arms maneuver despite claims of capturing US-made Iraqi armored vehicles and aircraft.  I have seen no evidence in open sources of a logistics system ISIS uses to sustain its captured materiel.  Terror tactics work against Iraqi forces with no ideological cohesion or nationalist sentiment of their own.

I do agree with our NWCF speaker that ISIS excels at information operations.  Erasing the Iraq-Syria border signals Arab rejection of Sykes-Picot colonialism.  Executing POWs wearing orange jumpsuits symbolizes revenge for the perceived US humiliation of Muslim prisoners at Gitmo.

Syrian refugees have been straining civil society in Jordan and Lebanon for several years.  Sunni Arab states may be turning against ISIS, at least among the Gulf sheikdoms.  Turkey and Saudi Arabia could easily be decisive against ISIS if they act.  Saudi Arabia just committed more air and ground forces to fight the Houthis in Yemen than they ever committed against ISIS.  The kingdom obviously believes Iranian influence to its south is a bigger threat than barbarians to its north.  The NWCF speaker astutely observed that the Sunni states tolerated ISIS's expansion as a way to pressure Iran.

Sunni ISIS fighters obviously target Shia.  I don't buy the argument that ISIS represents an existential threat to Iran that justifies Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.  Tehran's threat of a nuclear program is more valuable as a strategic deterrent to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.  I also don't buy arguments that ISIS cannot be destroyed with military force.  They have a strategic-level center of gravity in Raqaa that a ground campaign can destroy.  They also have financial channels from oil revenue and donations that the US can interdict.

Our speaker noted that ISIS's logistics system includes smuggling routes across Turkey's southern border.  The anti-ISIS coalition's effort to retake Kobane makes decent strategic sense in that context.  The coalition's failure to counter ISIS propaganda makes no sense; ISIS's narrative of romance, revenge, honor, and adventure appeals to disaffected youth.

The second NWCF speaker described recent tension between North Korea and South Korea over the Northern Limit Line (NLL).  He recapped recent Hermit Kingdom antics as a reminder that the country's "Byungjin line" requires a dual track of economic development and nuclear weapons.  The world still cannot confirm whether the DPRK has installed a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

The Korean War Armistice left the two Koreas' western maritime boundary undefined.  The North has tested the US and ROK commitments to uphold the NLL several times.  North Korea appears to have three aims:  maintaining economic rights to fishing and crabbing waters; retaining Haeju's port access to save shipping costs on its maritime route with China; and maintaining the ease of dropping SOF on islands close to the ROK.

North Korea has zero interest in submitting its NLL objections to international mediation.  Its KPA Navy is too weak to seize disputed islands outright from the ROK.  The Cheonan sinking incident was the North's way of testing how much the US and ROK are willing to escalate after an obvious provocation.  I am unclear on whether the NLL represents an airspace boundary as well as a maritime one.  I do not know whether the ROK has an identification friend or foe (IFF) system compatible with US aircraft but common sense dictates that they should.  South Korea's declared ADIZ clearly extends beyond the NLL, so any North Korean air-sea operation in the NLL's vicinity would demand a military response.

I attended a separate lunch discussion with a senior expert who shared his impressions of the Middle East from several tours.  I was not surprised when he said the US underestimated the Sunni/Shia divide in Iraq.  I figured that out during my own tour, when it was obvious that Sunnis and Shias would not return to formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad.  A similar sectarian fragmentation is not currently evident in Afghanistan.  That's the good news, provided the US can keep a token force there long enough to ensure there is no fragmentation.  The senior official's best success metrics in both Iraq and Afghanistan were not the number of successful troops in contact (TIC) reports or KIA counts.  He valued statistics on local recruitment of military and security forces, along with school enrollment.  Those successes proved that tribal leaders in either country accepted their government's legitimacy.

The third NWCF lecturer addressed the future of urban warfare.  The most recent Israeli-Hamas war showed how targeting insurgents in cities often destroys infrastructure.  The US learned that the hard way in Iraq; just watch the many YouTube videos of JTACs calling for CAS on some building.  We also learned that occupying forces end up owning government services, a lesson learned and forgotten in WWII.

Africa is rapidly becoming a laboratory where urban violence tests tribal and sectarian fault lines.  Boko Haram's objective is larger than seizing Maiduguri.  Their Islamist application of Sharia law appeals to people in corrupt parts of northern Nigeria who have grievances against Nigerian institutions.  The larger story of how Chad and Niger carried the fight against Boko Haram must include Nigerian forces' failure to reinforce liberated towns.  Al-Shabaab's resurgence is another story the West must hear, because that terror group still has a strong hold on Somalia and is now threatening Western malls after its Kenya mall attack.

Our lecturer endorsed US forces training its division-level formations in full-scale urban warfare.  I searched Google for "sewer drone" to find tech options US forces can use in urban warfare.  Advice from JAGs on ROE and targeting will be integral to urban warfare.  Many of the asymmetric advantages the US brings to a conventional fight are negated when defenders have an advantage in urban terrain.

The final NWCF speaker addressed the possibility of a new Cold War in Russian-American relations.  Russia has begun targeting military exercises at NATO areas.  NATO's response has been to preposition equipment in Eastern Europe and step up Baltic air patrols.  Remember, folks, "NATO" has always been the US instrument for influencing Western Europe.  Our European friends rarely take action to assert their interests without US leadership.  Russian opinion polls show a rapid shift against the US, but not so much against Europe until recently.

Russia's national psyche has always been predisposed to insecurity and paranoia.  I recently attended a gathering of Russian emigres in San Francisco.  A lot of them truly believed that pedestrian traffic islands around town were some kind of conspiracy to launder money.  It would have been funny if this wasn't indicative of multigenerational Russian paranoia about any official pronouncements.

The apotheosis of the "vatnik/vatnost" phenomenon represents how far Russia has regressed from its post-Cold War openness.  Search Google for those words to see an Internet meme celebrating the revival of reactionary, anti-intellectual traditions that Western materialism cannot vanquish.  I won't link to the vatnost's retrograde image here, so go find it.  The West recognizes Russia's new belligerency and so do former members of the Warsaw Pact who resented Russian dominance.

The West must understand why free market shock therapy worked in the Baltics and Poland but not Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus.  I suspect the answer lies partly in the US's willingness to extend military cooperation to those successful states but prematurely curtailed Russia's NATO participation.  A strong security link to the West would have made Russian-speaking elites feel safer about sticking with free market reforms.  I may explore this theory in future blog articles if no one in the US foreign policy community picks it up.

Karen Dawisha's Putin's Kleptocracy explores how Putin expropriated KGB funds.  His recent admission that Russian forces invaded Crimea and provoked its secession prove his duplicity.  John Schindler's XX Committee discusses the Chekhism of the Siloviki around Putin, providing invaluable insights into Russia's ruling elite.  US reluctance to challenge Putin emboldens him despite Russia's obviously diminishing power.  The NWCF expert believes Russia's geostrategic pivot is to its east given China's demand for Russian natural resources.  He also believes this will lead to a divorce when they can no longer hide their rivalries.  I think that divorce will come sooner than anyone expects when China's economy crashes.  I also noticed that many of my Russian-speaking friends in the San Francisco area often repeated Russian media narratives about Ukraine's supposed aggression and "Nazi Galitchina" nationalism.  Russia definitely won the propaganda war with Russian language media in Ukraine and elsewhere.

All of the NWCF panelists combined for a final panel and took audience questions.  Here come the panel's answers, in a stream of consciousness style with no unifying theme.  More Middle East nations are at risk of collapse due to poor governance.  The West cannot wear down Russia with spending programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative because the US's ballistic missile defense plan just pumps up Russian nationalism.  It's hard to assess the US response to North Korea's cyber actions.  The ROK's heavy Internet connectivity is very vulnerable to cyber attack.  It is very interesting that piracy is more prevalent on Africa's west cost than its east coast (i.e., Somalia and the Horn of Africa).  The US still has substantial interests in anti-piracy, stability, and development in the Horn of Africa.  The US Navy's Maritime Strategy mentions A2AD as a stalking horse for countering China, with less attention to civil affairs after budget cuts.  China sees global hotspots differently than the US, with separatists in Xinjiang and Tibet figuring prominently.  The US can slow but not stop Iran's march to acquiring nuclear weapons because Iran plays with the Non-Proliferation Treaty's limits.  It will be easy for Iran to get weapons-grade HEU if it can keep enrichment ability.  Saudi Arabia and Egypt are likely to follow Iran into a nuclear arms race.  Boko Haram's captive schoolgirls have either perished, dispersed, or returned home; many are still held captive.  Arabs think the US State Department's information operations campaign against ISIS lacks credibility.  ISIS has a heavy Twitter presence with thousands of sympathetic accounts.  The human capacity to handle deprivation has postponed resource wars and ingenuity drives more efficient resource use.  Russia's economy and demography won't support Putin's planned army expansion.  The Obama Administration truly believes its electoral mandate is to avoid foreign relations.

This concludes my synopsis of the Naval War College's 2015 expedition to The City.  A lot of black swans lurk in the world.  Look at China's tensions with India, a delayed economic crisis over Greece's inevitable exit from the euro, and migrations from Central America to North America that challenge our southern border's security.  US war colleges and private think tanks do a pretty good job of training American leaders to solve strategic problems.  I will extend my own discussion of strategy here on Third Eye OSINT.

Full disclosure:  The opinions I express in this article reflect my own views and do not reflect the official positions of any US Government entity.

Domestic Politics Drive US-Israel-Iran Strategic Monologues

Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress this month stirred up the usual posturing from American politicians.  Their equivalents in Israel and Iran, the other two audiences for Mr. Netanyahu's speech, will eventually be heard.  Third Eye OSINT judges that recent noises from leaders of the US, Israel, and Iran have more to do with moving public opinion in those countries than with reaching any diplomatic agreements.

All perspectives on US/Iran/Israel relations are of interest.  CFR's description of Iran's nuclear program raises enough concerns about the program's intent to warrant continuing IAEA monitoring and verification in Iran.  There is no reason for any of the P5+1 parties to pursue side deals with Iran outside this negotiating framework given its legitimacy in the eyes of the UN.  The US's own estimate is that Iran is years away from weaponizing its nuclear program.  The CFR's description of a 2007 NIE describes the difficulty Iran has in producing sufficient weapons-grade material.  The Stuxnet virus' attack on Iran's facilities pushed the weaponization date even further into the future.  Talk of crossing red lines is premature.

All of the recent public actions by both Israel's and Iran's leaders are fodder for internal audiences.  Mr. Netanyahu gains politically by frightening his people with an external threat.  His Likud party still polls strongly but he cannot ignore the growing chorus of former Israeli national security figures who have come out publicly against Israeli policies.  Anti-Iran rhetoric shores up his electoral base.

Iran's mullahs want their people to think the Iranian nuclear program is more dangerous than it is to keep the reformers sidelined.  Strategic feints are an old practice in history.  Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq went to great lengths to convince its own battlefield commanders that WMDs were an option, believing that mention of such programs would deter Iran or even the US from striking the regime.  Iran's hardened facilities and uranium enrichment technology obviously have military potential.  Whether Israel is the eventual target of an Iranian nuclear strike is open to debate.  Tehran has little to gain from a strike on Israel that would almost certainly bring US retaliation.  It has more to gain by rattling a nuclear saber against nearby rivals, specifically Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Even US politicians feel the impulse to contribute rhetoric fit for their domestic base.  Republican Congresspeople sent a letter to Iran with vague warnings about the validity of US-Iran diplomatic agreements.  Once again, domestic audiences matter, and positioning for the 2016 election cycle means putting tough rhetoric on the record.  Iran responded with an understanding of legal precedents that surpassed that of the GOP letter's authors.  An American legal scholar from the George W. Bush administration took the GOP to task on the Lawfare blog for their lack of understanding.  Israeli and Iranian leaders have yet to reveal whether their understanding of their own legal systems needs remedial attention.  They may surprise us yet.

Both Israel and Iran also have something to gain externally by going through these motions in public.  Iran wants a bigger bargaining chip to terminate sanctions, so making its nuclear program seem dangerous is a diplomatic gamble.  Israel has obviously won a major diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia if the Saudis quietly approve of Israel's stance against Iran.  American diplomacy is always at work and could probably have forged a P5+1 agreement sooner if not for some clumsiness.  Media exposure of President Obama's Nov. 2014 letter to Tehran about ISIS was an embarrassment.  Predictably, Iran's response was noncommittal once the entire US negotiating position was laid bare.  Trading nuclear concessions for acquiescence to a more active Iranian ground campaign is a deal best done in back channels.  US fumbling invites Israel and Iran to air their frustrations in public rather than behind closed doors.

The most explosive conflict in the Middle East isn't even Israel vs. Iran.  The intensifying Sunni vs. Shia civil war within Islam is the main threat to regional stability.  The leading Sunni states (Saudi Arabia first, Turkey second) are unwilling to directly confront Iran for leadership of the Islamic world, so they cynically allow Israel to do their heavy lifting for them.  They won't be able to postpone the open civil war for long; ISIS is just the latest explosion of Sunni anger against Shiite proxies (Syria first, rump Iraq second).

Public speeches on geopolitics are always the tips of icebergs.  They are monologues intended for multiple audiences.  The primary audience is usually domestic.  Hidden diplomatic initiatives rarely take their cues from public statements, except in states like North Korea where a megalomaniac leader personifies the state.  The US has yet to demonstrate its ability to competently navigate both the public diplomacy and back channel communication that can set the framework for a successful P5+1 agreement.  Rhetoric about leading from behind and "strategic patience" are no substitute for competence.  Dialogue suffers and the world is left with monologues.

The 3 Reforms The US Department of Defense Must Make Now

The US military divides campaign responsibility between the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war.  Its pursuit of success at each level has encountered severe problems since the 9/11 attacks.  The most well-funded military in human history has not achieved satisfactory strategic outcomes in Iraq or Afghanistan.  These problems stem from both policy and cultural weaknesses that cry out for remedy.  The US Department of Defense needs three broad reforms that will make its prosecution of each level of war more effective.

The first DOD reform must adapt strategic level policy development to modern times.  The National Security Act of 1947 governs the interaction of the military and whole-of-government (WOG) actors in the Department of State, the Intelligence Community, and other areas.  Its authors designed it for a post-WWII era that no longer exists.  The US is in dire need of a National Security Act 2.0 for the 21st century.

The Act as originally written subordinated the armed services to a central Cabinet secretary.  It did not anticipate a proliferation of intelligence agencies that compete with the CIA for authority and funding, nor did it prevent the non-defense executive agencies from creating internal offices that encroach on each other's functions.  Piecemeal reforms in the post-Cold War era have not solved problems with interagency coordination.  Act 2.0 must begin by recodifying each executive department's relationship with the President and the National Security Council.  DOD needs Congress to articulate this legal change; it cannot do so on its own.

The second reform will require a new personnel management approach to developing military leaders who can adapt at the operational level of war.  The US military's reliance on formal decision-making processes is adequate for planning major campaigns against nation-states.  It is often inadequate for rapid innovation or adaptation to ambiguous environments.  Changing the mental flexibility of mid-grade and senior officers means introducing them to private sector planning processes earlier in their careers.

The US Army's Training with Industry (TWI) program is a template for transforming the process-oriented thinking of career officers into the results-oriented thinking the private sector uses to stay viable.  The current TWI configuration allows no more than a handful of officers each year (normally 125 people as of 2014) to spend up to twelve months on sabbatical from the Army with a small number of large private corporations.  They return to the force with little incentive to use what they learned because they must re-adapt to the military's official planning processes.  Redesigning the program to allow tens of thousands of officers to spend six to nine weeks interning with private corporations would spread results-oriented thinking much wider within the military.  A 21st century TWI for all of DOD would resemble MBA program internships that prepare seasoned business professionals for management roles.

The third defense reform will change how new officers acclimate to tactical-level operations.  Young officers must prove themselves in the eyes of their enlisted service members to be effective as leaders.  More than anything else, this means offering some commonality of background, interest, or values shared between officer and enlisted ranks.  The strongest and fastest way to establish this bond is to require that all US military officers first serve in the enlisted ranks as a prerequisite for commissioning.

Decades of social science research have proven that social affinity bonds among peers are strongest across peer groups with common social origins.  This finding is a common thread in the study of social group cohesion at any socioeconomic level or within any culture.  In the military, the most common origin is entry-level enlisted indoctrination.  Officers who served successfully in the enlisted ranks, particularly as NCOs, achieve instant rapport with their enlisted followers.  They do this more rapidly and effectively than non-prior enlisted officers.  They also achieve horizontal trust among each other more quickly than "cherry" officers who have never served before.  Horizontal and vertical trust are essential to building effective teams.  Requiring enlisted service as a precursor to applying to officer accession programs ensures that new officers are trustworthy on day one.

Third Eye OSINT will elaborate more on each of these three reforms in subsequent articles.  Alfidi Capital is the only source in the world for this particular strain of original military thinking.

Whom To Call For Help In Stability Operations

The United States has taken a decisive swing away from armed interventions of all sorts since pulling back from military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Other actors will fill the empty space left by Uncle Sam's absent forces.  The US cannot afford to cede the mitigation of instability to others.  Count on the deep state elite to keep America's head in the stability operations game.  The roll call of miscellaneous entities doing that work is worth a look-see.

The Institute for Defense and Business is one of those entities that pops up to fill a market demand.  Their curriculum reminds me of the US Army offerings vetted through TRADOC schoolhouses.  The difference is the hybridization of course offerings that bridge knowledge gaps between the public and private sector.  There's also an interesting nexus of events and projects between the Center for Advanced Logistics Management and the Association for Enterprise Information.  National policymakers lean on these quasi-private organizations when their whole-of-government efforts need a boost.

The US government has its own interdisciplinary research programs touching stability operations.  The NDU Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) helps run the Sharing To Accelerate Research - Transformative Innovation for Development and Emergency Support (STAR-TIDES) project.  That kind of research on how disasters drive socioeconomic disruption will eventually underpin doctrinal approaches to humanitarian intervention.  The relief sector is leveraging Big Data; CrisisMappers and Geeks Without Bonds allow tech pros to gather around Big Data approaches.  Expect USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance to use lessons from these projects in its future development programs.

There's enough interagency and public-private work among those projects to keep plenty of government and non-profit workers busy for the rest of their careers.  If enough of them join the International Stability Operations Association (ISOA), they will have a critical mass for trade shows and other reasons to hang out together.  Armed humanitarian intervention shouldn't happen by accident.  It's no accident that the deep state makes room for deep thinking in stability operations.  

America's Disinterst In Its Hereditary Military Caste

I read with interest Andrew Bacevich's recent article "One Percent Republic."  I compared it to the notes I took when David M. Kennedy presented The Modern American Military at the Commonwealth Club last year.  Both Prof. Kennedy and Col. Bacevich accurately describe America's relationship with its citizen-soldiers after more than a decade of war against Islamic radicalism.  The Bacevich article could read very well as the follow-up to the Kennedy anthology.  Modern describes how the all-volunteer force allows the US to conduct war with reduced accountability to the American people, and "One Percent" describes the resulting alienation of the American people from their military.

Kennedy, in his talk, contrasted the high ratio of general officers whose children serve in uniform with the low ratio of Congress members whose children serve.  Anecdotally, I have observed a high degree of multigenerational service among officers below flag rank.  The Society of the Cincinnati and other hereditary orders are the closest thing the United States has to an aristocratic nobility.  I used to wonder whether those officers fortunate enough to perform duty in and around the Military District of Washington were able to leverage any hereditary connections during their careers.  There's even a Hereditary Society Community to keep track of all these hereditary societies.  I looked at the pictures of their annual reception . . . held in Washington DC, of course.  Pedigree matters in America.  Trace your lineage to a hero of our past wars and you get invited to high tea with people who don't have to fight in our current wars.  God bless America.

American expeditionary deployments have indeed increased dramatically since the all-volunteer force came into being after the Vietnam War, as Kennedy noted.  Americans are simply no longer interested in being accountable for war.  It's just another spectator sport providing amusement to a passive public.  This fulfills the prophecy Samuel Huntington made in The Soldier and the State in the 1950s that the American people would become more traditionally conservative in their tolerance of a large defense establishment.  Little did he realize just how conservative they would become.  American "conservatism" today primarily conserves Wall Street's grasping ethic and the middle class' unfunded entitlements.  Its liberal opposite is more like a Siamese twin, conserving and expanding every benefit program that progressive academics dreamed up.  TR Fehrenbach described in This Kind of War how liberals and conservatives checked each other's power and informed each other's ideas constructively during WWII and the early days of the Cold War.  The balanced dynamic has given way to a Janus-faced pantomime of difference, regardless of partisan noises.

Americans could write the next chapter in their history but they now prefer it to be ghostwritten.  Watching reality TV is more compelling.  Americans want handouts and our plutocrats know how to keep us pacified.  A people who lose interest in the burden of self-governance invite the entrance of actors who will lift the burden from their shrugging shoulders.  Bacevich notes the entrenchment of wealth at the apex of society, and Kennedy notes the military establishment's freedom of action in crafting policy.  We will soon see whether plutocracy and stratocracy can co-exist in America.  The Founding Fathers' own aristocratic pretensions often go unnoticed, and they intended the Electoral College to represent the nation's most enlightened beings.  This new elitist phenomenon isn't all that new anyway.  Generation X has a saying for all this . . "whatever."

Nota bene:  This article is dedicated to the memory of TR Fehrenbach, who passed away last month at the age of 88.  His passing received little note in news media.  I will never forget reading This Kind of War while on active duty in South Korea in 1995.  

US-South Korea Ties Leave North Korea In The Dust

The US and South Korea get along like old pals.  The US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) has been active for over a year.  The ROK's US embassy actively promotes US-ROK business ties under the KORUS FTA through US Korea Connect.  The Korea Economic Institute of America lobbies in the US on behalf of the South Korean government's economic initiatives.  This is a more mature approach to influence than the Koreagate troubles of past decades.  I reviewed OECD StatExtracts on FDI flows by partner country.  It's surprising to note that Korea's FDI in the US was US$6.2B in 2011 while the US's FDI in South Korea was $US1.6B.

The US and South Korea are on the same sheet of music diplomatically.  They oppose North Korea's nuclear development and the Kim dynasty's placement of its self-interest ahead of the welfare of the North Korean people.  North Korea detains about 1% of its population in concentration camps.  The US and South Korea do not punish political dissent with imprisonment or forced labor.

North Korea envies the attention the US lavishes on its healthier twin to the south.  That's why it lashes out with military provocations and drags out even the simplest diplomatic issues for months.  The US-DPRK "New York" channel has been dormant for months because North Korea has nothing new to offer.  The Kim regime likes to imprison some random missionary when it needs attention but delays release negotiations to extort for foreign aid.

Asians can take responsibility for their own security once they outgrow what ROK President Park Gyun-Hye calls the "Asian paradox" where political cooperation has not kept pace with economic integration.  The US will remain engaged in inter-Korean relations until Asian powers resolve that paradox.  They can begin such resolution by working on matters unrelated to North Korea's problems.  Start with climate change and disaster relief.

The Kim regime in the North makes lots of bombastic threats.  It has little to show for decades of hostility to its neighbors and paranoia.  This satirically dubbed video of "Pyongyang Traffic Girls From The Sky" may be all the North can muster as a threat.  I wouldn't mind seeing hot chicks drop out the sky if they were friendly.

Poised For Syria

The world waits for something to happen in Syria in response to an alleged atrocity, although forensic analysis of the scene in question is not complete as of this writing.  The general outlines of the geopolitical drivers are pretty obvious.

Western media already announced the general targets in open sources, giving the Syrians time to clear out.  The destruction of the presumed targets will not hamper the Assad regime's campaign against the Islamic rebels.  Indeed, replacing the destroyed systems with new Russian equipment fulfills that country's support contract with Syria, throwing Moscow a bone if it elects not to escalate.  Note Moscow's muted response; Putin has not announced countermeasures but merely shakes his head diplomatically.  The end result is that the Assad regime continues to its likely victory over Islamic radicals and the US satisfies world opinion that it "did something."

The primary concern now is drawing the correct parallel with history.  If the Kosovo Air Campaign is a template, any strike will be over in a fortnight.  

Infectious Disease Preparedness for Cheap Countries

Pandemics are problems for nation-state legitimacy.  Strong states with mature public health programs can handle them well.  Weak states distracted by poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation, social unrest, and insurgencies could destabilize or even disintegrate in the face of a pandemic.  States need early warning systems for disease outbreaks and road maps for consequence management.

Early warning systems already exist.  CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is a model for national organization of medical threat data.  WHO's Global Alert and Response (GAR) Disease Outbreak News (DONs) is free for any national health service to use as a monitoring tool.

The US already leads the way in pandemic mitigation.  The US National Intelligence Council published National Intelligence Estimate 99-17D, The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States in January 2000.  Analysis is the foundation for action.  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed up with its publication Protecting the Nation's Health in an Era of Globalization:  CDC's Global Infectious Disease Strategy in 2002.  Wealthy countries with strong central states can afford to make detailed plans.  Poorer countries are at a disadvantage but all is not lost.  Developing countries can follow the US's lead.

The US has been generous enough to suggest optimal funding levels and project directions for global health programs.  NIH published The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control via the National Academies Press.  Developing countries that are too cheap to pay the $45 for a hard copy are welcome to download the PDF for free from the NIH's NCBI.  The opportunity cost of inaction is huge, as outlined in EMBO's "Pricing infectious disease." 

Weak states have all of these free resources courtesy of Uncle Sam.  Use them before the next sequester hits federal spending.  Poverty is no excuse for unpreparedness if developing countries wish to avoid destabilizing pandemics.  

The Arctic Is Open For Business

Adm. Gary Roughead (USN Ret.) spoke at WAC NorCal about the opening of the Arctic Ocean to exploration and commercialization.  You don't have to believe in anthropogenic global warming to know that new sealanes open up some pretty hard-to-reach areas (sort of like that corner of your bathroom, only colder).  My synopsis of his talk will include my usual pithy observations.

Dutch Harbor, Alaska is the Arctic's only deepwater port.  That gives the US a huge strategic advantage.  It is separated from the mainland of North America by water, so its strategic value does not lie in any land connections to transportation infrastructure that can facilitate trade.  It is probably the best location right now for stationing emergency crews that will be on call in the event any trans-Arctic ships issue distress calls.  Communication is very difficult above 74 degrees north latitude, so ships and drill platforms will have to be hardened to withstand Arctic conditions.  The city of Unalaska's development plan for the port runs through 2019 but doesn't include any expansion plans to accommodate oil exploration ships or rigs.  Those assets will have to go elsewhere, like the Valdez Marine Terminal.  The bottom line is that Alaska can expect a major infrastructure boom to support the US's Arctic presence.  Shipbuilders can also expect a small boom in special orders for Arctic oil platforms and service ships with de-icing capabilities, special ventilation systems, and other features.

I knew about methane hydrates before I heard Adm. Roughead talk.  It's frozen natural gas, folks.  There's plenty of it in the Arctic.  Melting permafrost triggers the release of melting methane hydrates into the atmosphere.  It's too bad all that melting is disrupting built-up infrastructure and possibly contributing to global warming.  Maybe we can counter it by convincing Alaskans not to pass so much gas themselves.  Nah, forget it.

The real solution to Arctic problems will be found in cooperation from the Arctic nations.  The Arctic Council gathers those nations that border the Arctic and those whose ships transit the region.  The International Maritime Organization is developing a Polar Code for ship safety.  The US is jeopardizing its ability to adjudicate any sovereign claims to its energy-rich Arctic continental shelf by not being a signatory to  the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  American critics who object to the treaty are clueless about the leverage we're forgoing.  America's cluelessness continues with our inability to deploy icebreakers.  The US Coast Guard has one icebreaking vessel available and one more coming on line, while Russia has 43 in its national fleet.  I think the other Arctic Council nations are laughing at us.

The Admiral's talk helps me put recent news in context.  Exxon Mobil and Rosneft have agreed to operate an arctic research center.  They've made several joint agreements in recent years, so this points to an obvious trend of Russian-American cooperation in opening the Arctic.  They need to think about oil spill responses before they drill.  Oil spills behave differently in icy waters.  Adm. Roughead noted that Prudhoe Bay oil throughput is declining and the bay will need further infrastructure development to extend its life, probably requiring the reconstitution of much of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.  Relax, folks, Exxon Mobil and Rosneft will likely be first in line with bids for that work.

Here's my suggestion for further cooperation.  USPACOM's RIMPAC brings many navies together for joint maneuvers.  I'd like to see an Arctic version of RIMPAC with US, Russian, and Canadian forces working together on icebreaking and rescue missions.  No country can do this alone.