Several days ago, US Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech at the National Defense University outlining the current administration’s arms control agenda. It included pushing for US ratification of the CTBT, the ongoing START talks with Russia and reducing the US nuclear arsenal. While we could discuss all three of these issues at length, I’d like to first concentrate on the idea of ‘getting to zero’ and reducing America’s nuclear capability.

The Vice President (as others) noted that

“We have long relied on nuclear weapons to deter potential adversaries. Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective.”

Non-nuclear weapons development includes the administration’s plan for an “adaptive” missile-defense shield and conventional warheads “with worldwide reach,” he said. “With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong,” Mr. Biden said.

The idea of replacing some nuclear weapons with conventional capabilities is not new. The argument is that the increasing destructive power of modern conventional weapons combined with the ability of the United States to ‘reach out and touch someone’ anywhere on the globe in a minutes or hours can play the same deterrent role as nuclear weapons currently do.

In order to break down this argument, I’d like to make two things clear. Firstly, the goal of our current nuclear force posture is to deter adversaries from attacking us and our allies. Secondly, the means to accomplish this is not and should not be the focus of discussion but instead the end. What do I mean? Many people focus on the weapons themselves, i.e. nuclear weapons, but as Biden notes, if conventional capabilities can fulfil the same function (i.e. survive a first strike and destroy enemy targets with high certainty), then they can be substituted for nuclear weapons. In short, how we do it doesn’t matter. The key thing is the destruction of enemy targets with high certainty. The fact that we use nuclear weapons for this purpose is a reflection only of the fact that they are the best suited weapon available for this task today.

However, there are very serious problems with the idea of replacing nuclear with conventional weapons.

If we accept the proposition that today, or sometime in the future, conventional weapons will be on par with nuclear weapons in terms of their deterrent capability, then several logical conclusions must follow:

1) These conventional weapons would be just as dangerous as nuclear weapons. Therefore replacing one with the other makes no substantive difference. Moreover, it would require time, money and effort to do this all with no gain.

2) If conventional weapons are used in the future in the same role as nuclear weapons today, they could invite a nuclear response from adversaries whose conventional capabilities do not match our own. This would be possible also in smaller conflicts because an enemy could then never be sure what weapons were employed since both nuclear and conventional are equall bad. It would lead to escalation at a much higher pace.

3) Having more conventional weapons in the US deterrent may lower the threshold for use.This may encourage a first strike by us or others.

4) If conventional and nuclear weapons are ever equal, they will be sought after by other states just as nuclear weapons are. This leaves us in the same situation as today. However, if the conventional capability is more expensive or difficult to achieve than nuclear weapons (which is older technology now), it will actually encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

5) If these conventional weapons are indeed equal, it means countries will be able to acquire destructive power equal to nuclear weapons, but WITHIN the legal framework Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This will lead to the irrelevance and death of the most important and successful nonproliferation regime the world has.

6) If conventional weapons can equal nuclear ones, they will require the same types of arms control agreements and nonproliferation agreements as nuclear weapons.

7) Replacing nuclear weapons with equally capable conventional weapons is a cosmetic change which does nothing to address the underlying nature of the international system which makes deterrence necessary in the first place. It’s a change in form, not substance.

Readers, I’d appreciate any thoughts, criticisms and comments you have on this.

Igor Panarin, dean at the Foreign Ministry’s school for future diplomats, former spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency, and a regular on Russia’s state-guided TV channels, has predicted the collapse of the United States next year.

Panarin predicts six autonomous states, which would be under the influence of neighboring or distant regional powers. Specifically, he believes this will be the California Republic, the Texas Republic, Atlantic America, the Central North American Republic, with Alaska reverting to Russian control (Panarin has also publicly stated that the sale and purchase of Alaska in the 19th century was only a lease), and Hawaii probably going Japanese. (No word on what would happen to the Marshall Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Isles, etc.)

Sound unlikely? It sounds even more unlikely when you visualize the map, as I’ve done below:

Taking this analysis at face value for a mere moment, my immediate questions are: would a desire by the peoples of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia to be together with southern kin override the revulsion to be governed by Mexicans? Would a Mormon rebellion try to unite the Mormons living in Utah (controlled by China), and Idaho (controlled by Canada)? Would Washington and Michigan push to join their neighbors and be governed by Canada? Would the high proportion of Hispanics in the California Republic ultimatly lead to more influence by Mexico than China?

Some of those questions show how outlandish Panarin’s view is, and how unfamiliar he is with American cultural geography (if the breakup was based on something such as the nine nations of North America, I might take this a little more seriously). But Panarin has been predicting this type of American implosion for years, and only recently have the gloomy economy given his predictions more public attention, especially in Russia where he appears on TV regularly. Indeed, Panarin as of last month now believes the date of this crackup will be next year .

We may call this blog Coming Anarchy, and we’re generally concerned about the future stability of the world, including the United States. But Panarin’s predictions are far too outlandish to be taken seriously. In fact, his analysis is nothing short of ludicrous. He bases his prediction on factors that include the financial crisis (sounds plausible), the recession (yup, it ain’t pretty), and moral decline (eh?) such as school shootings (random violence a cause of national implosion?) and rampant homosexuality (ahh, now we know what type of person we’re dealing with). Once that’s disclosed, this type of prediction speaks for itself as what it is—a traditionalist and paternalist fear of the world that believes things are always getting worse, and the certain belief that it will lead to inevitable decline.

But beyond that, Panarin’s vision of the future sounds like it comes from a Russian. Russia is the major country that splintered apart in the 1920s, 1990s, and is widely believed to be a candidate for fracturing in the near future. And speaking of Russia’s break-up in the 1920s… I’ll be back with more on this very, very soon.

Adamu has a post at Mutanfrog to note speculation that former Vice President Al Gore may be selected as ambassador to Japan. That has me thinking about the past, present, and future ambassadors to Japan that inspires me to repost an article I wrote on these pages four years ago. I wrote this post in response to rumors that House Speaker Denny Hastert would be selected as the next Ambassador to Japan.

Denny Hassert and Al Gore may sound like unlikely candidates, but check out this list of US Ambassadors to Japan from the past 35 years and their old jobs:

1. James Hodgson, 1974-1977 : Secretary of Labor

1. Mike Mansfield, 1977-1989 : Senate Majority Leader

1. Mike Armascott, 1989-1993 : Ambassador to the Phillipines

1. Walter Mondale, 1993-1997 : Vice President

1. Tom Foley, 1997-2001 : House Speaker, House Majority Leader

1. Howard Baker, 2001-present : Senate Majority Leader

1. Tom Schieffer, 2005-present : Congressman, Ambassador to Australia

There is precedent in that list for both Hassert and Gore to serve in the post. Believe it or not, Japan doesn’t want East Asian experts like Edwin Reischauer, who served in the position during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies from 1961-1966. Born in Japan in 1910, Reischauer was fluent in Japanese was apparently pretty popular in Japan. But when it came down to real hard politics, he had no political connections in Washington and was never effective at getting clear channels of communication for the Japanese leadership. Starting with Mike Mansfield (who was appointed by Carter but who Reagan kept on), Japan realized that the secret to getting the message through to Washington was having a vetetran politico at the helm.

That being said, it seems highly unlikely that Gore would want this job. More realistically, as Obama likely looks to someone to replace Schieffer, he should look to people connected to power. Knowledge to Japan isn’t what matters—it’s a legislative career or experience in government that counts.

The BBC has Cuba finding 20 billion barrels offshore.

Background:

Cuba has suffered from blackouts countrywise since 2004. Last year, high metal prices have boosted Cuban revenue from nickel and Cobalt. Due to ongoing electricity shortages, the government has continued to invest in the energy sector. Cuba currently produces about 58,300 barrels of oil a day and consumes 150,000 a day. It acquires the remainder largely through Venezuela. As of January 2007, its proven oil reserves were 242 million barrels. The United States Geological Survey estimated in the past that Cuba holds reserves of 4.6 billion barrels of oil, and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in its Gulf of Mexico waters. today, the USGS estimates that as much as 9bn barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could lie in the North Cuba Basin. Currently, Canadian and Chinese companies are drilling in Cuba.

Story:

The state-owned Cuban oil company says the country may have more than 20bn barrels of oil in its offshore fields – more than double the previous estimate. Cubapetroleo’s exploration manager said drilling in the offshore wells would begin as early as the middle of 2009. Such reserves would place Cuba among the top 20 oil producing nations.

Cubapetroleo’s estimates are based on comparisons to known oil reserves found within similar geological structures off the coasts of the US and Mexico. The company said Cuba had undersea geology “very similar” to that surrounding Mexico’s giant Cantarell and Poza Rica oil fields in the Bay of Campeche.

Commentary & Analysis:

Despite currently declining oil prices, this recent find, if proven, will be both a financial and political boost for the current regime. This development is another reason the U.S. should finally pursue detent with Cuba and normalize relations. Cuba would potentially provide a stable, cheap and nearby source of energy to the United States. Additionally, Cuban revenue would be reinvested in infrastructure and development which would come at least partially through U.S. firms. If the US can buy oil from unsavory characters like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria, little ole Cuba can hardly be held up as worse.

Anyone familiar with Socrates knows his favorite question was why. Those who regularly converse and argue with others, especially about political topics, knows a strategically placed “why” can halt your opponent in his tracks. This simple, yet crucial question is asked far too rarely by both individuals inside and outside the government. Arab Media Shack, a favorite blog of mine, has a fantastic piece which I feel compelled to link to asking: Why is the Taliban the Enemy?

Grandmasta doesn’t claim to have deep knowledge about Afghanistan, but it seems to him that the current US approach is destined for failure. Over the past year violence has gotten worse and the US continues to lose soldiers and waste money there. But here’s Grandmasta’s question: Why is it important that we destroy the Taliban? Why is the Taliban being treated as an ineitable enemy that has to be eliminated in order for security to be achieved?

Afghanistan becomes a security threat to the US and its allies when it serves as a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda types to use as a base to plan and launch attacks against the US. For what other reason is Afghanistan important to the US? The situation that existed in Afghanistan before 9/11 was clearly a security threat to the US as Al-Qaeda could do whatever they wanted, and as we well know, they did just that. But why is the Taliban being lumped together with Al-Qaeda as an implaccable enemy that must be destroyed?

Read the rest here and be sure to leave your thoughts either there or here. Good thinking by Grandmasta, and the kind of basic questioning we don’t see often enough in the blogosphere.

Many saw the SCO as an organization that may one day rival NATO. Regardless of whether that assessment was accurate, more evidence against it has come in the form of China and the SCO’s recent joint statement from Tajikistan in which it calls for Georgia’s territorial integrity to be respected. While the language was clearly not as critical and aggressive as that from America and Europe, the message was clear: we don’t support you. While some treat this development as an additional ‘blow’ against Russia, this blogger finds it unlikely Russia counted on any real support from China. Indeed China has Taiwan and its restive Muslim provinces to worry about. Beijing knows better than to take sides on an issue like that. While Medvedev had indeed been quoted as saying he expected the SCO to back Russia, the organization seems to not be as inherently anti-Western as they expected, hence their polite but clear statement as noted above.

Yet, for all the talk of Russia and Georgia, I’ve seen little discussing what America’s overall policy goals should be in dealing with Russian aggression. Is the primary concern defending Georgia itself, or our image which would suffer were we to appear weak in defending an ally? Are we more concerned with Georgia in the first place, or rather with Russian. And indeed, if Russia is our main concern, which I believe it is, does the United States wish to punish or ‘rehabilitate’ Moscow? To be sure, Georgia is not an important strategic interest of the United States, which this blogger says despite being an avid Georgia supporter. Both Zenpundit and Galrahn at Information Dissemination correctly point this out. With that in mind, and in the mind of Moscow, Georgia’s strategic value does not warrant escalation and the taking of high risks by the US and Europe. Thus, wading through the war mongering and Cold War rhetoric, we arrive at the aforementioned question: punish or rehabilitate?

The Europeans have, for example, voiced interest in sanctions against Russia while others have discussed ejecting Russia from international organizations like the G8. Thomas Barnett is in the rehabilitate crowd as he noted today

his fusion model of Russia’s is not that different from China’s—just coupled with Russian political paranoia. Both need to be housebroken by the global economy/Core in coming decades. China’s moving in that direction nicely, Russia’s system far more slowly. But now Georgia gives us a great “teachable moment” here, assuming we don’t go overboard or militarize the response unduly. All levers, my friends, all levers.,

Dan at tdaxp simiarly describes the situation, namely that Russia is a Gap state acting as such against new Core states. That being said, US and European policy must focus on punishing Russia and damaging its economic and political interests while at the same time, opening new and more acceptable routes for Russia to achieve its foreign policy goals. American and European politicians must make the most of this opportunity or “teachable moment” as Barnett calls it lest we leave Moscow with no other route than to remain a repeat offender.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. It seems history may rhyme after all if current news reports are to be believed. According to the AFP, there was discussion in the Russian news of Moscow flying long range bombers to Cuba again.

Russia would cross “a red line for the United States of America” if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba, a top US air force officer warned on Tuesday.”If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America,” said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force’s chief of staff. He was referring to a Russian news report that said the military is thinking of flying long-range bombers to Cuba on a regular basis.

It was unclear from the report whether that would involve permanent basing of nuclear bombers in Cuba, or just use of the island as a refueling stop. In his confirmation hearing to become the air force’s chief of staff, Schwartz was asked what he would recommend if Russia were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba. “I would certainly offer the best military advice that we engage the Russians not to pursue that approach,” he said.

The newspaper Iszvestia on Monday cited an unnamed senior Russian air force official in Moscow as saying that Russia may start regular flights by long-range bombers to Cuba in response to US plans to install a missile defense system in eastern Europe. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the Russian report because there had been no “official response from the Russian government.”

I’ve written about the missle shield here and here but in short, my position is that Russia’s rhetoric merely masks its continued role of trying to play the spoiler for US policies and is using it as an excuse to ‘misbehave’ elsewhere under the cover of so-called US aggression. Do readers more knowledgeable on missile defense and nuclear affairs have a more detailed take?

As things stand, the missile shield wouldn’t pose any real threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrent for some time and could at most destroy a few of thousands of missiles, making it essentially useless. However, as time goes on, so does technology and the shield could one day pose an actual threat. On top of that, where is the line between defense and offensive missiles? Not being an expert, I’m not sure how valid of a point this is. Wouldn’t the agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland prohibit stationing offensive or nuclear weapons at these sites?

Lastly, my understanding is that the only real threat the missile shield presents now is that of almost giving the US first strike capability. Given the poor state of Russia’s military, nuclear weapons and radar system, a 2006 Foreign Affairs article argued that the US could soon have the ability to strike first and take out most of Russia’s first and second strike sites. The few missed, should the missiles even launch (due to poor maintenance, command and control etc.) the new shield could protect against them.

Readers, what are your thoughts on the US missile shield? What legitimate points does Russia have? And what could the stationing of Russian bombers in Cuba lead to, assuming it is even a real possiblitiy?

Readers would not often catch Lord Curzon perusing the pages of Mother Jones, a liberal-progressive commentary magazine. However, a recent article subtitled, “Can the world survive China’s headlong rush to emulate the American way of life?” caught my eye like few other articles have so far in 2008. That question is, I believe, the most important question we must ask ourselves over the next few decades.

China has also become a ravenous consumer. Its appetite for raw materials drives up international commodity prices and shipping rates while its middle class, projected to jump from fewer than 100 million people now to 700 million by 2020, is learning the gratifications of consumerism. China is by a wide margin the leading importer of a cornucopia of commodities, including iron ore, steel, copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel. It is the world’s biggest consumer of coal, refrigerators, grain, cell phones, fertilizer, and television sets. It not only leads the world in coal consumption, with 2.5 billion tons in 2006, but uses more than the next three highest-ranked nations—the United States, Russia, and India—combined. China uses half the world’s steel and concrete and will probably construct half the world’s new buildings over the next decade. So omnivorous is the Chinese appetite for imports that when the country ran short of scrap metal in early 2004, manhole covers disappeared from cities all over the world—Chicago lost 150 in a month. And the Chinese are not just vast consumers, but conspicuous ones, as evidenced by the presence in Beijing of dealers representing every luxury-car manufacturer in the world. Sales of Porsches, Ferraris, and Maseratis have flourished, even though their owners have no opportunity to test their finely tuned cars’ performance on the city’s clotted roads.

American consumption patterns such as personal transporation in the form of automobiles, high meat consumption, and a carelessly profligent lifestyle by the average consumer is simply not sustainable on a wordlwide scale. How the world copes with that reality may be one of the dominant questions of the 21st century.

With the current primaries and upcoming presidential election, on top of rising oil prices, one favorite phrase of candidates and media outlets is energy dependence and energy independence. Yet, outside of buzz words, how dependent is the US on foreign producers? In fact, since energy independence is secret code for independent of the Middle East, just how much of the US’s oil imports come from that region?

Take 30 seconds and make a mental list of your guesses for the top 15 crude oil importers into the US.

Read the rest of this entry »

With China’s not so subtle attempt to deter the US from weaponizing space by blowing up a satellite last year, one must view the current “problem” as an opportune moment to answer back:

US Plans to Shoot Down Broken Satellite
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush decided to make a first-of-its-kind attempt to use a missile to bring down a broken U.S. spy satellite because of the potential danger to people from its rocket fuel, officials said Thursday. Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffries, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, did not say when the attempted intercept would be conducted, but the satellite is expected to hit Earth during the first week of March.

“This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” Jeffries said. Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same briefing that the “window of opportunity” for such a shootdown, presumably to be launched from a Navy ship, will open in the next three or four days and last for seven or eight days. He did not say whether the Pentagon has decided on an exact launch date.

I think we can safely say this is no creative solution to the problem. Meanwhile, both Russia and China are teaming up on a treaty to ban space weapons since only the US would stand to lose while they would stand to gain much needed time.