Category Archives: defense policy

Right

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Sydney Seiler, Deputy DNI Mission Manager for North Korea and the US envoy to the six-nation talks on northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program, had some…advice…for that nation.

[He] said Tuesday that North Korea should learn from the emerging nuclear deal with Iran that Washington is willing to engage its adversaries if it has a “credible” partner to negotiate with.

It’s certainly true that northern Korea can be expected to learn from the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. They can see what can be had through negotiating with credulous partners.

Another parallel that northern Korea can surely recognize, according to Seiler; although not in the way he meant:

Seiler said there has been no sign in the last two years that Pyongyang is willing to de-nuclearize….

Indeed. Just as there’s been no sign in the last several years that Iran is willing to stop its nuclear weapons program before getting the bomb, also “despite sanctions and diplomatic isolation.”

Then Seiler, as is typical of this administration, exposed himself. Badly.

North Korea “may not have learned any lesson” from the Iran talks, and if it had, “we would perhaps [have] seen it earlier.”

No, northern Korea has learned one very valuable lesson from the Iran talks: stonewalling works. We’ll see in short order whether northern Korea learns the follow-on lesson: using Iran’s technique for handling credulity pays dividends.

It just doesn’t get any more feckless than this.

A Saudi Cease Fire

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Recall Libya and Europe’s ejection of Muammar Gadhafi from power. Shortly into the air campaign supporting Libyan rebel efforts, that campaign nearly ground to a halt because the Europeans—really—ran out of ordnance to drop on Gadhafi and his loyalist forces. The Unites States had to step in and rearm the European forces in order for the campaign to continue.

Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia called a halt to its air campaign in support of the just-overthrown government and against Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia declared late Tuesday that strikes against the Houthis would transition to a mostly political phase, but left open the possibility of using military action to halt the spread of the militants.

This was followed the next day by the Houthis continuing their advance, including capture of the government forces’ brigade headquarters in Taiz, the country’s third largest city, and it had been immediately preceded by the terrorists’ capture of a major seaport, apparently in preparation for receiving Iranian seaborne arms shipments.

The US isn’t rearming/resupplying the Saudis as far as I can tell. This bodes ill for the Saudis and for Araby in general—and for Israel, on the back side of Araby from Iran—in the coming confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I hope I’m being overly paranoid. The Saudis also released a statement:

…the new phase of operations “will support the Yemeni government on the ground as it works toward building a stable and secure Yemen[.]”

We’ll see.

Update: It appears the Saudis, or at least their coalition, are resuming airstrikes against the Houthis.  If true, this would be to the good.

An alternative reason for the ceasefire may be this:

The Obama administration told the Saudis the military campaign should be wrapped up quickly because it was no longer having the desired effect, senior US officials said. In the private messages, the administration said the campaign risked escalating into a broader conflict….

The “broader conflict” which President Barack Obama fears is one with Iran.  Never mind that someone needs to stand up to the Iranians and halt their expansion and their hegemonic dreams, and the Obama administration hasn’t the heart for it.  Never mind, too, that the Yemeni situation is only a small part of those dreams, and Iran is unlikely to force the question here.  Yet.

Signals

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An aircraft carrier has been sent to join the little flotilla sailing up and down the Gulf of Aden, and the Obama administration is very adamant about what it’s there for.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf insisted Tuesday that the US ships were “only” there to “ensure the shipping lanes remain open and safe”—and “not to do anything in terms of those Iranian ships.”

Regarding the premise that we intended anything serious in the waters off Yemen, like intercepting Iranian ships delivering weapons to their terrorists in Yemen, Harf was indignant:

That is blatantly untrue—so this discreet movement of US assets is for a discreet purpose.

President Barack Obama repeated the premise through his Press Secretary, Josh Earnest:

…the ships are in the region primarily to “protect the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.”

No, the signaling is quite clear, and Iran has received the message. Obama is so desperate for his “deal” with Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear weapons program that he’s perfectly willing to watch Iranian arms shipments to terrorists in the Middle East from close up. He’s perfectly willing to put our sailors so close that they can see the Iranian sailors biting their thumbs at us.

Ramadi and Strategy

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JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey said last week that losing Ramadi to the Daesh would be unimportant from a strategic perspective; it would have only symbolic importance.

I have a couple of thoughts about that. First, symbolism in a war has vast importance, to the morale of the defenders and to the morale of the attackers. Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo had no strategic importance whatsoever, but it was critically important: the symbolism of the raid—”we can hit you wherever we wish, whenever we wish”—had immediate impact on Japan’s strategic thinking and on American and Australian military and civilian morale, even though the raid did trivial physical damage.

So it is with Ramadi, especially for an Iraqi army that presently has no heart and little willingness to stand and fight, much less attack and fight. Tikrit, after all, was recaptured, to the extent it has been, by Iraqi militias and American bombing; the army itself played only a supporting role. Ramadi’s loss would simply add to the army’s mindset that it would only lose any encounter with Daesh. Ramadi’s loss also would add fuel to the ongoing conflict between Sunni Iraq and Shia Iraq. Symbolism matters in Iraq, too, and symbolic importance is…important.

Second, Doolittle’s raid came within the framework of an actual strategic plan for wresting the Pacific and its island nations back from Japan, driving Japan from the Asian mainland, and ultimately defeating Japan. In the present case, it’s entirely possible that Ramadi has no strategic importance, but this administration has no coherent strategy against which to measure Ramadi’s importance.

It’s Their Job

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Iranian President Hasan Rouhani doesn’t like it that in a republican democracy, legislatures, representing the plebes, get a say in what the republican democratic government does internationally—including agreeing to treaties and Executive Agreements. From this, he “accused” Congress of “meddling in sensitive negotiations” about Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

What the US Senate says, or what the US House of Representatives want, or what the extremists in the US are looking for, or what the US mercenaries in the region say, it doesn’t have anything to do with our government or our people…. We announce that the side that we deal with is not the US Senate or the House of Representatives—it is a group called the P5+1[.]

However, this thing has everything to do with our government and our people—us Americans on the other side of this…negotiation. And so Congress is obligated to say, to want, to look for.

Rouhani probably wants to (re)read the letter 47 of those US Senators sent him a bit ago.