Tag Archives: foreign policy

In Defense of Drone Strikes

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I want to expand on a couple of points from a Stratfor article by George Friedman in which he talks about the use of drones on a modern terrorist war battlefield.  Friedman ultimately finds the utility of relying on drone strikes of dubious value.  Without addressing his utility conclusion, my own conclusion is that drone strikes are a legitimate application of our national defense imperative.

Friedman suggests in a posited anti-drone argument that

What makes unmanned aerial vehicle strikes controversial is that they are used to deliberately target specific individuals…. The modern battlefield—and the ancient as well—has been marked by anonymity.  The enemy was not a distinct individual but an army, and the killing of soldiers in an enemy army did not carry with it any sense of personal culpability.  In general, no individual soldier was selected for special attention, and his death was not an act of punishment.

…the objection is that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is not so much an act of war as an act of judgment and, as such, violates international law that requires due process for a soldier being judged and executed.

When is the judgment carried out, though?  In a conventional war, an overall judgment is carried out at the war’s outset, with the decision to enter into it, and any enemy or collection of enemies after that entry is shot on sight.  In the terror war, the same total judgment is made as that of the conventional war, differing only in its mechanics—now it’s most often a two-step process.  A secondary judgment is carried out in real time in the terror war that was subsumed into the conventional war’s original judgment: an individual is identified (including being discriminated from an innocent civilian) in real time, within that larger judgment’s framework, and the strike carried out.  But this two-step process is not materially different from the totality of judgment for the conventional war, and it differs not at all from a two-step process often explicitly carried out in a conventional war: consider the capture of a city by ground troops during which the classic house-to-house combat occurs.  The framework judgment—kill the enemy wherever you find him—was carried out at the war’s start.  Now, in the house-to-house environment, the second step is carried out: is this an enemy soldier, or is it an innocent civilian?

Friedman later says

the United States is engaged in a unique sort of war.  Al Qaeda and the allied groups and sympathetic individuals that comprise the international jihadist movement are global, dispersed and sparse.  They are not a hierarchical military organization.  Where conventional forces have divisions and battalions, the global jihadist movement consists primarily of individuals who at times group together into distinct regional franchises, small groups and cells, and frequently even these groups are scattered.
…
The primary unit is the individual, and the individuals—particularly the commanders—isolate themselves and make themselves as difficult to find as possible.  Given their political intentions and resources, sparse forces dispersed without regard to national boundaries use their isolation as the equivalent of technological stealth to make them survivable and able to carefully mount military operations against the enemy at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways.

I’ll elide the violation of laws of war at which Friedman hints here and focus on the dispersal aspect.  I suggest that this is not so much a unique sort of war as much as it’s an extension of conventional war tactics carried to an extreme, albeit with a unique set of targets and goals.  The terrorists’ dispersal is simply an extension of conventional infantry tactics writ to a global scale.  Prior to the opening of an infantry assault, the attacking force often attempts to infiltrate as much as possible—through stealth—the defenders’ positions before firing the first shot.  The terror war’s terrorist simply carries this to the next logical step: instead of several infantry units, each consisting of a number of individuals doing the infiltrating, the terrorists’ small units now consists of individual terrorists doing the infiltrating—or the plotting of the attack.

In either of these cases, the drone strike is well within the limits of war: it’s a valid means of killing an enemy—here a terrorist, rather than a soldier—when and where he’s been found, and it’s a valid response to catching a terrorist in his infiltration process (at any stage, from planning it to mid-execution) and interrupting his intended assault.

China’s Economic Course

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In a nation that’s facing a demographic implosion (a birth rate of around 1.5 against a rate of roughly 2.1 required to maintain current population levels, and an aging population (expected by 2050 (the current generation plus their children) to have four workers in the age band 50-64 for every three aged 15-29, and for every 100 people aged 20-64, 45 over 65), that chronically lives on the edge of famine, and that has a population increasingly aware of what could be compared to what is, the PRC government is not treating its poor or its farmers (22% of whom will be over 65 as early as 2030—the current generation) very well.  And so it’s not treating its society or its economy with any foresight.

For instance:

In December 2010, when [Fu Liang]  says a campaign of harassment drove him off the small plot where he ran a fish farm, the local government paid Mr Fu just nine yuan ($1.45) a square meter for it.

The plot was quickly resold for 640 yuan [$103.11] per square meter to a developer, a national database of land transactions shows.  The developer has built villas that sell for 6,900 yuan [$1,111.67] a square meter.

A markup of a factor of nearly 10 at each stage.  Fu’s 9 yuan meter of fish farm was worth far more than he was paid.  In another sense, it was priceless, since he didn’t want to sell.

Mr Fu now is unemployed, one among tens of thousands of former farmers who inhabit the impoverished fringes of Chengdu, a city in southwestern China.  He has no heart to start another business.  “What’s the point if the government can just destroy it?” he says.

With no sense of irony, the PRC’s new president, Xi Jinping, claims to want strengthen that demographically unstable society and its unstable economy—through property (land) ownership.  After all, as Fu pointed out,

precarious land rights mean little incentive to invest in improving agricultural output, and no asset that can be sold to fund a move to the city.  Low compensation for the millions ousted from their land—coupled with ineligibility for social benefits because they aren’t registered as urban residents—means for many a life of poverty on the edges of the cities.

And no incentive to bring additional children—boys only, mind, in a mandated one child environment, with the bias’ own long-run population sustainability implications—into the world.  And the one-child policy was put in place explicitly to achieve the population reduction about to occur sharply.

Fat chance for any serious change:

“Push forward scientific development and advance social harmony,” proclaims a banner draped across one construction site, parroting a catch phrase of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao.  Mr Fu, surveying a noodle bowl of highway overpasses, said, “A few years ago, this was all farmland.”

Because farmland—the means of feeding the population—stands in the way of progress.  Xi will have a great deal of trouble reversing that, especially with the money to be made converting farmland to urban land.

Some Thoughts on the Politics of Missile Defense

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I’ll leave aside the technical difficulties of a missile defense; these are just engineering problems, most of which have already been solved, with the remainder having solutions understood and under development.  I’ll only write about some of the political factors involved in our country defending itself.

I operate in this post from this First Principle: we formed the social compact that created the US explicitly to do two things: one is to protect individual liberty and facilitate an environment within which each of us also could satisfy our individual responsibilities.  The other is to protect our nation as a whole from outside disaster.  A corollary to this is the defense of our friends and allies, since their health, independence, and freedom contribute to our own and so facilitate our defense.

A missile defense system is intended to support that second imperative—national defense—and missile defense in Europe (and in eastern Asia when the alliances can be arranged) is a component of that.

There are a number of objections to our having an active, and forward, missile defense capability.

  • Russia is also critical of the plan, which it believes is really intended to counter its missiles.
  • While it might seem logical for the US to want to have a defense against Russian missiles, it’s not so simple.  A new missile defense system aimed at Russia could undermine the balance between the nuclear powers, prompting Moscow to add to its arsenal and build up its own defenses.
  • [P]lans have gained momentum in Europe with the signing of basing agreements in Poland, Romania and Turkey, as well as backing by NATO.  But Russia, while initially welcoming the plan, now strongly opposes it, especially the interceptors in the final stage.  Russia fears those interceptors could catch its intercontinental missiles launched at the US.

Aside from my (minor) meme that if the Russians don’t like it, it must be a good idea, whatever “it” might be, there are a number of reasons why these objections are silly.  Say, arguendo, that our anti-Iranian missile defense system does have the capability of countering Russian missiles.  This isn’t at all farfetched, since the end-stage of our missile defense system includes a capability against all ICBMs (Russia’s included).  The Russians don’t have any intention of attacking us or our allies.  Do they?  Since they…do not…their plaint that a defense system might interfere with their non-existent attack is a non sequitur.  Besides, if they do attack, our government has a duty to shoot down those missiles—as well as to respond with the total defeat of Russia and their war.

Deploying a functional missile defense system could push the Russians into adding “to its arsenal and build[ing] up its own defenses?”  They’re already doing that.  However, even in our current economic strait, this is an arms race Russia cannot sustain.  Russia’s economy is too dependent on oil and gas exports, and that economy already is failing (and not only due to falling oil and gas prices on the world market).  They don’t have the money.  Besides, this is a rerun of a play we’ve already seen under identical circumstances: the failure of the Soviet Union and its subsequent dissolution was contributed to heavily by their effort to sustain a missile and missile defense effort in the face of our earlier, Reaganite missile defense system development.

  • [R]elocating missile interceptors planned for Poland and possibly Romania to ships on the North Sea, could be diplomatically explosive.

If setting ourselves to defend ourselves and our friends and allies is diplomatically explosive, that’s a problem for those with plans to attack us, not for us.

  • It [Europe-based missile defense] would undermine prospects for further cuts in nuclear weapons—a priority for President Barack Obama—and could also hurt US-Russian cooperation on other issues of international importance.

We’ve reduced our nuclear capacity below military viability, already.  We should be rebuilding/modernizing, not engaging in further cuts.  Beyond that, this is another red herring.  Stipulating a need for further cuts anyway, a viable defense against nuclear (missile) attack can only facilitate a willingness to reduce or eliminate expensive, no longer viable weapons systems.  When facing an effective defensive system,  there are two major options: overwhelming it with massive numbers—an enormously expensive option—or improving penetration aids and developing offensive systems that bypass the defenses.  The latter option doesn’t require much of an investment in nuclear weapons.

Moreover, Russia isn’t cooperating with us on anything, so there’s nothing here to hurt.  See their active obstruction of our, and of international, efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons development program.  See, also, their active support for, and consequent blocking of efforts to curb or replace, a Syrian régime that has butchered 60,000 of its people in the last 18 months.  After Afghanistan, their “cooperation” won’t be even be necessary there, and as it is, it’s an iffy cooperation: they’ve already tried to get Kirghizstan to stop letting us use their bases, and we had to greatly increase the rent to be able to continue.

OK, one technical item:

  • Romania [is] a poor location for an interceptor to protect the US.  …the Polish site would work only if the US developed capabilities to launch interceptors while an Iranian missile was in its short initial phase of powered flight.

However, Romania is well situated to defend Europe from Iran—or Russia, or China.

Additionally, intercepting missiles during boost already is under development, and this isn’t as difficult (relative to interception in any other phase of flight) as it might seem (only detection and reaction times are somewhat compressed).  Missiles still boosting are not yet at maximum velocity (they are still boosting), and they’ve not yet released their warhead(s), which greatly increases the interception problem, nor have they yet released their decoys and other countermeasures, which also greatly magnify the interception problem.

There are no coherent political reasons for not deploying an effective, and extensive, missile defense system around the world.

We’re Capable of So Much More

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In a related article, I described how even Progressive Europe recognizes the retreat of the US from the global stage and from our responsibilities as a major power.  Yet we have the economic and resource capacity to do so much better, as Spiegel International Online notices.  Fracking provides an example of both our capacity and of our willful impotence.

The United States is sitting on massive natural gas and oil reserves that have the potential to shift the geopolitical balance in its favor.  Worries are increasing in Russia and the Arab states of waning influence and falling market prices.

And

American drilling experts began using a method called “fracking,” with which oil and gas molecules can be extracted from dense shale rock formations.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the United States will replace Russia as the world’s largest producer of natural gas in only two years.  The Americans could also become the world’s top petroleum producers by 2017.

And

…the boom could generate 600,000 new jobs, and some experts even believe that up to 3 million new jobs could be created in the coming years.

And

…the United States will benefit the most from the development of shale gas and oil resources.  …the political threat potential of oil producers like Iran will decline. Optimists assume that, in about 15 years, the United States will no longer have to send any aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf to guarantee that oil tankers can pass unhindered through the Strait of Hormuz….

However.  There’s always a however.

President Barack Obama’s EPA continues to manufacture “investigations” of ground water pollution from fracking where none exists—their Wyoming fiasco, for instance.  His EPA continues its war on oil, gas, and coal by instituting output regulations that Congress already had rejected.

Obama continues to slow-walk oil and gas drilling permits on Federal lands and at offshore sites.  He has moved to cancel unused oil leases, never caring that the lessees had been reluctant to act on their leases due to uncertainty over Obama’s handling of hydrocarbons generally.

Obama even is slow-walking approval (and that approval is not a foregone conclusion, even now) of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, now that all environmental objections have been cleared with Nebraska’s approval of an alternate route.  This pipeline doesn’t directly address the resource explosion that fracking provides, but it remains symptomatic of his administration’s disdain for practical energy self-sufficiency.

It’s very unclear whether we will be allowed to realize the fruits of this technology and to bring into use these vast energy resources.

Paper Tiger

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We’re in the middle of a war far more damaging, far more threatening to our survival as a free nation, than wars President Barack Obama is so proudly walking away from.  This is a cyberwar that the People’s Republic of China is waging against us, and we’re losing it.  Badly.

One set of incidents includes this:

[Wall Street] Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. said Thursday that the paper’s computer systems had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers, apparently to monitor its China coverage.  New York Times Co disclosed Wednesday night that its flagship newspaper also had been the victim of cyberspying.

Every computer in the NYT was hacked, and every password of every journalist (among other things) was taken.  The reason was the two newspapers’ articles critical of PRC leadership.  And they did this with ease and with impunity.  The hacking went on for months and only recently was stopped, maybe.  And that’s just a couple of newspapers.

There are no consequences for the PRC or for individual hackers, because the US is utterly powerless to do anything.

President Barack Obama is talking and shaking his finger very firmly at the Chinese, however.

The Obama administration is considering more assertive action against Beijing to combat a persistent cyber-espionage campaign it believes Chinese hackers are waging against U.S. companies and government agencies.

And

…the administration is preparing a new National Intelligence Estimate that, when complete, is expected to detail the cyberthreat, particularly from China, as a growing economic problem.  One official said it also will cite more directly a role by the Chinese government in such espionage.

Yeah, that’ll show them.

Erstwhile Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview on her way out the door,

We have to begin making it clear to the Chinese—they’re not the only people hacking us or attempting to hack us—that the United States is going to have to take action to protect not only our government’s, but our private sector, from this kind of illegal intrusions.  There’s a lot that we are working on that will be deployed in the event that we don’t get some kind of international effort under way[.]

This war has been underway for a number of years, our vulnerability is uncorrected, and we’re “going to have to take action?”  We’re not already?  Clinton let the cat out of the bag on our capacity to protect ourselves later in that same interview:

Obviously this can become a very unwelcome and even dangerous tit-for-tat that could be a crescendo of consequences, here at home and around the world, that no one wants to see happen[.]

This administration is afraid to respond, because striking back might angrify those who are hurting us.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, exposes with his commentary another aspect of the problem:

In the next year there will be an effort to figure out a way to engage the Chinese more energetically.  The issue now is how do we get the Chinese to take this more seriously as a potentially major disruption to the relationship.

This flows, though, from a false premise: the Chinese don’t care about our relationship as much as we do, and they see the relationship materially differently from us.  We’re also too desperate to have a relationship with them.  Indeed, in an aptly titled editorial (“Barbarians at the Digital Gate”), the WSJ notes

…hacking—both for purposes of monitoring and to steal commercial intellectual property or government secrets—has become the Chinese way.

You can see from all the idle chit-chat—we’re still trying to talk to the PRC and still avoiding concrete action—that our government is too timid, too powerless, and too ignorant actually to do anything to protect our country.