Tag Archives: foreign policy

Deterrence

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Deterrence is one means of influencing another nation’s behavior.  It is, by its nature a passive activity, relying as it does on persuading another nation not to do something by threatening a response so powerful that any gain from the undesired behavior is overwhelmed by the loss from the threatened response.  One nation might deter another from initiating a nuclear attack, for instance, by threatening a nuclear response of devastating effect.

But deterrence, to be successful, relies on a number of factors, only some of which are under the control of the deterring nation.  One of those factors is actually having the ability to deliver the threatened response and the ability to defeat the other nation’s initiating action.  This is generally within the control of the deterring nation.  Either the United States, for instance, has the ability to deliver a devastating response and to defeat sufficiently the initial action, or we do not, and within limits, only we make the determination acquire/maintain those abilities.  Another factor in deterrence is the will to use that strength, should the nation we’re trying to deter act anyway.  This is a shared factor, though, depending not just on our actual will, but on the other nation’s perception of our will.  We can manage that perception only by acting meaningfully and decisively with lesser consequences in response to lesser actions.  If we do not deliver those lesser consequences, the nation we wish to deter will have no reason to believe we’ll respond with our described deterrence actions.  A third factor on which deterrence depends is the clarity of our position.  The consequences of the other nation’s action must be well understood by that nation.  This also is a shared factor: communication is a two-way street, and we must ensure that the other nation does get the message.  A fourth factor in deterrence is the other nation’s tolerance for the damage we’ll inflict should they strike and we respond as our deterrence position says we will.  The moment the other nation decides the cost is worth the gain, our deterrence ceases to exist, and we must adjust our deterrence—and defensive—posture.  And we must recognize the other nation’s tolerance for pain in order to make the adjustments.  This factor, other than our understanding, is entirely under the control of that other nation.

With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at our ability to deter today.

We say we do not want Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, going so far as insisting that such a thing is unacceptable.  How have we gone about pursuing that goal?  This administration began by extending an open hand to Iran, if only they would unclench their fist: we would negotiate with them, offer them incentives, including help with enriching uranium to the level that an Iranian nuclear power plant needs in order to function effectively.  In truth, the negotiation attempts did not originate with the Obama administration; prior administrations had been pursuing this path all along.  When it became clear that the open hand, the negotiations, were failing, then this administration began a parallel course of threatening ever stronger sanctions, and repeated attempts to apply them.

Indeed, President Obama insists that “this administration has systemically imposed the toughest sanctions on…Iran ever.  When we came into office, the world was divided.  Iran was unified and moving aggressively on its own agenda. Today, Iran is isolated and the world is unified in applying the toughest sanctions that Iran has ever experienced and it’s having an impact inside Iran.”

The Iranian response, though, has been continued effort, and progress, toward nuclear weapons acquisition.  The “toughest sanctions” were ineffective, and part of their ineffectiveness was the active interference with global sanctions by Russia and the People’s Republic of China.  Indeed, Iran has taken to openly attacking diplomatic missions in Teheran, and they’re dispersing their medium range missile systems, making them harder to target should Iran take overt military action.

Our deterrence effort vis-à-vis Iran has failed on a number of fronts.  We did not demonstrate any particular will to apply serious consequences at any stage of our interactions with Iran.  We have not demonstrated even the capability to apply serious consequences.  Even our message is muddled: we’ve never really spelled out the consequences of their continued efforts or of their actually getting nuclear weapons: we’ve only made fatuous remarks about sanctions and vague threats of “no option is off the table.”  Finally, Iran has determined that it’s willing to bear the costs we might inflict.

With Russia, it’s a slightly different story.  The question here is who is actually deterring whom.  The Russians object to our having a missile shield to protect against Iranian missiles (against northern Korea’s missiles, too, but Russia’s public objections have centered on a defensive deployment in Europe).  Shortly after President Obama took office, Russian objections became quite vociferous as we concluded agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to install components of the shield in each nation.  The Russians said that if we persisted, they would move nuclear weapons into western Russia from where they could strike Europe.  They also made direct threats to destroy Poland with nuclear strikes.  We canceled those agreements and agreed not to deploy a missile shield there.  (As an aside, keep in mind that this missile shield would have been part of that larger deterrence against Iranian use of their nuclear weapons—an ability to defeat a strike by them.

Now The Weekly Standard reports that

The Obama administration is…undertak[ing] what amounts to an off-schedule Nuclear Posture Review—one that ices out Defense and State Department experts usually consulted on nuclear issues.  It is also beginning a new round of talks with Moscow here in Washington next week that many observers believe will result in the United States offering to trade U.S. strategic weapons in exchange for reductions in Russian tactical weapons.

Further,

[T]he Obama administration is looking to make unilateral cuts….  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has suggested that to save money the administration might have to eliminate America’s land-based 450 single-warhead Minuteman III ICBMs (though ICBM sustainment is but a rounding error in the DoD budget)….”

It may be that Panetta’s threats are mere polemics in an attempt to protect the Defense budget from the cuts mandated by the Super Committee’s failure.  However, against the backdrop of Russia’s just concluded success at deterring us from deploying a defensive system—the flip side of which is our appeasement of them (which itself comes against the backdrop of our acquiescence in the Russian partition of an American ally, Georgia), it’s reasonable to ask whether we’re being further deterred, this time from having sufficient offensive weapons with which to respond to an attack against which we no longer can defend ourselves.  Understand: whether we’re conning the Russians (or conning ourselves) into accepting the decommissioning of supposedly obsolete ICBMs in return for their decommissioning of (obsolete) tactical missile systems or we’re being deterred from maintaining an offensive leg of our triad makes no difference.  We’ll lose a major fraction of our offensive capability.  Further, the tactical systems will be faster and cheaper to replace in the event of a breakout and arms race than will be the strategic systems.  And they will be more immediately decisive in a fight, especially one in which we have no defenses.

With no missile defense capability and with such reductions in our offensive capability, where is our ability to satisfy either the first factor in deterrence: the capability to respond?  And with the reduced capability to respond at all, the pain threshold is much harder to cross, also, giving Russia much less pause as they consider an offensive move.  Russia seems to be moving our behavior in directions satisfactory to it, however.

It’s different yet with the PRC, but not optimistically so.  We have a legal obligation to keep the Republic of China well enough armed with modern weapons that they can defeat an attack by the PRC.  Yet when we began the latest round of talks with Taiwan, the PRC objected so vociferously that we walked away from an initial sale of 66 modern F-16s, and agreed only to sell our ally a couple dozen of outmoded F-16s.

Further, the PRC is increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea, threatening American allies (vis., the Philippines) and potential allies (vis., Vietnam) and seizing key islands—including those that belong to the Philippines and Vietnam—and claiming them for itself.  The American response to this has been…silence.

Finally, DoD is on record as saying that the PRC is developing their own road-mobile ICBM (a capability which the Soviet Union had developed in the early days of mobile ICBMs), and they’ve dug a 3,000 mile tunnel system in which to hide their ICBM force.  They’ve also dismissed out of hand an offer of a joint weapons verification facility proposed by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Here, it’s clear that the PRC does not consider that we have the will to act, and so any ability to act does not concern them.  Nor have we said anything at all about consequences for their continued aggressiveness.  Finally, as they demonstrated with their human wave attacks in the Korean War, they’re perfectly willing, literally, simply to throw bodies into a fight until we run out of ammunition.  The degree of damage they’re willing to absorb is quite high.

So here we are with our deterrent capability.  Iran is about to acquire nuclear bombs, and it already has the missile systems with which to deliver them.

Russia has convinced us not to deploy a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.  Russia threatens our allies and any new, potential defensive systems we might deploy with nuclear attack, and it does so with impunity.  Indeed, the imbalance has reached the point where we can’t even determine for ourselves whether we will acquire/maintain the strength necessary for us to deter Russia.  We’re negotiating our arms levels with them.

The PRC threatens our allies and potential allies over sea resources and key islands in South China Sea and over our erstwhile willingness to provide the Republic of China the resources with which to resist a PRC invasion.

Given all of this, what happens when Iran gets its nuclear weapons?  Which of us will be deterred then?  From what else will we be deterred by Russia and the PRC?  What will we deter these three from doing?

Finally, a closely related aside on the question of appeasement: President Obama insists “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaida leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement.  Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that.”

Let’s also ask Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, and Kim Jong-il, how American strength and steadfastness is working out.  Oh, and congratulations to President Obama on his success in carrying out President Bush the Younger’s drone and bin Laden policies.

Apologies

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The US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, made some truly appalling remarks the other day, but what followed is even more so.  Gutman’s remarks were these:

There is and has long been some amount of anti-Semitism, of hatred and violence against Jews, from a small sector of the population who hate others who may be different or perceived to be different, largely for the sake of hating. Those anti-Semites are people who hate not only Jews, but Muslims, gays, gypsies, and likely any who can be described as minorities or different.

It is the area where every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus, and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.

Peace in the Middle East would indeed equate with a huge reduction of this form of labeled “anti-Semitism” here in Europe.

It seems, then, that at least some anti-Semitism results from tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.  Israel is condemned as a participant in the bigotry for the crime of insisting on defending itself.  Anti-Semitism, more generally, is trivialized by the attitude that “there always are haters.”  Gutman’s remarks, though, reverse the situation: the bigotry, which predates the existence of modern Israel and Palestine by some centuries, is the cause of the conflict, not the result.  The remarks demand a clear, unequivocal apology.

The official responses to this were worse.

To digress, for a moment, an apology consists of three things, as any child knows: first, a prompt acknowledgment by the one owing the apology of the wrong done; second, an expression of regret for that wrong and for the harm caused by that wrong; and third, the first two must be sincere.  Measures of sincerity include whether the apology occurs without prompting of any sort, the promptness of the apology, and the clarity of the expressions.

In response to the hue and cry over his remarks, Gutman had this to say:

I strongly condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms and deeply regret that my words were misinterpreted.

My personal history and the history of my family testify to the importance I attach to this subject and my unwavering commitment to fight anti-Semitism.

He regrets his audience misunderstood him, but he’s not the least sorry for what he said.  And we’re supposed to give extra credit because of his family history.

Then President Obama spoke up through his spokesman, Jay Carney:

Q    I’m wondering if you could explain what the U.S. ambassador to Belgium meant in his comments about anti-Semitism, tying them to Israel’s policy.

MR. CARNEY:  The fact is, as you know, we condemn—this administration and the United States condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms, and believe that there is never any justification for prejudice against the Jewish people or against Israel.  Ambassador Gutman has expressed his regret, noting that he, quote, “strongly condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms.”

And I would just point out, Jake, that this administration has consistently stood up against anti-Semitism and efforts to de-legitimize Israel, and we will continue to do so.  Our record on this speaks for itself.  Whether it was opposing one-sided efforts to single out Israel at the Human Rights Council, speaking out against incitement in the Arab world, or opposing efforts to shortcut negotiations at the United Nations.

Specifically to your question, I think the ambassador himself has addressed this, so I would direct you to his statements, in terms of interpreting what he meant.  But our position is quite clear.  And our record is even clearer.

Not a word of condemnation of, or even remonstration against, Gutman’s remarks, nor an apology from Obama for his ambassador’s words.  Just an injunction to go see what he said.

The State Department couldn’t even figure out what the problem was, as this confused exchange demonstrates:

Q: I’ll start with Ambassador Gutman’s speech from last week.  Does the—did the administration sign off on this, or was it vetted by anyone in EUR or NEA? And does the administration agree with the sentiments that he expressed in his speech?

MR. TONER: I think you saw—actually, let me start again. I’m not aware that his remarks were cleared back here in Washington. He made very clear in a subsequent statement that they were his thoughts or his remarks. He did condemn—he—and was very vocal about condemning anti-Semitism in all its forms, and I believe he expressed regret that his words might have been taken out of context….

Q: I don’t know—it’s a pretty easy question. Yes or no?

MR. TONER: It is a—it is—it is—it was his remarks. It was his opinion—

Q: So he wasn’t speaking on—the ambassador to Belgium, he was not speaking—

MR. TONER: He was not speaking on behalf—I think he’s said as much. He said it was his remarks and he was speaking on his own—

Q: No, he didn’t. He did not say that. He—but he was not speaking on behalf of the U.S. government?

MR. TONER: I don’t believe so.

Q: So the—OK, the ambassador to Belgium shows up at a conference in Europe, in Belgium, and he is not speaking on behalf of the U.S. government. Is that correct?

MR. TONER: The ambassador was expressing his views on an issue.

Q: They’re not the view—so these—

MR. TONER: He subsequently—he subsequently issued a statement clarifying that he was—and expressing regret if his remarks were taken out of context. He then said that he does condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms and in fact pointed to his own family history as a—as a testament to that.

Q: So are you—well, I understand that. But you’re saying that he was speaking as a private citizen, not as the U.S. ambassador?

MR. TONER: Well, of course, when—any time an ambassador speaks, he is representing the United States….

Q: Can I just follow up briefly on that? Some Republicans have called for the administration to fire Ambassador Gutman. Is there—does the administration have a response to that, have a position on—

MR. TONER: We have full confidence in him.

“Could you repeat the question?”

No hint of an apology in any of the statements or exchanges.  There were only “clarifications” and deflections from Gutman, avoidance and deflection from Obama, and an inability even to understand the problem from State.  And it was all done in response to the uproar, and not at all out of any recognition of, and acceptance of responsibility for, wrong-doing.

Even worse, this failure is not unique to any particular party; it seems to be the modern vogue.

US and Russia: Relations Re-reset

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Spiegel Online International‘s Matthias Schepp provides an interesting view of US-Russian relations, via his quasi-interview with the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin.  The nominal topic was the US missile defense shield that President Obama keeps chattering about installing in New Europe against rogue states like Iran.  But there’s far more in the subtext.

Ambassador Rogozin asks the question, “If space aliens were to completely disarm Iran, would Washington continue with its plans to build a missile defense system in Poland?”  Of course, this is a cynically disingenuous question: given the Russian obstruction to any sort of effort to prevent the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons—which obstruction they have claimed to be based purely on Russian economic self-interest—they’d only attempt to interfere with their space aliens, also.

Instead, Russia demands that we not install a missile defense capability; it demands a written guarantee that our overall military capability will not increase to the point that Russia won’t have a chance against us, even with nuclear weapons; and it demands that our missiles be unable to reach Russian territory.

Rogozin objects in all seriousness that, “For America, it is all about making itself impregnable.”

Here’s the backdrop to the present Russian demands.  President Bush the Elder was at pains to avoid anything that might embarrass surviving Russia in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union; he took great care for Russian sensibilities, including delaying contacts with, and aid to, the ‘Stans that had just been freed from Soviet Union dominance.  We supported Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization.  We extended economic aid, and economic policy advice and assistance—at its request—to Russia.  The Obama administration has appeased Russia concerning their domestic human rights abuses.  The Obama administration even has accepted Russia’s Anschluss-like occupation and partition of Georgia.

But it’s unacceptable to the Russians that we should want to ensure our survival in a hostile world.  In essence, the Russians want to continue to be assured that they can destroy us at will.

In support of their demands, the Russians have threatened Poland with nuclear immolation if that ally goes ahead with a proposed deployment of an arm of our missile defense shield, they threaten to target our missile defense capability with nuclear weapons, they threaten Europe with nuclear targeting, and they threaten to withdraw from the just-negotiated START treaty.

Russia both actively supports Iranian nuclear weapons development and actively obstructs our efforts to derail that development.

Russia even threatens a new arms race if we persist in being rude enough to wish to protect ourselves.  This, though, contradicts that claimed Russian economic self-interest—it’s a race we can win as decisively on economic, technological, and military grounds as we won the last, which economic competition destroyed the Soviet Union.  The Russians know this.

No, the motive behind their support for Iranian nuclear arming and their insistence that we take no measures to protect ourselves and our allies is nothing more than their continued, naked enmity toward us.

Censeo Carthagem esse delendam, was Scipio the Elder’s constant refrain.  The Russians actively support a nuclear-weaponed Iran.  The Russians actively demand that we be unable to defend ourselves against missile attack or to respond to one.

Hmm….

Iran “Sanctions”

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By a vote of 100-0, the Senate last week passed its most stringent Iran sanctions bill to date. The vote was on an amendment by Senators Robert Menendez (D, NJ) and Mark Kirk (R, IL), and it would:

  • Prohibit [maintenance of] accounts on foreign financial institutions engaged in non-petroleum-related transactions with the Central Bank of Iran after 60 days;
  • Impose sanctions on foreign financial institutions, including central banks, engaged in petroleum-related transactions with the Central Bank of Iran after 180 days…
  • Provide a humanitarian exception for food, medicine and medical devices; and
  • Provide the president with an unclassified (with classified annex, if necessary) national security waiver authority every 120 days.

The administration opposed it.  Their beef this time is that it might raise the price of oil.  It might antagonize nations that do business with Iran and support the acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration has opposed anything firmer  than very stern finger-shaking where Iran is concerned for the last three years, preferring instead “engagement” and chit-chat, which the Iranian regime has alternately rebuffed or ignored.

With the Obama administration so determined to appease a non-nuclear Iran, to what will it stoop after Iran obtains nuclear weapons?

America’s Future—Foreign Policy Principles, Part IVa

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In this companion post to Part IV of my foreign policy principles, I offer some means (far from exhaustive) of recognizing friend, ally, enemy, and foe.  The ideas I describe may seem obviously simplistic; however, in light of the incoherence of the present administration’s foreign policy—and that of prior administrations post-Reagan—it seems that an enumeration is useful.

In general, in any dispute there will be those who are “with us” and those who are “against us”—and some will always try to sit out the affair.  Of those who are “with us”, we need to know who is a friend, and who is an ally. An initial filter might seem to be a shared core set of beliefs.  This characteristic is highly useful, but I suggest that it’s only a secondary filter whose value is greatest when used to assess the potential durability of a relationship and thus to help discriminate a friend from an ally; it cannot, though, define either.

What are the essential differences between a friend and an ally?  The distinction lies in motive and purpose of the relationship.  An ally is with us against a common foe, for so long as the joint opposition suits our individual purposes—the allies of WWII, for instance.  Similarly, an ally is with us to achieve a common purpose for so long as the coordinated effort in the achieving suits us both—the building and manning of a space station, for instance.  For a friend, these short-term common ends are irrelevant; indeed, we might not work together on very many endeavors at all.  We simply associate with each other freely and easily.  Our bond is deeper, and far less a matter of convenience.

How might we recognize a friend?  A friend is a nation that moves to stand with us, that sends its assistance unasked in our moment of need, or that moves to stand with us in a conflict that has been thrust on us by another.  Our common efforts—military, political, diplomatic, economic, etc.—are joint endeavors, not merely coordinated actions of allies.  An example of a friend might be England and Poland, who stood with us in Iraq and Afghanistan despite their own misgivings about those wars or their duration.  An example might be the United States, who at Japan’s request, sent an envoy to northern Korea to support Japanese efforts to recover their citizens, stolen by the northern Koreans in the ’70s and ’80s, despite the harm sending an American envoy did to our efforts to prevent this entity from acquiring nuclear weapons.

This is not to say that a friend always takes our side uncritically, although one might on occasion.  Having criticisms and standing with us despite them is the mark of an even stronger friendship.  Their doing so with criticism, though, puts a premium on us: it creates in us a moral obligation beyond our simple duty to reciprocate in their hour.  We owe a friend thoughtful consideration of their criticisms; even more than that, we owe either a change in our own behavior where their criticism is legitimate, or a clear and unequivocal answer where we disagree with the criticism.

And that’s it.  It’s a short list containing a single way to tell a friend, especially compared to the much longer list of ways by which to recognize an enemy or a foe.  But that’s as it should be.  Our friends are “high, bright, and clear,” while our enemies and foes lurk in the shadows.

How do we recognize an ally?  Some recognition keys include offers, or accepting our offers, to work toward a common goal, whether this be sharing costs in a resource development project, or sharing financial data concerning a third nation of common interest.  Recognition keys also include offers, or accepting offers, to jointly oppose a third nation or non-national entity interfering with matters of mutual interests.  Nations working together to reduce piracy off the Horn of Africa are allies, for instance, as well as those nations of WWII mentioned above.  Recognition keys further include willingness to permit over-flight, transit transportation, staging, and so on in their territory to facilitate our prosecution of a conflict or other endeavor.  Granting basing rights to facilitate supply delivery to a combat zone is an example of an act of an ally.

While understanding who is our friend and who is an ally is important, it’s arguably even more important to recognize those who are “against us,” including distinguishing between our enemies and our foes.

An enemy is actively attacking us or planning to do so.  The difficulty here sometimes lies in recognizing the attack.  It isn’t always as open as a Schleiffen Plan’s storming across a border or an Operation AI’s aerial bombing attack on a naval base.  In the 21st century, there are many more ways of executing an attack and of prosecuting the subsequent war than merely shooting at us.  It might not even be a formal nation-state conducting the attack; rather the entity might be a non-national organization of terrorists.  Attacks might consist of cyber-attacks that impede or destroy nationally critical networks or that plant malware to be used for this at a different time.  Attacks might consist of economic embargos.  Indeed, the war may be purely one-sided, ranging from the asymmetrical warfare perpetrated by non-national terrorist organizations to a war where only one side is actually fighting because the victim of the war isn’t even aware of it: those cyber-attacks, for instance.

On the other hand, our enemy may “merely” be carrying out a collection of acts, short of legally defined war, that are designed to harm our friends and allies or us to the point of tightly circumscribing freedom of action or even to the point of subjugation.

In particular, we cannot accurately estimate other nations’ relationships to us or their intent by actively offering excuses for their behavior (vis., the Chinese want sea bottom resources, and this justifies aggressively seeking control of the South China Sea, at the expense of that area’s other bordering nations: the Republic of the Philippines, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Republic of China).  On the contrary, such actions must be assessed, and their underlying motives must be estimated, by their effect on our friends and allies and on us.  And we must understand that the other nation’s imperatives and motives may be nothing like ours.  It is legitimate, despite this though, to assume that the other nation’s leadership, in taking those actions, are neither stupid nor ignorant; they understand fully the impact—and so the implications—of their actions on our friends and allies and on us.  In essence, then, a nation’s publicly-stated intent is largely irrelevant; we must read their actions and assess their motives in light of those impacts.

How do we recognize an enemy, then?  Only by recognizing the shadowy keys of inimical behavior.  To repeat, understanding the other nation’s or non-national organization’s imperatives, so that we can (better, if still imperfectly) understand its motives, is critical, as is the fact that we must work from the premise that the leadership in question is highly intelligent and highly motivated: they know what they are doing, and they know the effect of their actions on us. We can infer their goals from their actions’ predictable effects.

What are our recognition keys?  Acts of enmity include these (a non-exhaustive list) in addition to classic military attacks:

  • deliberately restricting our access to critical resources—oil, for instance, or rare earth metals—for the purpose of damaging us.
  • actively moving to seize control of international waters whose free navigation and/or freedom of access to undersea resources are important to us or to our friends or allies.
  • harassing our ships in international waters or our aircraft in international airspace.
  • shipping, as part of ordinary trade, poisoned products: formaldehyde-laced gypsum board, or toxic baby food, for instance.
  • manipulating their currency value so as to damage our economy.
  • attacking our computing and/or communications networks, or our computer-controlled infrastructure, with cyberware capable of damaging/destroying those targets, or planting malware that will be used “later” for that purpose.
  • providing aid to terrorist organizations plotting, or which have carried out, attacks on us or our friends or allies.
  • moving to facilitate the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by other nations or non-national organizations that are hostile to us and/or our friends or allies.
  • actively arming those who intend to use those weapons against us or our friends or allies.
  • directly threatening our allies with nuclear attack if we don’t comply with the threatening nation’s wishes.
  • deploying nuclear weapons so as to carry out those threats.

As the number actions from this such a list which a nation or non-national organization carries out goes up, so does the clarity of that nation’s enmity toward us increase.

There is one more class of nation or non-national organization to be identified, and that is what I’ll call a foe.  In this usage, I consider a foe to be an ally of our enemy, loosely analogously to an ally of us.  A foe works deliberately against the interests of our friend or ally or of us as a common goal with another nation, but only for so long as that commonality of purpose exists.  As with identifying an enemy, the recognition keys are shadowy and unclear by themselves.  That list, though, is the same as the keys to identifying an enemy, with the single difference of motive.  This difference is that the foe, of its own volition, is following another nation’s lead in the actions; it is not acting as the primary decision-maker.  (As an aside, a nation or non-national organization forced into the role of foe, but which would not act inimically were it left to its own choices, represents a point of fracture within the enemy’s structure.  This, though, is the subject of a different thread.)

There are two items which I have deliberately elided in order to maintain a certain clarity, and these are the overlaps possible between the actions of an enemy or foe and the actions of an aggressive competitor, even the (less common) overlap with the actions of a friend or ally.  This overlap is a major factor in the need to understand the nation in question and its motives.

The other item is the nation that is neither friend or ally nor enemy or foe, mentioned briefly above.  Such spectators are neutral in some sense, and by holding themselves on the sidelines, tend to render themselves irrelevant to the essentials of the struggles of the active players.