Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Asia

  • Same Old “Peace Talks”

    Call me a pessimist or a downer, but I’m truly skeptical about the sincerity of Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas on closing the book on this conflict.

    Despite some confidence building measures from both sides in the last year — like Netanyahu’s temporary settlement freeze in the West Bank and Abbas’ clampdown on radical Palestinians — the Israeli and Palestinian delegations are at polar opposites on every major issue.

    Rumors are already going around in the Israeli press that Netanyahu is kowtowing to the right on resuming settlement expansion when the moratorium ends September 26.

    A weak and indecisive Abbas is looking for any excuse to pull out of the talks, for he really didn’t want to engage the Israelis in the first place. It took some extra cajoling from American diplomats George Mitchell and Hillary Clinton to convince the tired Abbas to travel to Washington. (more…)

  • High Noon in the Maldives

    Two years after the Maldives attainted the Wilsonian democracy, it’s witnessing a classic test of democratic ideals with a political struggle emerging between President Mohamed Nasheed and the opposition dominated parliament which has given Islamic terrorism a foothold in the young nation. The struggle has “invited” regional mediation from Sri Lanka with the countries as China, India and Pakistan wanting to have a crack at solving the problem as well. The United States, meanwhile, have urged Malé to accept international (i.e., not regional) mediation.

    Now, what worries India and the United States the most is that with the Maldives struggling with its infant democracy, there is every chance of the political chaos being used by jihadi extremists to use the island nation as a springboard for terrorism. Indian intelligence was alerted recently from Western sources that the internationally banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is based in Pakistan, had been trying to set up base in isolated islands of the Maldives. The group may well use the Maldives, which has largely a Sunni Muslim population, to launch attacks throughout South Asia.

    One instance when Islamic militancy raised its head was on September 29, 2007 when the Sultan Park bombing in Malé took place; the first ever Islamist terror strike in the Maldives. Though Islamic militancy isn’t entirely new to the Maldives — this started in the early 1980s under President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom — what is new is the clash between Salafi Sunni traditions versus the Shāfi’ī Sunni traditions. The latter is a culmination of the indigenous Maldivian culture whereas the former was imported through the return of students from the Arab world and Pakistan. Many of the “hardcored” Islamic motivated students are located in the southern atolls of the Maldives. They call themselves Super Salafis.

    Small scale insurgency attacks started in the Maldives after it was believed that President Gayoom, who came to power in 1978 by citing his Islamic credentials polished at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, ditched his Islamic agenda. Now with the more Western liberal Oxford educated President Nasheed in power, the fissures between the Salafis and the ruling establishment has only increased. It’s particularly evident in the southern atolls. Precisely for this reason, the Maldives’ government is engaging with India to set up underground radars on all of its 26 atolls.

    There are reports which also suggest that there’s an increase in the number of tourists from Pakistan to the Maldives. Annually, the islands hosts about 700,000 tourists, most of them from Europe and the United States which is part of the reason why Western governments are so concerned that jihadists might imitate the 2002 bombing that occurred in Bali, Indonesia.

    Politically in the Maldives the government and opposition started a dialogue to ease tension on the advice of US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake Jr. Blake traveled to Malé to mediate between the opposition and president while Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the capital on July 7 on invitation from his Maldivian counterpart to help him out of the matrix that is the current political predicament. It’s to be noted that Rajapakse has political capital in the Maldives for successfully annihilating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last year.

    As the great American poet Mark Twain observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” In the case of the Maldives that sounds perfectly apt as the islands descend into a political chaos much like it did twenty years ago. At the time, in November 1988, Abdullah Luthufi and some eighty armed mercenaries of the Sri Lankan People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) attempted to overthrow the Maldivian government but failed when Indian forces intervened with some 1,600 troops send by air to restore order. This act helped seal Indo-Maldives relations and it was a classic example of the application of India’s Monroe Doctrine.

    The present situation has not gone unnoticed in the capitals of today’s Asian giants. India considers the Maldives within the ambit of its Monroe Doctrine. In August 2009 a defense pact was signed between India and the Maldives. The last thing New Delhi wants is to have the islands succumb to internal power struggle with Islamic militancy on the rise around the Indian Ocean. China has active trade relations with the Maldives and it’s watching the ongoing political fiasco in Malé with great interest.

    The seeds of the present discord in the Maldives go back to the 2009 parliamentary election when the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) led by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom managed to get only a simple majority in parliament with the help of the People’s Alliance (PA) and some independents. President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has 28 representatives and the support of four independents in the 77 seat parliament.

    The Maldives function under a multiparty system with the president assembling a cabinet with parliamentary approval. Parliament also has the power to remove a minister with a motion of non confidence. Though DRP gained control of the legislature it fell short of the twothirds majority needed to impeach the president. At the same time, President Nasheed can’t dismiss the assembly until it completes its full five year term. The outcome has been a political deadlock.

    The crisis reached its height in June when thirteen members of Nasheed’s cabinet resigned. The reason cited was somewhat new in any parliamentary democracy: they claimed to have “working problems” with parliament. Though the ministers were reappointed at the insistence of Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa who undertook a one day goodwill tour to the Maldives on July 7 and managed to get the government and the opposition to agree to form a committee to address the political problem in the Maldives, the fissure is bound to last.

    Historically, the Maldives had their first constitution in 1932. Since, the country was ruled as a constitutional monarchy. A republic was established in January 1953 but it was short lived and the monarchy was restored in August of that same year. A second republic was proclaimed in November 1968. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom became the second president of the republic in 1978 and held power till the decisive October 2008 elections when Nasheed secured the presidency.

    The problem with the Maldives’ politics is multiplied by the paradox of its constitution. The constitution, which was adopted in August 2008, establishes a presidential system of government though vests significant power with parliament. It is a classic example of decentralization with extended checks and balances. This becomes problematic in case parliament is controlled by the opposition as is the case in the Maldives today. The opposition is then able to obstruct the core functions of the executive, such as raising taxes and providing subsidies.

    The escalating political rift in the Maldives casts doubt upon Malé’s ability to host the 17th South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation Summit next year. The Maldives were supposed to host the 16th SAARC summit in July 2008 which the government was unable to facilitate because of preparations for the October elections.

    Those elections led Mohamed Nasheed to victory against then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Gayoom was considered an oppressive ruler with a record of being Asia’s longest serving head of state; Gayoom was in power for thirty consecutive years.

    In many ways, President Nasheed was thought of as the Maldives’s Barack Obama. Just like Obama won the November 2008 elections in the United States on a message of hope and change, Nasheed was able to overthrow Gayoom’s “regime” campaigning on a message of “audacity of hope.” Like Obama, in many ways, Nasheed comes off far too liberal in a conservative society as the Maldives however which is populated by 300,000 Sunni Muslims. It remains to be seen whether President Nasheed will be able to bring his dissents and opposition together in the young democratic nation.

    In conclusion it must be noted that the Maldives are in great strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, all great powers that aspired to control the sea have sought to establish a base there — Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and more recently, the Soviet Union. The southernmost island of the Maldives, the Gan Island in the Seenu Atoll, served as a base for the British Royal Navy during World War II.

    The last thing anyone wants is for the Maldives to become a safe haven for Islamic insurgents which why leaders as President Mahinda Rajapakse and Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake had undertaken a “shuttle diplomacy” to ease the tension.

  • Mission Not Accomplished

    It’s now official: the American military is no longer a combat force inside Iraq.

    To the United States, this is an historic achievement in its own right. It was only three years ago when hundreds of American soldiers were dying in Iraq every month. It was only three years ago when an all time high of 150,000 GIs were patrolling all across the country, with 20,000 more solidified in the worst neighborhoods of Baghdad. Few Americans could have predicted that the United States would be essentially out of the conflict years down the road. But this is what has happened. Conditions on the ground improved just enough for the Americans to hand over security responsibilities to the Iraqi Security Forces. Granted, violence in Iraq is still abound, but American troops were no longer taking the lead.

    In a display that was as much political as it was ceremonial, the last Stryker Brigade crossed the southern Iraqi desert into Kuwait, demonstrating to the world that the United States was no longer engaging in “combat operations.” For President Barack Obama, this moment gave him a boost just before his party starts campaigning for the midterm elections in November. And for the administration, it fulfills a promise to end America’s intervention in Iraq after seven long and bloody years.

    The only problem is that the American intervention hasn’t really stopped. The remaining 50,000 troops will remain in the country for another year. And combat operations haven’t necessarily ceased either. While Washington trumpets the transition from a combat to advisory role, US Special Operations Forces will still be working with Iraqis in counterterrorism operations well into the foreseeable future. Troops will still be susceptible to risk when patrolling with Iraqi divisions.

    Iraq isn’t a peaceful country, no matter how much progress the Iraqis have made and how degraded Al Qaeda in Iraq may be from its heyday in 2006. Bombs continue to go off in the capital, and Sunnis associated with Al Qaeda are still more than willing to strap explosives to their body. If you need an example, just look at last week’s attacks across thirteen Iraqi cities, in which fifty Iraqis died (mostly police officers) in a spate of car bombs, suicide attacks, roadside bombs, and small arms fire. Insurgents are still clearly able to coordinate with deadly effect, striking paralysis in the ranks of Iraqi forces virtually everywhere in the country.

    And close to six months after the last parliamentary elections, Iraq’s political leaders are still squabbling among themselves over who has the right to form the next government. All the while, Iraqi civilians are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of public services.

    Americans have a right to be cheerful that the war in Iraq is drawing to a close. But the administration should be careful about gloating too much, or embarking on its own “mission accomplished” tour. In many ways, Iraq is still up in the air.

    In addition, we should not be coming to the conclusion that American influence in Iraq is over for good. As the military engagement winds down, the American diplomatic presence inside the country will most likely intensify. A new diplomatic team has already arrived in Baghdad, with US Ambassador James Jeffrey picking up where his predecessor Christopher Hill left off. The diplomats need to get right to work, with the first order of business being the establishment of an inclusive Iraqi government.

    And let’s not forget that the Iraqis still don’t have an air force, nor have Iraqi soldiers been trained in conventional conflict against an outside threat. The United States will still be defending Iraq’s air space for many years to come.

    “Mission accomplished?” Not yet. The American-Iraqi security partnership will continue, and it would be to no one’s surprise if Washington negotiated a brand new defense back with Iraqis to ensure that America’s hard work over the last seven years is sustained. American troop levels may be at its lowest since the start of the war. But there are still actors inside Iraq who are wishing to make that country a weak and destabilizing nation — outside and inside actors alike.

  • Iran’s Nuclear Plant Grand Opening

    Iran has finally announced the opening this Saturday of its first nuclear power plant, leaving many Western nations and Israel nervous about possible forays into nuclear weapons.

    Iran considers the ability to build and operate a nuclear power plant its right. The project has been underway with much opposition since 1974. Russia has supported the endeavor with money and technology, while at the same time supporting UN sanctions over the years. As of right now Iran is purchasing fuel for the plant from foreign sources, but has plans to begin production of its own fuel. Herein lies the danger for Iran’s foes. The uranium enrichment sites can be used for producing weapons grade uranium as well as enriched uranium for power production.

    The question is not whether Iran will gain nuclear capacity, but what role in this other nations play. No advance in civilization, particularly in war, can remain a secret indefinitely. And though Iran has been known for its aggressive behavior in the Middle East and its outspoken opposition to Israel and many Western nations and policies, it is still a sovereign nation. If there is individual freedom is there freedom for nations? Do foreign nations have any authority to oversee Iran at all, as the United Nations are doing right now? If so, from where does this authority originate?

    The authority to oversee nuclear plants in certain nations is claimed by the UN and it is backed up by threat of force. The authority only exists so long as the UN can and will use the force it threatens. It is a right of might, not an inherent one. The inherent rights of man would suggest that a foreign nation has the absolute right to govern themselves as they see fit. If what nations choose is aggression, then they must expect to be met with aggression in return. But there is nothing immoral in simply having weapons and armies; it is the way in which they are used that raises moral questions.

    The Nuclear Age however poses certain problems never before known. A nuclear missile might be launched from a distance and its destructive power dwarfs all previous human attempts at annihilation. Therefore prevention is much more desirable than retribution. Does the right of self-defense trump the right of self-determination in this case? Perhaps. Especially if the claim of right comes from a nation of unrepentant antagonists. For now, the UN will be inspecting and overseeing the nuclear projects of Iran.

  • Lebanon Braces for Judgment Day

    Five years ago, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon and longtime American ally, named Rafiq Hariri, was assassinated by a car bomb in the heart of Beirut. The incident fueled a popular uprising of Lebanese civilians commonly referred to as the “Cedar Revolution,” which would quickly pressure Syrian forces out of Lebanon after decades of occupation.

    Yet the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanese territory was not the only aftershock of the Hariri killing. The United States government under President George W. Bush would later blame Syrian authorities for orchestrating the attack on a moderate and Western Arab politician. Washington would sever all diplomatic ties with the Syrians until five years later, when President Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. The Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, which was already on the American security radar for past terrorist attacks, would bear the brunt of America’s attention.

    Now in August 2010, after that intense and tumultuous time in Lebanese politics, a UN investigation will release its final judgment on the Hariri murder. Syria has been exonerated from any wrongdoing. That leaves Hezbollah operatives as the main instigators of the attack.

    On the eve of the judgment, with everyone preparing to finger Hezbollah for the crime, Lebanon is once again bracing for a political firestorm that could quickly turn violent. The irony is that Rafiq Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, is now the man who has to keep the lid on the simmering pot.

    Unfortunately, this is going to be exceedingly difficult for the younger Hariri to accomplish. He is in a tough position regardless of who is blamed for his father’s murder.

    Prime Minister Hariri can either put his firm weight and political support behind the commission’s ruling, making his position known to the world but hurt his appeal with the majority of the Lebanese population (who happen to be Shia and highly supportive of Hezbollah as a social organization). Or he could endorse Hezbollah’s position and denounce the results. He may also choose to order the creation of a new independent commission aiming to uncovering evidence that may have been previously overlooked by the original investigation. This move, however, would hurt him with the United States and Israel at a time when Lebanon is already experiencing a harsh rebuke over the Israeli border incident.

    So what can Hariri do?

    So far, he’s been trying to straddle both sides by largely keeping his mouth shut and letting the tribunal do its job. This is what Hariri is probably going to do until a verdict is reached.

    If Hezbollah isn’t fingered, Hariri has dodged a bullet. But if Hezbollah is in fact implicated, then Hariri may choose to call another investigation in order to keep a potentially violent situation from getting out of control. The Lebanese government’s main concern is to limit a potential civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. The best way to do that is to divert pressure to an outside actor.

    This is all speculation of course. In either event, Hariri Junior is going to strain some relationships.

  • US Military: Give Us More Time

    There is a potential revolution in the making going on within America’s Afghanistan policy, and it’s not emanating from where you might think.

    Instead of the White House pushing the American military to change its approach and to change its tactics — which is something that Democratic presidents have traditionally embraced throughout American history — it’s the armed forces that are now starting to take that role. The issue in question is none other than Afghanistan, where whole squadrons of junior officers are lobbying the president hard on his July 2011 pullout date. “Too fast and too soon,” say these military leaders. “Don’t abandon Afghanistan like you did in the early 1990s.  Don’t withdraw American forces while the Afghan Security Services are still weak and ineffectual. But most of all Mr President, please refrain from terminating a war policy that has yet had the chance to prove itself.”

    In more ways than one, the marines and soldiers voicing this opinion are absolutely right. When President Barack Obama spoke at West Point last December and announced his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, most in the audience assumed that the current administration was unveiling a brand new strategy to curtail the Taliban and turn the situation around.

    The brand new strategy was called counterinsurgency, an approach that combines the traditional aspect of killing the enemy with the untraditional task of building local governance, promoting economic development, and showing the local population that the United States and the Afghan government were a better alternative to the Taliban. “Winning hearts and minds,” is the catchphrase that Washington has used to describe counterinsurgency, but the strategy is actually much more complicated than that. It’s more like “winning hearts and minds,” sustaining a relentless campaign of violence toward the insurgency, and swallowing your tongue when local residents frustrate your efforts.

    Yet seven months later, the situation in Afghanistan is still dire. Hundreds of insurgents have been killed by coalition forces, but the thousands more are still strong enough to coordinate attacks in every corner of the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai remains an unreliable American partner at best, and large portions of his government are still occupied by corrupt figures. Little headway has been made with the training of Afghan police, despite Washington’s hope that there would be close to 130,000 cops on the beat by July 2011. And America just experienced its deadliest month in the nearly nine year-old war, with 66 American soldiers killed in action by small arms fire, roadside bombs, and suicide attacks.

    As a consequence, lawmakers in Congress are getting a little antsy. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is demanding that the Obama Administration stick with its timetable of withdrawal, and an increasingly high number of House Democrats are questioning the very notion of funding the soldiers that are already in the warzone. As Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and David Sanger wrote in The New York Times, more than a third of the Democratic caucus voted against financing the war, sending a clear signal to Obama that his own party is distancing itself from the entire effort. In other words, Afghanistan in 2010 looks a lot like Iraq did back in 2006: violent, desperate, and a place where hope is in short supply.

    Will Obama cave into pressure in order to appease his own party on the war? Or will he listen to a growing number of commanders that are asking the president to give the military more time to make the counterinsurgency strategy work? These are the important questions that will not only determine the course of the war, but also America’s credibility in South Asia well into the future. Afghans and Pakistanis still distinctly remember how the United States packed up and left after its covert intervention against the Soviet Union ended in 1989. The result of that departure was nothing short of a long and brutal civil war in Afghanistan, culminating in the rise of a Sunni fundamentalist movement that drove the United States back into the country twelve years later.

    American generals want to get Afghanistan right. But they cannot kill Taliban, beef up a central Afghan government, pave roads, and build schools all before the summer of next year. The mission should be given more time to fulfill these objectives. Otherwise, the United States should either ditch counterinsurgency for a more limited counterterrorism plan, or get troops out altogether.

  • General Petraeus on Winning in Afghanistan

    In his first interview since taking over as commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus talked about his strategy on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday with less than a year before the withdrawal of the first American troops is scheduled to commence.

    Asked what was needed to win the war in Afghanistan, one of the things Petraeus mentioned was the need of reintegrating Taliban fighters in Afghan society. This is possible, he believes, especially with the “five dollar a day Taliban,” men fighting for the Taliban for a price, as well as with insurgents who are beginning to realize that the Taliban’s leadership appear to be leading from the rear.

    According to General Petraeus, the Taliban’s leaders largely send messages and leave everyone else at the broken end of the bottle, inflicting the most civilian casualties in this war. He added that the mission is still to win over the hearts and minds of the people in order to bring an end to the conflict.

    When asked what failure or success would mean to Afghanistan the general stated that while success means economic and national growth for the country, failure could affect the entire region, with civil war breaking out in Afghanistan and surrounding nations picking their sides, aiding the efforts of those prolonging the fighting and suffering.

    Interestingly, Petraeus said that while Iran has no desire to see Americans gaining an easy victory in Afghanistan, they don’t like the Taliban emerging victorious either, despite the small amounts of funding and training which Tehran has offered them. The Iranians see the Taliban as too conservative in their views while a victory for them could undermine the stability of their own regime.

    On the rather tricky subject of meeting with Taliban leaders in order to broker a peace agreement, Petraeus said that it was a lot like it was back in Iraq. They asked, “Were we willing to meet with people who had our blood on their hands?” The answer, said Petraeus, was yes. This may come as a somewhat disheartening response to many after the recent Time magazine article about Afghan women and their suffering under what’s left of the Taliban. But meeting with the Taliban is a reality of the war, and it may well be the price of peace.

  • Local Elections Canceled in West Bank

    Last month, Palestinians in the West Bank were supposed to vote on a new set of local politicians. To Americans and Europeans, municipal elections aren’t such a big deal. But for people who haven’t had a taste of democracy in years, just the slightest chance of waiting on line to cast a ballot is an exhilarating experience. For Palestinians — a people under persistent occupation, divided between two political factions, and separated in two geographical areas — this exuberance would have been even more fulfilling.

    Sadly, the elections were canceled by the Palestinian Authority, which argued that they would have fragmented Palestine’s national identity and diverted attention away from the more pressing problem of Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe.

    Little do they know that Palestinian identity hasn’t been unified for quite a long time. Hamas and Fatah have been battling it out for the past four years. 1.5 million Palestinians in the slim coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip are separated from another 2.5 million in the West Bank. And if you want to get mired in technicalities, the Palestinians don’t even have a national identity. The lack of a Palestinian state kicks the “national” right out the door.

    Something else is at work here. The cancelation had nothing to do with Gaza, and it certainly had nothing to do with efforts at unity. Instead, fear of who would win and who would lose was most likely the culprit. And in some strange way, the United States is partly to blame for Palestine’s increasingly authoritarian behavior.

    Back in 2006, the United States encouraged Palestinians to come out and vote for their next national government. At the time, it was an historic moment; the first elections since the death of longtime leader Yasser Arafat and the beginning of a new era in Middle East democracy. But when the elections were over, and the winner was announced (Hamas), encouragement in Washington quickly turned into despair and disappointment.

    The right thing for Washington to do was applaud the Palestinians for their trust in democracy — even if the United States didn’t necessarily like the results. Such a positive response could have served as a precedent for further elections into the future.

    Unfortunately, the Bush Administration took the opposite approach. The same democracy that Washington trumpeted beforehand quickly turned into an embarrassment. Due to Hamas’ place on Washington’s terrorist list, the United States refused to declare the contest legitimate. The administration dug itself deeper by not engaging Hamas at a low level, which would have at least shown Palestinians that America meant what it said about democratic institutions.

    Four years later, what we have in the Palestinian territories is a powerless legislative branch, a Palestinian president ruling by decree, and an authority that is divided internally between old-time technocrats and upwardly mobile moderates.

    We are still suffering from that disastrous 2006 experience. Just as America was afraid about the results back then, the PA is afraid about what’s on the minds of Palestinian voters today. Canceling the elections gives them more time to delay the inevitable.

  • Obama’s Numbers in the Arab World

    I’m a big fan of Dr Marc Lynch’s work. In addition to being considered a respected professor in a top-tier American university (George Washington University), he is also one of the best versed in Middle Eastern culture and knowledgeable about virtually every issue in the Arab world. So whenever Dr Lynch writes a post about Arab public opinion or has something to say about American-Islamic relations, I tend to read it very quickly.

    Such was the case last Thursday, when Lynch devoted a post to the dwindling appeal of President Barack Obama in the eyes of ordinary Muslims. Technically, the Brookings Institution sponsored the poll and conducted the project, but it’s people like Lynch (not to mention Steve Walt and Tom Ricks) that make sense of the data and try to put it into some perspective.

    For a full look at Brookings’ results, click here (PDF). I highly recommend that you take a look at the raw figures, because it gives us a sense of what issues still ring true in the hearts of Arabs. But if you just want to get to the nuts-and-bolts, the results can be best described as quantification of America’s declining appeal, even in countries that are considered to be American allies. The poll not only reveals an unfortunate American decline in popularity, but also the deep frustrations that many Arabs hold over America’s inability to meet its promises and commitments. (more…)

  • Israel-Lebanon Border Skirmish Not All Bad

    The last thing the Middle East needs right now is another shooting war. But when gunfire erupted between Israeli and Lebanese troops along the border this past Tuesday, that is exactly what the Levant experienced for a few brief moments.

    The border between Israel and Lebanon has been relatively quiet ever since Israel and Hezbollah decided to stop fighting one another back in August 2006. A mutual ceasefire was signed to damper down hostilities, which called for the deployment of a sizable United Nations peacekeeping force along the green line in order to ensure that a violent incident wouldn’t spark out of control. As of that agreement, the Hezbollah militia has shown restraint along the frontier, even as its weapons supply has increased to an estimated 40,000 rockets. Knowing that another violent confrontation with Hezbollah would be a costly military campaign, Israel too is content with the status quo (although it worries about Hezbollah’s growing arsenal).

    But all of that changed in a split second when Lebanese soldiers fired on Israeli commandos when they were trying to trim down a tree along their side of the border. One high level Israeli soldier was shot in the head and killed. Israel responded by firing mortars and machine guns toward the Lebanese, killing two of their soldiers and a journalist.

    The incident was the most violent in four years, and many in the region are deeply worried that the situation could quickly spiral into another full fledged armed conflict.

    Fighting over a cypress tree is certainly a tragedy for both sides, especially when casualties are involved. But the incident could have been much worse. Hezbollah, with its vast arsenal of missiles, could have used the opportunity to provoke violence toward Israel’s northern frontier in the name of “protecting Lebanese sovereignty.” Thankfully, Hassan Nasrallah chose to stay on the sidelines during the dispute. This shows that Hezbollah is indeed weary of another violent confrontation with Israel, despite its growing military capability in Southern Lebanon.

    Both the Israeli and Lebanese governments are meeting with UNIFIL to resolve the incident and to make sure that nothing like it ever happens again. It’s only a start, but the move confirms that both sides would much rather hold a fragile peace together instead of resorting to another round of shooting.

    Another point to consider: Given that the UN have now confirmed that Lebanon instigated the shootout, will this force the United States to reevaluate its partnership with the Lebanese Defense Forces? Last year, Washington donated $162 million to the Lebanese Army, hoping that the money would be used to counter Hezbollah’s own military gains. Now that a violent spat has occurred, President Barack Obama may have to consider whether this policy can be sustained without strong opposition from Congress. Thanks to Daniel Levy of the Middle East Task Force for bringing this up, because it would have sailed over my head had it not been for his piece at Foreign Policy.

  • Avoiding the Unthinkable

    As evidence mounts that the South Korean warship sunk last March was indeed brought down by a North Korean torpedo, tensions in Korea are rising. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has pronounced economic sanctions on the North which has reportedly begun to ready troops.

    The intentional sinking of a foreign naval vessel is certainly cause to go to war. In effect it is a declaration of war. However, we cannot be sure that the sinking was intentional or planned and more importantly, no one wants another war in East Asia.

    The United States, already declaring that it will stand with South Korea, maintains strong ties with the country and would probably be dragged into any conflict followed possibly by China on the side of the North. A battle between two world superpowers is precisely what the international community has been avoiding since the end of World War II.

    American secretary of state Hillary Clinton has been in Beijing trying to convince China to side with South Korea and support action in the UN Security Council. The word is still out on how successful she will be.

    While no one wants a war, it is almost inevitable that North Korea will reach meltdown stage at some point in the near future. It has already lasted as long or longer than other communist countries that were forced to enact fundamental reforms in the face of unsustainable levels of misery and poverty on the part of their people.

    The ray of hope in this situation is that it cannot be in the interest of North Korea to go to war again. As it is, the North is left free to abuse and destroy its own people. They cannot hope to take on the South with America funding and militarily supporting it; all the more so because South Korea has gone through an extended period of growth and advancement while the North stagnated. South Korea is much more fit at this stage for a confrontation. Nuclear weapons notwithstanding, North Korea is no match for its counterpart.

    The best we can hope for in this situation is that North and South Korea will do nothing more than rattle their sabers across the cease fire line until North Korea implodes on its own. Economic sanctions and slaps on the hand from the UN Security Council will do nothing while the alternative, all out war, is unthinkable.

  • The Missing Chinese Threat?

    In the recent discussion of Russia’s new military doctrine, most of the coverage has focused on its discussion of NATO’s role as a potential threat to Russia and the criteria for possible use of nuclear weapons. What has been largely missing from the discussion (and from the military doctrine itself) is the role that China will play in Russia’s security in coming years. Both official documents on Russian security and the vast majority of Russian officials and analysts consistently underplay the potential threat that Russia might face from China. It’s not that Russians don’t think there’s a threat there, it’s just that it doesn’t get as much attention as the threat from the West.

    In any kind of realist conception of how states formulate their foreign policy, this distinction wouldn’t make any sense. After all, objectively speaking, China is an enormous country located on Russia’s border and having a high rate of economic growth, overpopulation, an increasingly powerful army, and a history of territorial claims on Russian territory (and even border clashes over this territory in the late 1960s). Even now, Russian governors in the Far East occasionally raise the specter of the “yellow menace” and talk about the danger posed to the underpopulated region by unregulated Chinese migrants. But this kind of talk rarely emanates from Moscow and certainly does not affect troop positioning — only three of the 85 new brigades are situated in the Far East.

    So why does Russia understate the potential threat from China (and consequently overstate the potential threat from NATO and the West)? I would argue that this is because Russian foreign policy elites are not operating with a realist worldview (despite all their protestations that they base their foreign policy on realpolitik). The goals of Russian foreign policy are at heart about restoring lost prestige. Russian leaders want Russia to be seen as a great power again, if not equal to the United States, then at least sufficiently respected to be able to influence world events that they care about. This is much more important than actually becoming a great power.

    And they measure the status of their country by comparing it to Europe and the United States, not to China. The vast majority of Russians still see the Chinese as inferior and do not view China as a valid state for comparison with Russia. This is why China is largely ignored in most Russian foreign policy formulations and threat assessments.

    In reality, I don’t think Russia has much to fear from China. China is focused on economic growth and not on territorial expansion and would not want to face the international opprobrium that would come with any kind of hostile action against Russia. But then again, realistically Russia should not feel threatened by the West either, and yet its rhetoric and official pronouncements often focus on the potential threat from just this quarter.

    In this regard, it is again instructive to turn to the placement of Russia’s military forces. I already mentioned that there are almost no brigades in Russia’s eastern regions. There are also not too many brigades facing west. Most of the ground forces are positioned to the south, where the actual potential for military conflict is highest. In this way, the rhetoric and actions of Russian leaders diverge, with the rhetoric about status giving way to a more realistic assessment of potential military threats when it comes to troop placement.

    In other words, it makes sense for China to be ignored as a potential threat to Russia — the risk of military conflict in the Far East is low. The discrepancy comes in the artificially inflated public assessment of threat from the West, and this inflation has taken place primarily for political reasons.

    This story first appeared on Russian Military Reform, February 26, 2010.

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