Search Results for "Tim Sullivan"
China Cashes In on Iraq’s Postwar Recovery
Not long ago, my AEI colleague Tim Sullivan explained in this space how China’s economic influence in Afghanistan has been growing at a steady pace in the past few years. In 2008, for example, a state-owned Chinese company provided the largest single foreign direct investment in Afghanistan, doling out $3.5 billion to tap the Aynak copper field in Logar province. Last week, The Washington Post reported that the same appears to be happening in Iraq. Since 2008, Chinese firms have snatched up stakes in three of the 11 contracts the Iraqi Oil Ministry has awarded in an attempt to boost crude output by some 450 percent until 2017. According to the article, the Chinese have also been able to extract more favorable terms for a $3 billion oil deal they signed with the Saddam regime years ago. Yet while Chinese companies have been busy securing large oil contracts for their resource-hungry motherland, only two American firms have reportedly been able to lock in similar deals on behalf of the United States.
Risk-tolerance, the Post reports, is the primary advantage of state-owned Chinese firms over their American counterparts. Chinese companies,and the government that controls them, are not particularly concerned about violence and instability in the countries they target for investment, whereas security issues are usually at the top of the list of potential concerns for American corporations seeking to do business in developing countries. What is more, foreign corrupt practices and political volatility in those parts of the world now being targeted by the Chinese—most notably the greater Middle East and Africa—serve as an additional obstacle for American companies. China’s disregard for foreign corruption and comparatively higher tolerance for personal risk, coupled with what the Post describes a diplomatic corps willing to hash out business deals with some of the world’s most ruthless regimes, have advanced the PRC’s resource-driven objectives abroad.
China is also expanding its business presence in Iraq beyond the oil sector, venturing into construction, government services, and even tourism. The Chinese have made inroads into Iraq’s cement industry, a critical and very profitable business sector in a country where large infrastructure projects remain up for grabs. They have built a billion-dollar power plant in southern Iraq and entered into negotiations with the Iraqi government to construct large residential facilities for laborers—a key step in maintaining compliance with Iraq’s restrictive investment laws.
A Farewell to Arms
In his first speech as Britain’s new defense minister, Liam Fox on Monday laid out his priorities for a new defense review, promising a “clean break” from Cold War-thinking on national security strategy and defense policymaking. The “salami-slicing approach” that has characterized past defense reviews will give way to a “transformative change” in British defense, Fox said. While Afghanistan will remain Britain’s top priority for some time, Fox left no doubt that the dire state of Britain’s finances will impact government decisions on defense. The new defense review, due to be completed by the end of the year, Fox conceded, will be “resource-informed” but “policy-led.” The defense minister’s admission that Treasury will have a say after all in the crafting of British defense policy belies the Tories’ pre-election promise to conduct a strategy-driven defense review devoid of predetermined financial considerations.
Britain’s problems are “structural” in nature and thus they require “structural” solutions, Fox said. Reducing overhead costs will not suffice to return the armed forces to a sound financial and strategic footing. In the past, the government’s answer to these woes has been to delay procurement programs, thereby merely increasing the cost of defense equipment programs in the long run. Citing the troubled new aircraft carrier program, Fox claimed the decision in 2009 to slow the procurement rate of the Queen Elizabeth class carrier added an additional £600 billion to the program’s overall price tag. While it is true that many inside Whitehall worry about the affordability of certain programs, including the new carriers, they are not yet prepared to live with the consequences of a sharply reduced defense budget. Inevitably, a smaller defense budget will spur strategic retrenchment and decline. Fox’s calls to act “ruthlessly and without sentiment” are a precursor of what lies in store for Britain’s armed forces after the new defense review.
The British, however, are not the only ones whose defenses are in disarray. Military capabilities across Europe are atrophying at a fast clip. Although the global financial crisis is largely to blame for the latest round of planned defense cuts, Europe’s seemingly insatiable appetite for expensive social entitlement programs, coupled with a dangerous aversion to all things military, continue to undermine the state of Europe’s defenses. Recent calls by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Admiral James Stavridis, America’s European and NATO commander, not to cut defense budgets too deeply and to devote at least two percent of GDP—a NATO requirement—to defense despite economic woes, appear to have fallen on deaf ears in capitals across Europe, as my CDS colleague Tim Sullivan has noted. The current round of planned defense spending cuts across the continent is widely expected to rival the dramatic reductions after the end of the Cold War, and the list is indeed staggering.
Who’s Going to Win in Afghanistan? China.
According to a recent CRS report, China’s influence in Afghanistan is steadily increasing. Whether or not that turns out to be a good thing for the United States depends on whether Washington follows through on its recently-reaffirmed commitment to maintain a strategic partnership with Afghanistan post-2011.
The extent of China’s economic engagement in Afghanistan is by now well known. Since 2002, China has pledged nearly $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan (though only a fraction of it has been disbursed, and it remains modest sum compared to the U.S., UK, Japanese, and Canadian contributions). In 2008, a state-owned Chinese firm provided the largest single foreign direct investment in Afghanistan, dropping $3.5 billion to develop the Aynak copper field in Logar province. And despite the continuing security concerns and infrastructure challenges that have hampered progress at Aynak—the ambitious proposal also called for the construction of a freight railway, a power plant, housing, a mosque, and a hospital—China remains in the running to develop the Hajigak iron ore deposit in Bamiyan province, west of Kabul.
Of late, Beijing has launched a charm offensive in Afghanistan, having no doubt sensed, as with most other states in the region, that the time to begin shaping Kabul’s post-2011 regional alignments is now. Thus, during his March trip to Beijing, Afghan president Hamid Karzai was treated to meetings with Chinese president Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. In the course of the visit, Karzai and his Chinese hosts signed agreements on expanding economic cooperation, ensuring favorable tariffs on Afghan exports, and creating scholarships for technical training programs across a range of critical fields: commerce, communications, education, health, economics, and counternarcotics.
According to the CRS report, China may now be prepared to expand its engagement in Afghanistan into the realm of security. The report hinted that within the last six months there had been signs that the PRC could be persuaded to deploy PLA forces to Afghanistan:
“Some diplomats in Washington, DC, indicated to CRS in November 2009 that, should President Obama ask for China to contribute People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces, even in a non-combat role, to Afghanistan, China might agree to that request.”
China has already made some very limited contributions to the training of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). In the fall of 2009, the PRC launched a mine-clearing training course for officers from the ANSF and the Iraqi Security Forces at the PLA’s University of Science and Technology in Nanjing. In March, Xinhua reported that Defense Minister Liang Guanglie, following meetings with his Afghan counterpart, Adbul Rahim Wardak, pledged that the “Chinese military will continue assistance to the Afghan National Army(ANA) to improve their capacity of safeguarding national sovereignty, territorial integrity and domestic stability.” What’s more, reports have suggested that a senior PLA official may have discussed with Karzai the possibility of training and equipping the ANSF once coalition forces depart Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s Regional Context
In an interview on Monday with the Wall Street Journal, General Stanley McChrystal provided some commentary on the regional dynamics which stand to affect U.S. efforts in Afghanistan:
“We get overly fixated sometimes on al Qaeda, but the reality is there are regional issues here that are potentially more important than that and so that needs to be put as one of the key points.”
This was encouraging observation on the part of the ISAF commander, given that the competition among regional players to exert influence in Afghanistan will only become more intense as the United States’ 2011 drawdown date approaches. McChrystal went on:
“Everything in the region affects everybody else. You know it’s like in the solar system: Each planet actually does gravitational pull on all the others. Pakistan is clearly affected by a number of actors, India being large. And Afghanistan is affected by a huge number of actors.
I think the better we can make India and Pakistan relations, the better it is for everyone, particularly a relatively weak nation right now like Afghanistan because as those two significant nations have friction sometimes, it can affect Afghanistan in ways that are just huge. So I think it’s really important that the transparency and the trust with India be part of that calculation. And clearly the Pakistanis are worried about Indian activities inside Afghanistan and sometimes there’s a lot of misperception associated with those, so I think clarity there is essential.”
Reducing India-Pakistan tensions in the near-term may indeed allow the Pakistani military to feel more comfortable in shifting forces from its eastern flank to combat insurgents just inside its border with Afghanistan. We have seen this phenomenon in action, with the redeployment of more than 100,000 forces from Pakistan’s Indian to Afghan border (as reported in the Pentagon’s biannual report to Congress on progress toward security and stability in Afghanistan), and the Pakistani army’s continuing operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
But in truth, there is little India — or the United States, for that matter — can do to dissuade Pakistan’s national security establishment that Afghanistan remains a critical source of “strategic depth,” or that India’s engagement in the country — which has taken the form of a broad but low-profile “soft power” campaign — is anything other than an effort to encircle Pakistan. At the same time, India — whose objectives in Afghanistan have been clear and, as Dan Twining noted recently, coincide closely with those of the U.S. — should not be expected to reduce its presence in Afghanistan simply to mollify its rival.
Building Partner Capacity through Export Control Reform
Last week Secretary of Defense Bob Gates delivered an impressive speech on export control reform before a gathering of the Business Executives for National Security. My colleague Neena Shenai provided a helpful overview of Gates’ proposed reform plan—which involves a transition to a single control list and licensing agency, followed by transition to a single IT structure, followed eventually by the creation of a new licensing and enforcement agency—as well as an assessment of the likely challenges to implementing it. Recently I had a chance to read the speech in full.
One of the most compelling elements of the Secretary’s remarks was his strategic rationale for the reforms, which hinged on the importance of building partner capacity (BPC) — one of the consistent priorities, and perhaps the most strategically sound, of the Gates Pentagon. In a recent Foreign Affairs essay on the topic, Secretary Gates made clear that “helping other countries better provide for their own security will be a key and enduring test of U.S. global leadership and a critical part of protecting U.S. security, as well.”
Rarely, however, is the concept of BPC invoked among scholars and analysts in the context of high-end defense capabilities, but rather — as one might expect, given the nature of our current wars — with regard to building a partner nation’s army or police forces. In his speech, Gates explained why it’s a mistake to look at BPC solely through the lens of counterinsurgency:
The current export-control regime impedes the effectiveness of our closest military allies, tests their patience and goodwill, and hinders their ability to cooperate with U.S. forces – this at a time when we count on allies and partners to fight with us in places like Afghanistan and potentially elsewhere. Not too long ago, a British C-17 spent hours disabled on the ground in Australia – not because the needed part wasn’t available, but because U.S. law required the Australians to seek U.S. permission before doing the repair. These are two of our very strongest allies for God’s sake! Similarly, close, long-standing allies and partners like South Korea have bought U.S. aircraft only to encounter difficulties and delays in getting spare parts – something that weakens our bilateral relationships, our credibility, and ultimately American security.
India’s Afghan Endgame — and What it Means for the U.S.
Not long ago the Washington Post featured a story about a newly constructed park and community center for women in Kabul. Apart from the author’s moving account of the Afghan women’s appreciation for their newfound freedom and opportunities — the center offers a range of vocational classes — one detail stood out: the facility is funded by the Indian government and run by the Ahmedabad-based Self-Employed Women’s Association.
The park is one of many development projects the Indian government has sponsored throughout Afghanistan, having committed $1.3 billion in total to the country’s reconstruction. Major contributions have included power plants, medical facilities, schools, and, most notably, a highway across Nimruz province which links the Afghan ring road to the Iranian border and beyond to Chabahar, an Indian-built port on Iran’s Makran Coast. Delhi’s diplomatic presence in Afghanistan has also swelled since 2002, with the opening of consulates in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Mazar-e-Sharif; India maintains a modestly sized — though according to most assessments, influential — embassy in Kabul, as well.
Delhi is pursuing what amounts to a “soft power” campaign in Afghanistan — one which, according to Ahmed Rashid’s Descent Into Chaos, is “designed to win over every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with the Afghans, gain the maximum political advantage, and of course undercut Pakistani influence.” And although India’s efforts have without a doubt unnerved the Pakistanis, Delhi has managed avoid the perception among the other states engaged in Afghanistan that it is actively seeking to antagonize Islamabad — perhaps because of the extent of the services it has provided to the Afghan population. Assuming Rashid is right about India’s desire to cultivate influence among the Afghan citizens, its strategy has been success: an ABC News/BBC poll released in early 2009 indicated that 71% of Afghans viewed India favorably. Only 8% said the same of Pakistan.
But in adopting a “hearts and minds” approach, strategically conceived though it may be, the Indians have naturally foreclosed on other modes of influence. As former Indian diplomat Rajiv Sikri noted in his recent book, “Although India’s security remains deeply affected by what happens in Afghanistan, India’s disadvantage is that it is not involved in Afghanistan’s security in any meaningful way.” Among commentators and analysts in India, Sikri isn’t alone in suggesting that Delhi’s efforts to shape events in Afghanistan — while savvy and subtle — remain disproportionate to its strategic interests in the country.
In recent months, however, there have been signs that could quickly change.
Contributors
Michael Auslin, AEI’s director of Japan Studies, was an associate professor of history and senior research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University prior to joining AEI. He has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, and a Fulbright and Japan Foundation Scholar. His writings on Japan and Japanese diplomacy include the books Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Japan Society: Celebrating a Century, 1907-2007 (Japan Society Gallery, 2007).
Dan Blumenthal is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate, and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship between the two countries. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense’s Office of International Security Affairs and practiced law in New York prior to his government service. At AEI, in addition to his work on the national security implications of U.S.-Sino relations, he coordinates the Tocqueville on China project, which examines the underlying civic culture of post-Mao China. Mr. Blumenthal also contributes to AEI’s Asian Outlook series.
Tom Donnelly is the director of the Center for Defense Studies. He is the coauthor, with Frederick W. Kagan, of Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (2010) and Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (2008). Among his other recent books are Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (2007), coedited with Gary J. Schmitt; The Military We Need (2005), and Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (2004). From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the House Committee on Armed Services. Mr. Donnelly also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.
Leslie Forgach is a research assistant in Asian Studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. Ms. Forgach received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Asian Studies from the University of Michigan. After receiving the Ito scholarship, she studied for two years at Waseda University Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies in Tokyo, Japan. There she received a Master’s degree in International Relations, with a focus on U.S.-Japan relations. Ms. Forgach has previously worked at the Center for Global Partnership at the Japan Foundation’s Tokyo headquarters. She is fluent in Japanese.
Michael Mazza is a senior research associate in Asian Studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. He has worked previously as a policy analyst assistant at SAIC and as an intern at Riskline Ltd., and he has lived and studied in China. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University and has a Master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, where he studied strategic studies and international economics.
Gary Schmitt is a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during President Ronald Reagan’s second term. Mr. Schmitt’s work focuses on longer-term strategic issues that will affect America’s security at home and its ability to lead abroad. His books include The Rise of China: Essays on the Future Competition (Encounter Books, May 2009), of which he is editor and contributing author; Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), to which he was a contributing author and editor with Tom Donnelly; Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (Brassey’s, 2002), coauthored with Abram Shulsky and now in its third edition; and U.S. Intelligence at the Crossroads: Agendas for Reform (Brassey’s, 1995), a coedited volume to which he is a contributing author. His most recent book is Safety, Liberty, and Islamist Terrorism: American and European Approaches to Domestic Counterterrorism (AEI Press, 2010), of which he is editor and contributing author.
Tim Sullivan is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he manages AEI’s Center for Defense Studies. In addition to his work for the Center, he researches governance and security issues in Afghanistan. In his prior capacity as a research assistant in the AEI Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department, Mr. Sullivan contributed to studies on NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan, U.S. land force modernization, and U.S. security force assistance programs. He is a member of the Center for a New American Security’s Next Generation National Security Leaders Program.
Philipp Tomio is a research assistant in defense and strategic studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. A Fulbright scholar, Mr. Tomio holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors in International Relations from Webster University and a Master of Arts degree in Security Policy Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. In addition to his work for the Center for Defense Studies, Mr. Tomio is a researcher in AEI’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.
The Return of Haiti’s Gangs
In the immediate aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January, many analysts and observers predicted that with the destruction of the country’s national penitentiary and the escape of over 4,000 prisoners — including some of Port-au-Prince’s most notorious gang leaders — Haiti would soon see the return of the violence and criminality that had plagued the country in recent years. It was assumed, however, that as long as U.S. forces were present throughout the country, violence would be minimal; the real trouble would emerge once American troops began to withdraw. “Right now we’ve got (foreign) military crawling all over the island,” USIP’s Bob Perito explained at the time. “But they won’t be there forever.”
Judging from reports in the Washington Post and the Associated Press within the last week, it appears that events in Haiti are unfolding very much along the lines predicted by Perito and others. U.S. troops have been drawing down steadily in the last two months; what remains is a force of roughly 2,000 engineers and logisticians tasked with rubble-clearing and reconstruction. Meanwhile, the escaped gang leaders have reconstituted their posses and are now competing for control of their old turf. Kidnappings have increased in recent weeks, forcing aid groups to impose curfews and implement increased security measures. The gangs regularly terrorize vulnerable Haitians in the settlement camps throughout Port-au-Prince.
Gang members have also grown increasingly brazen in confronting the Haitian National Police (HNP), a force which was badly damaged in the quake, but has since established a reasonable patrolling presence throughout the capital city. Post correspondent Manuel Roig-Franzia described an incident in which gang members assaulted an HNP checkpoint, slaughtering a veteran of the force; HNP officers, according to Roig-Franzia, are frequently outgunned by the well-armed criminals.
Needless to say, in the months ahead, MINUSTAH — the 9,000-strong, Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping force in Haiti — and the HNP will be put to the test. Not only is gang violence likely to increase, but the two forces will be expected to provide security and stability prior to the postponed parliamentary and presidential elections, which are likely to be held late this year. Adding to the challenge, national police chief Mario Adresol has cited concerns, according to the Post, that political parties may be sponsoring and supporting armed groups in order to threaten opponents and otherwise create disorder prior to the elections — a tactic not without precedent in Haiti’s recent history.
First Take: The NPR in Context
Today the Obama administration releases its long-awaited, much-anticipated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Early reports reveal that the review, not surprisingly, adopts a middle-way strategy — one which is unlikely to satisfy arms control advocates and will only further unsettle nuclear hawks. Although the NPR doesn’t implement an across-the-board “no first use” policy, it is being peddled as an effort to significantly reduce the range of circumstances in which the United States would employ nuclear weapons. A core purpose of the document is to redefine deterrence against a nuclear attack as the “sole objective” of the United States’ nuclear arsenal; thus, according to the NPR, American nuclear forces will no longer be intended to deter chemical or biological attacks. What’s more, the NPR report states “the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”
This is a very fine piece of scholastic reasoning — on par with Bill Clinton’s “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” How would the Obama Doctrine apply to a case like that of Iraq in 1991, for example? On the eve of Operation Desert Storm, and after five months of warning Saddam Hussein not to use his weapons of mass destruction, then-Secretary of State James Baker met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. “God forbid chemical or biological weapons are used against our forces; the American people would demand revenge,” Baker said, implying that such attacks might provoke a nuclear response. Wrote Baker in his memoir: “I purposely left the impression that the use of chemical or biological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation.”
Iraq was a party to the NPT. It had long ago violated those obligations, but it was not formally cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency for NPT “non-compliance” until September 1991 — that is, nine months after the start of Desert Storm. Unless the White House intends to reserve an American right to unilaterally find inconvenient enemies to be NPT violators, it appears that had Saddam and Tariq Aziz been facing off with the Obama Administration, they would have had less reason to worry about the Americans’ “calculated ambiguity.”
In effect, the NPR makes clear that the circumstances in which the United States might employ (or otherwise threaten to employ) nuclear weapons are so limited, that their value in American strategy-making becomes practically nil. When evaluated in the context of the other significant nuclear policy shifts underway — the deep cuts in nuclear forces proposed in the U.S.-Russia START follow-on agreement, and this weekend’s nuclear summit, which will be focused on nuclear terrorism — it’s hard not to see the NPR as a further step down the road to the diminution of American military power.
This morning, the Center for Defense Studies and the Heritage Foundation will host a public event on the administration’s nuclear agenda. Stream it online HERE.
