The Defense Dept. never ceases to amaze. After roughly 7 hours of tense discussion on defense budgetary priorities (tense b/c I had the gall to question whether the actual goal of defense spending was to preserve human life, in which case it has on most counts been a miserable failure) I come across this Mother Jones gem. Even after an afternoon spent delving into future budget predictions that basically have us burning excess defense articles for fuel after the entire country goes bankrupt and we've descended into anarchy, this stuff is still shocking.
Like that the cost overruns in our defense budget exceed China's total defense budget by a factor of three - that's right, all the myriad discrepancies between what Lockheed tells us that plane will cost and what it actually ends up charging us all amounts to three times China's total defense budget!! And yes, nice try, but that is an accurate figure - China analysts believe this to be a reliable indicator of their activity - not that I could say the same for our auditors, since the "black budget" and the VA budget and lots of other little budgetary pieces never make it into our official defense budget anyway. Our defense spending, on the other hand, comes in at around $850 billion. That's about the size of four medium-sized country GDPs (like Israel+Norway+Denmark+Chile).
And, official projections for the F-35 (those are the projections that usually understate actual costs by about 20% or so) put those program costs at over $1 trillion - about the size of the national deficit. So, I hope we can dismantle some of these planes and distill some of their constituent elements for basics like food and fuel . . . . cause if we keep letting pathological organizations and defense contractors make all the budget decisions we're halfway to hell in an aircraft carrier.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Workshop Intriques: Weapons Espionage
Saw Issandr Al-Amrani's recent post about the JPost article on Egyptian military's purchase of Russian air defense systems. Since the Russians are unlikely to accept anything less than hard currency from the Egyptians for payment it begs the question of where Egypt would get the money for such a purchase, the price of which would undoutedly be very high since the S-400 is presumed to be the best air defense system available.
Well, the logical answer is that they would use US military aid (the Foreign Military Financing Funds that the Egyptians still get every year as an incentive for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979). But, would the US sign on to Egyptian purchases of Russian weaponry, given that there is some built in expectation that the Egyptians would use that money to purchase US defense material and at the very least would not buy material from the Russians?
A possibility I never considered (although now it seems entirely logical) is that the Americans would actually support such an Egyptian-Russian transaction on the premise that the Egyptians would give the Americans a few of the SAMs so they could use them in field tests (as opposed to having to resort to simulations and other computer generated tests. This would be especially beneficial to the US given that many of the countries that have bought these Russian weapons are those likely to be engaged in confrontation with the US in the future.
A former air force guy told me this is pretty common practice, but still something I didn't consider before, and introduces interesting motivations and mechanisms to questions/discussions of patterns of arms sales and military assistance.
Well, the logical answer is that they would use US military aid (the Foreign Military Financing Funds that the Egyptians still get every year as an incentive for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979). But, would the US sign on to Egyptian purchases of Russian weaponry, given that there is some built in expectation that the Egyptians would use that money to purchase US defense material and at the very least would not buy material from the Russians?
A possibility I never considered (although now it seems entirely logical) is that the Americans would actually support such an Egyptian-Russian transaction on the premise that the Egyptians would give the Americans a few of the SAMs so they could use them in field tests (as opposed to having to resort to simulations and other computer generated tests. This would be especially beneficial to the US given that many of the countries that have bought these Russian weapons are those likely to be engaged in confrontation with the US in the future.
A former air force guy told me this is pretty common practice, but still something I didn't consider before, and introduces interesting motivations and mechanisms to questions/discussions of patterns of arms sales and military assistance.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Syrian reaction to success of Hariri/Future Party
This response sounds pretty reasonable to me (basically the Syrians concede that even if the pro-Syrian opposition would have won much of the world would have isolated the new Lebanese regime - a fact driven home even more by the fallout after the re-election of Ahmadinijad and Biden's statements during his earlier visit to Lebanon).
Nonetheless, the fact that the elections were peaceful and there were no (to my knowledge) accusations of Syrian interference, this might be a good time to step us talks between the US and Syria. Granted, not interfering was probably in the interests of the Syrian regime, which is embroiled in it's own domestic problems ranging from managing Iraqi refugees to riding out the economic downturn. But it's still another step by Damascus in a long series (not reacting to either the Israeli bombing of a supposed nuclear facility last year or the US cross-border bombing raid, intelligence sharing in the wake of 9-11 (yes, snubbed by the Bush Administration), etc.)
These steps seem to me to garner (at the absolute least) the end of US economic sanctions, which are completely meaningless and only serve to symbolically isolate the regime, in addition to the end of US efforts to bock Syria's ascension to the WTO.
I would say that even the most reserved regime would be losing patience with US efforts to isolate the country, and that Syria may be looking for an opportunity to demonstrate it's regional importance (and opportunities abound: Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc.). This would be a sad reversal of the current trajectory. One can only hope that Mitchell et al are cooking up something to take to Damascus in the near future . . . .
Nonetheless, the fact that the elections were peaceful and there were no (to my knowledge) accusations of Syrian interference, this might be a good time to step us talks between the US and Syria. Granted, not interfering was probably in the interests of the Syrian regime, which is embroiled in it's own domestic problems ranging from managing Iraqi refugees to riding out the economic downturn. But it's still another step by Damascus in a long series (not reacting to either the Israeli bombing of a supposed nuclear facility last year or the US cross-border bombing raid, intelligence sharing in the wake of 9-11 (yes, snubbed by the Bush Administration), etc.)
These steps seem to me to garner (at the absolute least) the end of US economic sanctions, which are completely meaningless and only serve to symbolically isolate the regime, in addition to the end of US efforts to bock Syria's ascension to the WTO.
I would say that even the most reserved regime would be losing patience with US efforts to isolate the country, and that Syria may be looking for an opportunity to demonstrate it's regional importance (and opportunities abound: Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc.). This would be a sad reversal of the current trajectory. One can only hope that Mitchell et al are cooking up something to take to Damascus in the near future . . . .
Dubai reigns in real estate oligarchs
An FT article on the merger of several partially state-owned real estate development firms in Dubai says the move is a "decision to merge the real estate entities . . . to break down the business empires of his [Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum] lieutenants." One can only hope that Sheikh Issa [real estate developer and part-time torture connoisseur] gets his comeuppance as part of this deal. It's a distant second to the jail term he should be serving, but it's probably all that one could hope for in a country run by a monarchy.
50 Individuals in India control 20% of country's GDP
I think this is probably the highest concentration of wealth on the globe; FT has the story here.
Friday, June 26, 2009
NPR: Syria and Iraq Revive Business Ties
Great info from Syria experts Landis and Harling from ICG . . .
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
US-UAE Nuclear Deal
The US-UAE Nuclear Deal: Turning the Straight of Hormuz into a Nuclear Tijuana?
Somehow government bureaucracies manage to suck all the intrigue out of their reports, turning would-be political thrillers into sterile dossiers full of euphemisms and obscure acronyms. The US Bureau of Industry and Security, for example, produces a monthly “Major Case” list that with a little spicing up might draw in some readers from the ranks of the government foreign policy elite. This would be a great advantage since the Bush Administration officials who signed a deal to build a nuclear reactor in the UAE seem to have missed the fact that the small Gulf nation is a major transshipment point for illicit trade with Iran, the international community’s current non-proliferation cause célèbre. The Emirates is mentioned in ten of the department’s pending cases for May 2009: nine of these for acting as a way station for shipments of sensitive technologies and dual-use items to Iran (destination number ten is Iraq, not exactly a comforting anomaly). The agreement may be a good way of rewarding the UAE for not joining its neighbors Oman and Qatar in seeking a unilateral rapprochement with Iran and bypassing the US in regional peace initiatives (moves that not only brought the two gulf nations closer to Syria but also weakened the credibility of former regional heavyweights and US-allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia). But is nuclear technology an appropriate carrot in a region that IAEA Chief Muhammad El-Baradei last week called a “ticking bomb”? The problem, El-Baradei insists, is with the current NPT regime, which has allowed upwards of 20 countries to develop civilian nuclear programs that could be weaponized in relatively short order. One part of re-dressing this failure, he told the UK Guardian, is to “ensure that the gaps that might exist for misuse of that technology is plugged.” It seems this 11th hour Bush deal has the potential to make the UAE one of the biggest “gaps,” turning the Straight of Hormuz into a nuclear smuggling thoroughfare.
There is no hard evidence that the governing royals are implicated in these BIS smuggling cases, but there is no real evidence to the contrary either. Oman and Qatar, both of whom have strong political and economic ties with Iran, do not appear in the case log at all, challenging the supposition that the UAE’s proximity to Iran makes it prone to abuse by privateers. And the UAE has long been criticized for its de facto policy of allowing cheap imports from Asia to be relabeled in the UAE to take advantage of the Arab Free Trade Area, a policy that the regime’s allies no doubt benefit from quite handsomely. The institutions that have grown up to accommodate and facilitate these smuggling rings will be difficult to dismantle, and may only be driven further underground by government efforts to do so. This may press many smugglers and traffickers of the more mundane variety to seek out opportunities to work in higher-value markets such as those for nuclear technologies. The UAE surely has legitimate security concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, but if used within the legal bounds of the US deal, the civilian technology involved in this transfer would not magically make them impervious to an attack. They would have to use this technology transfer as a starting point to engage in their own clandestine nuclear weapons program, a policy contradiction made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the UAE is not exactly strapped for energy resources as it sits on nearly 100 billion barrels of oil.
Although the deal was concluded by the Bush Administration, it must still be approved by Congress, which requires the Obama Administration to submit the deal for consideration. Under different circumstances the UAE case might be strong: it contributed to establishing an IAEA administered nuclear fuel bank, an important step in removing state-control of nuclear fuel; it is a strong US-ally and it has invested heavily in alternative energies. However, recent events caution against the deal. Particularly notable is the gruesome 45-minute tape that shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the UAE Crown Prince, torturing a grain merchant accused of pilfering $5,000 worth of product. Although disturbing, the real smoking gun of the tape is the presence of a uniformed Emirati police officer who actually takes part in the torture. If the legal arms of the state are under such complete tutelage of the royal family, is it not reasonable to assume that many of the smugglers are as well? The Wall Street Journal reported that both Westinghouse and General Electric are vying for the reactor contract. GE for one has substantial financial interests tied up with the UAE Royals, including a recently launched partnership with Mubadala Development Company, a venture capital group backed by the Crown Prince and his full-brothers including, you guessed it, Sheikh Issa from the torture tapes. For these and a host of other reasons, the US deal is unlikely to garner the Obama Administration much respect from the Arab world outside the Emirates, which is to say about 99% of the region’s population.
Regional realities and the lessons of history also advise against the deal. Many states have expressed plans to establish civilian nuclear programs, including Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. If the US aids the UAE in their program, what is to stop the rest of the region from demanding similar concessions in exchange for cooperation on regional peace deals and other joint efforts? The fact that these states may not be openly pursuing weaponized versions of these programs is of little comfort, especially given the tendency for regional political realities to shift. And by “shift” I do not mean peaceful leadership changeover so much as the US tendency to supply a given strongman with sufficient means to exterminate millions of people only to discover some years down the road that the individual has become politically unpalatable. Implementing such policy reversals once the region has been nuclearized will make disarming Saddam Hussein look like a leisurely stroll in the dessert. Crude continental balance-of-power politics once compelled France to supply sensitive nuclear assistance to Israel, Pakistan and Egypt and led Italy and Germany to assist Iraq with its program while the British supplied dual-use items; unconfirmed cases include German assistance to the apartheid government in South Africa, and Italian assistance to Argentina. This menace of regional tensions is again implicated in the case of the UAE, partly due to Bush-era tactics that divided the region into those who were “with us” or “with the terrorists.” However this time the balancing takes place in a global environment made infinitely more complex by previous generations of proliferation. Sandwiched between Iran and Saudi Arabia, will the Emiratis prove more reliable non-proliferators than the states of Western Europe? I give it roughly a snowball’s chance in Dubai.
Somehow government bureaucracies manage to suck all the intrigue out of their reports, turning would-be political thrillers into sterile dossiers full of euphemisms and obscure acronyms. The US Bureau of Industry and Security, for example, produces a monthly “Major Case” list that with a little spicing up might draw in some readers from the ranks of the government foreign policy elite. This would be a great advantage since the Bush Administration officials who signed a deal to build a nuclear reactor in the UAE seem to have missed the fact that the small Gulf nation is a major transshipment point for illicit trade with Iran, the international community’s current non-proliferation cause célèbre. The Emirates is mentioned in ten of the department’s pending cases for May 2009: nine of these for acting as a way station for shipments of sensitive technologies and dual-use items to Iran (destination number ten is Iraq, not exactly a comforting anomaly). The agreement may be a good way of rewarding the UAE for not joining its neighbors Oman and Qatar in seeking a unilateral rapprochement with Iran and bypassing the US in regional peace initiatives (moves that not only brought the two gulf nations closer to Syria but also weakened the credibility of former regional heavyweights and US-allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia). But is nuclear technology an appropriate carrot in a region that IAEA Chief Muhammad El-Baradei last week called a “ticking bomb”? The problem, El-Baradei insists, is with the current NPT regime, which has allowed upwards of 20 countries to develop civilian nuclear programs that could be weaponized in relatively short order. One part of re-dressing this failure, he told the UK Guardian, is to “ensure that the gaps that might exist for misuse of that technology is plugged.” It seems this 11th hour Bush deal has the potential to make the UAE one of the biggest “gaps,” turning the Straight of Hormuz into a nuclear smuggling thoroughfare.
There is no hard evidence that the governing royals are implicated in these BIS smuggling cases, but there is no real evidence to the contrary either. Oman and Qatar, both of whom have strong political and economic ties with Iran, do not appear in the case log at all, challenging the supposition that the UAE’s proximity to Iran makes it prone to abuse by privateers. And the UAE has long been criticized for its de facto policy of allowing cheap imports from Asia to be relabeled in the UAE to take advantage of the Arab Free Trade Area, a policy that the regime’s allies no doubt benefit from quite handsomely. The institutions that have grown up to accommodate and facilitate these smuggling rings will be difficult to dismantle, and may only be driven further underground by government efforts to do so. This may press many smugglers and traffickers of the more mundane variety to seek out opportunities to work in higher-value markets such as those for nuclear technologies. The UAE surely has legitimate security concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, but if used within the legal bounds of the US deal, the civilian technology involved in this transfer would not magically make them impervious to an attack. They would have to use this technology transfer as a starting point to engage in their own clandestine nuclear weapons program, a policy contradiction made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the UAE is not exactly strapped for energy resources as it sits on nearly 100 billion barrels of oil.
Although the deal was concluded by the Bush Administration, it must still be approved by Congress, which requires the Obama Administration to submit the deal for consideration. Under different circumstances the UAE case might be strong: it contributed to establishing an IAEA administered nuclear fuel bank, an important step in removing state-control of nuclear fuel; it is a strong US-ally and it has invested heavily in alternative energies. However, recent events caution against the deal. Particularly notable is the gruesome 45-minute tape that shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the UAE Crown Prince, torturing a grain merchant accused of pilfering $5,000 worth of product. Although disturbing, the real smoking gun of the tape is the presence of a uniformed Emirati police officer who actually takes part in the torture. If the legal arms of the state are under such complete tutelage of the royal family, is it not reasonable to assume that many of the smugglers are as well? The Wall Street Journal reported that both Westinghouse and General Electric are vying for the reactor contract. GE for one has substantial financial interests tied up with the UAE Royals, including a recently launched partnership with Mubadala Development Company, a venture capital group backed by the Crown Prince and his full-brothers including, you guessed it, Sheikh Issa from the torture tapes. For these and a host of other reasons, the US deal is unlikely to garner the Obama Administration much respect from the Arab world outside the Emirates, which is to say about 99% of the region’s population.
Regional realities and the lessons of history also advise against the deal. Many states have expressed plans to establish civilian nuclear programs, including Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. If the US aids the UAE in their program, what is to stop the rest of the region from demanding similar concessions in exchange for cooperation on regional peace deals and other joint efforts? The fact that these states may not be openly pursuing weaponized versions of these programs is of little comfort, especially given the tendency for regional political realities to shift. And by “shift” I do not mean peaceful leadership changeover so much as the US tendency to supply a given strongman with sufficient means to exterminate millions of people only to discover some years down the road that the individual has become politically unpalatable. Implementing such policy reversals once the region has been nuclearized will make disarming Saddam Hussein look like a leisurely stroll in the dessert. Crude continental balance-of-power politics once compelled France to supply sensitive nuclear assistance to Israel, Pakistan and Egypt and led Italy and Germany to assist Iraq with its program while the British supplied dual-use items; unconfirmed cases include German assistance to the apartheid government in South Africa, and Italian assistance to Argentina. This menace of regional tensions is again implicated in the case of the UAE, partly due to Bush-era tactics that divided the region into those who were “with us” or “with the terrorists.” However this time the balancing takes place in a global environment made infinitely more complex by previous generations of proliferation. Sandwiched between Iran and Saudi Arabia, will the Emiratis prove more reliable non-proliferators than the states of Western Europe? I give it roughly a snowball’s chance in Dubai.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Reading Beyond the Lines
Political Science, and in particular international relations, can be a dodgy subject because practitioners often deal in documents or sources that are less than reliable. These then get picked up by other sources and after a few references are so lost in the chain of evidence that few people think to question their legitimacy.
For example, just reading a story on Syria from the JPost that includes the following "citations":
"Syria's actions are evidence of the reality of a Middle East Cold War"
Anytime someone uses the word "reality" in close proximity to some incredibly complex historical phenomenon like "Cold War" that's being transferred to a different regional and temporal context it makes me a little skeptical
The rest of the article contains the following appeals to evidence, without citation or significant elaboration. All these are meant as condemnations of the Obama Administration's recent efforts to engage with Syria, but when compared to the policies/practices of other countries in the region (esp. US allies like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) they just read like hypocritical exercises in shaping the opinions of policy-makers and issue publics.
"it is well known" (regarding the domiciling of Hamas and IJ leaders in Damascus, which is true, but to suggest that allowing Khalid Meshaal to reside in Damascus somehow makes Syria unfit for engagement is ridiculous)
"reports have surfaced" (on Syrian construction of a biological weapons facility)
"It is known" (about Syrian stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin)
"It is thought by Western governments" (about a biological warfare program)
"the latest news is that" (about Damascus 'recommencing' its practice of facilitating the entry of 'Sunni jihadi fighters into Iraq' - which I'm guessing is coming from the NYTimes article a few weeks ago, except that the intel sources cited in the article didn't suggest that the Syrian authorities were facilitating the movement, just that it was increasing)
If this is what passes for hard evidence we are all in a lot of trouble.
For example, just reading a story on Syria from the JPost that includes the following "citations":
"Syria's actions are evidence of the reality of a Middle East Cold War"
Anytime someone uses the word "reality" in close proximity to some incredibly complex historical phenomenon like "Cold War" that's being transferred to a different regional and temporal context it makes me a little skeptical
The rest of the article contains the following appeals to evidence, without citation or significant elaboration. All these are meant as condemnations of the Obama Administration's recent efforts to engage with Syria, but when compared to the policies/practices of other countries in the region (esp. US allies like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) they just read like hypocritical exercises in shaping the opinions of policy-makers and issue publics.
"it is well known" (regarding the domiciling of Hamas and IJ leaders in Damascus, which is true, but to suggest that allowing Khalid Meshaal to reside in Damascus somehow makes Syria unfit for engagement is ridiculous)
"reports have surfaced" (on Syrian construction of a biological weapons facility)
"It is known" (about Syrian stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin)
"It is thought by Western governments" (about a biological warfare program)
"the latest news is that" (about Damascus 'recommencing' its practice of facilitating the entry of 'Sunni jihadi fighters into Iraq' - which I'm guessing is coming from the NYTimes article a few weeks ago, except that the intel sources cited in the article didn't suggest that the Syrian authorities were facilitating the movement, just that it was increasing)
If this is what passes for hard evidence we are all in a lot of trouble.
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