Monthly Archives: September 2011

Can China Stop U.S. Airpower? Reply

China, National Security
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Access Challenges and Implications for Airpower in the Western Pacific
by Eric Stephen Gons
Pardee Rand Graduate School
May 2010
266pp.

As China’s military plans against the possibility of a face-off with the United States, the nation’s generals understand that even with recent advances in the quality of Chinese training and equipment, the PLA is not yet ready to go head-to-head with the U.S. military, even in a limited scenario. As a result, China has been developing a warfighting doctrine based on denying U.S. air and naval forces access to the PRC and areas contiguous to its frontiers.

In a readable doctoral dissertation for the RAND Pardee Graduate School, Eric Gons works through whether this is a viable strategy for the PLA (it is), whether the PLA has the weapons and capabilities to implement it (it does), and whether the U.S., and in particular the U.S. Air Force, can operate effectively against that threat. And that is where things get sticky.

Diving into regional politics, geography, weapons capabilities, and training, Gons notes that if the USAF had to fight China in the Western Pacific, it would go in with highly capable aircraft that are totally unsuited for such a conflict. One insightful conclusion about the mix of aircraft the USAF would bring to the fight will certainly sit badly in the laps of Air Force generals:

The current USAF inventory was designed and optimized for European operations, where basing was close to the likely area of conflict. The Pacific theater, especially in light of anti-access threats, is very different.

Even assuming the absolute superiority of US aircraft on a head-to-head basis, Gons notes, the best efforts of the U.S. military could not sustain air superiority over Taiwan, for example, for very long.

As easy as it would be to dismiss Gons as a tool for the Air Force to cage more budget from Congress, one could only do so by ignoring the gentle yet deft excoriation of Air Force doctrine and force structure that Goss administers in his work. The USAF has used the questionable threat of a fight with China over Taiwan to justify spending on a force largely unsuited to that very task. The result is frightening. An examination of the US options mean that any conflict over Taiwan would be uncontainable: it would, by necessity, expand into a much wider war.

Gons calls for a paradigm shift in thinking, but he stops short of explaining what that shift should be. If the U.S. is serious about defending Taiwan against a PLA attack, however, the Department of the Air Force clearly needs a house-cleaning even more serious that the one it got from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The USAF needs to become more Asia-facing, more flexible, more expeditionary, and a lot cheaper. Otherwise it is of no use to the nation in a Pacific century.

For their part, the PLA should be quite pleased with this report. It underscores that since the Taiwan Straits crisis in 1996, the PLA has shifted its ponderous force and thinking far enough all but hog-tie the world’s most powerful military in the Western Pacific.

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America’s War in the North Atlantic Reply

History, World War II
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As much as the U.S. Army’s role in the Pacific War somewhat unjustly fades behind that of the Navy and Marines, the Navy’s role in the victory in Europe is too-often overlooked. Samuel Eliot Morrison tried to rectify that somewhat in his multivolume histories of the U.S. Navy in World War II, but there is precious little grist available to us amateur historians to learn more about the US Navy’s Atlantic fight.

One of the most critical of those fights was the Battle of the Atlantic, the six year effort to thwart Germany’s plan to win the European war by severing the Allies’ transatlantic supply line. Our hindsight makes it easy to forget that the matter was often in doubt, especially after German U-Boats were organized in Wolf Packs, began operating off the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and shredded convoys like the infamous PQ-17. Indeed, the U.S. applied the same strategy to Japan with huge success.

Navy Task Force 24 was the U.S. unit charged with the safe conduct of merchant convoys from U.S. ports to a point where British escorts could assume escort duties. The official account of the Admirals who commanded that unit, Commander Task Force 24, is thus a critical primary source for anyone with an interest in that period.

As with many such government-produced documents, the narrative can be a bit dry, more of a chronology than a thematically-organized work, and it is focused heavily on administrative matters rather than operations themselves. Nonetheless, this is essential background, and anyone familiar with or interested in the conduct of the war in the Atlantic will find the work enlightening.

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The Untold Story of the Navy on D-Day Reply

History, World War II
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The Invasion of Normandy: Operation NEPTUNE (Administrative History of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, 1940-1946)

Do not let the otherwise bland title fool you. Nearly seven decades after the Allied landings in northern France, this service history remains the most comprehensive study of the maritime side of the invasion of Normandy.

Covering the complete history of the operation, from its early planning stages in January 1942 until its execution 30 months later, this is an exhaustive study of what had to happen behind the scenes in order to bring together the massive flotilla necessary to make D-Day happen. It is probably one of the best yet least told naval stories of World War II, and it is available for free reading online.

The work itself has, to my knowledge, never been published in book form, though the original manuscript was apparently a key source for naval Historian Samuel Eliot Morrison when he wrote the eleventh volume in his massive operational history of the U.S. Navy in World War II. This it is probably the single best primary source of history about the operation.

A must for any historian, we can only hope that somebody will put it in book, pdf, or Kindle format at some point soon.

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The Pacific War According to MacArthur Reply

History, World War II
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There are histories aplenty of World War II in the Pacific, and the biographies of General Douglas MacArthur would fill a long bookshelf. Anyone interested in the man or the period, however, would do well to read The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Volume 1.

This account of Douglas MacArthur’s World War II, published by the U.S. Army and compiled by MacArthur’s staff, is excellent source material, but should not be seen as a definitive history. Indeed, the work seems a tad more biased than both contemporary and recent works by distinguished historians, and there are those who would read into the portrayal of some of the events and battles an overly flattering picture of MacArthur, his generalship, and the strategic importance of his theater of operations.

That said, the account of the war against Japan could use a little bias away from the accepted narrative, if only to prevent important campaigns from vanishing from memory. As the saying goes, there were two wars being fought in the Pacific, the one between the Allies and Japan, and the one between the US Navy and the US Army. If history is written by the victors, the Navy won the latter, and as a result the role of the US Army in the region has been minimized by a focus on the Navy by academic and popular historians alike.

This begs for some rectification without taking from the sacrifices and achievements of the Navy/Marine Corps team. MacArthur’s account, although compiled by men intensely loyal to the general personally, is a first step in that direction.

Are the Afghans Learning to Defend Themselves? Reply

Afghanistan

Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan: Identifying Lessons for Future Efforts | RAND.

Stripping the politics and the rhetoric out of the question, RAND scholars Terrence Kelly, Nora Bensahel, and Olga Oliker dig into whether and how the Security Force Assistance (SFA) program has been effective in the Afghan counterinsurgency.

The idea behind SFA is getting the Afghans to fight their own internal battles. In some cases, arguably Iraq, that program works, allowing US troops to go home even when there is an active insurgency.

I would not expect RAND to be as caustic in its analysis as other sources, but in a way that can actually be accepted and acted upon inside the E-ring in the Pentagon, what RAND says delivers a punch, and it is read carefully.

Well worth the read for those watching the evolving situation in Southwest Asia.

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A Primer for Afghan Peace Talks 1

Afghanistan, International Relations
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It seems likely that the focus in Afghanistan is going to shift away from eliminating the Taliban to finding a negotiated solution for coexistence between the tribes and factions that have found themselves on one side or another of the current conflict. The concern of all is that history has a tendency to echo, and nobody really wants to return to a state of constant, unmediated civil war.

Part of that challenge is ensuring that those negotiating on behalf of the world’s great powers are well-briefed: an abiding danger in any mediated negotiation is that the mediators are badly informed. Against that challenge, James Shinn and James Dobbins have written Afghan Peace Talks: A Primer. In the book they not only introduce the parties to the talks and the challenges those talks will face, but also a pathway to an agreement, and a draft framework for the agreement itself.

Whether peace can be brought to a region fraught by conflict for the better part of two centuries, where the wounds between tribes remain fresh and deep, is a matter whose answer lies far beyond the tactics of negotiation and whether the outsiders are prepared to engage effectively. Each of the Afghan tribes and the Taliban must believe that their best interests like in cooperation rather than conflict, a matter that speaks to their respective visions of the future and Nashian game-theory more than great power politics.

Yet great power unity is essential for success, and the authors lay out a thoughtful framework of international influence and interests in the process. They recognize that if the U.S., Russia, India, China, or Iran decide that a negotiated peace in Afghanistan is not in their best interests, the conflict will continue. Thus there are really two layers of peace talks: the one in which Kabul and the Taliban agree to peace, and one in which the rest of the world agrees to stand together to preserve the delicate balance.

In breaking these challenges down to their fundamentals, Shinn and Dobbins have done much more than create a briefing book for negotiators: they have given all of us a program and a scorecard that will make the otherwise byzantine maze of Afghan politics much more comprehensible.

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So What Did YOU Do in the War, Daddy Reply

Bibliography, History, World War II

Reading through David Brinkley’s excellent Washington Goes To War provided a jarring reminder to this amateur historian that history during that period was made outside of the Armed Forces as well.

For those interested in studying the home front in World War II, an excellent resource is The Administrative Histories of World War II Civilian Agencies of the Federal Government. This is essentially a large bibliography, but it is exhaustive, and thus an outstanding scholarly resource.

The PLA’s Modernization Challenge 3

China, National Security
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‘Betting on the come’ – the People’s Liberation Army combined arms gamble for the 21st century. :: School of Advanced Military Studies Monographs.

The U.S. Navy and Air Force have never been shy about naming China as the USA’s “near-peer” competitor, which makes it interesting that the U.S. Army is a little more circumspect.

In an excellent analysis that is a tad old but by no means dated, Michael Hendricks at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College explains the barriers that bar the way for the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), not least of which are domestic politics and an ongoing battle over doctrine. Hendricks also makes a forceful case for military-to-military ties that we all need to keep in mind as those relationships wax and wane.

Well worth the read for the sober and reflective look at a highly politicized topic.

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Water on Hot Politics: The Plan to Evaluate Washington’s School Reforms Reply

Education, Policy

Over the past decade, the battle over the future of public elementary and secondary education in the United States has been fought in the microcosm of the nation’s capital. In the face of union resistance and vocal parental opposition, the city engaged Chancellor Michelle Rhee in a crash program to redesign the way the entire school system was operated, making it more focused on students and outcomes than on the institution itself. Rhee has moved on, the results are a matter of ongoing controversy, and it will probably be decades before we truly understand whether the kids have really benefitted.

The schools are such a political football that the district and the US Government have appointed an independent committee just to come up with a plan on how the schools should be evaluated. The most important conclusion: take politics out of the evaluation process, a difficult job in one of the most politicized cities on the planet. Nonetheless, the plan offers a way to de-politicize evaluation and, hopefully, take a step that will also de-politicize the reform process itself.

The D.C. schools controversy is worth watching. To some extent, whither goes Washington, so goeth the nation, and if the schools of the District can enjoy high-profile success in rejuvenating its education system, other cities will follow suit. The pity is that, in the meantime, the students in the District become some of the highest-profile guinea pigs in education. One can only hope that the reforms Rhee made serve them well, and that something can ensure that they are relieved of the burden of political pawnship and returned to their rightful place as well-served, curious, and capable kids.

The book itself is a model of how to insert objective process into a politically charged situation. Anyone who has ever fought such battles will appreciate both the tone and the approach the authors take.

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Dealing with a Nuclear Iran Reply

International Relations, National Security

I am seeing something of a shift among international relations specialists, in particular among the realists, with regards to a nuclear Iran. Following the lead of some of the less ideological experts like Thomas P.M. Barnett, many are contributing to a growing body of literature that deals not with how to keep Iran from getting the bomb, but in how do deal with Iran once it has thermonuclear weapons.

Among those specialists are the team at the RAND Corporation who collaborated on Iran’s Nuclear Future: Critical U.S. Policy Choices. In the book, they examine the challenges Iran faces in its national security, the role nuclear weapons might play in those challenges, and lays out the options open to the U.S. and the world in ensuring that the Islamic Republic’s plutonium scimitar remains sheathed without having to cave to nuclear blackmail.

Quite apart from the case of Iran, learning to deal with a world in which slow proliferation is a fact of life will be one of the great geopolitical challenges of the 21st century. What I suspect is that this slim but thoughtful volume will form the first of a growing body of work that will fundamentally redefine the conduct of international relations in the coming decades.

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How Intelligence Helped Turn the Tide Against Japan 1

History, World War II
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On April 17, 1942, Imperial Japan seemed invincible. The nation’s armed forces were virtually undefeated in battle. All of East Asia, including much of China, lay under the boot of Dai Nippon; Australia and India looked to be next; and with the Allies focused on Europe first, the U.S. looked to be at least a year away before being able to take the offensive against even an overextended Japan.

Within 50 days, that had all changed.

While her armies were still rampant on mainland Asia, Japan’s Navy had suffered a sequence of defeats. The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo ended the myth of Japanese invincibility, the Battle of the Coral Sea had halted Japan’s drive into Australia, and the Battle of Midway destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy as a strategic offensive force.

That turning point was enabled by a range of factors, but it surely would not have happened had there not been a series of coups in signals intelligence in the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians, Frederick D. Parker gives us a look at the facts behind the legends, and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the unconventional team that enabled those (and many other) victories.

If the work leaves one wondering why, in contrast, the history of US intelligence over the last six decades reads like the annals of the Keystone Kops, it also offers the beginnings of an answer. Superior intelligence organizations are often not the conscious product of organizational science, but of brilliant, directed operators who are completely focused and left unhampered in their work.

A superb read for lovers of history and anyone interested in intelligence.

 

U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and
the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians
Frederick D. Parker

Russian Nukes and European Security Reply

Europe, National Security
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Over the past 22 years, the world has grown accustomed to thinking of the Russian military as a decrepit relic of the Cold War. For those who are watching carefully, there are growing signs that the bear is stirring from its post-Soviet hibernation. A recent naval deployment to the Caribbean, resumed long-range bomber patrols, and the conflict in Georgia several years ago are signs that Russia seeks to once again wield a respectable sword.

Part of that sword is Russia’s nuclear arsenal, now considerably smaller than that sported by the USSR, but substantial nonetheless. In 2010, the Russian armed forces laid out a doctrine under which such weapons would be used in the defense (broadly defined) of the motherland. That Russian leaders are once again contemplating the use of such weapons in combat has put Europe on alert.

In Nuclear Deterrence in Europe: Russian Approaches to a New Environment and Implications for the United States, James Quinlivan and Olga Oliker examine Russia’s new nuclear doctrine in the context of how Russia sees itself and its interests in modern Europe. In a post Cold War environment, the nuclear tripwire in Europe is no more as sensitive as it once was, and arguably it rests much further East. At the same time, as the authors point out, Russia sees its interests extending well beyond its geographic borders to countries with which it has “historic” ties.

The questions seem esoteric, but they define the extent to which a conflict with Russia in or around Europe would deteriorate into an atomic slugfest, even of a mere “tactical” nature. Does Russia see its interests extending into the former republics of the USSR, or indeed further into Europe? What is more, as Russian conventional forces are little match for its possible opponents, does this make it more likely that Russia will employ nuclear weapons in a future conflict?

The authors offer no easy answers, but they provide a path forward that makes it possible to act without seeing into the minds of the Russian leadership. Winston Churchill once wrote that, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

To their credit, Quinlivan and Oliker recognize that the formulation of Russian policy and action is no more transparent today than it was in Stalin’s Russia. By eschewing an updated version of the Kremlin-watchers craft from the Cold War and focusing instead on Russia’s stated interests, the authors begin to frame Europe’s response to a revived bear.

One final quibble I have with the authors is in their limiting the scope of their report to Russia’s policy vis-a-vis Europe. While they did so in order to keep the scope of the book manageable, or to ensure they did not venture beyond the ken of their own expertise, in so doing they create the illusion that Russia calculates its interests and actions one hemisphere at a time.

That is not the case. Russia and its leaders see themselves as much an Asia power as a European one, and the economic importance of Siberia, the Pacific, and the ‘Stans is now at least on a par with that of Europe. Russian irredentism is as strong in Asia as it is in the Black Sea, and even at the height of the German invasion of the USSR during World War II, Stalin never calculated his next move against Hitler without taking the situation in Asia into consideration. As such, a more encompassing study is in order, one that offers a full appreciation of why Russia sometimes sees itself as beset from all sides, and the strategic calculus that has developed as a result.

This is, however, a quibble. What the authors have wrought is the first of many studies we are likely to see of a re-emergent Russia and the new role it will play on the world stage.

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Who will Win? India, or China? Reply

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Forecasting the future is a tricky business, but it is not an altogether unrewarding one. Get it right, and you can remind people forever. Get it wrong, and most people will forget. Less fraught, however, is the habit of making business and policy decisions based on such prognoses: bet the farm on somebody else’s forecast, and your posterior is on the chopping block, not theirs.

It was with that slightly cynical thought in mind that we undertook to review China and India, 2025: A Comparative Assessment. Comparisons between China and India and their prospects are almost as common as all other forms of future gazing. At the very least, we are told, these will be two of the powers who will determine the course of the 21st century. The only question is which country has the economic model and political resilience necessary to take and hold the lead.

But the authors of this particular study place little stock in such predictions of global dominance. They recognize that there are too many uncertainties to make a prediction either way: what they are interested in discovering is which of these countries seems most likely to beat the other?

Spoiler alert: they are betting on India.

Since I’ve let that little tidbit out of the bag, I will not explain why, because that’s the fun of reading this report: understanding not just the rhetoric but the math behind their reasoning that makes India such a good bet over the next 15 years.

There are a ton of qualifications along the way, and the authors all but tell the reader “hey, don’t make any bets based on this conclusion, because, you know, anything could happen.” All of which sort of undermines the point of reading through it. But push these disclaimers out of your head and follow along with the reasoning, because the framework they use to analyze the two countries is worth considering at length.

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The Air Force and the War on Drugs Reply

Free PDF Book, Homeland Security
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The conflicts elsewhere in the world have cast the War on Drugs into something of a popular eclipse: it is just not something you hear about much, until the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, or a local police force captures a healthy-sized cache of drugs from someplace. The matter remains at the forefront of many minds, however, not least among those in the Pentagon, where the inter-agency effort to stem the flow of narcotics into North America remains an important, albeit not focal, raison d’etre.

In The Latin American Drug Trade: Scope, Dimensions, Impact and Response, homeland security expert Peter Chalk does offers a detailed update on how the drug trade operates in a day of Mexican cartels and mini-submarines. While the purpose of the study is to examine the role the U.S. Air Force might play in the War on Drugs, most of the book delves into the gritty detail of how drugs move from Latin American fields into American cities.

Smugglers have taken some innovative steps in the drug trade in response to more sophisticated U.S. efforts to stop it, but at its heart the interdiction battle is still a cat-and-mouse game that will get worse until either the entire supply – or most of the demand – dries up. There is no sense in making it easy for criminals, however, and ten years into The Long War, there have been technical and tactical innovations that can be readily applied in the War on Drugs specifically, and in homeland security more broadly.

Chalk’s work is a superb primer for those interested in the narcotics trade, in transnational crime, and in the role the armed forces should be playing in that effort.

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