May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Main
Wired's David Axe makes Canberra's case
The F-22's long range and twin engines make it a good choice for replacing aged Australia's F-111s and F/A-18s. On a recent visit, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said there was no reason Canberra couldn't be trusted with the radar-evading Raptor. "The reality is we have a law that prohibits the United States from selling F-22 to any country," he added. Since Gates' comment, Aussie media has only pumped up the volume on its Raptor punditry.
Australia's in the middle of a huge economic boom thanks to its oil and mineral wealth. The government has plowed a big chunk of that windfall into new destroyers and amphibious ships, M-1 tanks, MRAP-style armored trucks, a couple squadrons of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and airborne radar planes. The F-22s would top off what amounts to the biggest rearmament in decades for the island nation. Barring a change of heart by Congress on the F-22 ban, Canberra's planning on buying F-35s. But the single-engined F-35 is nobody's favorite.
The next best thing to the U.S. Air Force with Raptors is the RAAF with Raptors. I say work out an airtight security arrangement for protecting the highly classified F-22 schematics from foreign collection and let the Aussies play. It's the least we can do after decades of unwavering support for our alliance.
Eh, I suppose that's one way to conduct counterinsurgency operations:
The US Air Force wanted to use nuclear weapons against Vietnam in 1959 and 1968, and Laos in 1961, to obliterate communist guerrillas, according to newly declassified secret US Air Force documents.
In 1959, US Air Force chief of staff General Thomas D White chose several targets in northern Vietnam, but other military officials blocked his demand to nuke the Southeast Asian nation.
Confucius say, do not use cannon to kill mosquito. Still, I kind of miss the days of crazy old Air Force generals:
 Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.
But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
The Ishigaki city council, in the Okinawa prefecture of Japan, has passed a resolution allowing the capture of goats on the Uotsuri Island. Satellite images show that overgrazing by the goats is endangering the island’s delicate ecosystem. Ishigaki city councilmen plan to seek the National Diet’s (parliamentary) approval, as well as support from the executive branch, for their initiative.
The Uotsuri is the largest of a group of eight islets measuring a total of 2.7 square miles. Known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands, in China as the Diaoyu Islands, and in Taiwan as the Diaoyutai Islands, they are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.
In 1978, members of the ultra-nationalist Japan Youth Association built a lighthouse on the Uotsuri as a symbol of Japanese sovereignty. Ownership and management of the lighthouse was transferred from the group to the Japanese government in 2005.
Over the years, activists from China and Taiwan have tried repeatedly to land on the island to protest Japan’s assertion of sovereignty. The erection of a second lighthouse and the raising of a Japanese flag on the Senkakus in 1996 ignited a storm of protest from both China and Taiwan. In September of that year, four protesters jumped into the East China Sea after Japanese patrol boats blocked their ship from approaching the Uotsuri. One of the protestors, an activist from Hong Kong named David Chan, drowned.
In 2006, the director of the Japanese Coast Guard described the islands as "uninhabited, except for a few goats." The goats, however, are not native to the Uotsuri. The Japanese activists who built the lighthouse in 1978 were given by their supporters a pair of goats to be used for food. Upon completion of the lighthouse, the goats were set free on the island. Their descendants now number more than 1,000.
Any act of sovereignty over the disputed islands -- or their goats -- threatens to have serious diplomatic consequences.
In March 2005, Beijing expressed "firm opposition" to the Ishigaki city council’s proposal to enact an ordinance establishing an official "Senkaku Island Day," calling it "unlawful and invalid." Later that year, the city council appropriated 1.6 million yen for an inspection tour of the Senkakus by the mayor and city councilmen. The act was regarded by China as a serious provocation.
A landing by Japanese goat snatchers may result in China and Japan once again locking horns.
They've been looking at more advanced systems like the JSF and Raptor, but something needs to plug the hole until the RAAF retires the venerable F-111 in 2010.
The Australian government has confirmed the purchase of 24 Boeing F/A-18F Block II Super Hornet fighters.
This is despite accusing the previous administration, which originally ordered the aircraft, of having failed to make sound, long-term air combat capability decisions during its decade in power.
The decision followed the release of Part A of an Air Combat Capability Review ordered by the new government in January. This focused on the feasibility of retaining the Royal Australian Air Force's ageing F-111 strike aircraft beyond 2010 and the status of Australia's plans to acquire the Super Hornet.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said in a statement on 17 March that cancelling the Super Hornet would bring significant financial penalties and create tension between the United States and Australian governments. In February, defence officials said cancelling the Super Hornet contract under the US Foreign Military Sales programme would cost between AUD400 million and AUD600 million (USD375 million to USD563 million).
The decision is drawing fire down under. For one, the Super Hornet doesn't stack up too well against the Russian built Flankers and Fulcrums flown by Australia's far-east competitors. Second, this is essentially a $2.5 billion duct-tape job, as the F/A-18 is to serve as a mere gap-filler between the Aardvarks' retirement and the JSF deployment.
Additionally, the timing is odd. Australia is committing itself to expensive fighter aircraft--jets that won't be needed in 7 years--while simultaneously lamenting a $6 billion "hole" in their defense budget. Labor officials maintain that they can't keep the Aardvarks flying long enough to wait around for the JSF, but a former RAAF air boss has gone on record saying that the F-111 is "quite capable of going out to 2020 and beyond." Given the USAF's ability to keep ancient KC-135s, B-52s, and C-130s airborne decades past their projected retirement dates, I'm thinking that he's right. Though it's always pleasing to see allied nations buying American kit, this seems like a waste of precious defense resources.
Reuters reports:
New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who has pledged a tougher policy in dealing with North Korea, rebuffed his communist neighbor's offer to meet in January, a news report said on Wednesday.
The proposal was made through South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) "for responsible officials from the two sides to meet," the conservative Dong-a Ilbo newspaper quoted an unnamed government official as saying.
"But President Lee demanded clarification on the purpose of such a meeting, and the North subsequently suspended attempts to make contact," the official said....
Spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said the president felt: "it was not appropriate to meet without principle or with no results expected."
The last South Korean administration had relatively warm relations with their counterparts in the North--not that face-to-face meetings and unconditional aid ever prompted any real change in the behavior of the Kim Family Regime. Of course, meeting without principle and with no results expected would seem to be the guiding principle of Obama's proposed foreign policy--we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate, right? Wouldn't it be great if someone from the press actually asked Obama about this. Does he believe the South Koreans fear to negotiate? Would he meet with Kim Jong-Il regardless of whether or not the South Korean president does? That's what his website says.
Update: These are the people Obama would meet without precondition, and who the New York Philharmonic recently serenaded:
North Korea publicly executed 15 people who attempted to flee the country or helped others escape, a warning aimed at stemming the growing flow of refugees to China, an aid group said Wednesday.
Of those 15 people, 13 were women.
Traveling the world in search of Condi's legacy:
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said on Friday he may go to Beijing at the weekend to meet his North Korean counterpart for talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
"I think we will have an announcement on that at some point," Hill told reporters in Bangkok. "We had some very good discussions with the Chinese. There is an idea we might try to arrange something this weekend."
We're always on the verge of a breakthrough with the Chinese. A cynic might call it chasing the dragon.
But they still can't have it:
Australia could be trusted with the United States' Lockheed F-22 Raptor fighter, US defence secretary Robert Gates says.
Currently an Act of the US Congress bars any foreign sales of the Raptor.
The aircraft is the US Air Force's most advanced fighter and its sale is prohibited to any foreign country, under a 1998 amendment to a budget bill moved by Wisconsin Democrat Congressman Dave Obey.
The production line will remain open until 2009, allowing for the next President to decide if we'll continue manufacturing the birds. If it's McCain, sympathetic ears may be willing to hear the Air Force out. Obama or HRC, maybe not. But the Raptor's current mission is as much about winning a war with China as it is about preventing one. In that sense, it's in our best interest to equip trustworthy Pacific rim allies with the world's most advanced fighter. If Australia gets access, so will the Japanese, which could mean as many as 200 allied F-22s in the theater.
The real problem: if the U.S. starts selling F-22s in the Pacific, it will come at the expense of the Joint Strike Fighter.
The conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, defended his orchestra's commie concerto in the Wall Street Journal last week:
I have always believed that the arts, per se, and their exponents, artists, have a broader role to play in the public arena. But it must be totally apolitical, nonpartisan and free of issue-specific agendas. It is a role of the highest possible order: bringing peoples and their cultures together on common ground, where the roots of peaceful interchange can imperceptibly but irrevocably take hold. If all goes well, the presence of the New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang might gently influence the perception of our country there.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Maazel intended to improve the perception of Americans in North Korea and keep his political opinions to himself. No such luck. The maestro spoke to reporters in Los Angeles just before his departure:
Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel caused more controversy with remarks suggesting that the United States shouldn't criticize North Korea's human rights record because of its own treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw bricks, should they? Is our standing as a country -- the United States -- is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and the way they are treated?"
Political, partisan, and issue-specific. He's just on the other side.
HT: FP Passport
I listened to this bit on NPR yesterday about the New York Philharmonic's trip to North Korea. It featured Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president and executive director. He says:
I think it's going to mean a lot...our board has supported it, our musicians have supported it, I would say that 95 percent of opinion in New York and in American and around the world has supported it. Yes, there are a few people who think that we shouldn't have dialogue. I don't happen to believe that one shouldn't have dialogue in any circumstances.
He's like the Michael Barone of classical music. Count us among that 5 percent that thinks there isn't much to be gained from the country's most famous orchestra serenading Kim Jong-Il. And one wonders what, precisely, is the percentage of North Koreans who support the visit according to Mr. Mehta's polling? Between scrounging for tree bark to eat and trying to avoid being sent to slave labor camps, one might imagine that support is something less than 95 percent. That is unless an agent of the North Korean government is standing around when you ask, in which case I suspect support for the visit would be a whopping 100 percent.
Let this be a lesson to potentially hostile North Korean and Chinese fishermen:
Experts sounded alarm on Feb. 20 over the Japanese military's ability to defend the country after one of its most advanced naval destroyers crashed into a fishing boat, leaving two missing.
The collision on Feb. 19 came as Japan steps up security to ensure safety during July's summit of the Group of Eight major industrial countries, to be held in the northern resort town of Tokyo.
"Japan's security cannot be ensured if an Aegis-equipped destroyer fails to avert a collision with a fishing boat," the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said in an editorial.
Curious how this happened. Being a Navy brat, I've heard my fair share of sea tales. Most USN surface warfare officers will tell you that the "pucker factor" shoots up when you're steering a Navy ship within 5 or 6 miles of another vessel. Granted, we accidentally surfaced a nuclear attack submarine underneath a Japanese fishing boat a few years back, but that was a bit different, what with the whole no "eyes on" element.
North Korea's official press agency responds to Jay Lefkowitz's speech at AEI:
Some days ago, Lefkowitz, special envoy for North Korean human rights issue of the US, was impudent enough to poke his nose into the nuclear issue, only to bring shame to himself.
What he uttered is nothing but rubbish which admits of no argument as it only provoked wry laughter.
But what merits attention here is that some American guys who do not know even where they stand, to say nothing of the way the world goes, are watching for a chance to scuttle the processes to settle the nuclear issue and improve the DPRK-US relations, displeased with them....
It was in this context that Lefkowitz underlined the need to include the human rights issue in the agenda items of the six-party talks and complained that China and South Korea are not pressurizing [pressuring] North Korea at the American Enterprise Institute, a centre of conservatives.
It seems the North Koreans and Foggy Bottom agree on something. As Secretary Rice said last week:
"[Lefkowitz] doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks."
Which translates roughly into 'don't be poking your nose into our negotiations.'
For the past week or so we've been following the fallout from Jay Lefkowitz's criticism of the State Depatment's North Korea policy (see here, here, and here). The criticism itself went something like this:
Using unusually sharp words, he said North Korea "has not kept its word," was "not serious about disarming in a timely manner" and "its conduct does not appear to be that of a government that is willing to come in from the cold."
Lefkowitz also accused Pyongyang of being a "serial proliferator" and using its nuclear arms to "extort" foreign aid, saying there was no guarantee that US military and nuclear strength could prevent it from passing on nuclear arms or technology to Islamist extremists or their backers.
Since then the State Department has erased any record of Lefkowitz's speech from its own website, and now the Secretary herself has fired back:
Rice said that Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush's special envoy on North Korean human rights, "doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks."...
Rice, speaking with reporters on her way to Germany for talks on Iran's nuclear program, said that she knows where Bush stands on North Korean policy, "and I know where I stand, and those are the people who speak for American policy."
The Wall Street Journal expressed some hope in a recent editorial that Lefkowitz might have been talking for the president when he made those comments. Or at least that Lefkowitz might have the president's ear on this issue. I'm skeptical. But her reaction here is a bit bizarre. Nobody besides Rice, Chris Hill, and the president really have any idea what's going on at the six-party talks. And in fact, we don't need to know what's going on there to know that the North hasn't yet met its deadlines for "disablement," hasn't yet stopped starving its people, hasn't yet become a credible partner for negotiation. If, despite his title, Lefkowitz has no say in American policy on North Korea--perhaps he ought to.
Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights, has publicly questioned the Bush administration's approach to dealing with North Korea:
Lefkowitz charged late Thursday that North Korea used its nuclear arsenal to "extort" aid, was "not serious" about disarming, and would likely not give up its weapons before US President George W. Bush's term ends in January 2009.
He also said that China and South Korea -- the two nations with the most leverage over the North Korean regime -- were "unwilling to apply significant pressure on Pyongyang" to abandon its nuclear weapons arsenal.
Because of this, he said, recent six-party talks "in actuality, became a bilateral negotiation between the US and North Korea."
Lefkowitz called for a "new approach" in disarmament talks -- "perhaps even bilaterally" -- with North Korea that would permanently link human rights as part of the engagement policy and a critical condition for any normalization of diplomatic relations.
Using unusually sharp words, he said North Korea "has not kept its word," was "not serious about disarming in a timely manner" and "its conduct does not appear to be that of a government that is willing to come in from the cold."
Lefkowitz also accused Pyongyang of being a "serial proliferator" and using its nuclear arms to "extort" foreign aid, saying there was no guarantee that US military and nuclear strength could prevent it from passing on nuclear arms or technology to Islamist extremists or their backers.
Lefkowitz has one overarching concern--human rights in North Korea--and there's little doubt that the current process is unlikely to see progress on that front. But there's also no reason to doubt his assessment of the nature of the six party talks, or that North Korea is negotiating in bad faith. A number of Conservatives, most notably John Bolton, have broken ranks with the administration over the "disablement" process, but this is the first time someone has done so from the inside. Hopefully his boss is paying attention.
Hong Kong
I’m not the only Heritage Foundation guy in Hong Kong this week. Heritage President Ed Feulner was in town to release the 2008 "Index of Economic Freedom." A joint project of the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the index grades every country on the openness of their economy and the potential for economic opportunity. This year’s winner is Hong Kong. That was no big surprise. Hong Kong has been ranked No. 1 in economic freedom every year, starting with the first "Index," published 14 years ago.
One striking thing about this year’s report, though, is how many Pacific nations rank among world leaders in economic freedom. Indeed, six of the eight top-ranked countries border the Pacific. Four of those six are Asian: Hong Kong (1), Singapore (2), Australia (4), and New Zealand (6). The U.S. ranks fifth--an indication that America might well spend more time looking East.
Americans are getting exercised by warnings of a possible recession and talk about an economic "stimulus" package from Washington. But the early word about the stimulants under discussion suggests that--as is often the case -- the promised help from Washington is calculated more to win votes than generate jobs. Odds are that, whatever "stimulus" Washington applies will have only a minor effect on America’s $14 trillion economy. But the best stimulus package is to unleash the economy and let free economies do what they do best--grow. That’s what Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand have done. And that’s why Asia offers tremendous opportunities for growth.
From a security standpoint, turning East makes sense, too. Asia has been awash with "happy talk." South Korea is talking to North Korea; Taiwan is talking to China, and China is talking to India. Asia’s hottest hot spots all look to be a little cooler as a result.
American leadership in Asia could help keep things moving in the right direction. Only continued U.S. pressure will ensure that North Korea follows through on backing away from its "nuclear bully" stance. Missile defense in Asia won’t happen without U.S. leadership. The Taiwan Straits will always be potentially troubled waters without a vigilant U.S. presence. And U.S.-India relations have come a long way--but have a long way to go.
And, of course, there is Pakistan. My guess is al Qaeda has overplayed its hand in Pakistan much as it did in Iraq--and there will be serious "blowback" against the extremists (regardless of who is Pakistan’s president). A year from now Osama bin Laden and his cohorts may find themselves pressed between a Pakistan which no longer wants them and an Afghanistan with a NATO presence (bucked-up by the United States) this is not about to take them back. This happy scenario, however, won’t happen without leadership from the White House. To regain momentum here, the U.S. needs to remain actively engaged with both countries.
American leadership can make a real difference in Asia this year. And there is a real payoff for the effort: an opportunity to engage with some of the most dynamic economies in the world. And that’s a great way to help ward off a recession.
 Because it worked out so well the last time... Not long ago we learned that the State Department had facilitated arrangements for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to travel to North Korea. It’s a terrible idea, of course, to reward Kim Jong Il’s bad behavior--indeed, his bad nature--by sending cultural envoys with the blessing of our top diplomats. (See Powerline’s Scott Johnson on the subject here.)
But it would be something just short of disastrous if our top diplomat herself--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice--were to go along, no? That is just what she is planning to do, according to a report from NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, in an appearance on The Chris Matthews Show. According to Mitchell, whose reporting consistently reflects access to very good sources at the highest levels of our diplomatic bureaucracy, Rice will be going to North Korea with the philharmonic when it travels to the dark nation in February.
George W. Bush included North Korea in the Axis of Evil some six years ago. And he famously told Bob Woodward: "I loathe Kim Jong Il. I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people."
But more recently, Bush sent a letter to the man he once derided as a "pygmy," in an effort to get the North Korean leader to made good on his disarmament commitments--a triumph of hope over experience, as Samuel Johnson once said in a different context. Bush was even said to have addressed Kim Jong Il as "Mr. Chairman" in the letter, suggesting a softening of his earlier views.
A letter is one thing. But a cultural exchange featuring America’s top diplomat is quite another.
Will Bush let her go?
As Kevin Rudd and his new cabinet are being sworn into office today, Chinese media have given unprecedented coverage to the Australian Labor Party’s victory in the November 24 elections, and to the newly designated prime minister in particular.
Names of Western leaders are typically transliterated into Chinese characters. For example, Bush is referred to in the Chinese press as bu-shi, Blair as bu-lai-er, Brown as bu-lang, and so on. All sound somewhat alien to the Chinese ear.
Kevin Rudd, on the other hand, is known as Lu Kewen, a quintessentially Chinese name that he adopted while studying Chinese language and history at the Australian National University. Rudd endeared himself to the Chinese even more when he mentioned, during a pre-election interview with China Central Television (CCTV) conducted almost entirely in Mandarin, that his three children are all students of the language and his son-in-law is a Chinese-born, naturalized Aussie.
The Chinese take great pride in the fact that the leader of a major Western country speaks their language and has expressed a keen interest in their culture. Rudd’s interview with CCTV is characterized as a conversation that "demonstrated China’s cultural soft power," while the "Lu Kewen phenomenon" is viewed as a reflection of "China’s continuously ascending international clout."
The official Xinhua news agency found it "profoundly significant" that Australia’s "history" finally caught up with its "geography," as its voters ousted John Howard, whose Asia policy was "bogged down in history," and embraced Rudd, the widely acclaimed "China expert" who turned his "Chinese-ness" into a "campaign trump card."
Guangming Daily, run by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, attributed Rudd’s victory to his "forward-looking new thinking."
The gushing enthusiasm, however, is mixed with a certain degree of caution. People’s Daily ran on November 27 an opinion piece titled "Do not rush to label the China-expert prime minister ‘pro-China.’" The story, first published in China Youth Daily, states:
Being a "China expert" is not equivalent to being a "China lover." First and foremost, Lu Kewen is a citizen of Australia; secondly, he is the prime minister of Australia. In the eyes of Westerners, official duties and private affairs are strictly separated. Lu Kewen the "China expert" belongs in the personal realm. Being "prime minister" is Kevin Rudd’s official duty. We expect him to improve his country’s relations with China. But we cannot expect too much.
At an APEC lunch in Sydney this past September, then-opposition leader Rudd upstaged prime minister Howard by addressing Chinese president Hu Jintao in Mandarin. Howard, who had just inked a $45 billion gas deal with Hu, was left to listen to a translation of Rudd expressing his love for China and its culture.
The following day, Rudd and Hu held a 30-minute meeting conducted entirely in Mandarin. So impressed was Hu that he told Rudd: "You speak perfect Chinese and you know China inside out."
In his victory speech on November 24, Rudd referred to the United States as Australia’s "great friend and ally." Australia’s friends across Asia and the Pacific were characterized not as "allies," but instead as "partners." An indicator, perhaps, that Kevin Rudd, aka Lu Kewen, really does know China inside out.
Beijing
Intelligence sources and other observers both here in the capital of the PRC and elsewhere in Asia are stating that they project a possible collapse of the North Korean regime within six months time.
Although there have been similar dire predictions made in the past, those analyzing the current situation point to several factors that indicate that the regime may finally be unraveling.
Recent activity by both Kim Jong-Il and other DPRK officials suggest that the Dear Leader is in the process of moving around the financial resources of Pyongyang’s international banking empire in order to make sure he is taken care of should he have to go into exile. This includes a recent visit to the United States by North Korean finance officials who were visiting to learn about the international financial circulation network.
Ostensibly, this visit was preparatory work that would allow the country to re-join the international financial system. This is the next, anticipated step for Pyongyang once the regime has negotiated its removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. The DPRK are also seeking an end to their being subject to the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act first imposed during the Korean War by President Harry Truman.
But, there are others who suggest that this is also part of a contingency plan in order to make Kim’s assets “portable.”
While the Dear Leader is engaged in financial matters, other reports state that there are movements of U.S. and South Korean military units and equipment to the DMZ in what appears to be a pre-positioning exercise in anticipation of some internal upheavals in the north.
Indications that the regime is possibly losing its grip and that Kim may be failing to maintain control over events are seen in what happens both inside--and how people are managing to get outside of--the country.
A recent article in the Washington Post details how it has become far easier and more common for North Koreas to find ways of getting out of their country. How much money you have determines how arduous and circuitous your escape route might be.
The key factor to watch is how rapidly the numbers of people fleeing are increasing. Only 41 North Koreans were able to reach the South in 1995, but the rate of those escaping has grown each year and last year it reached 2,000. What makes these multiple escape routes out of the country possible is that there are a growing number of DPRK border guards and secret police officials who are willing to take bribes to allow their fellow countrymen to escape.
North Korea watchers regard this as a telltale sign of the regime losing its control. Part of the motivation for these border control officials’ desire to collect bribes is that the centrally-controlled economy has ceased to function and the food distribution system is nearly as broken. But, the other side of the coin, they say, is that those accepting these under-the-table payments do not fear the punishment of higher-ranking authorities as much as they once did.
Equally indicative of how little Pyongyang can now affect the outward flow of asylum seekers is how harsh the retributions have become for the relatives left behind.
Continue reading "DPRK On The Verge Of Collapse?" »
It happens, on rare occasion. When the USS Porter came to the rescue of a hijacked North Korean ship off the coast of Somalia, I speculated that the North Korean public would never hear about the encounter, remaining blissfully ignorant of the fact that the United States fleet includes a single vessel other than the captured USS Pueblo.
Don Surber, took a different view, though, saying "this should help relations with North Korea":
Still, I have to think that there are a few Koreans who think a little more highly of the United States because of this.
Well, apparently it has helped relations:
In an extremely rare public expression, North Korea officially thanked the United States for helping the crew of a North Korean cargo ship hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast late last month, describing the rescue as a symbol of Washington-Pyongyang rapprochement.
"We feel grateful to the United States for its assistance given to our crewmen. This case serves as a symbol of the DPRK [North Korea]-U.S. cooperation in the struggle against terrorism," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
Best word to describe the North Koreans, other than evil: unpredictable.
 Looking les and less likely. According to a weekend report from Reuters news agency, one of Washington’s closest Asian allies may be ending a several decades-long practice of purchasing its advanced weaponry from the United States. On Wednesday, Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba gave an interview which seemed to indicate that the country’s air force was saying "sayonara" to their earlier expressed wishes to purchase an export version of the Lockheed Martin (LM) F-22A Raptor.
Japanese military officials have been discussing a possible F-22A purchase with the United States for more than two years, and several of the aircraft have made visits to Japanese air bases, but Congressional and other opposition to selling the U.S. Air Force’s top-of-the-line stealthy fighter appears to still be enough to block the sale. Despite the fact that Japan is perhaps the number one security partner of the United States in the region, there is still a mindset within the U.S. Government that is hesitant to export the new-age technologies that are the basis for the Raptor’s performance and combat effectiveness.
This past August the House Appropriations Committee passed legislation banning the export of the F-22A to any foreign government. DoD officials in Washington said this would derail plans by Israel and Japan to obtain the advanced fighter sometime during the next three years, Middle East Newsline reported.
Conventional wisdom has been that the Japanese would try to outwait this resistance and just postpone their procurement for another year, but the problem facing Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force (JSDAF) is that time is not on their side. The JSDAF are still operating a number of the aging McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantoms that need to be retired and replaced with a later-model platform. Some of the F-4s have been in service in Japan for nearly 35 years.
If the past week’s statements are to be believed, the need to buy something now appears to be winning out over Tokyo’s desire to continue to "buy American."
"The F-22 is an exceptional aircraft," Ishiba was quoted as saying. "But we at the Defence Ministry have not decided that it is absolutely necessary for Japan." Ishiba went on to say that of the several other competitors to replace the F-4s the most likely choice was the four-nation consortium Eurofighter. Eurofighter’s major industrial participants are BAE Systems in the UK, EADS in Germany and Spain, and Alenia Aeronautica/Finemeccanica in Italy.
Other competitors in the race have been ruled out for other reasons. "The French [Dassault] Rafale is difficult to use. We certainly wouldn't choose a Russian fighter plane. So I think it would be the Eurofighter Typhoon," he said.
Observers of the F-22A program in the United States are puzzled as to why the U.S. Government continues to hold back from selling the Raptor. They point out that the other major LM program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), utilizes many of the same technologies as the F-22A and will likely be sold to more than a dozen nations.
"The major new technologies that make the F-22A the next generation in fighter aircraft are also the building blocks of the F-35," said a Washington, D.C.-based expert on combat aircraft and stealth technology. "The low observable materials, the active electronically scanning array (AESA) radar, new avionics--these and more are part of the F-35’s design. The USAF also need an export sale to bump up the total numbers of F-22As to be produced. It is the only way to put any economies of scale into this program."
Continue reading "Sayonara For F-22A Raptor?" »
Gordon Chang has posted an interesting rebuttal to Robert D. Kaplan's must-read in today's New York Times. Chang is dubious of Kaplan's contention that this century will be "the Asian Century":
Kaplan is right to highlight the growing militarization of Asia. But he’s too hasty in arguing that the continent will, therefore, dominate the 21st century. If anything, Asian militarism probably will be the reason that historians will call this era “the Second American Century.”
In the twentieth century it took two all-encompassing wars and one decades-long struggle to resolve the most pressing matters in Europe. In Asia, Japan and Russia have yet to settle their differences resulting from World War II, and the Korean War still has not been concluded by peace treaty. More important, the animosity among the great powers of Asia—China and India, India and Pakistan, and China and Japan, just to mention the most prominent of them—continues to flare. And then there is always Taiwan, essentially the unfinished Chinese civil war.
Kaplan does note a few of today’s territorial disputes, but he ignores the more important ones, and fails to convey the intensity of any of them. Moreover, he does not refer to the military clashes and confrontations that have threatened peace this decade. Asia is an area of rising giants, failing states, and unresolved disputes, some of which have gone on for centuries. In this context, it’s unlikely that the Chinese, Indians, Japanese, and South Koreans will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new ships and not use them in another monumental clash. We can probably look forward to decades of Asian turbulence. In many respects, Asia today is the Europe of a hundred years ago. For this and other reasons, Asians will not dominate this century.
My own two cents: Kaplan worries that China's increased military spending may result in "a quantitative advantage in naval technology that could erode our qualitative one." This seems unlikely as the U.S. Navy still maintains an enormous quantitative advantage over its competitors, including China. The United States Navy has more ships than the next 17 navies combined. During Pax Britannica, the British Navy understood supremacy to mean a fleet larger than the next two navies combined. And our qualitative advantage is similarly impressive--despite cutting the number of ships from 592 at the end of the Cold War to less than 300 now, the current Navy is a far more lethal force than it was before. There's no doubt that China's ever-growing submarine fleet represents a real challenge, but that is in the littorals. So I'm deeply skeptical that in just "a few years" we will see "the loss of the Pacific Ocean as an American lake after 60 years of near-total dominance." But Kaplan's a smart guy.
Australian PM John Howard is seeing a "stunning recovery in the polls":
JOHN Howard's refusal to bow to Cabinet critics has paid off for the Prime Minister with a stunning recovery in the polls.
A Newspoll survey published today shows the Government picking up four percentage points to get 45 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
Labor's share fell four points to 55 per cent.
The poll still shows that an election held now would see Labor easily elected. But it will give Coalition MPs - and Mr Howard - greater confidence.
Maybe a result of Bush's recent trip to Australia where he delivered this strong message?
It was a bad week for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of America’s most important allies. First his party took a “thumping” (as George W. Bush might say) in upper house elections on Sunday, July 29th. Then, a day later, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Tokyo to formally apologize and “accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner” for the mistreatment of thousands of sex slaves in Japanese military brothels during World War II.
Japan issued an official apology for the so-called “comfort women” in 1993, but it was never ratified by parliament. Many Japanese conservatives, including Prime Minister Abe, have shown a troubling tendency to downplay or sugarcoat such imperial atrocities. (The Rape of Nanking is another example.) Indeed, a large bloc of Japanese MPs has pushed to revise the 1993 apology.
The “history issue” remains a stubborn and embarrassing problem for Japan. But here is my take, from a few months ago, on why it shouldn’t discredit Tokyo’s new foreign policy agenda, which is based around prudent self-defense, a greater acceptance of international duties, and what Foreign Minister Taro Aso calls “value-oriented diplomacy.” (And here is a related piece on the overblown fears of resurgent Japanese nationalism.)
From today's Australian:
ALEXANDER Downer has distanced Australia from US and Japanese complaints about China's rapid military build-up, saying the concerns are exaggerated.
The US and Japanese Governments have complained about the escalation and "opaqueness" of Beijing's military spending, but Mr Downer said Australia viewed growing military strength as "an inevitable function" of China's economic growth. China was interested in secure supplies of resources and free markets for its products, he said in Tokyo yesterday, not expanding its territory or exporting its ideology, except possibly in the case of Taiwan.
"I don't think anything drives the Chinese leadership more than their desire to lift their people out of poverty and about making China a prosperous country," he said. "That is the true driving force of Chinese public policy, so I don't think any of us need be unduly concerned about Chinese military expenditure. I think expressions of concern are much exaggerated."
This might seem like a strange sentiment for a government that has been one of the Bush administration's staunchest allies on matters of democracy promotion. But, according to THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own Duncan Currie, this view of China runs deep in the Howard government, which has presided over an unprecedented economic boom that has been given a recent lift by increased trade with the Chinese mainland. Unlike the United States, which runs an enormous trade deficit with China, Australia's deficit was only $3.5 billion last year, and exports rose 46.4 percent while imports climbed just 16.5 percent compared with the year before.
Currie says the Australians see themselves as an honest broker between the Chinese and the United States, a mediator that both sides can trust. Still, it seems unbelievably naive to think that China's Communist party is primarily driven by the desire to lift the country's masses out of poverty...and to the extent that it is driven by such considerations, it's unlikely that prosperity is, in and of itself, an end, but rather a means to greater stability and military power. Either way, helping the Chinese get rich, and helping oneself in the process, shouldn't blind developed countries to the nature of the regime in Beijing. Currie says that Howard, for his part, has promoted a calm and constructive dialogue between the U.S. and China. But the Australian premier has also emphasized that he has “no illusions--that China remains an authoritarian country” and “no false illusions about the nature of China’s society.” He made those remarks at a press conference with Dick Cheney this past February in Sydney.
And when Howard signed a security pact with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in March, he made it quite clear that Australia would not soon ink such a deal with Beijing. As he told a reporter: “There are a lot of things we have in common with China, but China is not a democracy. Japan is.”
This speech offers a good distillation of Howard’s views on China (and on Asia generally).
 As things stand now, it's entirely unclear whether the North Koreans will meet their first obligation set forth under the February 13 agreement--the shutdown of the country's main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
After nearly four years of Six Party Talks with the North Koreans, the reclusive regime seems interested only in stalling for more time and extorting aid from the West in the form of fuel oil and food.
But what if the West, instead of trying to disarm the rogue regime, merely sought to do business there. The story of the Baltika Beer Company might be instructive. The Russian brewery shipped 72,000 bottles of Baltika No. 5 Gold to Korea last week, the first delivery of its kind. How long did it take for Baltika to tap the North Korean market? Longer than it took the Bush administration to bribe the North Koreans into another nuke deal.
Negotiations began in 2001, when Kim Johg-Il himself visited the brewery while in St. Petersburg. The next year he sent engineers back to St. Petersburg "to study brewing methods." According to officials at Baltika, reaching an accord took a further three years. That only takes us up to 2005--and there's no explanation for what held up the first shipment for another two and a half years.
Dmitry Kistev, head of Baltika's export sales, explained the company's strategy: "The foam drink brewed in the city that's the cradle of socialist revolution -- and that's how Baltika will be positioned in North Korea -- will be available for foreign tourists as well."
At 80 cents a bottle, it's doubtful that Baltika will reach a wide swath of the North Korean "market." And, given that it takes Kim six years to order a beer, one has good reason to be skeptical that the regime will dismantle its nuclear program after just four years of giving us the run around.
Tim Johnson, the China correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, also runs his own blog, China Rises, which is a must-read for those following events in the world's most populous country. Yesterday Johnson linked to a story titled "Have All China Scholars Been Bought?" from the Far Eastern Economic Review. The author, Carson A. Holz, writes:
Academics who study China, which includes the author, habitually please the Chinese Communist Party, sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously. Our incentives are to conform, and we do so in numerous ways: through the research questions we ask or don’t ask, through the facts we report or ignore, through our use of language, and through what and how we teach.
Foreign academics must cooperate with academics in China to collect data and co-author research. Surveys are conducted in a manner that is acceptable to the Party, and their content is limited to politically acceptable questions. For academics in China, such choices come naturally. The Western side plays along.
China researchers are equally constrained in their solo research. Some Western China scholars have relatives in China. Others own apartments there. Those China scholars whose mother tongue is not Chinese have studied the language for years and have built their careers on this large and nontransferable investment. We benefit from our connections in China to obtain information and insights, and we protect these connections. Everybody is happy, Western readers for the up-to-date view from academia, we ourselves for prospering in our jobs, and the Party for getting us to do its advertising. China is fairly unique in that the incentives for academics all go one way: One does not upset the Party.
You get the gist--if one wants to study China, he had better not get on the wrong side of the Communist party. If he does, he runs the risk of losing his access, and his job.
For his part, Johnson locks onto this particularly disturbing paragraph from the story:
We ignore the fact that of the 3,220 Chinese citizens with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan ($13 million) or more, 2,932 are children of high-level cadres. Of the key positions in the five industrial sectors - finance, foreign trade, land development, large-scale engineering and securities -- 85% to 90% are held by children of high-level cadres.
Johnson is suspicious--"It’s a pretty extraordinary statistic. But is it true? I have my serious doubts." Jennifer Chou posted here yesterday on two "children of high-level cadres," one of whom is the vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration and the other the head of Huaneng Power International, China's largest power producer. THE WORLDWIDE STANDARD thus makes its contribution of anecdotal evidence to support Holz's claim.
But Johnson does not really challenge the thrust of Holz's argument, that Western scholars have, out of self-interest, largely conformed to the wishes of the Communist party on issues large and small.
Current New Mexico governor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson is making the rounds in North Korea this week with the blessing of President Bush. Richardson hopes to collect the remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War, but his hosts are making the most of the visit's propaganda value, taking the governor, and a group of reporters, to the USS Pueblo, which was captured in 1968 along with 82 of her crew. The crew was released 11 months later, but the Pueblo remains in North Korea, for the purpose of "anti-American education" in the words of a Nork colonel accompanying Richardson's delegation. The Pueblo is the only active duty warship held by a foreign government, and was the first U.S. warship to be captured since 1807.
As embarrassing as the ship's capture was at the time, Allahpundit rightly points out the performance of that crew relative to the 15 British sailors and marines released by Iran's Revolutionary Guards just last week. I'm hesitant to accuse the British troops of cowardice, though I pretty much agree with those that have, but in comparison to the Americans who served on the Pueblo, they fail to measure up. The crew of the Pueblo may not have fought to the last man, but neither were they a "contrite and cooperative lot."
 Notice the hand signals these sailors from the Pueblo display
in this propaganda photo taken by the North Koreans.
Today at the American Enterprise Institute, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control before his stint as ambassador to the United Nations, slammed the February 13 agreement between the United States and North Korea. Here's the report from U.S. News:
"I think this deal will inevitably fail," Bolton said. "That day cannot come too soon in my view."
Asked by U.S. News why the administration had changed course in February and accepted that North Korea would receive some benefits before it had verifiably disarmed, Bolton said it was because of "the persistence of the State Department bureaucracy ... they've finally succeeded." Bolton added that he was particularly surprised that President Bush, with well-known views about human-rights violations in North Korea and terrorism, would agree to begin a process of removing North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. He cited North Korea's abduction of perhaps 15 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s as a matter that must be resolved before North Korea could shed its terrorism-sponsor status.
"The February 13 agreement let North Korea out of the corner it had put itself in," Bolton said. "Time works in North Korea's favor and against our interest."
Bolton argued that North Korea will not surrender its nuclear weapons and programs until there is regime change, saying that a real denuclearization agreement would constitute a "suicide pact" for the regime of Kim Jong Il.
Bolton argued that North Korea will not surrender its nuclear weapons and programs until there is regime change, saying that a real denuclearization agreement would constitute a "suicide pact" for the regime of Kim Jong Il.
Whatever opinion one has of Bolton, it's hard to argue against his interpretation of events. And it would be surprising if the left, as much as they love to hate Bolton, didn't support this interpretation--if only to deny the Bush administration credit for what is, in fact, a pathetically Clintonian deal. In other news "Pyongyang is likely to miss an agreed deadline for initial steps towards dismantling its nuclear programme" according to Wu Dawei, China's chief negotiator on North Korea.
Total WonKerr Paul Kerr continues to support the government's bizarre position that an absence of evidence that the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs are collaborating is, in fact, evidence of absence. Kerr points to this Feb. 27 exchange before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
SEN. COLLINS: Do you have evidence that North Korea is assisting Iran in developing its nuclear capabilities?
ADM. MCCONNELL: No, ma’am, I’m not aware of anything. Let me turn to my colleagues, if they are. I don’t know of anything — any connection between the two.
SEN. COLLINS: General?
GEN. MAPLES: No, ma’am.
SEN. COLLINS: The reason I ask is there was a CRS report that was issued back in October of last year that says the evidence suggests that North Korea has had extensive dealings with Iran on missiles and other weapons. But General?
GEN. MAPLES: That’s correct, they have had extensive interaction on the development of missile systems. And Iran, in fact, has purchased missiles from North Korea.
SEN. COLLINS: But there’s no concern that North Korea may be helping Iran develop nuclear capabilities?
GEN. MAPLES: There is a concern, but we haven’t seen —
SEN. COLLINS: But no evidence to support it?
ADM. MCCONNELL: No evidence, that’s correct, Senator.
Well, case closed, right? I mean, we haven't actually seen Kim Jong-Il handing plutonium to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so I'm sure they've confined their collaboration to the development of missile systems.
Fortunately, not everyone is lining up to give these rogue regimes the benefit of the doubt. Spiegel reports:
The fate of 12 German giant rabbits delivered to North Korea is in doubt. The breeder who sent them suspects they have been eaten by top officials rather than used to set up a bunny farm. Berlin's North Korean embassy denies the allegation.
Update: Over at The Danger Room, Sharon Weinberger links to an English-language copy of the original report. And John at Op-For makes this excellent point: "I've always chuckled at references to China's "asymmetrical" military doctrine. We're the boys with the force-multiplying toys, and China's the one with the big honking Army. Aren't we the asymmetrical ones?"
I've been skeptical of reports that China is planning to deploy an aircraft carrier in the near future, perhaps as soon as 2010. But the rumor is persistent, and the Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes recently wrote a compelling essay on why the rumors might be true. Said Brookes,
The existence of a Chinese “flattop” program has long been rumored. Sure, some experts scoff at the idea, pointing out that carriers don’t fit with China’s military doctrine of “asymmetry.” . . .
(Critics will point out that carriers have significant vulnerabilities. Jaunty submariners brag those 100,000-ton “bird farms” are nuthin’ but big, fat gray targets.)
So, if the experts are right, and China is pursuing a “David and Goliath” strategy against U.S. military might in the Pacific, why would Beijing build carriers?
First, it’s always possible the recent news is wrong--just another badly sourced rumor coming out of Hong Kong regarding Chinese military developments.
Second, Beijing could be changing its strategy. It might be looking toward a more balanced naval force that includes aircraft carriers to project power deep into the Pacific. (With its broad expanses of open ocean, there aren't many other ways to operate in the Pacific theater.)
A third option: China may want to “show the flag.”
China is, without question, a rising power--world’s largest population, No. 2 energy consumer, No. 3 defense budget, No. 4 economy. And so on. It’s an up-and-comer. Beijing may well think the time is ripe to proclaim to the world: We’re not just a regional power anymore.
I find this third reason particularly persuasive. The Chinese ASAT test earlier this year confirmed Beijing's asymmetric strategy, but it also signaled to the world that China was capable of waging war in space--that it was a military power on par with the Soviet Union and the United States.
An even greater indication of the Chinese desire to "show the flag" is that country's manned space program, which, like this country's manned space program, serves no other purpose than to demonstrate technological superiority and foster national pride. As the party organ People's Daily put it in February of this year under the headline "Why Does China Want to Probe the Moon?", "Sooner or later, China's gorgeous five-star red flag will tower on the moon, and days are not distant for the dream of the Chinese people to come true." Clearly, showing the flag is of some importance to the Chinese.
Now The Marmot's Hole links to this story from the very credible, if reliably left wing, Korean newspaper Hankyoreh Shinmun. According to the report, "China is secretly pushing the construction of a nuclear-powered 'supercarrier' of 93,000 tons." My Korean is a bit rusty, but The Marmot's Hole gives this synopsis:
Citing a source familiar with Chinese military issues, the Hankyoreh Shinmun is reporting that China is secretly pushing the construction of a nuclear-powered "supercarrier" of 93,000 tons.
The source, presenting internal Chinese Communist Party documents, said China plans to build a 48,000-ton conventional-powered aircraft carrier (so-called “Project 085″) and a 93,000-ton monster carrier (”Project 089″). The materials presented said China’s Central Military Commission had recently approved both projects and spelled out both vessels’ displacement.
I'd still contend that, as Brookes put it, Chinese carriers would be "nuthin’ but big, fat gray targets," but that doesn't change the fact that an aircraft carrier would boost Beijing's ability to project "soft power." And deploying a Nimitz-sized nuclear carrier would, like the ASAT test, show that China is to be considered a military superpower.
Again, Brookes:
As opposed to provocative exercises of "hard power" (such as China's January test of a satellite-killer), a friendly ship visit, while still displaying strength, does so in a "soft power" way (think: velvet glove around the iron fist).
 The Russian carrier Varyag, which is being refitted in the port of Dalian by the Chinese.
When the Chinese bought the ship from the Ukraine, they claimed it would be used in Macau as a floating casino.
Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was greeted with full military honors in Beijing yesterday where he met with his counterpart, PLA General Liang Guanglie.
The American Forces Press Service reports that the Chinese brought up the "situation" between Taiwan and China and that Pace assured them that American policy is guided by the "'One China Policy,' the ‘Three Communiques’ (between the United States and China), the Taiwan Relations Act and a sincere desire to see reunification done in a peaceful manner."
An American officer of this rank didn't visit the Soviet Union until June of 1989, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral William Crowe Jr. arrived in Moscow to sign the Agreement on | | | |
