Strategic Trust-Building

Sidhu points to four recent intelligence-related news stories – the resignation of intelligence tsar Admiral Dennis Blair, the exposure of a Russian spy ring, the case of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri and the revealing Washington Post series on the U.S. intelligence apparatus – and argues that they all reveal fundamental flaws in the way the U.S. gathers and analyzes intelligence.

First among these flaws, Sidhu suggests, is that U.S. intelligence agencies' ability to collect data has outpaced their ability to make use of it. "While the National Security Agency intercepts and stores 1.7 billion pieces of communication—emails and phone calls—every day, it does not have the wherewithal to analyze all of it," he writes. "'As Gen. James R. Clapper Jr, the latest aspirant for the post of DNI, confessed: 'There’s only one entity in the entire universe that has visibility on all (top secret programmes)—that’s God.'"

Second, Sidhu argues that the intelligence system too focused on technology and not enough on human intelligence. "Most analysts are inexperienced college graduates with little or no knowledge of the country they work on or its language, especially Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan," he writes.

Third, Sidhu suggests that the system does not pay sufficient attention to non-state actors. "Since [9/11], the effort to protect the U.S. from terrorist groups has led to some change in the system, but not necessarily in the attitude," he writes.

"Finally, while spying is a necessary instrument of statecraft, the vast, complicated and stove-piped system that Washington has developed is defeating its very purpose," Sidhu concludes. "It is time for a radical transformation—at least to ensure that the money invested in the system is well spent."

Click here to read Sidhu's article on livemint.com 

China’s hard-won diplomatic gains in Europe in the last two decades are under threat. China’s position in the world of information security is taking its toll, at the same time as European apathy or even resentment towards China is growing. China’s government should act more forcefully to redress both sets of perceptions. At the same time, European institutions, including the EU and NATO, must take China more seriously as a security actor.

European businesses, especially banks and high tech companies, are becoming more hostile because of aggressive efforts coming from inside China to steal privileged information, to use the internet for criminal fraud, to penetrate key infrastructure networks and to generate spam. According to an official Chinese source, the country dealt with 48,000 cases of cyber crime in 2009. Russia’s Kaspersky Lab has identified China as the source of more than half of the world’s cyber crimes in 2009. Serious corporate leaders who are aware of cyber security threats emanating from China no longer engage in any electronic communication for business when they visit the country.

China also sees itself as a victim of large-scale international cyber crime. In June this year, China published its first Internet White Paper. In this document, China committed itself to working with international partners to fight cyber crime. European governments and their  regional organizations need to respond to this commitment and engage more effectively with China to address mutual concerns about cyber security.

Public attitudes in Europe to China are getting more negative, compared with increasingly favorable images of China in many other regions and countries (including even Japan). For example, according to a recent poll commissioned by BBC, “in Italy and Spain already low positive views [of China] have decreased by seven points so that just 14 per cent in Italy and 22 per cent in Spain view China's influence as favorable”.

In January 2010, Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform noted that attitudes toward China were becoming “prickly”. A Pew Global Attitudes survey report released three weeks ago noted that opinion on whether China’s economic rise is beneficial reported that “majorities in Germany, France and Spain … see China’s economic strength as a bad thing for their country”. The deterioration in European views of China since 2005 revealed in the Pew data has been sharp, with the number holding negative views rising in the UK from 16 to 35 per cent and in Germany from 37 per cent to 61 per cent of those surveyed.

China’s diplomats in Europe have a job on their hands. This is complicated by the relatively small amount of political attention European leaders give to China, apart from occasional official visits. This trend toward indifference has been evident for several years in the regular EU-China summits, about which Chinese sources have often complained. More surprisingly, the European neglect of China also surfaced in the report of the Albright experts group on NATO’s new security concept. The giant Asian country on a growth trajectory got three very bland mentions in that report. The gulf between American preoccupation with China’s rise as a potential security competitor and a more benign (more indifferent?) view at government level in Europe could not be more pronounced. Who is right here?

Europeans need a more rounded and better developed view of what China is and what it holds for their future. As the cyber challenges suggest, risk management for European security (and NATO) in the next ten years may depend far more on how change unfolds in China than in any other single country in the world.

Main discussion points included:

1. While the Cold War saw the emergence of five nuclear powers, which coincidentally are also the five permanent members of the Security Council (P5), strategic stability largely revolved around the two most powerful, the United States and the former USSR/ now the Russian Federation.  That paradigm has drastically changed to an asymmetric multipolar world, with complex inter-relations among key global powers. This project on strategic stability aims to frame the new architectural order of the post-Cold War era. 
2. Strategic stability should be defined as “preventing war between nuclear states,” as opposed to the traditional definition  of a nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Participants acknowledged the broad scope of strategic stability, encompassing more actors and new security threats, but agreed to maintain a narrow focus on preventing war between nuclear states. 
3. Nuclear weapons are no longer the only issue affecting strategic stability. Many new factors are in play  in the 21st  century, including  economic interdependence, political relationships, regional conflicts, energy issues, cybersecurity, and non-nuclear sophisticated conventional systems.
4. Participants  also discussed the scope of the project and whether  to focus only on  the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the P5) or the eight nuclear-armed countries (the P5 and  India, Israel and Pakistan).  It was felt that given the complexity of the subject, in the  first phase of the project  a larger group of  representatives from the P5 will  analyze strategic stability primarily among their five countries, but with an eye towards the other three nuclear powers. The second phase will include representatives from  India, Israel and Pakistan and will discuss strategic stability more broadly among the eight nuclear states. 
5. Participants noted the complexity of bilateral and multilateral relations that affect strategic stability, not just among the P5, but also their relations with other states, such as Iran. 
6. Although the factors and relationships affecting strategic stability have expanded beyond U.S.-Soviet/U.S.-Russia  nuclear issues, the project should draw  lessons from the history of that relationship and apply them, when necessary, to other situations. Other stable relationships, such as that of France and the United Kingdom, can also provide guidance.
7. The project will identify factors related to nuclear weapons and sophisticated conventional weapons that affect strategic stability. Such factors may include, but are not limited to:
   • Ballistic missile defense 
   • Prompt Global Strike weapons
   • Anti-submarine warfare 
   • Conventional strike capability
   • Counterforce capability
   • De-alert
   • Nuclear proliferation
   • Conditions for possible use of a nuclear weapon
   • Early-warning systems
   • Implications of reductions in nuclear weapons
   • The relationship between offense and defense  Vulnerability and survivability
8. As the size of the P5 arsenals continue to shrink and the world makes progress towards the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, the P5 could demonstrate an exemplary, responsible role of leadership by developing a code of conduct. A code of conduct among the nuclear-weapon states would go a long way towards meeting the obligations of the NPT article VI and would assuage the non-aligned and others who have criticized the nuclear-weapon states since the treaty entered into force for not taking sufficient steps towards nuclear disarmament. A code of conduct would be far easier to develop on a Track 2 level than at an official level. 

Links:

• Meeting agenda
• List of participants

As Europeans head for the beaches and mountains over summer, they might recall anniversaries this week of two major events some 65 years ago – the opening of the Potsdam Conference in 1945 on 17 July and the first test of the atomic bomb in Alamogordo New Mexico the previous day.

At the Cecilienhof Palace in Germany, Truman, Churchill and Stalin met to map out the future of Europe after the Second World War and to show Allied unity in the final stages of the war against Japan. Many of the agreements signed then shaped the course of history in Europe for the generations that followed. But the conference also set the course of events in Asia in the coming decade. The Declaration signed by the three war-time allies was in fact about ending the war in Asia, where all three had territorial interests and geopolitical ambitions.

The first article said that Japan would be given an opportunity to end the war, and the second warned that “The prodigious land, sea and air forces of the United States, the British Empire and of China, many times reinforced by their armies and air fleets from the west, are poised to strike the final blows upon Japan.”  The ultimatum called for the unconditional surrender of Japan and, if it did not, threatened the “prompt and utter destruction of Japan”.

The Allies did not need the atomic bomb to make such a threat. The fire bombing of Tokyo over just two days in March destroyed almost 300,000 buildings and killed almost 100,000 people. Bombings led by Air Force General Curtis LeMay destroyed more than 50 per cent of all building in 30 Japanese cities in the six months before Potsdam. But the United States did use the atomic bomb just days after the Potsdam Conference concluded.

Well, 65 years later, the Americans and Europeans are still making history in Asia, and in some of its most remote parts. In Kabul on 20 July, the Afghanistan government will host the first ever international conference of its kind in the country itself on national reconstruction and development. According to the Afghanistan government, the meeting of more than seventy countries “marks a new phase in Afghanistan’s engagement with the international community”. One aim is to “mobilize international confidence and resources for a new generation of “bankable” national programs”, albeit in accordance with “ President Karzai’s inaugural speech of November 2009”. The clear message of that speech was that the future security of Afghanistan will be determined more by what the people of Afghanistan and neighboring countries want, rather than by the United States or its NATO allies. That is of course the ideal. What the Afghanistan government would prefer is that those distant countries retreat from political interference in the country while still providing aid. President Karzai is more comfortable with support from Asian countries.

Japan and the Asian Development Bank each provide more aid to Afghanistan then the European Commission, while India, Iran, Pakistan, the UAE and China are also important donors. But the UK provides more and military forces than any Asian country and the United States contribution to civilian is more than ten times that of the top Asian donor, Japan.

The question Asia’s leaders must ponder going into the Kabul Conference is just how much they want their region’s history to continue to be shaped so profoundly from Washington and London. Many Asians are comfortable with the “old” powers playing this role. But 65 years after the beginning of the end of imperialism and colonialism, wealthy Asian governments need to get organized among themselves and shoulder more responsibility for regional security.

Writing in the India daily The Telegraph, Kanwal Sibal, a former foreign secretary of India and a member of EWI's Board of Directors, urges the United States to oppose China-Pakistan nuclear cooperation.

Sibal suggests that the China's recent decision to sell two nuclear power reactors to Pakistan threatens nuclear non-proliferation agreements. "When [China] joined the non-proliferation treaty in 1992, it subjected itself to the treaty’s discipline of abjuring any nuclear cooperation with a non-NPT State like Pakistan," he writes, adding: "Further cooperation by China with Pakistan would be in violation of the non-proliferation obligations that China has voluntarily accepted."

Sibal sees China’s nuclear cooperation with Pakistan as "a deeply hostile act towards India," writing, "China’s political objective was to strategically neutralize India in its own region by propping up Pakistan with nuclear capacity so that the latter could pursue its confrontationist policies without fear of military reprisals by a conventionally superior India."

Further, Sibal takes issue with suggestions that the China-Pakistan deal is a justifiable reaction to India-U.S. cooperation on civilian nuclear technology. "China and Pakistan are giving currency to the canard that the Indo-US deal will enable India to increase its weapons production rate, promote an arms race in the subcontinent, and increase the chances of a nuclear conflict between two long-term adversaries," he writes. "It is instructive that China should use the security argument to justify the deal with Pakistan, for it implies that China sees it not as a ‘civilian’ initiative but as a military one. China wants to build up its protégé Pakistan against any strengthening of India perceived as U.S.’s new protégé."

Sibal is particularly disappointed by U.S. reactions to the deal. He continues: " For weeks, U.S. reports prepared international opinion for a tepid American response to this frontal Chinese challenge to the non-proliferation regime and the NSG. It was speculated that the U.S. and China had struck a deal under which China would support U.S.-led sanctions against Iran in the Security Council against the U.S.’s condoning of the Sino-Pakistan nuclear deal. It was also conveniently argued that the NSG guidelines were not legally binding, and that if China was bent on going ahead the U.S. could do precious little, especially at this juncture of financial dependence on China. Not surprisingly, in a travesty of facts, the blame for creating such a situation was placed on the failure of the Bush administration to secure any non-proliferation concessions from India. The anti-India U.S. non-proliferationists found a way to blame India for the Sino-Pakistan deal."

The U.S. has a special responsibility to oppose the deal, Sibal argues. "The Indo-US nuclear deal was accompanied by stringent non-proliferation conditions, some at the cost of our sovereignty and dignity," he writes. "India had to subject itself to a prolonged U.S. legislative process with all the political sensitivities of having to fend off the extra-territorial application of U.S. laws, besides having to undergo a supplicatory diplomatic exercise with NSG members to obtain their consent. If, as the Chinese argue, they and Pakistan are respecting their international obligations and the new power plants will be under IAEA safeguards, where was the need for India to be put in the wringer of a tortuous, conditions-laden process by the U.S.? Why did the US pressure others not to cooperate with India until the US cleared the way? We too could have obtained nuclear cooperation by simply agreeing to put internationally assisted reactors under IAEA safeguards. The US cannot have different standards for China/Pakistan and for us."

Click here to read Sibal's article in The Telegraph

A New York Times article features Louise Richardson, a member of EWI's Board of Directors, who is the first woman, the first non-Brit, and the first Roman Catholic to head St. Andrews University. The article highlights her role desegregating several institutions in St. Andrews and making them accessible to women.

“In what might be the understatement of the year, the GPI notes that the ‘world has become slightly less peaceful in the last year,’ and argues that in some states the decline in peace ‘appears to be linked to the global economic downturn,’” Sidhu writes.

Of the 149 ranked states, four South Asian countries are ranked in the bottom twenty—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar—with Pakistan ranked among the bottom five.  "Of all these, Pakistan’s descent into the bottom five—sinking three places since last year—should be of particular concern.” Sidhu argues, adding: "While many in the region, including in Pakistan, do not wish that country any good, it is worth pondering the negative implications of a less peaceful and unstable Pakistan on the region."

Sidhu disagrees with the correlation the GPI draws between these negative trends in regional security and the recent economic downturn. “While this may be true for Portugal, Greece and Spain, which experience the ‘largest decline in peacefulness of any region,’ it does not resonate in the case of India and China, both of which registered high economic growth rates over the past year despite the relative decline in peacefulness,” he writes.

India has a special role in addressing the situation, Sidhu suggests. "Clearly, India, as the self-professed benign and responsible hegemon in the subcontinent, must bear the onus for building the necessary institutions and providing the essential leadership to not only police the neighbourhood (and ensure the absence of violence), but also to establish 'a positive peace of justice, tolerance and plenty,'" he writes. "New Delhi would do well to adhere to these principles while addressing internal security challenges and before embarking on establishing a peaceful external neighbourhood."

Click here to read Sidhu's column on livemint.com.

The chasm between certain political values in Europe and those in the United States was exposed yet again this past week in the ruling of seven judges of the European Court of Human Rights that a particular American prison regime (at ADX Florence) may be a treatment too harsh even for people who might be convicted of terrorism charges.

The Court was happy enough for four people indicted on terrorism charges to be extradited from the UK to the United States, and so dismissed a number of their pleadings. Yet the Court upheld, temporarily at least, the claims of three of them about just how ugly prison life would be for them. The court kept in place a restraining order against their extradition until it studied the matter more closely.

On top of that, the court also held that the term of imprisonment that the four faced was so long – life without parole or 50 years for one – that their appeal against extradition on those grounds alone was admissible for further hearing. The cases have been in and out of the Court beginning in 2007 for two of the applicants and since 2008 for the other two.

The European judges are troubled by the United States application of “special administrative measures” (SAMs) in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. According to the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, SAMs are applied “when there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others. The main feature of the prison regime in ADX Florence that is under challenge is a more or less permanent form of solitary confinement applied selectively to certain prisoners. Its opponents regard this as inhumane in the extreme or at best counter-productive for the purposes it is intended to serve.

Human rights organizations, doctors, criminologists and prisoners’ rights groups in the United States have long railed against the conditions in supermax prisons like ADX Florence.  It houses some 40 or so convicted terrorists and almost 400 other serious criminals.

This latest example of an Atlantic “values” gulf in the court has a lesson for NATO. There is not a strong political and social consensus in Europe that matches the commitment of United States national officials to fight international terrorism the way the American government is doing it. There is ample other evidence of this gulf in values, not least the political furore in Europe over extraordinary renditions of terrorist suspects. The same sort of divide is appearing in the policies of key NATO members in respect of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan with military forces.

What is the real problem here? NATO has seen far more serious challenges in the past to its cohesion and solidarity from differences across the Atlantic. Not too many of Europe’s citizens really feel any sympathy for the four indicted prisoners.

But the new mood at a political level may be different. There are signs that the traditional solidarity of NATO among security elites and among political and social leaders may be in some sort of serious decline. We need to study this question and, if the above diagnosis is correct, find explanations and ways to address it. More importantly, there has to be a better answer for it than we are hearing from some as to why it should still matter.

NATO solidarity matters for good reasons of hard international security that have little to do with political values. An over-emphasis on values in the new NATO security concept to the relative neglect of solving the concrete security problems as we will face them outside Europe or on its periphery in the coming decade may be to the long term detriment of NATO solidarity. 

Members of the U.S. delegation included EWI President and CEO John Edwin Mroz; retired General Eugene Habiger, former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command; retired General Charles F. Wald, former Deputy Commander in Chief of the U.S. European Command; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Timothy Stratford; Joel Cowan, a member of the EWI Board of Directors; David Firestein, EWI's Director of Track 2 Diplomacy; Piin-Fen Kok, EWI's China Program Associate; and Karl Rauscher, EWI's Chief Technology Officer and Distinguished Fellow.

The delegation engaged in a day and a half of discussions with Chinese experts hosted by CIIS and met with Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, Vice Minister Liu Jieyi of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Department, and Vice Minister Sun Yafu of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.  The group also visited the China Institute for International Strategic Studies, the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, Horizon Research Consultancy Group (a public opinion polling firm) and the China Social Entrepreneur Foundation.
The main purpose of the Dialogue was to explore concrete ways to increase strategic trust between the United States and China.  Topics addressed included:

• Critical concerns in U.S.-China political, military and economic relations, including Taiwan, Tibet and barriers to the bilateral trade-and-investment relationship.
• Public diplomacy:  Identifying and debunking the main myths about the U.S.-China relationship, clarifying strategic perceptions of each other, and addressing how each country can make itself better understood.
• The situation in the Middle East, including the Iran nuclear issue and opportunities for U.S.-China cooperation to promote socio-economic development in the region.
• Strategic stability in the 21st century: Balancing strategic offensive and defensive weapon systems.
• Potential U.S.-China cooperation on outer space.

The dialogue produced important new institutional partnerships for EWI in China and laid the groundwork for continued U.S.-China Track 2 activities.