Topics include:

1) Learning to share the oceans with China

2) Pakistan under siege

Learning to share the oceans with China

On Sept. 22, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a new report, titled, China's Arrival: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship. Journalist and CNAS senior fellow Robert Kaplan, wrote a chapter in the report, called "China's Two-Ocean Strategy" (see page 45).

Kaplan asserts that "China is in the midst of a shipbuilding and acquisition craze that will result in the People's Liberation Army Navy having more ships than the U.S. Navy sometime in the next decade." Since 1945 U.S. diplomatic and political strategies in Asia have been predicated on U.S. naval domination in the western Pacific and Indian oceans. The U.S. Navy's control of sea-going lines of commerce from the Middle East to all points in Asia has been a major component of America's alliance system in the region and its relations with potential adversaries. Kaplan's essay reminds us that over the next decade or so, the rise of China's naval power will scrap the assumptions underlying America's Asian diplomacy.

According to Kaplan, the collapse of the Soviet army in the 1990s removed China's most significant land-based threat. With its territorial security established, China's leaders could afford to spend money on naval forces. This shift coincided with the massive expansion of China's international trade. Kaplan reminds us that China's energy imports from the Middle East -- which travel across the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, and up the western Pacific -- will double over the next decade or two. China's ocean-going commerce currently receives protection from the U.S. Navy and its allies in the region. But as an arriving global power, China's leaders are not likely to tolerate this vulnerability to potential American leverage. China's naval shipbuilding program indicates China's response.

According to Kaplan, by 2015 China will surpass Korea and Japan to become the world's most prolific shipbuilder. China will achieve this position because its growing shipbuilding expertise will combine with its labor and capital cost advantages to make it the preferred shipbuilding vendor. China's cost advantages in "metal-bending" industries will compare very favorably against U.S. naval shipbuilders who are currently best known for gross cost overruns, long schedule delays, and problem-ridden deliveries. U.S. military acquisition officials have hoped that U.S. technological advantages will offset an adversary's numbers. But such a focus on technology may be part of the problem, rather than the solution. Looking out over the next two decades, military shipbuilding trends do not favor the United States.

The solution is expanded diplomacy. Kaplan discusses how the United States and China will find common interests protecting shipping from piracy, terrorism, and natural disasters. In addition, both China and the United States share an interest in keeping open the ocean's lines of communication -- both countries are highly dependent on trade and on energy imports from the Middle East. With many common interests, China's arrival as a naval power need not result in conflict.

But will the United States be able to maintain its Asian alliance system if its naval hegemony comes under challenge? Will America's friends in Asia drift into China's orbit if the U.S. military cannot maintain its investment in naval power? This decade's land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have absorbed huge sums which might have otherwise gone into naval recapitalization. The looming fragility in America's position in the western Pacific might be the best reason for it to wind up its affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pakistan under siege

Over the past eleven days Islamist militants have conducted six major attacks in urban areas of Pakistan, killing scores of security personnel and civilians. Today militants conducted a suicide attack on a police station in Peshawar, killing at least eleven people. On Oct. 15, militants attacked three police facilities in Lahore, in Pakistan's Punjab heartland. That followed an Oct. 10 attack on the army's headquarters building in Islamabad which resulted in a 20-hour hostage siege.

For almost two months, the Pakistani government has promised a large ground offensive against suspected Taliban support areas in South Waziristan. If the government was actually serious about such an offensive, it remains a mystery why it would choose to forfeit the element of surprise. Even if the military carries out the attack, we can be sure that it will now yield little.

Instead it is the militants who are on the offensive, and not just in the frontier and Pashtun areas of the country. The Islamists are in no position to seize control of the national government; indeed, the latest string of attacks has very likely energized the urban middle class to demand harsh action against the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda. Assuming that militant leaders anticipated this reaction, what is the objective of this latest urban terror offensive?

First, they may hope to boost the morale of their supporters in South Waziristan and elsewhere, hoping to steel their resolve before the looming army offensive. Second, the militants may be hoping to deter the offensive, or at least persuade the government to make it a half-hearted affair. Finally, they may be hoping that the attacks might sap the morale of the government's soldiers, reducing their performance on the battlefield.

Pakistan's deteriorating internal security is an extremely unwelcome development for U.S. policymakers. Some smart analysts have argued that one of the best reasons for the United States to make a large commitment to Afghanistan's stability is to prevent a possible collapse in Pakistan, a far more strategically significant country. Yet it seems that the more the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan escalates, the worse things get inside Pakistan.

Correlation is obviously not causation. Should the United States dramatically scale back its effort in Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine that this would have any significant influence on Pakistan's problems. The solutions to Pakistan's internal security lie within Pakistan and not Afghanistan. Perhaps the latest wave of attacks will motivate Pakistani society to now face these problems head on.

... Success takes time, but how much time does Stanley McChrystal have? The war in Afghanistan is now in its ninth year. The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before. Polls in the United States show that opposition to the war is growing steadily.

Worse yet, for all of America's time in Afghanistan - for all the money and all the blood - the lack of accomplishment is manifest wherever you go. In Garmsir, there is nothing remotely resembling a modern state that could take over if America and its NATO allies left. Tour the country with a general, and you will see very quickly how vast and forbidding this country is and how paltry the effort has been.

And finally, there is the government in Kabul. President Hamid Karzai, once the darling of the West, rose to the top of nationwide elections in August on what appears to be a tide of fraud. The Americans and their NATO allies are confronting the possibility that the government they are supporting, building and defending is a rotten shell...

More at The New York Times Magazine.

McChrystal's Afghanistan - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement

... Critics might say that Filkins, whose reporting notes the military view that Afghanistan and Pakistan are intricately entwined and cannot be separated strategically or tactically, doesn't give the so-called Biden plan a full airing. However, it is a McChrystal profile, not a Biden one. Though that might be entertaining. Embedded in the District of Columbia.

Anyway, you'll want to read the whole thing. You'll come away with the sense of a man who, given the time and resources, might just pull off what he set out to do. Not the blindered military bumbler so popular in modern myth, the image that drives this country's relentless push for political failure in war.* I knew there was a reason why Filkins is my favorite NYT reporter, and not just because his book, The Forever War, is the standout war memoir of our time...

More at Forward Movement.

Draft Army Capstone Concept Hits Web for Public Input

By Carroll Kim (TRADOC Public Affairs)

FORT MONROE (Oct. 14, 2009) - The 2009 Army Capstone Concept will be released on Dec. 21, but until then, Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center's Concepts Development and Experimentation Directorate, invites the public to preview and provide feedback for the draft copy on the Small Wars Journal blog.

Last updated in 2005, the ACC describes the broad capabilities the Army will require to apply finite resources to overcome adaptive adversaries in an era of complexity and uncertainty. The concept puts into operational terms Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey's vision of balancing the Army to win today's wars while describing how the future Army will fight.

McMaster furnished the draft to the Small Wars Journal to generate awareness and encourage dialogue through its discussion board. This is the first time TRADOC has "crowdsourced" a document, and more than 100 comments were posted in response to the draft ACC.

Along with this non-traditional method, McMaster has also sought input from Army fellows, joint and international partners, educators and experts in the field, not just from leaders within TRADOC.

While the ACC will enter final planning stages on Oct. 21, the discussion board will remain open for new comments. Please go to the Small Wars Journal to join the conversation. You can also read the document here.

Afghanistan could be the most important decision of Barack Obama's presidency. Maybe that's why he is, in effect, making it twice. What's odd about the administration's review of Afghanistan policy is that it is revisiting issues that were analyzed in great detail - and seemingly resolved - in the president's March 27 announcement of a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The recent recommendations from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal were intended to implement that "Af-Pak" strategy - not send the debate back to first principles.

The March document stated that the basic goal was "to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the al-Qaeda safe haven that it was before 9/11." But to accomplish this limited mission, the president endorsed a much broader effort to "reverse the Taliban's gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government." That gap between end and means has bedeviled the policy ever since. So now the president is doing it again, slowly and carefully - as in last Friday's three-hour White House meeting, where, I'm told, he went around the table and quizzed his national security aides one by one...

More at The Washington Post.

Intense debate has raged for weeks on whether President Obama should send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but the dispute over numbers may be distracting attention from the more important decision he is facing: the need for a new strategy. "Additional forces are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, wrote in his now famous report to the president that was leaked to the press in September. Among the key decisions the president will make is whether to partner with an Afghan government hobbled by accusations of widespread fraud in a recent election, how to handle the prickly diplomatic situation in neighboring Pakistan, and how much effort to put into training the Afghan army.

But perhaps the most pivotal decision, however, is whether the Taliban is a force that must be completely defeated, or whether it can be bargained with. Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University who served as a top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq, said President Obama's military reviews "are addressing all three facets of strategy: ends, ways, and means." "The media, and by extension the American people, are focused on means, (troop numbers)," Mr. Mansoor said in an e-mail. "But as or more important than this factor are the administration's goals (ends) in Afghanistan and its concept for prosecution of the war (ways). You need to look at all three in unison to get a clear picture of the way ahead." ...

More at The Washington Times.

Obama Focuses on Civilian Effort in Afghanistan Strategy Review - Anne E. Kornblut and Scott Wilson, Washington Post.

President Obama, convening his fifth war council meeting in as many weeks, pressed his senior national security advisers Wednesday on the political situation in Afghanistan and the effort to train the country's security forces, officials said. Allegations of fraud in the Afghan presidential election over the summer have raised questions about the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's government, complicating US efforts to partner with him. Meanwhile, the country's security forces are seen as ill-equipped to confront an insurgency that is gaining strength.

Such factors are figuring prominently in the debate over the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan, official say. Although the discussions also include making a decision on whether to deploy tens of thousands of additional US troops, an administration official said the president was "very focused on the complexity of the situation" Wednesday - looking past the military aspect of the equation and toward the civilian effort. Another official said the focus on the civilian effort grew out of a sense that the United States needs to better cultivate Afghan leaders and institutions. "We've been at war eight years, and we realize now we're starting from scratch because very little work has been done building a credible Afghan partner," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks...

More at The Washington Post.

US Officials Look at Scenarios for Afghanistan 'Middle Path' - Julian E. Barnes and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times.

As the Obama administration debates whether to shift its aims in Afghanistan, officials at the Pentagon and National Security Council have begun developing "middle path" strategies that would require fewer troops than their ground commander is seeking. Measures under consideration include closer cooperation with local tribal chiefs and regional warlords, using CIA agents as intermediaries and cash payments as incentives, said current and former officials who described the strategies on condition of anonymity.

Other steps would concentrate US and allied troops in cities, pulling out of Afghanistan's widely dispersed rural areas. At the same time, the allied forces would push ahead with plans to intensify training of Afghan troops, officials said. None of the strategies envision troop reductions, but officials said they would not require the 40,000-troop increase preferred by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the US and allied commander. A number of White House officials favor sending fewer than 20,000 additional troops...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

Please see this page for the complete submission instructions for entries to our $8000 writing contest. And please help us spread the word by aggressively disseminating this flyer throughout the diverse community of small wars participants.

Of note: entries are now due November 30, 2009, not November 10 as originally announced.

"This publication provides joint doctrine for the planning, execution, and assessment of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations across the range of military operations. This will include the description of relationships between COIN, irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and foreign internal defense."

Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency.

Some excerpts from the article:

One of the scientists, K. Santhanam, who coordinated India's nuclear weapons program when the country conducted five nuclear tests 11 years ago, has said that the original thermonuclear device test was a dud ... Santhanam said that the hydrogen bomb tested in 1998 "completely failed to ignite" and that the shaft, the frame and the winches were found to be intact even after the tests. No crater was formed in the fusion test.

"If the second H-bomb stage of the composite device had worked, the shaft would have been blown to smithereens," he told reporters.

[...]

Last week, the former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, P.K. Iyengar, also joined the chorus advocating more tests and said "nobody makes a weapon out of a single test."

Commentary

A few months ago I heard the Indian ambassador to the U.S. express in public her government's slight regard for both the CTBT and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). India would in theory be able to support these treaties but only under verification regimes that North Korea and Iran have shown to be completely impractical.

India is extremely unlikely to surprise the world anytime soon with another round of tests. Testing has become so taboo that India would risk enormous diplomatic damage if it attempted to re-verify its two-stage thermonuclear design.

But we should question whether this uncertainty about the effectiveness and reliability of India's nuclear arsenal is really the safest and most stable outcome. If policymakers in India or one of India's adversaries have doubts about whether India's nuclear weapons actually will work, such uncertainty could lead to risky decisions by either side during a future crisis.

Well-meaning arms control advocates have hoped that treaties such as the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the CTBT, the FMCT, and others would either prevent countries from getting nuclear weapons or reduce tensions and provocative acts (such as nuclear tests) if they did establish nuclear arsenals. However, after countries emerge as nuclear weapons states (bypassing the increasingly irrelevant NPT), the most important goal should be creating stability and reducing the probability of nuclear weapons use. A ban or taboo against testing creates doubts about effectiveness and introduces instability rather than stability during decision-making in a crisis.

The question for India, Pakistan, and the rest of the world to ponder is whether they would prefer India to perform a full-power, two-stage thermonuclear test before the next crisis with Pakistan or during it. In the event that, for example, radical Islamists seize power in Islamabad, leading to a high-tension crisis on the subcontinent, Indian decision-makers would want to be assured that all components of the military are ready to defend the country. But questions about the nuclear arsenal will exist, both for India's decision-makers and for Pakistan's. India's leaders may feel the need to organize a hasty nuclear test during the crisis, both to reassure themselves and to deter the Pakistani Islamists. At that moment, nearly everyone will have wished that India had done such a test under more placid circumstances, something the testing taboo and the CTBT are preventing.

As President Barack H. Obama is edging toward making up his mind about accepting, partially accepting, or not accepting General Stanley McChrystal's advice to insert more troops in Afghanistan, I hear an abundance of metaphors flying. One metaphor used by Obama during the presidential campaign, when he described starting the war in Iraq to driving a bus into ditch. That metaphor is being reprinted (recently by the New York Times). Rory Stewart, a Professor at Harvard and an opponent of the option of increasing the troops is using the metaphor "driving off a cliff". Steven Biddle, a Fellow at CFR, calls it "a war that is worth waging, 
but only barely." John Nagle, who built his reputation by being one of General David Petraeus' assistants, and a person whose doctoral dissertation was on counter-insurgency (and a very good read), calls the war in Afghanistan "a better war."

The debate within the Principals Committee in the White House is reported to be waging along the lines of COIN or counter-terrorism. What is missing from all these metaphors and depictions is what should be our strategy 
in Afghanistan. If the United States is committed to remain in Afghanistan for the next 20 years, we need to add more troops. Even as we do that, our focus ought to be nation building, not in the sense of how this phrase is used among the US Special Forces. What I mean by nation building is a massive process of institution building for the purpose of establishing democracy in Afghanistan, along with a huge campaign against counter-drug operations, crop substitution, educational reforms, a colossal campaign of building civilian infrastructures, etc...

More at The Khaleej Times.