Inevitably, the mass exodus of refugees from conflict areas was going to provoke the spilling into Europe of multiple disputes in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Spanish soccer is the first to feel the weight of the baggage that has turned vast numbers into destitute refugees. Kurdish rebels have accused a Syrian coach who was hired earlier this month by Real Madrid after having been tripped on camera by a Hungarian camera woman as he was running towards the border a child in his arms of being an Al Qaeda fighter and the instigator of a deadly anti-Kurdish soccer brawl.

The allegations raised by the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), believed to be associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that is locked into escalating hostilities with Turkey, are serious. PDY media asserted that Osama Abdul Mohsen, the coach who landed in Spain, had been a fighter for Jabhat al Nusra, a major Syrian jihadist militia aligned with Al Qaeda.

The PYD and a Syrian Christian Facebook page charged further that Mr. Abdul Rahman had recently revived his Facebook page but had deleted the Nusra flag which in the past had been his cover photo. Also allegedly removed from the page were references to Mr. Abdul Rahman having fought against Kurdish forces in Amudeh, Serekaniye and Afrin. “Osama Abdul joined the rebel groups in 2011 and committed crimes against civilian minorities, including Kurds,” the PYD said in a statement.

The PYD suggested further that Mr. Abdul Rahman had left Syria on a journey that put him in the spotlight in Hungary and propelled him to Spain after Kurdish forces captured in July the Syrian town of Tel Abyad where he and his family lived.

Kurdish resentment of Mr. Abdul Mohsen, who was the coach of al-Fotuwa SC in Deir Ez Zor from 2004-2010, appears heightened by allegations that he was one of the instigators of a soccer brawl in 2004 in the predominantly Kurdish city of Qamishli during which Syrian security forces killed at least 50 Kurdish protesters.

The allegations raise serious policy questions for European governments. An unknown number of refugees may well have been fighters at some point in the past 4.5 years of groups that are proscribed in the West. Some sources suggest that Mr. Abdul Rahman had been arrested and tortured by forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad early on in the war.

Many may have felt they had no choice in a brutal civil war rather than having opted to join groups like Nusra for ideological reasons. That is all the more true in a situation in which Western efforts to create more moderate rebel forces have failed miserably. The failure has prompted efforts by Qatar to bring Nusra in from the cold and sparked creeping suggestions in the West that Nusra in the fight against the Islamic State may be the lesser of two evils.

To be sure, determining who is who in the human mass that has swept on to the shores of Europe is no easy feat, Nonetheless, the PDY allegations are likely to be grist on the mill of East European opposition to accommodation of the refugees that is often laced with racism and conservative and right-wing West European politicians and groups with long-standing reservations about immigration.

Intelligence agencies have further warned that some jihadists may slip into Europe with the refugees. German intelligence said this week that the number of Islamic extremists in the country had increased sharply in recent months and expressed concern that they were recruiting among refugees.

There is no immediate way of checking the PYD’s allegations, but both Syrian and Kurdish rebel groups as well as the Assad regime have a vested interest in trying to stymie the exodus from areas that they control. They both fear that their regions could be depopulated and that their ability to recruit fighters would diminish.

The PYD is reported to have barred Kurds in at least one area under its control, Efrin, from travelling to Turkey, a gateway to Europe. A PDY rival, the Kurdish National Council (KNC) earlier this month organised protests against migration in Hasakah province. KNC officials said they feared Kurdish demands for autonomy, if not independence, could be undermined by demographic changes as a result of an exodus of Kurds. Similarly, the Assad regime opposes migration because it further undermines its legitimacy.

Real Madrid and Mr. Abdul Rahman have yet to comment on the allegations levied by the PYD. Irrespective of their accuracy, the allegations raise multiple issues that go beyond security considerations. Mr. Abdul Rahman hails from an environment that was tough even before civil war erupted in Syria.

The more damning PYD assertion is his alleged involvement in the soccer brawl that occurred long before the civil war and was designed to suppress Kurdish demands for legitimate rights rather than his association with Nusra in a situation in which people often have to make difficult choices. Nonetheless, Mr. Abdul Rahman should also respond in chapter and verse to his alleged association with Nusra.

The question, however, what if, remains. Sending Mr. Abdul Rahman and his family back to Syria and retaliation by either the rebels or the regime is not an option. The real lesson is that refugees’ baggage is a mixed bag of the disputes that persuaded them to leave their home countries as well as choices they made in conflict situations. It’s easy to judge them from an armchair, but doesn’t solve the issue of what consequences that judgement should have.

The remains of the last Russian emperor and his wife have been exhumed, while the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee has reopened an investigation into the early 20th century murder of the Romanov family.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin announced the renewal of the case due to new evidence in an official statement online.

The investigators will have to study archival materials related to the enquiry conducted between 1918 and 1924 by former Russian Imperial officers. These documents were found sometime after 2011 along with some new material evidence.

Additionally, at request of the Russian Orthodox Church, a special working group on studying and burying the remains of the last Russian emperor’s son Aleksey and daughter Maria was formed in July 2015 with the burial plans announced this month.

The working group has exhumed the remains of Nicolas II and his wife and took DNA samples to verify the identity of remains supposedly belonging to Aleksey and Maria that were unearthed in 2007.

The group aims to verify Aleksey and Maria’s identity by comparing them to the remains of their aunt, the empress’s sister Elizaveta Feodorovna, and to the emperor’s grandfather, Alexander II.

The investigation into the murder of the Romanov family was initially launched in 1993 to identify the suspected remains of Tsar Nicolas II, his wife, and three daughters, as well as their retinue, which were found near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural region. The case was closed in 1998 “owing to the deaths of the perpetrators of the crime.”

It was later reopened in 2007, when the remains of Aleksey and Maria were found, and then closed again after their identities had been confirmed.

In June, regional lawmakers in the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) region proposed a law giving the surviving Romanov heirs special status and one of the family’s historic palaces in St. Petersburg or the Crimea.

“For the whole length of its reign, the Romanov imperial dynasty remained a foundation of the Russian statehood,” local MP Vladimir Petrov said in a letter urging the heirs to return to Russia.

“At present Russia is undergoing a complicated process of regaining its glory and worldwide influence. I am sure that in this historical moment the Romanovs would not stay away from all the processes that are taking place in Russia,” he added.

At the same time, the members of the Romanov dynasty addressed Moscow City Hall in June, demanding that the Voikovskaya metro station, which bears the name of a Bolshevik who played a key role in the 1918 execution of Tsar Nicolas II and his family, be renamed.

“It is simply necessary to clear the Moscow city map of the name of someone who took part in repression and who organized the Tsar’s family killing,” the royal family’s lawyer, German Lukyanov, told the Interfax news agency at that time.

The question of renaming this station has been repeatedly raised in recent decades. In July, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin showed readiness to rename the station, and public discussion of the matter has been ongoing ever since.

US Congressman J. Randy Forbes has organized and transmitted a bipartisan letter from 29 members of the US House of Representatives to President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter urging the U.S. government to verbally and physically challenge China’s purported claims to 12 nautical mile territorial seas around its “artificial formations” in the South China Sea. The letter also implies that China’s actions are threatening “freedom of navigation”.

Forbes is the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services and Projection Forces Subcommittee and Co-Chairman of the Congressional China Caucus.

Meanwhile in the US Senate, Senators from both parties including John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. needs to go within the 12nm territorial sea limit to make it clear that it does not recognize China’s claim that the islands are its territory. McCain said [Not doing so] “is a dangerous mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims.”

On the contrary, these calls for what amounts to an effort by the US military to intimidate China are ill-advised and even dangerous.

China occupies at least seven features in the Spratlys: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reefs, Johnson South Reef, Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Hughes Reef and has undertaken reclamation and construction on all of these.

Why is physically challenging China’s claims “ill-advised”?

First of all it is not clear that China does or will claim maritime zones from submerged features that it has ‘reclaimed’. Second we do know that China claims sovereignty over all the features in the South China Sea, including legal islands like Spratly, Itu Aba and Thitu that are occupied by others and are entitled to a full suite of maritime zones. Of course their sovereignty and boundaries with other coastal state clamaints are disputed and must be negotiated.

Nevertheless, China could argue that the “artificial formations” are within its jurisdiction by virtue of its EEZ and shelf claims from legal islands. This jurisdiction carries with it the exclusive right to construct and to regulate construction, operation and use of artificial structures. Such structures are entitled to reasonable safety zones around them, usually –except under special circumstances- not exceeding 500 meters. China might argue that these safety zones include the airspace above them and thus explain its warnings to foreign military aircraft not to violate this airspace. But if this is not a sufficient legal reason to exercise caution, consider that Fiery Cross Reef and Cuarteron Reef may be legal islands as well, or claimed as such by their occupier, China.

Only Subi, Hughes and Mischief Reefs are (or were) definitely neither islands nor rocks before China’s reclamation activities. Although there is some question about Gaven Reef, the others occupied by China are (or were) clearly at least legal rocks entitled to 12 nm territorial seas.

Penetration of their airspace would be a direct and public challenge to China’s claim of sovereignty. Sending a warship into their territorial sea would violate China’s legal regime requiring prior permission to do so. Also, sailing a warship or flying a warplane into or over a country’s territorial sea to demonstrate the right of free navigation could be construed as a threat to use force—a possible violation of the UN Charter and the Law of the Sea—and at the least not a positive example of peaceful resolution of disputes. It has even been suggested that such provocative penetrations to demonstrate freedom of navigation may not be the continuous and expeditious movement required for ‘innocent passage’.

So if the U.S. government acquiesces to the strident demands of the Congress members and conducts Freedom of Navigation operations in the area, it should be with continuous and expeditious passage or overflight within 12nm of Subi, Hughes or Mischief Reefs. In that case China may well ignore the provocation since it has not publicly claimed territorial seas around these previously submerged features. But to be fair and demonstrate its professed ‘neutrality, the U.S. should also physically challenge other claimants and occupiers of artificial formations constructed on submerged features.

However it does not appear that these lawmakers are concerned with the legal folderol surrounding these issues. They want chest-thumping action and they want it now– regardless of the legal ‘niceties’. To them, the main purpose behind a public American challenge would be to demonstrate Washington’s will to defend ‘freedom of navigation’ and to dissuade China from any further ‘aggressive’ actions and claims in the South China Sea.

Why is this ‘dangerous’?

Doing so may well backfire. What if Beijing thinks the U.S. will not go ‘to the mat’ over this issue and pushes back–hard? Then the U.S. would suddenly be faced with a critical dilemma of its own making – either ‘put up’ and risk escalating a crisis, or ‘shut up’ and stand down – demonstrating weakness, damaging its reputation and generating doubt about its commitment to its friends and allies. Moreover there is always the possibility of an accident or a ‘miscalculation’.

These domestic politicians may underestimate the zeal of China’s nationalist movement and the leadership’s need to accommodate it to maintain its legitimacy. China has publicly positioned its sovereignty and claims in the South China Sea as a matter of national dignity and redemption for its “century of humiliation.” This will make it very difficult for China’s leadership to back down on these issues.

So this US gambit that many are calling for could result in serious international conflict, threatening regional peace. Is it worth the risk of cold or hot conflict? Some Southeast Asian nations might not think so. Fortunately it is clear that the U.S. Defense Department is aware of this potential dilemma and is proceeding cautiously. According to David Shear, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and Pacific Security Affairs, ”freedom of navigation operations are [only] one tool in a larger tool box that we’re going to need to use”.

If the U.S. government decides to physically challenge China’s claims it will likely not happen until after China President Xi Jinping’s State visit to Washington this week. Perhaps as chief of US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris reportedly told Philippine officials, the U.S. is also refraining from action so as not to distract from the Philippines case at the Hague.

This whole canard of conflating freedom of commercial navigation with military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance along China’s coast is a product of a U.S. military propaganda campaign. It has been so successful that it has confused its own citizenry and their elected representatives. China has never threatened commercial freedom of navigation and is highly unlikely to do so in peacetime. This is not because of its adherence to some high moral principle. It is because it would not be in its interest to do so. The U.S. government well knows this and yet is seemingly willing to risk conflict by conflating these issues..

But whatever the U.S. government does, it will not placate the bellicose anti-China crowd. They will simply find something else to harp on. It is important to recognize that and for decisions to be driven by longer term and larger goals. It is critical at this juncture that U.S. decision-makers remain calm, cool, collected and courageous.

About the author:
*Mark J. Valencia, Adjunct Senior Scholar, National Institute for South China Sea studies, Haikou, China

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena left for New York Wednesday to attend the 70th United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA) Sessions.

Sirisena is scheduled to deliver a special address at the General Debate of the 70th UNGA.

Sirisena will have bilateral meetings with several leaders including Prime Minister of Malta Dr Joseph Muscat, Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key, and Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull during the summit.

Sirisena also will meet the President of ICRC; Peter Maurer, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch; Mr. Kenneth Roth, as well as the Administrator of the UNDP; Helen Clark.

External Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera, Minister of Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Hindu Affairs D.M. Swaminathan, Minister of Justice and Buddha Sasana Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Minister of Skills Development and Vocational Training Mahinda Samarasinghe are accompanying the President.

The Spanish Minister for Justice, Rafael Catalá, met in Mexico with the Attorney General of Mexico, Arely Gómez, to discuss issues relating to legal cooperation between the two countries. They agreed to increase efforts and cooperation between their countries for greater exchange and collaboration in areas of mutual interest.

Rafael Catalá and Arely Gómez welcomed this meeting, which they both consider as a demonstration of willingness from the two governments to foster bilateral cooperation.

The issues discussed at the meeting included legal assistance on criminal affairs, regarding which the two governments highlighted the close collaboration between the two countries since 2006 in terms of the exchange of letters rogatory. A total of 165 such documents have been processed in the last four years.

Spain and Mexico also highlighted the positive results from the mechanisms for extraditing and relocating people receiving sentences. Since the year 2000, a total of 21 cases for the relocation of Mexican nationals to their country and 17 for the relocation of Spanish citizens from Mexico to Spain have been processed. There are currently 22 Spanish citizens being held in prison in Mexico and 71 Mexican citizens at penitentiary centers in Spain.

As regards the issue of international child abduction, the two delegations agreed on the positive improvements taking place in terms of communication between the authorities of Spain and Mexico, and agreed to continue working to expedite proceedings in such cases.

As regards surrogacy, Mexico expressed a desire to collaborate on resolving a number of problematic cases. Spain does not recognize the validity of surrogacy contracts, but there is an increasing number of cases in which Spanish citizens are traveling to countries such as Mexico where certain contracts are indeed recognized by the State.

Rafael Catalá and his Mexican counterpart also discussed the issue of international adoption, which has been a possibility between the two countries since 1995. The number of such adoptions has experienced a significant decline in recent years due to the strengthening of protection systems in the country of origin and the development of national child protection services, such as fostering and national adoption.

Spain committed to holding the 12th Spain-Mexico Binational Commission in Madrid next year, at which such issues as the fight against crime, the investigation and prosecution of cross-border crime, prison inmate relocation, child abduction and the consular protection of respective nationals will be analyzed.

The Spanish Minister for Justice and the Attorney General of Mexico also met with the Secretary-General of the Conference of Justice Ministers of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB), Arkel Benítez, to discuss the internal operation of the organization, the recent changes to executive positions and its financing.

At his meeting with the Speaker of the Upper House of Parliament of Mexico, Rafael Catalá and Roberto Gil Zuarth reviewed the recent legislative reforms adopted by the two countries. The Spanish Minister for Justice stressed that the social, economic and political development of Mexico and Spain requires legal cooperation instruments – both civil and criminal – to be constantly updated. In turn, Roberto Gil Zuarth expressed a desire for the “political tension arising in recent months with Catalonia to be resolved through dialogue, political debate, the institutional channels of respect for constitutional order and through democratic processes”. Roberto Gil Zuarth advocated a prosperous Catalonia as part of a united Spain within the boundaries of a strong Europe.

The Spanish minister also met with representatives from Spanish law firms in Mexico and leading Mexican law firms.

Abe’s statement of apology disappointed audiences in neighbouring countries, but as China celebrates its ‘victory’ 70 years ago, the Communist Party cannot claim the moral authority of the German example.

By Benjamin Creutzfeldt*

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s statement on 14 August 2015, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, was eagerly anticipated in China in particular: movies featuring Chinese heroes fighting off evil invaders from the island empire were the daily staple of the television menu, keeping animosities alive. Neither are Koreans prone to forget the assassination of Queen Min by Japanese ronin in 1895, and the subsequent annexation of the Peninsula by Japan.

In this climate, Abe’s speech neither salted old wounds nor calmed sore souls, it just disappointed: it was no more than a splash of water on smouldering embers. For a German who has imbibed fully the “original sin” of being German even if my father was barely a teenager when WWII began, it is baffling to witness the apparent inability of the Japanese to properly acknowledge and apologise for their brutal subjugation of most of East Asia during half a century.

The role of a statesman

For sure, Abe’s carefully crafted statement was punctuated by words such as grief (断腸の念) and feelings of sincere apology (心からのお詫びの気持ち). But these expressions are preceded in the rhetoric by an implicit finger-pointing to the 19th century Western colonisation of Asia and awkward references to injuries and deaths which “occurred” without specifying the perpetrator.

He reiterates the national pledge to non-aggression and opposition to war, yet subtly jabs at China when rejecting the “arbitrary intentions of any nation” (いかなる国の恣意) or denouncing economic blocs as the seeds of conflict. Most controversially, however, Abe contends that the young and future generations of Japanese “should not be predestined to apologise”.

This is Abe the politician pandering to conservative Japan. In attempting to soften the weight of the past with lightness of a possible future, he fails to recognise that a circumscribed apology is no apology at all. States as corporate actors are the only entities in a position to apologise for past aggression, and as such their leaders are the only ones who can utter such apologies, and they must do so again and again, in the face of such grave crimes committed in their country’s name. National accountability does not expire. Historical responsibility cannot be qualified over time.

But more importantly, this is not about the last major war. It is about the recognition that humans are capable of organised and state-sanctioned murder of other humans, and it is the mark of a statesman to speak to this and prevent war from recurring. Beyond the national or individual guilt, it is a valuable human ability to apologise unconditionally and recognise the darkest side of human nature: the system of the ‘comfort women’ instituted by the Japanese was horrifyingly similar to what the so-called Islamic State is doing to Yazidi women today.

The German example

In Japan, minimising its war crimes in history books and discussions has been optional, whereas in Germany minimising or denying the Holocaust has been a criminal offence. The contrast with Germany’s contrition has become something of a cliché, but it is nonetheless an instructive one.

Germany’s position since Willy Brandt’s “Kniefall” (Kneeling) before a Warsaw Holocaust memorial in 1970, has in fact been its strength: only once you recognise a human failing on a massive scale and as a national unit, and utter that recognition unequivocally and with uncompromising humility, can you reasonably question or even criticise others.

To look at the Holocaust with an unwavering eye and see one’s country’s role in it, requires determination and great strength of will. Holocaust remembrance and education as well as contrition for Germany’s historic crimes have become central to German national identity.

East Asia’s greatest weakness

The demonstrators across Japan protesting Abe’s security policy and his proposed legislation to allow its military to fight overseas are proof that many Japanese have understood the transcendental nature of the country’s pledge to pacifism. It would seem the prime minister and his cabinet have not. But if the Japanese government thinks that heightened military activity is a legitimate catalyst for a laboured economic recovery, they are only increasing the mistrust that marks neighbouring East Asian nations.

The same admonition would go to the rulers in Beijing, who are prone to condone public Japan-bashing when domestic issues rile the Chinese middle class. But herein lies the great weakness of the Communist Party of China, which is historically guilty of many million deaths also. As long as the CPC refuses to explore self-critically the darker periods of its political history, its leadership retains a feeble moral position in the face of Japan’s reluctance to fully own up to its collective responsibility for past atrocities.

This is the conundrum of East Asia today: even after decades of unparalleled economic growth and poverty reduction, and education levels matched by few other countries in the world, the leading powers of the region cannot see eye to eye. Instead of pulling together by showing true greatness in laying the past to rest with sincerity, they let the ashes of the past make their voices grow hoarse.

*Benjamin Creutzfeldt is a sinologist and political scientist, and associate professor for the study of contemporary China and East Asia at CESA School of Business in Bogota, Colombia.

A coastal hazards analysis of 48 Pacific Ocean beaches in three continents, using data from 1979 to 2012, found the biggest factor influencing communities and beaches in all regions was the impact of El Niño and La Niña events.

The study also found their influence had alternate impacts in different parts of the Pacific basin. When one side of the Pacific experienced extreme coastal erosion and flooding because of El Niño the other side often experienced these hazards during La Niña. Some climate projections suggest that these events may occur more frequently in the 21st century, meaning that populated regions could experience more severe flooding or erosion.

Results of the study, which was funded by a variety of organizations, are being published this week in Nature Geoscience.

“There are many factors that can influence coastal vulnerability yet many future projections of coastal hazards focus only on sea level rise and neglect the influence of seasonal water level anomalies, storm surges, wave-driven processes and other factors,” said Peter Ruggiero, an Oregon State University coastal hazards expert and co-author on the study.

“We knew that climate cycles play a major role in what happens to our coastlines, but the fact that El Niño and La Niña significantly affect coastal hazards throughout the Pacific in a fairly coherent manner was a bit of a surprise,” added Ruggiero, who is an associate professor of geology and geophysics in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

The analysis also confirmed what scientists had suspected – the most dominant impacts on beaches and communities through climate cycles takes place in the boreal (northern) winter. Some projections suggest that the worst-case scenarios for sea level rise could displace up to 187 million people by the end of the 21st century, with flood losses exceeding $1 trillion (in U.S. dollars) for the world’s major coastal cities.

More frequent, and potentially more severe, El Niño and La Niña events could worsen the situation.

The researchers also looked specifically at the Pacific Northwest of the United States, which experiences extreme water level anomalies during major El Niño events – on the order of tens of centimeters, and changes in both wave height and direction. Storms reaching the coast from more steep southern approach angles cause significant “hotspots” of erosion, Ruggiero pointed out.

“The El Niño winters of 1982-83 and 1997-98 resulted in the most extreme coastal flooding and erosion hazards along the Oregon and Washington coast in recent decades – oftentimes taking many years to recovery, if at all,” the authors wrote in their analysis.

In 2013, Ruggiero led a study of Pacific Northwest beaches that found Washington’s beaches, on average, were more stable than those in Oregon, which had experienced an increase in erosion hazards in recent decades. His study found that since the 1960s, 13 of the 17 Oregon beach “littoral cells” – stretches of beach between rocky headlands and major inlets – have either experienced an increase in erosion, or less of a buildup in sand during beach-building months.

Some of the hardest hit areas along the coast include the Neskowin littoral cell between Cascade Head and Pacific City, and the Beverly Beach littoral cell between Yaquina Head and Otter Rock, where shoreline change rates have averaged more than one meter of erosion a year since the 1960s.

“We’re in the midst of a strengthening El Niño right now,” Ruggiero said, “and we already seeing some significant water level anomalies through tide gauge readings. Some people project that this 2015-16 El Niño could match those significant events of 1982-83 and 1997-98.

“If we get significant storms this winter during times of elevated water levels, the region could experience erosion and hazards not seen in some years.”

Hugo Chavez always thought that the Bolivarian revolution was a continuous process in two senses – 1) the contemporary revolution was a continuation of the historic national liberation struggle led by Simon Bolivar in the early 19th century. 2) The political and national revolution begun with his election in 1998 must, of necessity, advance to a socialist transformation.

Chavez understood that political power, involved more than winning elections and entering the Presidential Palace; the strategic political objective was transforming the neo-colonial state, in order to advance the national liberation revolution, which in Venezuela meant, creating an independent nation. In a petroleum state, national liberation meant taking total control over the petrol industry and redistributing the revenues to the majority of the working people.

For Chavez the nationalist revolution was a necessary step toward advancing the socialist revolution.

For Chavez the nationalization of strategic industries was a step toward socialization of the economy – the decentralization of control into the hands of communal councils. For Chavez either the revolution advanced from the political and economic to a social, cultural and ethical transformation or it would stagnate, reverse and be defeated.

In every major crises, the coup of 2002, the lockout of 2003, the referendum of 2004, the decade of military threats and sabotage from Washington and Bogota, Chavez responded by radicalizing the revolution, mobilizing the masses and internationalizing the revolution.

At every point of class confrontation, Chavez never retreated; instead of compromising with the bourgeoisie, he intensified his efforts to raise national and socialist consciousness among the masses.

Chavez waged a two front struggle; 1) against the ‘external enemy’ – US imperialism, the Colombian terrorist state and the Venezuelan capitalist class, 2) against the internal enemies, those leaders and officials in the Bolivarian state and PSUV who were part of the rentier legacy and engaged in corruption, abuse of power and who failed to respond to popular demands. Chavez declared war on bureaucratism and conciliation with the bourgeois.

Chavez understood that the capacity to resist the ‘external enemies’ depended on conscious, organized, mass movements. Chavez detested bureaucratic, incompetent and corrupt leaders who wanted to prevent the revolution from advancing .Those officials who sought to stifle the advance of popular power, to marginalize the communal councils, to concentrate power in the hands of a bureaucratic elite in order to negotiate a compromise with imperialism and the local bourgeoisie which would leave the basic institutions and privileges of capitalist society intact.

Chavez’s basic political legacy is his recognition that the dialectal relation between the external and internal enemies of the continuous revolution, required the deepening of the spiritual, cultural and political consciousness through the radicalization of the class struggle and audacious mass action.

Faced with capitalist sabotage of the economy, Chavez declared the need to nationalize all the major industries. Faced with financial swindles by private and public officials, Chavez demanded the socialization of the banking system.

Faced with imperial blockades, Chavez sought new international allies: he deepened ties with Latin American, Islamic, Russian and Chinese nationalists.

Today Venezuela faces its biggest crises since the election of Chavez.
President Maduro faces two choices – either to pursue the road detailed by Chavez, the road of continuous revolution, or to seek the path of conciliation, surrender and defeat.

Chavez identified the five interrelated historical objectives of the Venezuelan people on the path to revolution. He established the national framework, put socialism on the immediate agenda, successfully promoted South American unity, participated in the creation of a multi-centered world and raised the issue of climate change.

President Chavez advances are in mortal danger today from external and internal enemies. The continuation and realization of Chavez historical objectives rests in the hands of the advanced sectors of the revolutionary masses over the next few months.

Taiwan’s delayed transformation to an all-volunteer force (AVF) would not be a turning point for conscription, but signify its weakening defence.

By Wu Shang-su*

Contrary to its plan to abolish compulsory military service by the end of this year, the Ministry of National Defence (MND) in Taipei has announced the enlistment of about 23,100 young male citizens next year, due to insufficient recruitment of volunteer soldiers – after the first failure in transformation to an all-volunteer force (AVF) in 2013.

The MND also mentioned the possibility of further conscription thereafter. This temporary decision not only reflects Taiwan’s dilemma in its continuous attempt at introducing the all-volunteer force (AVF), but may also create a weakness in its capability for general deterrence, particularly in hybrid warfare scenario.

Vulnerability in hybrid warfare

Despite the current failure in recruitment, the MND still plans to carry out its AVF policy which may narrow Taiwan’s security margin. To lower the difficulty of recruitment, the MND plans to slash the total size of the armed forces from the present 215,000 troops to between 170,000 and 175,000 during peace time. Such a smaller number would be a key factor of reaching MND’s manpower requirement.

As conscripts are mainly for ground troops rather than air force or navy, transforming the AVF would mostly affect such units. While conventional wisdom has it that the air force and navy are far more critical than ground troops in island defence, this notion has been reversed and the importance of ground troops raised due to the possibility of irregular or hybrid warfare.

Thanks to Taipei’s open policy towards Beijing since 2008, China has various channels to deploy its special operation units and other forces under civilian cover, such as tourists, students and business people, into Taiwanese territory in advance of operation. Those Chinese “fifth column” could paralyse key facilities and other missions to create better conditions for regular invasion or other forms of intervention.

As a result, Taiwan’s group troops are critical to counter such scenarios, and their quantity would considerably be related to their performance, especially when their opponents could be much more than before.

Under cover of more than three million Chinese visitors annually, it would not be a surprise to find thousands or even tens of thousands of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers penetrating Taiwan. Unlike regular warfare, such scenarios would not allow the MND to have sufficient time to mobilise reservist soldiers to achieve quantitative superiority, and the regular forces would be the only means of responding.

Downsizing them to fit the AVF goal may make the defender lose quantitative advantage, or even regionally outnumbered by the PLA forces without landing or airborne invasion. If Taiwan’s ground troops were unable to control the situation, its other defence capabilities would be unlikely to perform effectively, or may even get neutralised by sabotage or other forms of attack.

Weak general deterrence

Due to the relatively slow and small military procurement, the general military balance between Beijing and Taipei, especially naval and aerial capabilities, has been tilted toward China. As Taiwan’s deterrence against China on air and maritime defence is being undermined, land defence, particularly urban warfare, would be crucial to supplement its general deterrence. As such, a large number of citizen soldiers are an important element for homeland defence, and demonstrate the credibility of defence will.

Although the MND also plans four-month basic training for male citizens parallel to the AVF, without the experience of large-scale, joint training or exercise, this would significantly constrain their operational flexibility. Moreover, as China is building up its military capability, Taiwan’s building down with less popular participation may send a message to Beijing about Taipei’s reducing defence will.

Taiwan identity and conscription

The Sunflower Movement last year and the high school students’ protest on their curricula this year showed that the Taiwan identity — with Taiwanese people seeing themselves as independent from China — seems to be increasingly popular, particularly among youth, based on a number of recent polls.

However, such a shift in national identity, which may cause Beijing to use force against Taipei, has not led to a popular review of the conscription issue. If people in Taiwan really want to defy the second strongest military power in the world for their self-determination, the resolve for self-defence would be indispensable. According to Taiwan’s short strategic depth and China’s expanding long-range firepower, warfare across the Strait would involve not only professional soldiers but the entire population on the island.

Hence, military preparedness should be relevant to such a political situation. Yet, after the MND’s announcement, public opinion has generally merely focused on the government’s failure in completing AVF, and the eroding interest of some young male citizens due to the longer enlistment.

Undeniably, Taiwan’s military system has been somewhat notorious for a series of scandals, including torture, espionage and other incidents about internal management. Thus some people argue that they do want to serve in the military, certainly not in the current one. However, military reform is not the main topic, either in daily public opinion or the policy debates in the presidential election campaign.

A modified AVF policy has been mentioned by Tsai Ing-Wen, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with a promising opportunity to win the election next year. But there have been no details about this policy as yet. As long as public attitude toward conscription is negative, public pressure would ensure that elected decision makers in Taipei still move toward AVF. Moreover, despite the clear trend towards a Taiwan identity, the Taiwanese people’s reluctance to make individual contribution to defence would put them in an inferior position vis-à-vis China.

*Wu Shang-su is a research fellow in the Military Studies Programme of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Lisa Ferdinando

The US Defense Department says there are false reports coming out of Syria about defections among personnel in the Syrian train-and-equip program.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the false reports have been sourced to Twitter from people claiming to be from the al-Nusra front and saying train-and-equip personnel have turned over weapons or defected.

“I just wanted to tell you that we believe those reports to be false. We have no information at all to suggest that’s true,” Davis said in a press briefing today. “All coalition-issued weapons and equipment are under the positive control of New Syrian Force fighters.”

The United States is in contact with the personnel and there is “no indication that there is any truth to the claim that there has been a defection,” he said.

Some of the photos in the social media postings, “appear to have been repurposed,” Davis said.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said there are indications the al-Nusra front is “actively” trying to discredit the train-and-equip program and the New Syrian forces by spreading false information via social media.

The coalition program trains and equips Syrian opposition members in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

According to Centcom, approximately 70 graduates of the program returned to Syria over the weekend and are currently operating there as New Syrian Forces.

“While the NSF do not operate under the command and control of the coalition,” the statement said, “we will continue to support and enable these anti-ISIL forces as part of the campaign to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.”

By David W. Murray*

The emergent problem of the dangerous drugs known as synthetics has been featured in several recent media accounts. Their use has grown strikingly, and because of their association with violent behavior, so has law enforcement concern. The rising trend was shown in reports of emergency episodes attributed to “synthetic cannabinoids” by the District of Columbia Fire and EMS departments. Episodes had been stable at fewer than fifty cases a month from August, 2012, until roughly November of that year, when they spiked to over a hundred.

That number subsided until approximately January of 2015, when they began an unprecedented, and persisting, climb. By June of 2014, the last data point captured, they reached 439 cases, an apparent increase of nearly 800 percent since the end of the year.

Our attention has been triggered by some horrendous episodes involving consumption of synthetics, including an alleged stabbing death that has the city, already known for far greater use of the synthetic hallucinogen PCP among arrestees than other major cities, on edge.

Has some underlying factor driven synthetic cannabinoid use in the nation’s Capital, as shown by these emergency episodes? What has changed that could affect either drug availability, or the acceptability of increased use, of this dangerous set of compounds?

There is a correlation found in the timing. In November of 2014, District voters made news by approving legal “natural” cannabinoid use in the city – that is, marijuana. Then, in January of this year, the legalization took effect, with an increase in public consumption, while police backed away. Both developments seem to be echoed in the data.

We must confront a disturbing question: by allowing “natural” marijuana to increase in acceptance, could the District have sowed the wind of the synthetic cannabis whirlwind?

Advocates for drug legalization recognize that connection, but their response is the predictable resort of pro-marijuana advocates. Legalizers explain the increased use of synthetics as a consequence of the prohibition on “natural cannabis.” But that had ended just before the epidemic began. So how could prohibition be forcing the problem? The response from legalizers is revealing, as it discloses their next target in District policies: workplace drug testing. Since many synthetic users believe that they are not readily detected by potential employers, they must be substituting them for the “natural” marijuana product.

So for legalizers, it is still the “punitive criminal justice system” that somehow incentivizes use of dangerous synthetic toxins. As they perennially argue, it is our crack-down on marijuana that drives consumers to more dangerous drugs.

For advocates, the problem with marijuana legalization in the District is not that it led to a disturbing shift in the attitudes and norms of drugs use. It’s that it didn’t go far enough. We didn’t legalize sales, as well as use. And employers (like the Federal Government) still insist on drug-testing applicants. And because drug users want jobs, they have to use synthetics.

Oddly, before November when “natural marijuana” was prohibited, this argument failed; there was then no spike in synthetic use, even though marijuana users were still, as now, subjected to drug tests.

The legalizer solution? Legalize marijuana sales, but most importantly, eliminate workplace testing. That will surely end the demand for synthetics.

It’s possible that the cause of the current epidemic is, as legalizers argue, this complicated incentive effect. But isn’t it simpler, and more faithful to the data, to posit that the District made a huge, predictable mistake when it opened the flood gates to legalized marijuana, and thereby shifted the entire drug using landscape towards an epidemic?

The argument is not far-fetched. Perceptions and norms of disapproval matter for those contemplating drug use, and survey data are clear that for youth, there is a strong correlation between one prior behavior and use of synthetic drugs. Data from a study overseen by the National Institute of Drug Abuse showed that the use of “natural” marijuana is, in fact, a “gateway” for synthetic use. In fact, the use of synthetics by those who hadn’t previously used marijuana is 0.5 percent; that is, almost never.

The true common sense understanding of the tragedy happening right before us is that the District of Columbia, by legalizing marijuana, produced a completely predictable effect. It made drug use more acceptable, and rendered police control more difficult. Sadly, as drugs of all sorts begin to flood the streets, the District is experiencing a rapidly-unfolding train wreck, of its own devising.

About the author:
*David W. Murray, Senior Fellow

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute

By John Johnson and Bradley T. Gericke

Gashed from the yellow earth and scarred by lacerating wire bound to steel posts, the moment Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) comes into view, you cannot avoid the impression that you are witness to a crime. In a way, you are. The DMZ is an ominous wound from an unfinished conflict dividing the Korean Peninsula and serving as a boundary between incarceration and freedom. It carves its way between Korea’s sharp-sloped green hills only 20 short miles from the megacity of Seoul and its surrounding environs with its 25 million people who, after decades of economic development, are enjoying increasingly prosperous lives. The DMZ both signifies suffering already endured and foreshadows violence yet to come. It represents a status quo inter-bellum, which cannot endure. It is like no other place in the world. And the complex strategic and operational challenge that it poses to America’s joint force is likewise daunting.

The fact that war has not yet returned to the Korean Peninsula is in large measure due to U.S. security assurance. In close and enduring partnership with the armed forces of the Republic of Korea (ROK), American military power has to date tempered hostilities and assured all actors that the cost of military ambition would be high. By no means, however, is the tumultuous history between the states and peoples of this critical region finished, nor should the absence of major war in recent decades be seen as a diminished mandate for U.S. military deterrence, shaping activities, and operational readiness.

In every so-called balance of power, stability is a constructed outcome that puts competing interests in suspension. Stability is not an accident, and it requires active intervention to endure. Like spinning a top, sustained intervention in the form of applied force is necessary to keep the thing going. If the top loses its spin, equilibrium is lost. For more than 60 years that force has been applied in Korea on the ground by American troops. They have been Northeast Asia’s key guarantors of stability. They have kept the top spinning.1

But now a young leader sitting atop the North Korean regime threatens anew what has become fashionable to blink at: escalatory conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The standoff there is not simply a relic of the Cold War or a quaint regional affair whose consequences can be held distant from American shores. The implications for American security and prosperity are global and increasingly urgent. War in Korea would inflict a terrible toll, and the United States could not avoid the butcher’s bill.

For the joint force, and for the U.S. Army in particular, a clear-eyed consideration of the high-intensity demands of a 21st-century war in Korea is overdue. We must be clear about the fundamental nature of a war waged on the Korean Peninsula. A centerpiece of U.S. joint campaigns would be a ground war—American boots on the ground in Asia. And those ground forces, as members of a joint force in partnership with our ROK ally, would be called on not only to prosecute multiple, often simultaneous operations to achieve the essential military objectives necessary to defeat North Korean military forces, but also to secure the North’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the enabling components of WMD networks, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the population, and assure order to set the conditions for the return of civil authority. Thus, if war erupts, it would be extraordinarily complex and dangerous.

Accomplishing these tasks would require much of our Armed Forces. In addition to the layered threats posed by the North’s armed forces, the deeply isolated political and economic character of the North Korean state means denial of air and sea environments alone would be necessary and enabling, yet not sufficient to the prosecution of a campaign on the peninsula. Land dominance would be essential to military success.2

The Strategic Environment

While not recently in the forefront of military planning, Asia is a familiar battleground. The United States is a Pacific nation, with our country’s political, economic, and security interests tightly bound to this dynamic region. Since 1898, the United States has waged four major Pacific conflicts—the Philippine Campaign (1899–1913), World War II (1941–1945), Korean War (1950–1953 and through today), and Vietnam War (1962–1972)—as well as numerous smaller scale operations and deployments. Despite the common perception that the Pacific is an air-maritime theater, since 1898 the U.S. Army has waged more ground campaigns in the Pacific than anywhere else in the world. Likewise, Asian states have themselves fought ground wars, and with sizeable forces. The Army’s attention to this theater is historically rooted in genuine posture and readiness demands.3

As each of the Services seeks to balance worldwide commitments in an era of domestic fiscal constraint, the effects of posture decisions will be felt in the Korean theater. In concert with Army choices, the stationing or rotational presence of Navy ships, Air Force strike aircraft, and Marine forces will matter greatly. The time it takes to bring U.S. capabilities to bear in the event of conflict becomes an enemy itself if joint capabilities are moved farther from the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s violent provocations and bombastic pronouncements that have ratcheted up tensions in recent years mark a familiar recurrence in the constructed, public confrontations so necessary to the North. The regime capably underpins its diplomacy through a double-bind approach that generates a political crisis to set conditions, followed by facile concessions to reset conditions ante, underpinned with the threats posed by an industrial-scale WMD program and improving missile delivery systems.

North Korea is a security-first state.4 Perpetual tension with South Korea (and the United States) is the raison d’être for the North Korean regime. Manufactured vexation directed against the South and the United States is employed to justify the hardships imposed on the North Korean people by the North’s leaders. These leaders are not irrational—but they do not see the world as the West does, either. Why would they hazard a war? One catalyst would be the perceived threat posed by the West to regime leadership. Readiness—and the sacrifices demanded by the public to stay ready—to fight to protect the ethnic Korean nation whose only true defender is the North is inherent to their ruling ideology. North Korea’s leaders comprehensively prioritize a military mindset and act accordingly.5 Their ambition to protect the North’s self-declared concept of Korean racial and cultural purity means that the regime cannot go far down the path of economic reform and political liberalism. The elasticity that Western policymakers seek from the regime is simply incompatible with that mindset. This does not mean the North’s rulers are martyrs, but it does leave plenty of decision space to risk a war, even if they could be defeated eventually. It is better to remain firmly in control and resist for as long as possible than to incur the high risk posed by instability.

It is axiomatic that North Korea’s leaders see their own authority as an existential issue and would have little interest in restraint in defending themselves. They would employ every tool at their disposal to preserve their regime: conventional forces, special operations capabilities, cyber attacks, missile and artillery volleys, and, logically, WMD. The U.S. joint force must not presume that the selective application of U.S. weapons in an attempt to limit the scope of the conflict would be feasible. Once its ruling elites see themselves in jeopardy, North Korea could be expected to fight with all its capabilities. The fates of recent U.S. adversaries such as Muammar Qadhafi, Saddam Hussein, and even Bashar al-Asad are surely near to mind; none serves as models for paths to accommodation with the United States. Thus U.S. and ROK military planning must admit that North Korea’s leaders are motivated to protect their interests. That translates to war across the range of military operations, against a determined adversary, in Asia—complexity posing severe challenges for American planners.

The North’s aggressive promotion of confrontation also heightens the risk of unintended consequences such as an escalatory spiral driven by emotion, miscalculation, and chance. It is entirely feasible—in fact most likely—that any major military engagements would start with little or no notice. The scenarios for escalation are remarkably complex and merit a clear-eyed consideration of the kind of campaigns likely to be waged in crisis. In all cases military action would certainly be many things: fast-paced, violent, fought in multiple domains, high risk, and international in scope. What it would not be is easily limited or waged only on American terms.

Here is where U.S. policy desires and the shadow of history collide. Common wisdom asserts that another war on the Korean Peninsula is, in effect, unthinkable. Regional stakes are too high. Too many global powers and their economies are in play. Enormous populations are at risk. At home, an American public and policy class is weary from a decade of war in the Middle East. The default then is to hold the prospect of war in Asia at arm’s length while hoping for time to re-muster American military strength and for something—anything—to change on the Korean Peninsula that leads to an end-of-Cold-War–style soft landing. But given North Korea’s record, one should hold little optimism for a negotiated settlement to conclusively lessen tension on the peninsula.6 It is a risky proposition to assume that the relatively orderly endgame of the Cold War in Europe would be replicated in northeast Asia. The history is simply different, and so are the cultures in play.

It should not be surprising then that the North’s leaders appear to be sticking to their playbook. Their March 2010 sinking of the ROK Cheonan, with the loss of more than 40 ROK sailors, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November of that year, the largest military assault against the South since the armistice, are provocations very much in the North’s customary style. Then in April 2012, North Korea launched a 90-ton Unha-3 rocket ostensibly for the purpose of placing a satellite in orbit but likely serving as a test platform for long-range missile technologies. (It is in this context that the alleged cyber attacks by North Korea against Sony in late 2014 must be understood.) And of course even more seriously, the North has claimed several successful underground nuclear tests in recent years. Leaders in Pyongyang no doubt see little incentive to try a new approach so long as their longstanding approach of provocation followed by extraction of concessions continues to work. This is especially true now, as Kim Jong-un tightens his authority through assassination of his political rivals in a rare third-generation hereditary transition within an autocratic state.

In the meantime, change is under way south of the DMZ, which further heightens military risk. The population of South Korea is justifiably proud of hard-earned prosperity, and while they long tolerated provocations by the North, that forbearance is now being sorely tested.7 The public made their displeasure known by reacting with revulsion to the civilian loss of life as a consequence of the Yeonpyeong shelling. In the years since, the public’s perception of their security has declined significantly.8 ROK political leaders have taken note. After each of the North Korean provocations in 2010, senior ROK leaders were dismissed, including ministers of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and a number of general officers. The result is that the armed forces are more determined and readier than ever to deliver a prompt, firm, and unequivocal military response in the event of another such North Korean attack. This is just the kind of tinder that could spark a broader conflagration.

A salutary development at the level of national policy is that the U.S. Department of Defense is beginning the rebalance of force capabilities to the Asia-Pacific region.9 In addition, the U.S. Army, despite its ongoing commitments in the Middle East, has recently published its operating concept, Win in a Complex World, with its embedded idea of “joint combined arms operations.” Such operations consist of “synchronized, simultaneous, or sequential application of two or more arms or elements of one service, along with joint inter-organizational and multinational capabilities to ensure unity of effort and create multiple dilemmas for the enemy.”10 The Army’s concept proposes the kind of integrated, adaptable maneuver that would be necessary to confront and then defeat likely adversaries in any theater, but seems highly suited to the diverse challenges posed by North Korea.

The Operational Environment

If wars really do end in the mud, then the physical environment of northeast Asia offers plenty. Korea’s weather is extreme—brutally humid and monsoonal in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. Most of the peninsula features rugged, compartmented terrain characterized by low-lying rice paddies and farm fields with steeply sloped mountains. U.S. mobility would be challenged. Logistical support would be severely tested. In short, the Korean Peninsula presents considerable challenges that would test U.S. troops and equipment.

The military resources available to the North are more formidable than they may at first appear. Despite their aging equipment, inadequate transport, outdated communications gear, and poor maneuver training, they retain significant lethal capabilities. While conquest of the peninsula may no longer be feasible—a fact that the North’s military leaders likely understand—the North’s armed forces pose multiple, in-depth, and complex challenges to U.S. and ROK armed forces.11 The North Koreans would still be a formidable adversary in ground combat and possess strategic and operational attack options via robust short-, medium-, and long-range missile and cannon capabilities, which alone could put at risk most of the ROK’s population. North Korea’s armed forces are the fourth largest in the world, including an active-duty strength of more than 1.2 million—at least twice the size of the South’s.12 The North does not possess the professional officers and modernized equipment of the South, but the regime’s military leadership is indoctrinated and loyal, and the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) boasts both large numbers of armored vehicles and an especially lethal indirect fire inventory: 7,500 mortars, 3,500 towed artillery pieces, 4,400 self-propelled cannons, and 5,100 multiple-rocket launchers. These can deliver both standard high explosives and chemical munitions.

Swiftly neutralizing a large number of delivery systems is problematic even for U.S. and ROK forces that possess decided qualitative advantages. And of course, North Korea has declared itself to be nuclear-weapons capable. Interrupting and then rendering safe whatever nuclear materials do exist is a wicked problem.13 Thus the counter weapons of mass destruction (CWMD) mission set plays a regular and prominent role for U.S. Army forces on the peninsula. The prospect of waging war with conventional means against a nuclear-capable foe would itself constitute a new chapter in modern warfare, one whose implications deserves extensive scrutiny.

With these capabilities, the North could launch indirect-fire raids against key ROK cities and U.S. military installations while deploying large numbers of its 60,000-strong special operations forces (SOF) across the peninsula, and conduct limited objective incursions to seize key terrain south of the DMZ for use as negotiating leverage later. Such an offensive would pose a potent combination that would be difficult to repel. The North’s battlefield dispositions pose a challenge much more akin to the conditions at Verdun than the rapid offensive of 1950. This is not to say that the NKPA could not conduct limited attacks and seize terrain; it likely could. But the army’s strength comes from waging a defensive struggle, inflicting ROK and U.S. casualties, panicking the large population of Seoul, buying time for its national leadership to employ asymmetric weaponry and to press for an early diplomatic accommodation that leaves the regime intact.

South of the DMZ, Koreans today are justifiably proud of their economic success and protective of their hard-won affluence that has witnessed the explosive growth of a middle class in recent years.14 One result is a deeper calculation by the South of the intersection of its economic and security interests. Trade and defense issues between South Korea, China, Japan, and the United States are deeply intertwined. Even as the South and the United States continue to negotiate force posture issues and matters of operational control of forces within their alliance framework, the military partnership remains resilient and strong. In fact, U.S. troop levels in Korea have stabilized after several years of drawdown, and the U.S. Army is modernizing and improving readiness of its forces stationed on the peninsula.15 The ROK army is a highly motivated force that is earnestly modernizing and would fight hard. But it is also a force that is challenged to perform offensively with the speed and alacrity of U.S. forces. South Koreans and our allies in the region expect that the U.S. Armed Forces would fulfill alliance obligations and would carry a hefty share of the warfight. To do less would irreparably damage U.S. prestige, risk U.S. interests in the region, and likely exacerbate human suffering.

A Three-Campaign Land War

Two frequently encountered assumptions about war on the peninsula are that the war would move lockstep up the peninsula, phase line by phase line in a replay of 1950–1953, or that conflict would be limited to a specific piece of terrain, waged primarily by select—standoff—military platforms. We should employ greater imagination and resist the temptation to believe that the adversary would allow U.S and ROK forces to march the length of the peninsula as the North succumbs to “shock and awe.” While U.S. precision strike capability is certainly a good thing, it just would not be enough because the nature of the war would reflect the totality of its objectives.16 It would be fought in checkerboard fashion, with ground, sea, air, and cyber operations occurring simultaneously. Central to the contest would be the need to seize and hold ground.

For U.S. forces, the burden of waging war would fall first on U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), a subunified command that also shoulders the responsibility of representing the United Nations as the United Nations Command and partner to the ROK as it contributes to the bilateral Combined Forces Command.17 USFK troops and arriving joint forces from the region and the continental United States would be required to wage three broad campaigns: neutralize North Korea’s offensive WMD capability and protect the capital of Seoul (existential and immediate), secure WMD sites and defeat North Korean conventional and unconventional forces (existential and essential); and conduct WMD site exploitation and stability functions to aid the population and enable ROK-led reunification of the peninsula under a responsible civilian authority (conflict termination). The operational space in which these missions must be performed would be chaotic, friction would dominate, and U.S. forces would meet resistance in all domains.

The timeline from steady state to the outbreak of crisis would likely be a short one. There is little reason to believe that there would be accurate information regarding North Korean intentions. With ambiguity dictating the opening phases of a crisis, the ability of ROK and U.S. policymakers to make timely decisions would be hampered, compressing the time available for military preparations. Our recent experience in the Middle East would hinder us in Korea. U.S. forces have historically been accustomed to generating combat power over time from largely sheltered operating bases that could receive, equip, and sustain the onward-moving tactical echelons. Even when expeditionary packages are deployed, they are not large and they too benefit from an extensive support network that is protected in the theater. Our forces in Korea would be both at immediate risk and in high demand.

Operational risk climbs quickly over time if necessary capabilities are lacking. The requirements would not only be ordinary classes of supply but would also consist of specialized formations and often highly technical equipment, again demanding ready access if they are to be employed effectively. The distance between Seoul and Los Angeles is about 6,000 miles—a long way to ship or airlift heavy reinforcements, and a trip that would simply take too long if the right mix of capabilities is not already accessible to commanders. At the onset of crisis, ground forces would face the prospect of several major tasks: evacuation of noncombatants out of tactical harm’s way (likely more than 175,000 persons), and the reception, staging, and integration of follow-on forces from all Services to the peninsula. These alone are monumental undertakings that would require dedicated manpower and consume that most precious commodity, time. And then, when conflict erupts, U.S. forces would confront a threat posing complexity and scale unlike any combination faced elsewhere in the world.

In the face of this threat, the first campaign to command the attention of the world’s capitals would be to render neutral North Korea’s strategic weapons and associated capabilities, especially nuclear weapon launch and detonation. In 2006, the North publicly declared that it had conducted a successful underground nuclear test, and 3 years later it claimed to possess a nuclear weapon. No doubt it continues to pursue nuclear weapons capability, the only purpose of which could be to hold its neighbors and adversaries hostage, including the United States. In the interim, the North is ambitiously developing a range of missile technologies and platforms, some of them near fielding and possibly already in low-rate production, which could enable it to strike farther into the depth of the peninsula and as far as Japan.

Taking down the North’s strategic and operational strike weapons capability would include eliminating its ability to perform centralized command and control. The regime, being the center of gravity of the North Korean state, would remain a viable political reality only as long as it could provide centralized control. However, as we have seen in the Middle East in recent years, this does not mean that violence is terminated. Lack of central authority can in fact serve as an accelerant, which leads to the next challenge.

The next component of the ground campaign would be to wage a fight that in some respects resembles the battlefields of Northern France in 1918 as much as a 21st-century fight: lots of artillery, lots of chemical weapons, and large numbers of dug-in forces. One urgent aspect of this conventional fight is the ROK determination—and U.S. obligation—to protect the city of Seoul and its environs. There is little doubt that the North would launch a massive artillery and rocket barrage if it is afforded the opportunity to do so. Vigorous measures from the ground, sea, and air would be necessary to stymie the North’s indirect fire attacks.

Elsewhere north of the DMZ, uniformed troops and regime security forces would likely continue to fight, whatever the status of the central regime in Pyongyang. They would almost certainly follow their “last orders” and resist until they are killed or unable to offer any resistance. At the same time, North Korean SOF, highly trained and well equipped by the regime and one of the largest special operating formations in the world, would pose a significant threat. These purpose-built organizations are intended to open a “second front” behind the allied lines—in both South Korea and North Korea—and could be expected to achieve considerable disruptive effect. Alongside the officially sanctioned SOF, armed bands inspired either through deprivation and hope of food or gain or simply out of desperation and fear of ROK and U.S. troops could be expected to resist vehemently in northern areas. North Korean arsenals and underground facilities near the border area no doubt number in the hundreds, replete with munitions and explosives that could easily be turned into improvised explosive devices.

Finally, it is inevitable that ground forces must to some extent participate in stability operations, particularly during the transition following offensive combat operations. While the ROK would formally take on the requirement to establish a competent government authority to initiate the reconstitution of civic functions and services in the North, U.S. forces would inevitably be required to pacify chaotic conditions on the ground. A critical mission within this environment is for the Army to lead joint force efforts on the ground to perform CWMD missions.18 Harnessing the full suite of capabilities of the joint force to address the WMD threat would be a necessary and demanding priority that would influence nearly every aspect of ground operations. This is a central feature of the Korean Peninsula’s warfighting environment and one with worldwide implications for U.S. forces.

WMD: New Missions on the Ground

The North’s extensive WMD architecture has matured to the point that it is now a dominating feature of the Korean battlespace. It endangers civilian populations and military forces on the peninsula, and it puts in harm’s way, either by deliberate use or even as a result of an accidental release, every neighboring state. Once the North is denied the ability to employ these weapons, their elimination—their isolation and ultimate destruction—poses the next inevitable and important step for U.S. forces in conjunction with our ROK allies. There is no U.S. agency with the requisite mission command and robust means to protect friendly forces and allies on the ground—and with the requisite special skills—other than U.S. Army forces enabled by joint capabilities.

The precise number, function, and location of the North’s WMD sites and associated installations are not known. The North keeps its programs shrouded in secrecy. Thus U.S. and ROK forces would undoubtedly discover many facilities that are currently hidden. Joint CWMD operations would constitute a WMD “movement to contact” as our formations gain contact with the adversary’s network and construct a more accurate and comprehensive picture of the threat. Operations would require specific chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives–trained and –equipped personnel and units at every echelon.¹⁹

The U.S. strategy for combating WMD contains several components, including nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and consequence management. WMD-elimination operations are both technically demanding and manpower-intensive actions to systematically locate, characterize, secure, disable, or destroy WMD programs and related capabilities, each of which is manpower intensive.²⁰ There is no substitute for trained and ready forces on the ground to perform these necessary mission tasks.

In Summary

During the intervening six decades since the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, the divide between North and South—in effect between the past and the future—has only deepened. This disparity is increasingly perilous as the regime in the North depends ever more exclusively on its military-political complex for its survival. It lacks international legitimacy and possesses only a fractured and declining economy, and its people have been starved, slaughtered, brainwashed, and coerced into submission.

In a region featuring important U.S. national interests, the persistent presence of American forces and capabilities, in close partnership with the Republic of Korea and regional partners, has kept war at bay. How much longer this balance (the spinning top) can be kept in play cannot be known. The severe rigidity of the North Korean political-military nexus and the potential for miscalculation that such a system engenders renders any balance of power inherently unstable.

Defeating North Korea militarily would require the joint force to operate in every domain. The land campaign would be decisive. In every eventuality, among key U.S. objectives is that the North Korean WMD program must be rendered safe. If crisis erupts in Korea, American military forces on the ground would be central actors to safeguard U.S. interests and restore stability.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 78 which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:

1. For a short quote from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger concerning balances of power, see Niall Ferguson, “America’s Global Retreat,” Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2014.
2. Lukas Milevski, “Fortissimus Inter Pares: The Utility of Landpower in Grand Strategy,” Parameters (Summer 2012), 9.
3. Andrew Bacevich, “The Endless Army: Is ‘Pacific Pathways’ a Necessary Pivot or Military Budget Grab?” Boston Globe, January 10, 2014.
4. The crimes of the North Korean regime against its own people are increasingly well documented, adding further pressures to regime decisionmaking. See “Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, February 2014.
5. See B.R. Myers, “Planet Pyongyang,” Newsweek, April 15, 2013. See also B.R. Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (New York: Melville House, 2010). Professor Myers’s book offers a penetrating assessment of the North Korean regime’s ideology.
6. Provocations of course are longstanding features of North Korean behavior. In the mid-1960s the North initiated more than a decade of violent acts along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that took dozens of lives. Major terrorist actions included a raid to assassinate the South’s president, Park Chung-hee, at his official residence in the Blue House in Seoul (1968); seizing the U.S. naval vessel USS Pueblo (1968); and the murder of two U.S. Army Officers in the DMZ (August 18, 1976).
7. Karl Friedhoff, “South Korean Public Opinion Following North Korea’s Third Nuclear Test,” Public Opinion Studies Center, The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, March 8, 2013. For the South’s immediate response in 2010, see Keith B. Richburg, “South Korean President Takes Responsibility for Failing to Protect Country, Signals Hardened Military Stance Toward North,” Washington Post, November 29, 2010.
8. Karl Friedhoff, “How South Koreans View National Security,” Wall Street Journal–Asia, April 11, 2013.
9. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in David Alexander, “U.S. Will Put More Warships in Asia,” Reuters, June 2, 2012.
10. The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in A Complex World, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-3-1, October 7, 2014, 45.
11. Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “North Korea: Turning in the Wrong Direction,” 38North.org, April 2013, available at <http://38north.org/2013/04/amansourov041013/>.
12. Anthony Cordesman et al., The Korean Military Balance: Comparative Korean Forces and the Forces of Key Neighboring States (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2011), 40.
13. Regarding North Korean nuclear weapons effects on select Republic of Korea targets, see Bruce W. Bennett, “Deterring North Korea from Using WMD in Future Conflicts and Crises,” Strategic Studies Quarterly (Winter 2012), 125.
14. “South Korea: EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World,” DG Trade Statistics, March 21, 2012.
15. Raymond T. Odierno, “The U.S. Army in a Time of Transition: Building a Flexible Force,” Foreign Affairs, May–June 2012.
16. Not discussed in this article are the enabling operations to be waged in cyberspace and space, or other instruments of national power such as economic sanctions or blockades. Nor discussed are the prominent roles to be played by key powers in the region, to include Russia, Japan, and prominently, China.
17. About 20,000 of the 28,000 troops stationed in Korea are U.S. Army Soldiers. It is already fashionable among the military intelligentsia to charge that the Air-Sea Battle concept will trump the imperative of U.S. Army forces in Asia. The facts on the ground speak differently. For a short review of the debate among the Services, see Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., “The Next War,” Government Executive Magazine, August 15, 2012.
18. See Joint Publication (JP) 3-40, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, October 31, 2014).
19. “White Paper,” U.S. Army 20th Support Command (CBRNE) [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives], Background Information, September 2011.
20. JP 3-40, A-1.

By Francis E. Hutchinson*

The Middle Income Trap has been discussed extensively in the Asia-Pacific over the last few years. At the highest levels in Malaysia, China, and Vietnam, policy-makers have been asking for the best way to move from labour- and capital-intensive growth to productivity- and technology-driven growth. Responding to this policy need, organizations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have sought to attain thought leadership on this issue.

APEC has also begun to discuss the Middle Income Trap. China, the organization’s previous Chair, brought up the issue in 2014. Following instruction from the Leaders in November last year, APEC’s Economic Committee has included it as a topic under its Structural Reform Programme. The Philippines, the current Chair, has also maintained the Middle Income Trap as a topic, and more detailed directions on future work will be given at the Leaders’ Meeting in Manila in November.

The term ‘Middle Income Trap’ has a lot of resonance for countries in the region, many of whom have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. However, while the concept has been successful at attracting the attention of policy-makers, it has also given rise to a plethora of different definitions, methods of measurement, and countries that it is taken to refer to. Beyond the validity of the concept itself, it is worth asking if this is an area where APEC can make a useful contribution, given its unique organizational characteristics.

THE ORIGINS OF THE DEBATE

The Middle Income Trap has been discussed in various forms for a little over a decade. In 2004, Garrett wrote about globalization’s ‘missing middle’.3 He argued that globalization processes have benefited wealthier countries whose institutions and human capital bases encourage innovation, as well as poorer nations who focus on routine tasks and utilize easily available technology at low costs. However, countries in the middle, with higher labour costs and imperfect institutional configurations, have not benefited as much. Trapped between countries at the technological frontier such as United States on one hand and low-cost providers such as China on the other, he argued that middle income countries were faced with decreasing opportunities.

In their 2007 work, An East Asian Renaissance, Gill and Kharas develop this further.4 They argue that a number of middle income countries in East Asia could potentially attain high income status. However, in order to do that, they must seek to alter the way they do things. In particular, this group of countries needs to: become more specialized in terms of what they produce; shift from investment-driven to innovation-driven growth; and produce skilled and creative workers. Should this not occur, these aspiring countries will be ‘squeezed between the low-wage poor-country competitors that dominate in mature industries and the rich-country innovators that dominate in industries undergoing rapid technological change’.

However, while intuitively appealing, this is not an uncontested concept. The Economist famously labelled the issue as ‘claptrap’, arguing that policies should just focus on leveraging a country’s comparative advantage.5 The periodical contends that competitiveness is not a dichotomy of labour-intensive or skill-intensive activities, but that economies operate along a continuum and competitiveness is determined at a given price point. Furthermore, the transition from factor-intensive to knowledge-intensive production is a continuous process, rather than a disruptive one.

While this position has considerable merit, it is hard to argue with one statistic. According to the World Bank, since 1960 only 13 out of 101 countries classified as middle income have subsequently been able to attain high income status. In East Asia, this group is limited to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.6

Thus, if simply focussing on a given country’s comparative advantage were sufficient for growth to occur, and the transition from factor-intensive to knowledge-intensive production were continuous, surely more countries would have ‘graduated’ to high-income status over the past five decades? The fact that only a small minority have done so suggests that this process is not automatic, and that growth past a certain threshold is more difficult.

DEFINING THE MIDDLE INCOME TRAP

There are, broadly, two ways of defining the Middle Income Trap. First, one can use international income standards to identify those countries who classify as middle income and then specify thresholds or performance indicators that indicate whether they have ‘graduated’ to high income levels or have failed to do so – thus falling into a ‘trap’. Alternatively, one can look at countries seeking to transition away from labour- and capital-driven growth to productivity- and technologically-growth and analyse the policy challenges they face.

Felipe et al look at the pace at which countries grow and move from one income category to the other.7 They identify four groups by GDP per capita: low income; lower middle-income; upper middle-income; and high-income. 8 Based on cross-country comparisons, and particularly the trajectory of high-performing economies, Felipe et al then specify how long a given country should take to pass from middle to high income. Those countries that are unable to ‘graduate’ to high income within this time frame are taken to be in the middle income trap.

Along a similar vein, Eichengreen et al argue that the middle income trap can be understood as a slow-down in growth after a specific threshold.9 Defining a slow-down as a decrease in growth of at least 2 percent over two consecutive and non-overlapping seven-year periods, they examine episodes of slow-downs in previously rapidly growing middle-income economies. They find that, rather than one point, there are two where growth slow-downs are more frequent – one at approximately US$10-11,000 per capita and another at US$15-16,000 per capita (in 2005 PPP dollars).

The other approach is to focus on the structural issues that middle income economies face in their transition towards higher value-added activities. Thus, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank relate the Middle Income Trap to the challenges inherent in moving from labour- and capital-intensive growth to productivity- and technology-driven growth.10 In similar fashion, the OECD refers to the transition from ‘intrinsic’ based on factor-driven growth to ‘extrinsic’ or productivity-driven growth (2013, p. 279).11

Ohno breaks this process down further. Looking specifically at industrialization, he argues that there are four consecutive stages that countries need to pass through to attain high income status.12 These are a) simple manufacturing under foreign guidance; b) the development of indigenous supporting industries, but still under foreign supervision; c) the local acquisition of leading-edge technology and management practices and d) full indigenous capability in innovation and product design.

According to this classification, Vietnam is at the first stage; Malaysia and Thailand are at the second; Korea and Taiwan are at the third; and Japan, the United States and the European Union are at the fourth. Ohno argues that the transition from the second to the third stage is very difficult, and has been a ‘glass ceiling’ for all Southeast Asian and many Latin American countries. It is this inability to fully master the technology and management techniques necessary for the production of high quality goods that constitutes the middle income trap.

HOW TO ESCAPE THE TRAP

For much of the recent past, economic policy-making has looked at escaping the poverty trap. In 1950, a full 70 percent of the world’s population lived in countries that were classified as poor. It was thus appropriate that attention focus on kick-starting growth and creating jobs. However, by 2010, this proportion had shrunk to 36 percent, meaning that the bulk of the world’s population now lives in countries that are lower middle-income or above.13

In these cases, the industrialization process is underway or established, some sectors are integrated into regional production networks, pockets of expertise have emerged, and inroads have been made into key overseas markets. The issue facing these countries is no longer about escaping poverty, but rather the appropriate institutional and policy settings to enable them to continue to grow.
The experience of the high-performing Asian economies of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong provides useful insight into the nature of this transition, often referred to as structural transformation. It has various components, including: shifting capital and labour to more productive sectors such as manufacturing and services; the increasing sophistication of production and export ‘baskets’ underpinned by deepening capabilities and diversification of products; and the use of more efficient methods of production.14 While services can be important drivers of growth, in-depth research into these economies highlights the importance of manufacturing in underpinning a shift to productivity- and technology-driven growth. Indeed, no country has reached high-income status without a strong manufacturing sector employing approximately a fifth of the workforce.15

Furthermore, exports constitute an important part of this process, with firms being exposed to competition, global best practice, and generate scarce foreign exchange.16 In addition, what firms produce also matters. A consistent finding is that countries with firms that produce more sophisticated and diversified exports are more likely to grow quickly and are less likely to experience growth slow-downs. When matched with income level, this relationship is particularly robust for middle income countries.17

However for the manufacturing and services sectors – and particularly more value-added niches within them – to develop, firms need an enabling environment. The first and most basic is a range of market-supporting institutions that provide a minimum level of: property rights; regulation; macro-economic stability; social protection; and conflict mediation.18 In addition, openness to trade and investment is vital to allow local firms to access overseas markets, be exposed to competition, and procure inputs and technology as well as capital.19

That said, at lower income levels, a country can progress quickly with ‘second best’ institutions. This refers to contexts where market and government failures that cannot be eliminated in the short run are bypassed through alternative arrangements. This can take the form of some form of protection from external competition for local entrepreneurs as well as preferential access to credit.20
However, at higher income levels, these distortions must be eliminated, otherwise they will become a drag on growth. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence that countries need different institutional contexts and policy frameworks at different income levels. At its base, the difference seems to be whether firms are growth based on the adoption of existing technologies or by innovating themselves.21

Once a country is closer to the technology frontier, it is vital that the institutional context: enables firms to enter and exit markets easily; allows capital to be freely available and cater to smaller firms active in new sectors; and avoids stifling regulation and oversight. In particular, firms need to be allowed shut down if they are not competitive, enabling resources to be deployed more efficiently.22

Quantitative research based on cross-country regressions finds that at upper-middle and higher income levels, total factor productivity becomes much more important than at lower or lower- middle income levels, suggesting a qualitatively different type of growth – such as that dependent on a higher-skilled work-force, deeper research capabilities, and more efficient business environments.23 Furthermore, at the upper middle and higher income levels, greater provision of tertiary education as well as support for research and development are found to be correlated with higher rates of economic growth. In contrast, these are not significant in lower and lower-middle income countries, where secondary education is found to be more important.24

Thus, while it can be argued that escaping the Middle Income Trap merely attests to the need to maintain growth momentum, there are reasons to believe that once a country has progressed beyond low income status, it needs to start looking at ways of producing more diversified and complex products. This, in turn, requires a distinct environment for firms, as well as different sorts of policies and spending priorities.

APEC AND ITS ROLE

At the highest level, APEC’s goals and activities fit remarkably well into the Middle Income Trap debate. The organization’s declaration states that it is committed to ‘sustain the growth and development of the region’ and ‘enhance the positive gains of economic interdependence’.25 Furthermore, its work is centred on three very relevant aspects: trade liberalization and facilitation; investment liberalization and facilitation; and economic and technical cooperation.

In addition, the Middle Income Trap is a topic crucial to an important constituency in the organization. Of its 21 member economies, nine are currently classified as middle income. Five are upper middle-income (China, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico and Peru); and four are lower middle-income (Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea).26 Following the tenures of China and the Philippines, the Chair will rotate to Peru, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea, ensuring that this topic remains at the top of the agenda for the next while.

The success of these economies is of key interest to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as APEC itself. Should income disparities increase between its member economies, the commitment to trade and investment liberalization could be undercut. In addition, looking ahead, the large and dynamic economies of China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are expected to contribute very significantly to global growth – if they are able to transition towards productivity and technology-driven growth.27

And it is in these countries that this issue is keenly felt. Although China has averaged growth rates of 10 percent p.a. since 1980s, its economy’s momentum has decreased of late, falling to under 8 percent p.a. in 2011-14. And while the Southeast Asian Tigers of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have also experienced good growth that has not been at the levels seen prior to the Asian Financial Crisis.28 In addition, relative to middle income countries in other parts of the world – and particularly the high-income economies of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan – innovation levels in the middle income countries of Asia are below par.29 There are also concerns about the availability and quality of human capital in China and key Southeast Asian economies.30

The Middle Income Trap is also of concern across the Pacific. Unlike their Asian counterparts who have been growing quickly and are worrying about a potential growth slow-down, Mexico and Peru have been grappling with the Middle Income Trap for three decades. Following high levels of growth during the 1960s and 1970s, these two countries stagnated during the 1980s and 1990s, and also have issues with innovation, human capital, and producing higher value- added products.31

However, APEC, unlike the World Bank or Asian Development Bank, does not have an extensive loan portfolio. Nor, like the OECD, does it have a large bureaucracy with in-depth research capabilities. Its membership is very diverse and its organizational set-up is lightly institutionalized, relying on self-enforcement and lacking means of ensuring compliance. Furthermore, the organization has been criticized for pursuing too many topics and having an under-funded economic and technical cooperation (ECOTECH) pillar.32

That said, the organization has a good record for policy dialogue and sharing of best practice, which is most evident in APEC’s consistent work in the area of trade facilitation.33 This non- glamorous and piecemeal work involves streamlining customs procedures, improving legislation to enable firm creation, and other measures to improve ease of doing business. Furthermore, ministries from across government participate in meetings – not just those related to foreign affairs or trade. This is vital for long-term reform. And, it is these small steps in the overall economic context which are likely to enable greater efficiency and productivity, and where many of the organization’s middle income members need to make greater strides.

Furthermore, policy dialogue and sharing of best practice on productivity- and technology- driven growth is also one area where APEC can leverage on its unique membership structure. In addition to the high-performing economies of Japan, Korea, and Singapore, APEC is one of the few international organizations that counts Hong Kong and Taiwan among its members. While Hong Kong has interesting insights in the financial sector, it is Taiwan that can provide important insights. Its robust small and medium enterprise sector is among the world’s most dynamic and innovative, and has made the most inroads in fostering local technological capabilities – particularly in the manufacturing sector. This is key to structural transformation and is an area where countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia have struggled mightily.

Furthermore, through APEC’s structured mechanisms of dialogue with the private sector, the organization is particularly suited for this type of long-term capacity-building. The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), the organization’s private sector body, has been the promoter of many important initiatives, including the APEC Business Travel Card and the Free Trade Area of Asia and the Pacific.34 Given the dense production networks that already link Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States with other APEC member economies, ABAC should be in an excellent position to foster interchange.

At present, APEC has incorporated the Middle Income Trap under its Structural Reform programme, which seeks to improve the functioning of markets through behind-the-border measures to reduce regulations, streamline policies, and promote enforcement. This framing of the concept has the advantage of appealing to a wider number of member economies, who then may be interested in contributing funds to underwrite activities.

This aspect of work on the Middle Income Trap is vital. However, this work on improving the environment for business also needs to be complemented by efforts to build capacity to produce and export more and better products. This could be an area for APEC’s ECOTECH work. Interestingly, while APEC currently has working groups on technical cooperation for agriculture as well as the services trade – where member economies share information on best practice – there is no such equivalent for manufacturing.35

In addition, there are dialogue groups for the automotive and chemical subsectors. Coming under the Committee on Trade and Investment, these provide a forum for technical and policy interchange and discussion – rather than capacity-building. However, there is no such body for the electrical or electronics sector, which is a vital and strategic sector for virtually all of APEC’s middle income members.

CONCLUSION

The Middle Income Trap is a key area of concern for many of APEC’s member economies. In order to focus attention, guard against complacency, and remain relevant to this interest group, the organization should incorporate the topic into future work plans. Furthermore, widening income disparities among its members could undercut momentum for reform.

While APEC does not have a large budget, deep research capabilities, or even means of pushing countries to pursue potentially painful measures, it can still play a role. Its experience in pursuing piecemeal and graduation reforms to facilitate trade and investment maps well onto many of the measures needed to improve the environment for doing business and facilitate greater innovation. In addition, the grouping’s diverse membership and pervasive production linkages are assets.

That said, the current focus on structural reform to improve efficiency and the ease of doing business should also be bolstered by measures to encourage the acquisition of capabilities of firms in member economies to deepen technological capabilities and break into new export markets – particularly in strategic areas such as the electronics industry.

About the author:
* 1. Francis E. Hutchinson is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Regional Economic Studies Programme at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

Source:
This article was published by ISEAS as ISEAS Perspective 2015 Number 52 (PDF)

Notes:
2 The author would like to thank Cassey Lee and Malcolm Cook for their comments.
3 Garrett Geoffrey. “Globalization’s missing middle”. Foreign Affairs 83 no.6 (2004): 84-96.
4 Gill, Indermit and Homi Kharas. An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2007.
5 The Economist, “Middle Income Claptrap: Do Countries get trapped between Poverty and Prosperity?” February 16, 2013.
6 World Bank. China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious and Creative Society. Washington DC: World Bank and the Development Research Centre of the State Council, 2013.
7 Felipe, Jesus, Arnelyn Abdon, and Utsav Kumar. “Tracking the Middle Income Trap – What is it, Who is in it and Why?”. Working Paper Number 715, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2012.
8 A variant of this approach is to look at income relative to a frontier economy, usually the United States. Lee, Keun. Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-Up: Knowledge, Path-Creation, and the Middle-Income Trap. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
9 Eichengreen, Barry, Donghyun Park and Kwanho Shin. “Growth Slowdowns Redux: New Evidence on the Middle Income Trap”. NBER Working Paper 18673, Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013. 10 ADB. Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast? Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 2013; Commission on Growth and Development. The Growth Report: Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development. Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2008.
11 OECD. Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China, and India 2014: Beyond the Middle Income Trap. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2013.
12 Ohno, Kenichi. The Middle Income Trap: Implications for Industrialisation Strategies in East Asia and Africa, GRIPS Development Forum, 2009 (http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/pdf09/MIT.pdf; accessed on 16 July 2015).
13 Pelkmans-Balaoing, Annette. The Middle Income Trap: A Challenge for Competitiveness and Inclusiveness. Seminar on the Middle Income Trap (APEC Senior Officials Meeting), 15 May, 2015, Boracay.
14 ADB. Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast? Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 2013.
15 ADB. Asia’s Economic Transformation: Where to, How, and How Fast? Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 2013. This supported by Bulman, David, Maya Eden, and Ha Nguyen. “Transitioning from Low-Income Growth to High-Income Growth: Is there a Middle Income Trap?” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 7104. Washington DC: World Bank, 2014.
16 Ramanayake, Sanika Sulochani, and Keun Lee. “Does openness lead to sustained economic growth? Export
growth versus other variables as determinants of economic growth.” Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy 20,
no. 3 (2015): 345-368.
17 Hausmann, Ricardo, Jason Hwang, and Dani Rodrik. “What you export matters.” Journal of economic
growth 12, no. 1 (2007): 1-25; Bulman et al “Transitioning from Low-Income Growth”; Felipe et al “Tracking
the Middle Income Trap”; Eichengreen et al “Growth Slowdowns Redux”.
18 Rodrik, Dani. One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
19 Dollar, David. “Outward-oriented developing economies really do grow more rapidly: evidence from 95 LDCs, 1976-1985.” Economic development and cultural change (1992): 523-544.
20 Rodrik, Dani. Second-best institutions. NBER Working Paper 14050. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008.
21 Acemoglu, Daron, Philippe Aghion, and Fabrizio Zilibotti. “Distance to frontier, selection, and economic
growth.” Journal of the European Economic association 4, no. 1 (2006): 37-74.
22 Acemoglu, Daron, Philippe Aghion, and Fabrizio Zilibotti. “Distance to frontier, selection, and economic
growth.” Journal of the European Economic association 4, no. 1 (2006): 37-74;
Outlook: Asia and Pacific. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund, 2013.
23 Bulman, David, Maya Eden, and Ha Nguyen. “Transitioning from Low-Income Growth to High-Income Growth: Is there a Middle Income Trap?” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 7104. Washington DC: World Bank, 2014. Total Factor Productivity is the proportion of output not accounted for by labour or capital – it is taken to be an indicator of an economy’s technological dynamism.
24 Lee, Keun, and Byung-Yeon Kim. “Both institutions and policies matter but differently for different income groups of countries: Determinants of long-run economic growth revisited.” World Development 37, no .3 (2009): 533-549.
25 Seoul APEC Declaration 1991, available at http://www.apec.org/Meeting-Papers/Ministerial- Statements/Annual/1991/1991_amm/annex_b_seoul_apec.aspx, accessed 27 August, 2015.
26 World Bank, New Country Classifications, 2015 available at: http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-groups#Lower_middle_income [accessed on 8 August 2015].
27 ADB. Asia 2050: Realising the Asian Century. Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 2011. 28 World Development Indicators Online.
29 World Bank. Robust Recovery, Rising Risks: East Asia and Pacific Economic Update 2010 Vol. 1,
Washington DC: World Bank, 2010.
30 Fang, C., & Yang, D. “The changing demand for human capital at China’s new stage of development” in
Human Capital Formation and Economic Growth in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Wendy Dobson. New York: Routledge, 2013; Raya, U. R. and Daniel Suryadarma “Human Capital and Indonesia’s Economic Development” in Human Capital Formation and Economic Growth in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Wendy Dobson. New York: Routledge, 2013; and Jimenez, E, Vy T. Nguyen, and Harry A. Patrinos, “Human capital development and economic growth in Malaysia and Thailand: stuck in the middle?” in Human Capital Formation and Economic
Growth in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Wendy Dobson. New York: Routledge, 2013.
31 OECD. Perspectivas Económicas de América Latina 2015: Educación, Competencias e Innovación para el Desarrollo. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2015.
32 Yamazawa, Ippei. APEC: New Agenda in Its Third Decade. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012.
33 Gyngell, Alan and Malcolm Cook. “How to Save APEC?” Policy Brief, October. Sydney: Lowy Institute, 2005.
34 Yamazawa, Ippei. APEC: New Agenda in Its Third Decade. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012.
35 The closest Working Group is the Policy Partnership on Science, Technology and Innovation – formerly called the Industrial Science and Technology Working Group. Current foci include climate change, traffic management, theoretical physics, as well as boosting R&D and supporting innovation. Most of these do not map directly onto the acquisition of production capabilities at the firm level.

By Maj Michael P. Kreuzer, USAF*

In early 2008, the United States began a dramatic increase in the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) as part of the global war on terrorism. Since that time, there has been no shortage of scholarly articles on and public discussion of the legal implications of RPAs, the hazards of their employment in military campaigns, or the prospects for the diffusion of RPA technology. The debate over these aircraft and future unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) is generally one of extremes, much as the one about the value of air warfare more generally for the past century. As early airpower advocates extolled the potential of the air weapon to bring about a decisive end to conflict through the threat of aerial bombardment, critics decried the human suffering that would inevitably result and sought to ban the practice outright.1 Experiences of the twentieth century would demonstrate how airpower advocates overestimated the likelihood of success of strategic bombing given the technologies available at the time, with doctrines and technology catching up to the theory in the 1990s at the earliest.2

The RPA debate has undergone a similar transition from hype, to recognition of shortcomings, to relative acceptance of existing capabilities while looking ahead to the next transformative technology that will almost inevitably be a game changer. The early years of the United States’ RPA campaign saw publications touting the potential of these vehicles and other robotics to revolutionize warfare.3 More current critiques appear to have accepted RPAs in their present form but warn against what they see as the next step of autonomous attack. The prospect of US intervention in Syria in 2012 highlighted the shortcomings of the latest generation of RPAs in a contested air environment.4 Furthermore, the ongoing debate among the United States and allies at both the diplomatic and domestic politics levels has likely con- strained the expansion of RPA programs against al-Qaeda affiliates. One critic of “robotic warfare” put this larger trend most succinctly: “This debate goes well beyond drones, as they are yesterday’s news.”5

Although thoughtful discourse on the realistic future applications of RPAs from an operational or tactical perspective has been in short supply, over the past few years, articles in Air and Space Power Journal have elevated this aspect of the debate with several treatments of the subject, notably Maj Dave Blair and Capt Nick Helms’s “The Swarm, the Cloud, and the Importance of Getting There First” and Capt Michael Byrnes’s “Nightfall: Machine Autonomy in Air-to-Air Combat.” Each of their perspectives adds numerous insights into the future capabilities of RPAs and, eventually, toward more autonomous UCAVs.6 Although Byrnes, to an extent, argues that his vision contrasts that of Blair and Helms regarding the role and degree of automation in future Air Force missions, both share a common vision of autonomous aircraft increasingly taking on the air-to-air role in future conflicts against near-peer competitors. The sharpest contrast between the two perspectives is the level of interaction between human pilots and future UCAVs, Byrnes arguing that the technological attainability of automation in the future, together with reaction and performance considerations, will inevitably lead to a takeover of air-to-air combat.

This article argues that the transformation of airpower to a UCAV-centric force is a more difficult proposition than simply a technical hurdle to overcome. Substantial technological barriers to autonomy remain, but overcoming them would still leave economic, political, legal, and organizational challenges to fielding significant numbers of fully autonomous aircraft in wartime situations.

Clearly, the Air Force and US policy makers will consider the possibilities of autonomous aircraft and the tactical advantages that may be gained from removing pilots from cockpits. However, they must remain aware of these limitations and begin to shape Air Force organizations, policies, and doctrines around the realities of a mixed force of manned, remotely piloted, and semiautonomous aircraft and prepare for the issues that such a force entails.

Artificial Intelligence: Always Just around the Corner

The basics of air-to-air combat are largely an algorithmic function. Junior pilots are trained extensively on basic fighter maneuvers to emphasize mastery of the textbook procedures.7 If future air combat closely mirrors the tactics and proficiency levels we assume today, it is conceivable that programmers could develop an automated system to identify the threat environment and execute preprogrammed maneuvers based on the inputs, much as a junior pilot would.

This program would be complex, significantly more so than similar decision-matrix programs for autonomous flight- route programs in other RPAs such as Global Hawk. Enabling the kind of autonomous operations envisioned by Byrnes would demand significant leaps forward in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), allowing future UCAVs to become learning entities that can adapt to circumstances and develop new tactics to overcome an adversary.

This issue is the first major challenge to autonomous UCAVs from a theoretical standpoint because the prospects for the level of AI for such a requirement are consistently overestimated. A brief review of the literature of AI suggests that since the 1940s, both experts and amateurs have perpetually viewed the prospect of AI lying a generation away (roughly 16–20 years).8 Advancements in memory, computing power, and dynamic programming techniques over the years have increased this sense that we are on the verge of a major breakthrough, but with each break-through we have also seen to an extent the complexity of true AI. The examples cited by Byrnes, most prominently the 2010 article by James S. McGrew and his coauthors on the application of approximate dynamic programming to air combat, are indeed examples of advancements in computer technology that give the impres- sion of AI but remain the execution of programs and calculations applied to specific scenarios.9 We may indeed be on the brink of a major breakthrough that will enable near-human AI in the future, but placing a projection for a time window based on the examples cited is questionable, given the history of AI projections.

Although the ability to run programs that calculate more efficient outcomes creates the impression of AI, the aircraft is ultimately tied to a large data set of preprogrammed options and runs a decision-making process. Theoretically, this process could be built to an extreme degree whereby all possible maneuvers and assumptions about terrain, weather, and adversary logic are programmed, allowing the computer to better access likely outcomes and make decisions; however, that is a fundamentally different dynamic than a true learning process.

Preprogrammed assumptions and design limitations ultimately frame the sphere in which the computer makes its decisions while a human operator can access information from a variety of additional sources that may or may not be programmed. Moreover, instincts—although fallible in a number of circumstances—can make the difference in attaining victory in close combat.10

The assurance we have that the tactical environment will mirror our preconflict notions of air tactics will dictate our confidence in relying on technology alone to secure victory.

In a sense, this issue mirrors in the information age the problems presented by “scientism” throughout the industrial age. Scientism, a term of more recent origin, describes the movement from the 1700s forward that views the natural sciences as the source of all human knowledge and seeks to apply those lessons to all human endeavors.11 In the military sphere, this perspective manifested itself through what might be called the Jominian school of strategy, which values rules of war and prescriptive approaches to conflict. As Christopher Bassford notes, Jomini saw the wars in which he participated as “the technical near-perfection of a fundamentally unchanging phenomenon, to be modified only by superficial matters like the list of dramatis personae, technology, and transient political motivations.”12 Conversely, Carl von Clausewitz said of the Jominians, “They aim at fixed values; but in war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities.”13 Approximate dynamic programming represents to a large degree a reaction to this critique since pure dynamic programming would be impossible, given the complexity of the operating environment. Even so, many of the approximations made in the program must be programmed in advance of conflict. Without a true leap forward in AI, reliance on extending approximate dynamic programming as the backbone of autonomous air-to-air operations would be a significant gamble in many scenarios for the foreseeable future.

Retaining the human element for remote operations in a supervisory role will thus prove necessary from a technological standpoint for the near future. Indeed, one of the long-standing concerns for the RPA community has been the failure to distinguish between remote control and autonomy. Both are at work in modern RPAs, but automation is generally limited to routine flight operations and issues such as maintaining aircraft control in lost-communications situations.

Automating the release of weapons is a greater challenge, not only from a technological stand- point but also from a legal and normative one. Some precedents exist for such operations under human supervision that can be extended to offensive air operations over time, but despite these precedents, the prospect of fully autonomous air-to-air warfare remains low due to obstacles beyond technology. Overcoming them is likely to entail costs well beyond those of existing systems.

Cost Considerations for Remotely Piloted Aircraft and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles

A common strain in the RPA/UCAV debate is that each will revolutionize warfare because of its low cost per unit and the ease of employing off-the-shelf technology. This is true to some extent for the near term, but as RPAs and UCAVs grow as weapons of war and as countermeasures proliferate, the costs associated with specialization will increasingly raise those of UCAVs—just as the costs of aircraft have risen with advancing technology.14 Further, economic expenses alone do not define the outlay associated with new technologies in war. Political costs are also a consideration insofar as more reliance on technological solutions projects lower commitment to conflicts, potentially escalating the level of violence should an adversary believe he can wait out the threat of attack.

US experience with RPAs to date illustrates the problems with the standard narrative that they are cheap. Analysts often compare the Predator or Reaper to the F-22, noting that “for the price of one F-22 . . . you can buy 85 Predators.”15 By doing so, they omit the clear mission and capabilities distinctions between the Predator and the Raptor, ignoring the prospect of procuring manned aircraft tailored to perform similar missions to the Predator’s. (For a better comparison, note the MC-12 Liberty program as an approximation of the RQ-1 [unarmed] Predator.) As the military has invested in newer and more capable RPAs, the cost has steadily risen to levels comparable with manned alternatives (table 1).16 Not included in this table are the Navy’s X-47, with a program cost to January 2012 of $813 million; the often-named manned alternatives such as the U-2 for the Global Hawk; or the aforementioned F-22. The U-2/Global Hawk debate is especially illustrative, given that for much of the past decade, the Global Hawk was more expensive than the U-2 (table 2), and many critics of the transition to Global Hawk see a trade-off of capabilities for cost. The Air Force itself has hedged the cost-savings argument for UCAVs versus manned equivalents, noting in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009–2047 that the RPA’s/UCAV’s virtue lies in “increasing effects while potentially reducing cost” (emphasis added).17

Given the nature of recent spending on research and development and the number of systems that advanced UCAVs would have in common with fifth-generation fighters and beyond, cost savings are likely to be in the range of percentages rather than orders of magnitude.

Beyond these economic expenses, the political costs will weigh heavily on states employing RPAs and UCAVs. Writing about RPAs in 2000, Tom Ehrhard noted that “the unmanned attack communicates shallow commitment, even  fecklessness.”18 For a state, such as the United States, reliant on a series of alliance structures, this dynamic poses challenges to the Air Force beyond accessed tactical performance of technology. It raises issues of alliance assurance and the ability of advanced RPAs to convince allies of US commitment in a manner similar to that of a deployment of a fighter squadron or strategic bomber. Beyond deterrence, their actual use in contested airspace has arguably shown the net results of RPAs as a negative for states deploying them too aggressively. Despite numerous predictions that RPAs could exacerbate conflict by undermining sovereignty and allowing states to violate airspace with impunity (a charge often leveled against the United States for its RPA campaigns), experience to date has largely been the opposite. RPAs regularly have been shot down in potential conflict zones like Israel, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and most negative attention focuses on those employing these platforms. In the run-up to the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict, four Georgian RPAs were shot down. If they had been manned aircraft, the international condemnation of Russia probably would have been significantly higher. Since they were RPAs, though, both Russia and Georgia were condemned by the UN investigation—Russia for the illegal shoot down and Georgia for aggravating the crisis by flying the aircraft.19 In this case, the use of RPAs may have weakened Georgia’s military posture in the run-up to the August 2008 conflict both by showing weak resolve and by coming at the economic cost of four advanced RPAs, each valued at approximately $2 million.

The need for the tactical advantages provided by future RPAs and UCAVs must be weighed against the probable remaining technical limitations; must be structured within the existing parameters of the laws of war that emphasize the responsibility of actors to control and ultimately be responsible for the application of force within a war zone; and must be evaluated in terms of the strategic costs that come in both political and economic forms. These considerations will ensure a balance of both manned and remotely piloted platforms for the foreseeable future of air warfare, with the relative proportions of semiautonomous UCAVs, RPAs, and manned platforms shifting throughout phases of the conflict.

For the near future, both technological limitations and cost restrictions appear to place autonomous warfare beyond the limitations of military planners. However, even if financial and technological barriers to such operations declined, given new technological innovations on those fronts, significant obstacles to employing such autonomous weapons in a number of wartime environments on a large scale would still remain. The laws and ethics of such warfare and the challenges of leadership and control in such an environment would pose as great a hindrance to state em- ployment of autonomous weapons as these technological barriers.

Laws of War and Autonomous Operations

As Charles Tilly once said, “War made the state, and the state made war.”20 As commonly understood by Western nations, war is an act of states against other states. It is at its most fundamental the imposition of state will by force and coercion to achieve political ends.21 Politics governs the use of force in war, limits the scale and scope of combat operations, and makes the state responsible for the conduct of those who act on its behalf. This principle of state control of force is essential to the framework of limiting the horrors of war and has remained constant through centuries of warfare.22 Technological innovations of the information era do not alleviate state responsibility; instead, they present new challenges about keeping the use of technology under the control of the state and holding it responsible for its armed forces should the state choose to employ autonomous actors.

The just war tradition, codified in jus ad bellum and jus in bello, serves as the baseline for both formal and customary international law regarding the conduct of war and participants. Jus ad bellum represents a set of principles designed to limit the horrors of war by providing justification for military action, defining the scope of conflict, and ideally laying the groundwork for reestablishing peace at the end of hostilities. These criteria have been refined over the years through both philosophy and codification in international law, today described generally as having just cause, being a last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and having the end proportional to the means.23 Jus in bello is generally summarized by two criteria: discrimination and proportionality.24 Underlying the just war criteria is the notion of responsibility, both of states and actors, for the initiation and conduct of war. RPAs and future UCAVs present a series of issues for both aspects of just war tradition, many of which can be normalized within the existing framework of international law but require greater public discussion and knowledge of RPA operations and potential actions by UCAVs.

The main challenge for RPAs in current campaigns is not one of jus in bello as often portrayed with a focus on disproportionality and collateral damage but a problem of jus ad bellum with ambiguity surrounding the question of whether operations outside campaigns such as Iraq and Afghanistan meet the just war criteria. If so, should they be evaluated by wartime understandings of discrimination and proportionality (codified under international humanitarian law), or if they are extrajudicial actions outside a war zone, should they thus be evaluated under international human rights law? The position of the US government since September 2001 has been that the campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliates represents a noninternational conflict (a war of a state against a nonstate actor). However, the ambiguity surrounding the proper authority to expand the conflict to new states and the absence of a public declaration of both the zones of conflict and the objectives of the operation leave these conflicts in a legal gray area. Consequently, proponents and opponents of RPA operations talk past each other on the legal rationale for operations, and the United States finds itself at a disadvantage to exploit the tactical gains of operations for strategic effect by not openly discussing the targets of operations and mounting an effective information campaign.25 The legal problem here, however, rests in the character of the conflict within international law as opposed to the tool employed. Similar criticism of special operations and manned aircraft exists.26

The RPA receives the most attention because it represents a new technology and because it can make such interventions more common in uncontested airspace.
UCAVs in a traditional international conflict raise a different set of concerns for international law, primarily stemming from the overarching issue of responsibility. International law has codified responsibility both for individual actors and for the states employing such vehicles to varying degrees over time, with an increased emphasis on holding individuals accountable for their actions.

Ultimately, however, the state remains responsible for the conduct of its armed forces, and states have historically held the military responsible through the process of commissioned officers. An officer’s commission is given in the name of the head of state to act in his or her name overseeing the armed forces, based on demonstrated loyalty to the state and trust in the integrity and leadership of the commissioned officer. This principle was explicitly codified in the Hague Convention of 1899 and 1907, which declares in Article 1 of Annex 1 that “the laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions: To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates.”27 A fully autonomous UCAV, at minimum, must retain this requirement for positive control by the operating state. How to do so is to an extent an open question, but existing examples of automatic/autonomous operations suggest that the answer already exists for some environments.

Human Rights Watch, a group that regularly addresses the issue of robotics and warfare, may have inadvertently opened the door for the legal use of robotic weapons through its differentiating existing automated lethal systems from potential future “killer robots” that would be wholly autonomous. In addressing the move toward automation in 2012, Human Rights Watch examined “automatic weapons defense systems” such as the Phalanx or Israel’s Iron Dome as a step in the direction of automation but something that remained fundamentally different, being “automatic” versus “autonomous.” Human Rights Watch says these weapons systems deserve further scrutiny because of their existing potential for collateral damage and because of concerns about the actual level of human control over the system. On balance, though, the distinction between automatic systems and autonomous systems appears acceptable.28 If, however, an “automatic” system such as the Phalanx is acceptable, then a similar airborne network of defensive UCAVs to secure permissive airspace would similarly prove acceptable by the same logic. This concept could be taken to the next stage to permit offensive operations in a pure air-to-air environment given human control, either from ground stations or forward airborne control into denied environments—the essence of the “swarm and cloud.”29 The key issue becomes the level and character of human control of the net- work of UCAVs and the ability to hold both officers and the state accountable for the use of military force.

Outside these environments, as the challenges of discrimination rise, so does the need for higher levels of human supervision. Current international law and the political realities that frame any conflict are likely to dictate this scenario even if it can be shown that new technologies such as visual identification can better identify and target in wartime than a human counterpart. Both the policy makers responsible for the overall conduct of their forces and the populations supporting the war effort are unlikely to delegate decisions that can result either in a criminal action or the unintended escalation of conflict without the prospect of an individual or individuals responsible for and held accountable for the decision. A machine, without self- awareness, cannot fill that role.

Two major factors are thus at work in determining the overall balance of remotely piloted platforms versus manned platforms. The first is the threat posed to aircraft by adversary fighters and other defensive networks (surface-to-air missiles, electronic and cyber attack, etc.), and the second is the ability to discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets. In a hypothetical conflict against a near-peer competitor, the early phases of conflict will likely be dominated by high-intensity conflict in which discrimination is relatively easy—especially in the air-to-air environment—and the threat is very high. Over time, this balance shifts—more so for air assets than ground assets—since attaining air superiority reduces the threat while the progress of bombing campaigns makes target discrimination increasingly difficult. Within the category of RPAs, a shift will also probably occur from semiautonomous UCAVs toward RPAs as the air threat dissipates and the problems of ground-target discrimination increase. The figure below offers a conceptual model for the relationship of manned to remotely piloted airframes across the major phases of conflict, including two mirroring S curves that represent the change in the air threat environment and the matter of target discrimination. Semiautonomous UCAVs face a higher requirement proportional to the level of the air threat, and persistent RPAs are necessary once the air threat is minimized while ground targets are most elusive. Manned air-frames are required in all phases, playing the greatest role in phases two and three, when airspace is contested but semipermissive and the primary air-to-ground effort concentrates on both fixed targets and conventional military forces.30

Future Challenges for the Air Force

RPAs and UCAVs present significant concerns for the military services that em- ploy them insofar as their use directly confronts the essence of what it means to be a war fighter and the relationship of combat effects to traditional ideals of warfare marked by individual heroism and sacrifice. The US military has had significant issues with this matter recently, both with the questions of promotion rates for RPA pilots and with the debate over the Distinguished Warfare Medal.

At issue in this dispute is the role of technology in shifting the relationship of proximity to harm to combat effects and with it the very nature of what it means to be involved in “combat operations.” If organizations wish to continue adopting innovations, they must find ways to recognize and promote individuals proficient in these new systems of war, a prospect that represents a greater challenge than quotas or protection of specific career fields. It will demand a fundamental reevaluation of who we are as a service and what it means to be an Airman, compared to the traditional understanding of what it means to be a warrior.

Development of a strong career progression system is vital to the normalization of new technologies and practices within an organization because, as Stephen Rosen notes, innovation occurs “only as fast as the rate at which young officers rise to the top.”31 The issue of promotion ceilings and the integration of new technologies into the armed forces is not a new phenomenon. Billy Mitchell identified promotion ceilings for pilots in 1925 as one of the key justifications of an independent Air Force because such restrictions would be devastating to the development of strategic airpower: “The personnel situation is very serious in all the air services. . . . Their position on the promotion list is hopeless. Some of our lieutenants can never rise above the rank of major or even captain. They see no future before them and consequently are not in the state of mind in which officers in so rapidly developing a service should be.”32 The existing Air Force organizational structure presents a series of challenges to the normalization of RPA culture within the service as increased visibility of a “glass ceiling” for RPA pilots has grown in the past year. Part of this situation proceeds from existing perceptions of RPAs within the Air Force flying community and the process of rapid expansion of the RPA community; another part is rooted in requirements the Air Force places on command position eligibility.33 The first issue to rise to the attention of both the public and lawmakers (emerging in 2012) was the reported lower promotion rate of RPA pilots compared to that of traditional Air Force pilots.

Closely related to the issue of promotions is recognition. Debate over the Distinguished Warfare Medal is illustrative. The potential recognition of RPA operators with decorations rating above the Bronze Star Medal with “V” resulted in a significant backlash both within and without the Air Force. John Soltz, chairman of VoteVets, a political action committee for veterans, summarized this argument: “I personally don’t have an issue with the medal itself. Troops don’t set the policy; they just perform their duties. . . . What I do have an issue with is this: The new medal ranks above the Purple Heart. For those who served, that doesn’t sit right.”34 Similar arguments were raised by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and numerous other veterans in editorials.35 If we accept this framing—that medals represent heroism and that no nonvalor awards should take precedence over valor awards—and if we took the next step that the awards process was independent of the promotion process, this position would be completely valid. However, neither of those conditions is true under the current system.36 As a result, the failure to recognize those who produce greater operational effects creates a potential disconnect between whom the service promotes and who is a capable, modern war fighter. Heroism and the broader warrior ethos are closely connected to operational effects under a traditional ground operation—and even for tactical airpower—but not necessarily for strategic airpower and war at a distance.

Since 2001 the Air Force has sought to recenter the force around the “warrior ethos” and the tenets of the “Airmen’s Creed,” both of which emphasize the traditional values of being a “warrior,” dating to the Spartan ethos. Steven Pressfield examined the common understanding of the warrior ethos at length in 2011 when he wrote a volume dedicated to members of today’s military that discussed the origins of that ethos.37 To Pressfield, the warrior ethos emerges from a sense of fear on the battlefield, where classic war was fought hand to hand and between roughly equivalent armed forces: “For a Greek or Roman warrior to slay his enemy, he had to get so close that there was an equal chance that the enemy’s sword or spear would kill him. This produced an idea of manly virtue. . . . The ancients resisted innovation in warfare because they feared it would rob the struggle of honor. . . . The God who ruled the battlefield was Phobos, fear.”38 Courage and honor represent essential elements of the warrior ethos, which manifests in the Army’s ethos as a subset of the drive for victory and the obligation of never leaving a man behind.

The Air Force, from its beginnings, recognized that it was something different. Both Mitchell and Giulio Douhet saw the virtue of the air weapon as its ability to bypass this type of combat and take the fight directly to the adversary with no hope of defense. Douhet, at the most extreme, saw this as completely overturning existing norms of war, eliminating the distinction between militaries and civilians and shattering traditional notions of war and the warrior ethos.39

Mitchell, while less absolute than Douhet in a number of aspects, echoed a similar theme: “An entirely new method of conducting war at a distance will come into being. . . . As air power can hit at a distance, after it controls the air and vanquishes the opposing air power, it will be able to fly anywhere over the opposing country.”40 This, in turn, Mitchell noted, led to a very different perspective of warfare for airmen versus other combatants: “The air-going people have a spirit, language, and customs of their own. They are just as different from those on the ground as those of seamen are from those of land men.”41 Though bravery and valor remain essential to gaining and maintaining control of the sky, Mitchell and Douhet both saw airpower’s main value as the ability to attack at will against an undefended enemy after seizing command of the air. This vision of airpower as unrestricted, combined with the realities at various points in our history of the tactical difficulties of gaining air superiority, has led to some of the greatest organizational problems over time. To varying degrees, bomber and missile forces have embraced Mitchell’s vision, which, during the Cold War, often proved detrimental to tactical proficiency and the warrior spirit of tactical engagement. The rise of the fighter-pilot generals beginning in the late 1980s, followed by the challenges of air campaigns in the Balkans and the Middle East, moved the Air Force back in the direction of a more tactical warrior mind-set. Indeed, after 2001 the Air Force was dominated by this perspective that emphasized the traditional values of a warrior over technocratic skills.42

The debate over a future of autonomous UCAVs dominating air warfare versus a moral argument against automation represents only the most recent fault line in this ongoing dialogue. Rather than picking winners between rival factions, the organizational goal must be eliminating destructive competition between the factions and refocusing on the larger mission and the tools necessary to carry it out. Doing so will at first involve changing the way we promote and recognize individuals but ultimately must go to the question of what the service really does—deterring and defeating threats to the United States and its interests through the control and exploitation of air, space, and cyberspace. Everything else the service does is a means to this end—not the end itself. Technology will serve as a vital force multiplier, but ultimately war is a contest of people and ideas, with organizations and tactical innovations playing the decisive role in attaining military objectives. Building systems to support innovation and create leaders positioned to capitalize on those innovations must be the greater concern today, rather than the specifics of the tactics employed. The argument must not pit technocrat versus warrior but must leverage the virtues of both to meet the challenges of future conflicts.

Conclusion

From its earliest era, airpower has envisioned a future in which promising new technologies can solve such age-old matters as the fog and friction of war and the swift and decisive domination of a military adversary. To this point, the history of air warfare has shown that, as technologies advanced toward fulfillment of that vision, new obstacles in both technology and the fundamental human nature of conflict remain. The debate over the future of RPAs and UCAVs in warfare represents but the latest in a string of airpower technologies that can significantly increase military capabilities but that will be insufficient by themselves to solving human conflict. Technological barriers to true artificial intelligence, economic and political costs, leadership and organizational obstacles to effectively controlling autonomous operations, and the legal and ethical demands of warfare are likely to ensure a significant role for manned operators and support infrastructure in air warfare for the foreseeable future.

The future of the Air Force does not involve a race to or from autonomy but the question of how the organization can integrate manned flight, RPAs, and UCAVs into a single force that maximizes combat power.

About the author:
*Major Kreuzer (USAFA; MPA, University of Alaska–Anchorage; MSI, American Military University; PhD, Princeton University) is the director of Analysis Enterprise Manage- ment, Air Combat Command Directorate of Intelligence. He is a career intelligence officer who has served as director of special programs in counter improvised explosive devices and collection management for Multinational Division North in Iraq, as the intelligence staff officer of the Kapisa Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, and as chief of US Air Force Intelligence Officer Formal Training. His dissertation exam- ined the utility and diffusion of remotely piloted aircraft technology.

Source:
This article (PDF) was originally published in the Air and Space Power Journal Volume 29, Issue 5, Sept – Oct 2015.

Notes:
1. The Hague Convention of 1907 banned bombardment “of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended.” However the ill-defined word undefended led to a loophole, allowing bombing in most cases as long as the state was resisting and had some means of defending itself through an armed force. “Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907,” Art. 25, Yale Law School, accessed 12 May 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp.
2. Giulio Douhet in particular underestimated both the cost and number of munitions required to inflict the level of damage postulated by his theories. See Philip Meilinger’s summary of Douhet for a more detailed account of his theories and calculations. Col Phillip S. Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet and the Origins of Airpower Theory,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory, ed. Col Phillip S. Melinger (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1997), 1–40.
3. See, for example, P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2009); Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (London: Verso, 2013); and Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare (n.p.: Dispatch Books, 2012).
4. Tabassum Zakaria and David Alexander, “Weapon of Choice against al Qaeda, Drones Marginal in Syria,” Reuters, 4 September 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/us-syria-crisis-drones -idUSBRE98314C20130904?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews.
5. Denise Garcia, “The Case against Killer Robots: Why the United States Should Ban Them,” Foreign Affairs, 10 May 2014, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141407/denise-garcia/the-case-against -killer-robots.
6. Maj David J. Blair and Capt Nick Helms, “The Swarm, the Cloud, and the Importance of Getting There First: What’s at Stake in the Remote Aviation Culture Debate,” Air and Space Power Journal 27, no. 4 (July–August 2013): 14–38, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/digital/pdf/articles/Jul-Aug-2013 /F-Blair.pdf; and Capt Michael W. Byrnes, “Nightfall: Machine Autonomy in Air-to-Air Combat,” Air and Space Power Journal 28, no. 3 (May–June 2014): 48–75, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/digital /pdf/articles/2014-May-Jun/F-Byrnes.pdf. As the terms appear in this document, RPAs and UCAVs represent ideal definitions on a spectrum of human control. RPAs remain under the control of a human operator and manned reachback infrastructure with similar human inputs to operations that existing manned airframes require. UCAVs, in contrast, operate with limited supervisory autonomy and can conduct strike missions with minimal direct human intervention. RPAs and UCAVs can be further dif- ferentiated by generational differences in aircraft design and survivability similar to differences in generations of fighters. RPAs generally consist of basic airframes designed to operate in permissive environments, and UCAVs incorporate advanced designs and stealth technologies to improve surviv- ability in contested environments.
7. Thanks to Dave Blair for this phrasing.
8. For a good summary of the literature, see Stuart Armstrong’s blog Less Wrong, which examines 257 total AI predictions and 95 with timeline predictions for “human-level” AI. Of this survey, over one-third of both experts and amateurs consistently predicted AI within 15–25 years, dating to the 1940s. Stuart Armstrong, “AI Timeline Predictions: Are We Getting Better?,” Less Wrong, 17 August 2012, http://lesswrong.com/lw/e36/ai_timeline_predictions_are_we_getting_better/.
9. James S. McGrew et al., “Air Combat Strategy Using Approximate Dynamic Programming,” Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics 33, no. 5 (September–October 2010): 1641–54, http://dspace.mit.edu /openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/67298.
10. This is closely related to deductive versus inductive reasoning but imprecise, given the context.
11. Thomas Burnett, “What Is Scientism?,” American Association for the Advancement of Science, accessed 13 May 2014, http://www.aaas.org/page/what-scientism.
12. As Bassford and others have noted, Antoine-Henri Jomini himself would likely reject the cari- cature of his work, which in total is very similar to Clausewitz’s though they are often portrayed as writing contrasting positions on the essence of warfare. The distinctions between the two listed here represent a small fraction of the overall work of these theorists but generally describe how they are remembered in the realm of military theory. Christopher Bassford, “Jomini and Clausewitz: Their In- teraction,” Clausewitz Homepage, 26 February 1993, http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford /Jomini/JOMINIX.htm.
13. Ibid.
14. I limit this article largely to the use of RPAs by state actors, but factors that will raise the cost of RPAs for states will likely be a greater obstacle for nonstate actors. Small RPAs made from off-the-shelf technology are likely to play an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance role and a limited tacti- cal attack role by nonstate actors. However, as countermeasures are developed and mechanisms to prevent their ability to act in close coordination though “swarm” tactics develop, in the long run this risk will be less than is often predicted. Weaponizing RPAs will add significant weight and increase their size to the point where their utility declines as costs and vulnerabilities increase.
15. Singer, Wired for War, 33. See also Michael C. Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 221.
16. Beyond platform costs, a common question that arises is whether life-cycle costs end up lower due to lower training costs and other related issues. This is difficult to quantify at the present time because as some life-cycle costs are lower, the remotely piloted factor of RPAs has led operators to risk the airframes in many situations, resulting in higher loss rates, particularly with tactical RPAs employed by the US Army. Future studies will have to better answer this question as operational use increases and greater numbers of cases become available. Regardless, the open question suggests that any po- tential cost gains are likely to be low if at all—and not in orders of magnitude.
17. Quoted in W. J. Hennigan, “New Drone Has No Pilot Anywhere, So Who’s Accountable?,” Los Ange- les Times, 26 January 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/26/business/la-fi-auto-drone-20120126.
18. Thomas P. Ehrhard, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States Armed Services: A Com- parative Study of Weapon System Innovation” (diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2000), 628.
19. According to the UN Observer Mission in Georgia report, “A reconnaissance mission by a military aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, constituted ‘military action’ and therefore contravened the Moscow Agreement. . . . However legitimate this purpose may seem to the Georgian side, it stands to reason that this kind of military intelligence-gathering is bound to be interpreted by the Abkhaz side as a precursor to a military operation, particularly in a period of tense relations between the sides.” “Report of UNOMIG [UN Observer Mission in Georgia] on the Incident of 20 April Involving the Downing of a Georgian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Zone of Conflict,” 26 May 2008, http://globe.blogs .nouvelobs.com/media/01/02/cf530afbef0fb6f305824428f6c83509.pdf.
20. Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 42.
21. Force and coercion in this context refer to the definitions used by Thomas Schelling, who dif- ferentiates between “brute force” (the decimation of the enemy) and “coercion” (violence and threat of further violence, both deterrence and compellence) as parts of a bargaining process. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 5–7, 66–70. Clausewitz is famous for noting that it is the “continuation of politics by other means,” but more specifically he de- fined it as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 75.
22. At the same time state control is vital from a legal perspective to control violence in conflict, one could view the passions of the era of nationalism from Napoleon through at least World War II as exacerbating violence in a number of cases as rational control breaks down.
23. Alexander Moseley, “Just War Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 21 January 2014, http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/.
24. Ibid.
25. See Johnston and Sarbahi’s work on the military effectiveness of RPAs for an example of how these platforms have had limited but demonstrated tactical success while the strategic impact remains ambiguous. Patrick B. Johnston and Anoop K. Sarbahi, “The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan,” 11 February 2014, http://patrickjohnston.info/materials/drones.pdf.
26. For an example of the criticism extending beyond RPAs, see Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (New York: Nation Books, 2013).
27. “Laws of War,” Annex 1, Article 1.
28. “Losing Humanity: The Case against Killer Robots,” Human Rights Watch, 19 November 2012, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/11/19/losing-humanity.
29. This could range from a modified F-22 to a larger command post such as an E-3, with the pilot role of the F-22 shifting from direct air-to-air combat toward an air-battle-manager role for a team of UCAVs operating at a distance.
30. The need for continued, elevated high autonomous aircraft in phase two may remain, depending on the progression of automation in the air-to-air environment.
31. Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 105.
32. William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power—Economic and Military (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), xviii.
33. For further information, see Lt Col Lawrence Spinetta’s work examining the “glass ceiling” for RPA pilots. Lt Col Lawrence Spinetta, “The Glass Ceiling for Remotely Piloted Aircraft,” Air and Space Power Journal 27, no. 4 (July–August 2013): 101–18, http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/digital/pdf/articles /Jul-Aug-2013/V-Spinetta.pdf.
34. Jon Soltz, “The New Drone Medal and Why Troops Need Hagel,” Huffington Post, 21 February 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/the-new-drone-medal-and-w_b_2734731.html.
35. See, for example, John Bruhns, “Why the Drone Medal Is Overvalued,” Huffington Post, 25 February 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sgt-john-bruhns/why-the-drone-medal-is-overvalued_b _2756375.html.
36. Retired colonel Terry Stevens, an Air Force personnel officer, noted his unofficial formula for the importance of decorations in calculating the prospects of officer promotion: “Company-grade officers will normally have an Air Force Achievement Medal and a Commendation Medal or two. Majors and lieutenant colonels also should have Meritorious Service Medals and/or Joint Meritorious Service Medals, with clusters. If you do, then you’ve shown initiative, leadership and above-average performance.” David Larter, “Officer Drawdown: What Are Your Chances?,” Air Force Times, 10 July 2011, http:// www.airforcetimes.com/article/20110710/NEWS/107100313/Officer-drawdown-What-your-chances.
37. Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos (New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2011).
38. Ibid., 12–13. As examples of Pressfield’s central point about the relationship of innovation and the warrior ethos, major innovations of the past were described in terms of being dishonorable to the way the RPA is debated by current advocates of the warrior ethos. In the Second Lateran Council of 1139, the Catholic Church declared, “We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on.” “Second Lateran Council (1139): Canons,” accessed 15 June 2015, http://www.ewtn.com/library /COUNCILS/LATERAN2.HTM. Similarly, in the 1600s, Cervantes noted that the “devilish invention [of artillery enables] . . . a base cowardly hand to take the life of the bravest gentleman. . . . A chance bullet, coming nobody knows how or from whence, fired perchance by one that fled affrighted at the very flash of his villainous piece, may in a moment put a period to the vastest designs” J. F. C. Fuller, Armament and History (New York: De Capo Press, 1998), 91–92. In World War I, a French general was said to have remarked on how horrible the machine gun was because “three men and a machine gun can stop a battalion of heroes.” Kirsten Cale, “Cultural Wars,” Clausewitz Homepage, accessed 22 May 2014, http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/CaleReview.htm.
39. For Douhet’s discussion of how he sees the aircraft revolutionizing warfare and concepts of what it means to be a combatant, see Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (New York: Coward-McCann, 1942), 8–11.
40. Mitchell, Winged Defense, 11, 16. Between the passages highlighted here, Mitchell details his perspective of the development of warrior cultures and eventually armies in a manner similar to that described by Pressfield but with a distinctly negative view. Airpower, he argues, fundamentally changes the calculus by tying the entire state back to conflict and not just one caste while making the fighters specialists in delivering force rather than overcoming fear.
41. Ibid., 6.
42. A casual sampling of the comments section of articles on the US Air Force’s website (http:// www.af.mil/), the Air Force Times, and controversial pieces in Air and Space Power Journal illustrates the fault lines in this debate: those on either extreme view themselves as either the outsider or the one losing influence. Those outside the flying community tend to see the Air Force as dominated by fighter pilots and de-emphasizing other key aspects of the service’s mission. Those in the flying and maintenance community point to the current Air Force mission, arguing that they should have more influence but are steadily losing it due to a variety of reasons unrelated to the mission, from political correctness to lack of focus. The comments section for Maj Dave Blair’s May–June 2012 Air and Space Power Journal article “Ten Thousand Feet and Ten Thousand Miles: Reconciling Our Air Force Culture to Remotely Piloted Aircraft and the New Nature of Aerial Combat” is particularly illustrative (http:// www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/article.asp?id=72).

“There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.” — Unnamed British General, Sunday Times, Sep 20, 2015

Having stirred the soup of British politics sufficiently to make it interesting again, UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn finds himself exciting one conservative grouping after another. The pacemakers are refusing to work. Cardiac arrest in some circles, it seems, is imminent. The “security thesis” against him, entailing, for instance, that he would pose a threat to Her Majesty and country, continues to inflate.

This thesis takes the form of a double headed eagle: on the one hand, what he will do in the context of Britain proper, be it military deployments or, as it may turn out, non-deployments; on the other, what his approach to Israel might be. Regarding the former, the weekend offered a few unhappy surprises with the remarks of a senior serving general, who contended that the Army would initiate a mutiny if a Corbyn government tried to shrink their numbers should he win the elections in 2020.[1]

In true masculine reflex, the unnamed general claimed a few immutable points, already suggesting how his view of true authority is distinctly at odds with the idea of civilian control. Leave Trident alone, he was saying. Stay deep and buried in Nato. Do not announce “any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.” In short, going against a long understood rationale, leave war, and even peace, to the generals.

The general evidently found it difficult to forgive Corbyn for not taking a strong stance against the IRA, which managed to kill 730 British troops and injure 7,000 more during the Troubles. (He is said to have served in Northern Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s.) To even suggest that IRA members might be honoured, including the hunger strikers lead by Bobby Sands, was something that stirred the blood.

The statement made to the Sunday Times is a measure of how Corbyn has gotten under the skin of various branches of officialdom. “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible fair or foul, to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.”[2]

The statement comes on the heels of a growing war lust within Labour’s own ranks. Corbyn is facing a good deal of jingo from the shadow cabinet, which is gradually moving into Caesarean assassination mode. Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn has simply decided to refuse any idea that nuclear disarmament might be affected, let alone a withdrawal from NATO. Case closed.

A primary topic of consideration is the embrace of airstrikes on Syria that Prime Minister David Cameron has been pressing for. As long as the plan to target ISIS targets in Syria is “coherent”, Cameron is guaranteed that a good number of the shadow cabinet will cross the floor.

What, then, about this general? Tory MEP, Daniel Hannan, has reminded the general, in the same breath as calling him an “idiot” that, “We’re not Bolivia for God’s sake.” A campaign of sorts has begun to out him, with a Change.org petition started by Left Unity securing over 5,000 signatures. It calls upon the prime minister to sack the general in question. “It is a direct interference in Britain’s democratic process.”

Ben Griffin, a former member of the Special Air Service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hawk turned dove, has argued that such generals pose an obvious menace to democratic process. “He should go public with his statement. He is threatening the democratic will of the British people and he exposes the lie that the armed forces exist to protect our freedoms.”[3]

A Ministry of Defence source did note that such political commentary on any “future government” was unacceptable. “No one thinks that it is a good idea for a senior serving officer to undermine a potential future government.”[4] But a good deal of foot dragging was also in order, with the MoD telling the Independent that launching an investigation into who actually spoke out would be nigh impossible – they would be, it was suggested, too many generals to investigate.

The rebuff would have been unthinkable if the matter had concerned another Edward Snowden like scenario. The big, threatening fish must be left alone, with the MoD reluctant to go through the dirty laundry of the higher-ups. As Griffin noted, “GCHQ could tell the MoD today which general it was.” They, after all, “collect the metadata of all phone calls and emails so they will have a record of which generals have been in touch with the journo who wrote the story.”

Now that would be a turn up for the books and tabloid headlines: GCHQ, grand surveillance bugbear, protects democracy by disclosing the identity of potentially mutinous, leaking general.

Notes:
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html

[2] http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1609597.ece

[3] https://www.rt.com/uk/316116-sas-corbyn-coup-general/

[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ministry-of-defence-condemn-army-general-behind-jeremy-corbyn-mutiny-threat-10510353.html

On 15 September, President Park hosted President Tusk and Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström for the annual EU-Korea summit in Seoul. This was largely a routine summit as relations between the two sides are very good and there are few major issues of disagreement. Korea is the only country in Asia with which the EU has three major agreements covering trade, political and security cooperation.

It was also an interesting summit from an institutional perspective as this was the first summit where the usual EU tandem of President of the Council and President of the Commission were not both present. Juncker had pressing issues at home, notably migration, and his role was divided between Tusk and Malmström.

The main issues on the agenda, apart from bilateral relations, were regional issues, climate change and counter-terrorism. On the trade front both sides were seeking minor changes to the FTA agreement and agreed on the need to boost two-way investment. The EU is the second biggest market for Korean exports and largest source of FDI. Korea is the EU’s fourth largest trading partner and it is also increasing its share of FDI in Europe.

On foreign policy there was broad agreement on issues ranging from Iran to human rights. On regional issues there was an exchange of views on the situation in Russia/Ukraine and NE Asia. Tusk welcomed Korean’s condemnation of Russian actions in Ukraine and expressed his support for the prospect of a new trilateral summit between Korea, China and Japan. He reiterated EU support for Korean unification and welcomed the prospect of Korea joining the EU’s anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden.

There were some differences on climate change with the EU pressing Korea to take a more forthcoming position in advance of the Paris conference. There was also an agreement to cooperate more on counter-terrorism and on science and technology (5G) as well as cyber. The EU welcomed Korean moves in the fight against illegal fishing.

This routine summit demonstrated how close the EU and Korea are on most major international issues. The joint statement is available here.

By Siraj Wahab

The death toll in the Thursday morning stampede in Mina has risen to 717 and officials expressed fears that the number could still increase. The Directorate for Civil Defense said 863 more pilgrims have been injured.

The stampede happened as pilgrims, numbering about two million, were on their way to the Jamrat to perform the “stoning of the Devil” ritual of Haj. The exact cause of the accident could not be determined immediately.

Most of the victims were Arabs and Africans, officials said. Many of the injured were in semiconscious state. The harsh summer weather has only added to the problem. The injured were not in a position to speak.

Sirens were wailing as the ambulances brought in the injured. Hundreds of Saudi security forces and Haj volunteers are at hand helping the injured.

Most of the injured were taken to Mina Emergency Hospital. Other were also rushed to the hospitals in Makkah.

Amateur video shared on social media showed a horrific scene, with scores of bodies — the men dressed in the simple terry cloth garments worn during Haj — lying amid crushed wheelchairs and water bottles along a sunbaked street.

Pictures taken later by Arab News photographers showed bodies piled on top of each other near a gate leading to the Jamrat.

Survivors assessed the scene from the top of roadside stalls near white tents as rescue workers in orange and yellow vests combed the area.

Because of the tragedy, security officials closed the Jamrat area, where the pilgrims have to perform the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual. The Jamrat has seen stampedes in the past. But the Saudi authorities have expanded the area by constructing a multilayered complex to ease the flow of pilgrims.

The pilgrims had spent the night in Muzdalifa and had come to Mina to throw seven pea-sized stoned at one of the three wall-like structures.

Some 2 million people are taking part in this year’s Haj pilgrimage, which began Tuesday.

The stampede was the deadliest disaster at the Haj since 2006, when more than 360 pilgrims were killed in a stampede in the same area. Another stampede at Mina in 2004 left 244 pilgrims dead and hundreds injured.

Thursday’s stampede happened less than two weeks after a giant construction crane came crashing down on the Grand Mosque in Makkah, the focal point of the Haj.

That accident, on Sept. 11, killed at least 111 people and injured more than 390.

Authorities blamed the crane collapse on high winds during an unusually powerful storm.

In his lengthy speech to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis said the family is being threatened today like never before, and praised American figures, including Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., for their tireless efforts to defend freedom and values.

The Pope also boldly condemned the death penalty and the arms trade, calling for their global abolition.

“How essential the family has been to the building of this country! And how worthy it remains of our support and encouragement!” the Pope told Congress Sept. 24.

“Yet I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without.”

Fundamental relationships, he said, “are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.”

He called specific attention to members of the family who are the most vulnerable, particularly the youth. While many face futures filled with endless possibilities, too many are trapped inside “a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair.”

“Their problems are our problems. We cannot avoid them,” he said, explaining that concrete solutions must be the result of a joint effort, without “getting bogged down in discussions.”

Francis also noted the troubling trend of youth deciding not to get married, and said that “at the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future.”

“Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family,” he said, alluding to the growing fad of being ‘childless-by-choice’.

Pope Francis is the first Roman Pontiff ever to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. His visit to the nation’s capitol took place on his third day in the U.S. Shortly before his address to Congress, he met privately with Rep. John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility,” he reminded the legislators in his public speech, as a visibly moved Boehner looked on.

“Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation … you are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics.”

“A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people.”

“You are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face,” he said, giving them Moses as an exemplar of this task.

He said that through them he is speaking to all Americans, particularly the men and women who work hard daily to save and to build a better life for their families.

Francis also gave a special mention to the youth working to fulfill their dreams and aspirations, as well as the elderly who continually seek to share their wisdom and insights, particularly through volunteer work. “I know that many of them are retired, but still active; they keep working to build up this land.”

The Pope pointed to four key figures in American history who “were able by hard work and self- sacrifice … to build a better future,” as an illustration of the message he wants to convey: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.

“Four individuals and four dreams: Lincoln, liberty; Martin Luther King, liberty in plurality and non-exclusion; Dorothy Day, social justice and the rights of persons; and Thomas Merton, the capacity for dialogue and openness to God. Four representatives of the American people.”

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, “the guardian of liberty,” he noted, explaining that “building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.”

“All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today,” the Pope said, noting how the world is increasingly a place of conflict, violence, hatred and atrocities, “committed even in the name of God and of religion.”

“No religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind,” he said.

“A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms.”

The Pope also warned against a “simplistic reductionism” that only sees good and evil, the righteous and the sinners. “The contemporary world … demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.”

“We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place,” he said, noting that this is something Americans “as a people, reject.”

Even in the developed world the effects of unjust structures and actions are obvious, he said, calling for cooperation in restoring hope and righting wrongs, with the well-being of peoples and individuals in mind: “We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.”

“The complexity, the gravity and the urgency of these challenges demand that we pool our resources and talents, and resolve to support one another, with respect for our differences and our convictions of conscience,” he said.

Noting the role religious persons have played in the strengthening of society, he urged that “it is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love.”

The Pope then noted how this year also marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic march from Selma to Montgomery in support of his dream of full civil and political rights for African Americans.

“That dream continues to inspire us all. I am happy that America continues to be, for many, a land of dreams,” he said, and noted that many migrants have come to America with the desire to build and achieve their dream of a future in freedom.

“We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants.”

He lamented that “the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. For those peoples and their nations, from the heart of American democracy, I wish to reaffirm my highest esteem and appreciation.”

Although the first contacts with foreigners were often unstable and violent, Francis stressed that the past must not be repeated “when the stranger in our midst appeals to us” and that “building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal subsidiarity.”

In regards to the widespread refugee crisis, Pope Francis said that despite the tough decisions that come with refugees, we must “view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.”

“On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children?”

He underlined the Golden Rule in treating others as they want to be treated, explaining that if we want opportunity and security, we must give these to others. “This Rule points us in a clear direction. Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves.”

“The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us,” he said.

“The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.”

Pope Francis then immediately condemned the death penalty, and advocated its global abolition. He said he’s convinced it’s what’s best, since “every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity,” and societies can benefit from the rehabilitation of convicted criminals.

He then pointed to the potent example of the Servant of God Dorothy Day, a Catholic social activist of the 20th century, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement.

Day’s passion for justice and her commitment to the oppressed were rooted in her faith and in the Gospel, he said, noting that while much has already been done to eradicate poverty and hunger, there is still more to be done.

“It goes without saying that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth,” he said, explaining that this involves a just use of natural resources, the proper application of technology, and the harnessing “of the spirit of enterprise.”

This discussion also involves our care for creation, the Pope said, referring to his recent encyclical Laudato Si’, in which he spoke of the need to combat environmental deterioration brought about by human activity.

“I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play … I am confident that America’s outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.”

Francis also noted that this year marks the centenary of the birth of Thomas Merton. A Cistercian monk, Merton was also a writer and a pacifist, and was actively involved in interreligious dialogue.

Merton, the Pope said, “remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people … he was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.”

On the topic of dialogue, Pope Francis praised the recent restoration of diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba. When countries at odds resume dialogue, he said, “new opportunities open up for all.”

Dialogue must also have a determination to minimize, and ultimately end, the armed conflicts throughout the world he maintained.

He then pointed to the global arms trade, a phenomenon he has spoken out against continually since the beginning of his pontificate.

“Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” he asked, explaining that “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

“In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.”

Pope Francis closed his speech saying that a nation can only be considered great “when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to ‘dream’ of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.”

The Pope expressed his hope that spirit of the American people continue to grow and develop, “so that as many young people as possible can inherit and dwell in a land which has inspired so many people to dream. God bless America!”

By Eric LeCompte*

Yesterday morning at the White House, I saw Pope Francis urge world leaders to protect the most vulnerable and build an economy that leaves no one behind.

As I watched Pope Francis, I was jubilant. After all, the organization I direct, Jubilee USA, was founded by religious leaders and Pope John Paul II to do just that – win global economic reforms to benefit those living in poverty.

With the support of both Democrats and Republicans, the Jubilee movement won USD130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world’s poorest countries. Debt relief money built schools and hospitals, reduced child mortality rates and sent school enrollment numbers skyrocketing.

Debt relief is part of the broader concept of Jubilee – of creating an inclusive global economy where we are all protected from becoming too rich or too poor.

Pope Francis is not only talking about debt. Almost everyday he refers to the actual policies that trap people in poverty. He’s raised concerns about tax havens to a gathering of dignitaries from known tax havens. He endorsed a United Nations global bankruptcy process. He declared a ‘Jubilee Year’ in the Catholic Church focused on mercy and compassion for the poor. Whenever he speaks, we hear about how corruption, austerity and trade policies impact the poor.

Much will be written this week about Pope Francis as he tours the U.S. Much will be said about what the Pope thinks or even feels – about what his views are on this or that political or religious hot button issue. It’s helpful to remember that the Pope himself is a prolific writer and speaker. His words speak for themselves.

And so here, in his own words, is Pope Francis on the defining issues of our time. Ultimately, the defining issues of his papacy: addressing inequality and transforming the polices that cause poverty.

On Inequality

“Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment. It is about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right. The universal destination of goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social teaching. It is a reality prior to private property. Property, especially when it affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples. And those needs are not restricted to consumption. It is not enough to let a few drops fall whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself. Welfare programs geared to certain emergencies can only be considered temporary responses. They will never be able to replace true inclusion, an inclusion which provides worthy, free, creative [and] participatory… work.” – July 9, 2015

“Poverty in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons.” – June 7, 2013

“While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling.” – May 16, 2013

Building an Inclusive Economy

“A way has to be found to enable everyone to benefit from the fruits of the earth, and not simply to close the gap between the affluent and those who must be satisfied with the crumbs falling from the table, but above all to satisfy the demands of justice, fairness and respect for every human being.” – June 20, 2013

“Certainly every country needs economic growth and the creation of wealth, and the extension of these to each citizen, without exclusion. And this is necessary. But the creation of this wealth must always be at the service of the common good, and not only for the benefit of a few. On this point we must be very clear.” — July 11, 2015

“Those charged with promoting economic development have the responsibility of ensuring that it always has a human face. Economic development must have a human face. We say no to an economy without such a face! They have in their hands the possibility of providing employment for many persons and in this way of giving hope to many families. Putting bread on the table, putting a roof over the heads of one’s children, giving them health and an education – these are essential for human dignity, and business men and women, politicians, economists, must feel challenged in this regard.” – July 11, 2015

On Corporate Tax Avoidance and Corruption

“[There] is widespread corruption and selfish tax evasion which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The will for power and possession has become limitless.” – May 16, 2013

The Global Debt Crisis

“A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules. Moreover, indebtedness and credit distance countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power.” – May 16, 2013

Halting Austerity

“The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain “free trade” treaties, and the imposition of measures of “austerity” which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor. We, the bishops of Latin America, denounce this with utter clarity in the Aparecida Document, stating that “financial institutions and transnational companies are becoming stronger to the point that local economies are subordinated, especially weakening the local states, which seem ever more powerless to carry out development projects in the service of their populations.” – July 9, 2015

Economic Growth

“I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflict the world of work and business today; I am thinking of how many, and not only young people, are unemployed, often due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks profit selfishly, beyond the parameters of social justice. I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment.” – May 1, 2013

Establishing a Global Bankruptcy Process to Benefit Indebted Nations

“If a company can declare bankruptcy, why can’t a country do so and we go to the aid of others?” – July 14, 2015

*Eric LeCompte is the Executive Director of Jubilee USA Network and serves on UN expert working groups that focus on global financial issues. He has advised the Vatican on finance issues and global poverty. Learn more: www.jubileeusa.org

By Vindu Mai Chotani*

Vietnam Communist Party Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong paid a four-day official visit to Japan from September 15. He held official talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shizo Abe and met the Emperor of Japan. He also met various eminent members of Japan’s political, economic and social circles.

The visit came at a time when Japan is looking to boost its economic relations with ASEAN and SAARC countries, and also further its aim of being a “proactive contributor to peace” in the Asia Pacific region. For Vietnam, this move is set to bolster its foreign policy which is aimed at strengthening its strategic partnership with major powers, particularly the US and Japan while hedging against China.

As the world witnesses a diffusion of power, and the US implements its rebalance strategy, the Asia-Pacific region has been and is still struggling to adopt a security architecture that would ensure peace and stability within the region. China’s assertive behaviour in the East China Sea has been alarming for Japan and the US. The Japanese government has thus taken it upon itself to expand its relations, forge partnerships and invest in countries in the region, like Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Though both Vietnam and China are communist nations, and share deep economic ties, relations between these nations have been severely hampered by their territorial dispute in the South China Sea.Both nations are currently contesting sovereignty issues in the Spratly and Paracel islands. Further, this region has also witnessed a surge in economic growth, with much trade passing through the Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC). It is in the interest of both Japan and Vietnam to prevent this region from becoming a strategic flashpoint. In such a scenario it does seem natural that both Japan and Vietnam would aim to bolster ties with each other.

The pattern of Vietnamese-Japanese relations reflects a significant convergence of national interests between the two countries. Vietnam sees Japan as a reliable source of capital, technology and security. Japan, seeking to diversify its investments beyond China, looks at Vietnam from an economic and political lens. With a population of 90 million people, Vietnam is a big market for Japanese goods and products. Cheap labour costs, as well skilled workers further encourage Japanese investments.

Over the years, Japan-Vietnam relations have grown in strength. In 2007, Japan and Vietnam agreed to establish a Joint Cooperation Committee. Four years later, in 2011, Japan and Vietnam adopted a Plan of Action to implement the strategic partnership. After returning to office in 2012, Prime Minister Abe made his first official overseas trip to Vietnam in 2013. While in Hanoi, Abe also announced the provision of $500 million in loans to Vietnam on the 40th anniversary of Japan-Vietnam diplomatic relations. However, the major turning point in bilateral relations took place in March 2014, when Abe and Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang during his state visit to Tokyo elevated their eight-year old strategic partnership to an Extensive Strategic Partnership.

Besides cooperation in bilateral issues, Japan and Vietnam through the “New Tokyo Strategy 2015 for Mekong-Japan Cooperation” will continue to engage with each other, as well as other Mekong region nations (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia).Further, both nations are in the final stage of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations – the free trade agreement, which currently includes 12 countries representing 40 percent of global GDP. This is expected to deepen trade and investment between the two countries at a much faster pace once finalized.

From the joint statement released following Trong’s visit to Japan, it can be seen that progress has once again been made in defence and security relations, as well as economic relations.

Defence Cooperation

Following Abe’s pledge last year to provide Hanoi with six second hand ships that could be used as patrol vessels, Abe and Trong this year have agreed that Japan will provide more used vessels to shore up Vietnam’s maritime law enforcement capabilities to counter China’s increasing power in the South China Sea. Further, Abe also said Tokyo will extend about ¥100 billion in loans to Vietnam to help build new infrastructure such as ports and expressways.

The two sides also shared the intention to enhance cooperation in maritime security, search and rescue, non traditional security issues such as cyber security, cybercrime, terrorism, piracy etc. The two sides signed a Memorandum on Cooperation between Coast Guard Agencies. Further, Japan also affirmed its continued assistance to help Vietnam enhance its capacity of maritime law enforcement agencies, and participate in UN peacekeeping operations. The defence authorities of both countries signed the Memorandum of Cooperation on UN Peacekeeping operation.

Economic Cooperation

As of January 2015, Japan is Vietnam’s fourth largest trade partner after China and is also the second biggest investor in Vietnam, with total registered capital of around $37 billion dollars.Japan is also the largest ODA donor. As of 2012, the cumulative ODA fund from Japan had reached $22.7 billion.

The two nations agreed to establish a Joint Committee on Cooperation in Industry, Trade and Energy, which is aimed at strengthening cooperation in the fields of industry, trade and energy between the public and private sectors of both countries. Both governments also agreed to promote comprehensive cooperation in agriculture, forestry and fishery in the spirit of “Japan – Vietnam Medium long term Vision on Agricultural Cooperation.”

The joint statement also noted other economic initiatives, such as those in the field of energy development, electronics industry, information and communications technology, and development of manufacturing engineering. Japan has offered 286 million yen in official development assistance to help Vietnam build new general hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City.

Besides economic and defence cooperation, it is in the interest of both nations to raise the effectiveness of cooperation in education and training, culture, tourism, labour, climate, and people-to-people exchange.As maritime nations, Japan and Vietnam can also further enhance collaboration to maintain peace and stability at sea.

*Vindu Mai Chotani is a Research Assistant at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi