Is China Trying to Split ASEAN?

By Trefor Moss May 30, 2012

Defense leaders from around Southeast Asia are meeting in Phnom Penh this week for the 6^th ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM). The theme of the get together – “Enhancing ASEAN Unity for a Harmonized and Secure Community” – smacks of doublespeak: unity and harmony within ASEAN are sorely lacking at the moment, and no-one really thinks the ministerial meeting is going to rediscover them.

In the anarchy of the international arena, a club like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ought to be a reassuring place to be. The organization gives its ten members – small or medium-sized players in geopolitical terms – the opportunity to close ranks when dealing with the greater powers, and to speak with one voice loud enough to be heard in Beijing, Washington and any other place that needs to listen.

Unfortunately, ASEAN doesn’t work like that: individualism swiftly trumps collectivism whenever contentious issues arise.

In particular, ASEAN has a China problem. Ask the ten members about China, and you’ll get a kaleidoscope of opinions about what that country represents. Some ASEAN countries are very much pro-China: their own economic development is tied closely to Beijing’s, and they are comfortable with the political implications of their China connections. Others are cooler on relations with Beijing: they balance a wariness of Chinese influence with the obvious benefits of a healthy trading relationship. And finally, there are those that feel threatened by China and regard themselves as targets (or at least potential targets) of Chinese assertiveness.

Unity on the question of how to handle China has therefore eluded ASEAN. And given the association’s nature, this is unsurprising: neutrality and non-intervention, not unity and collectivism, are ASEAN’s most cherished principles.

Prosecutor explains Mladic mix-up

The trial began — and then it stopped because of so-called “disclosure” problems. What’s up with that?

Prosecutors at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal today gave their first detailed explanation for the bungled opening of the Ratko Mladic trial. In a 42-page filing to the court, they blamed the fiasco on a computer “operator error” that had led to the non-disclosure of around 5,000 documents, or just over 3 percent of the disclosable trial record. They added that the omissions were largely “technical” in nature, and should not require a lengthy trial delay.

The trial, which began on May 16 with a summary of the prosecution case against the former Bosnian Serb military commander, was due to resume on May 29 with the calling of witnesses. But Judge Alphons Orie ordered an indefinite delay while he investigated “significant errors” by the prosecution in the disclosure process. Lawyers for Mladic have called for a six-month postponement of the trial, alleging “an unprecedented disclosure failure whose scope is without parallel in the history of the Tribunal.”

For those interested in the details, I have posted the latest prosecution filing here, along with the defense filing here, and e-mail correspondence between the prosecutor and defense here.

The Caspian’s Naval Arms Race

Satellite image of the Caspian Sea

A rise in the naval buildup of powers on the Caspian Sea highlights the deepening of unresolved regional tensions.

By John CK Daly for ISN Security Watch

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Why has Russia built a new stealth equipped artillery ship, the Mahachkala, as Kazakhstan prepares to launch the Kazakhstan missile boat, its first domestically built warship, from its Zenit shipyard in Uralsk?

Because both nations are concerned about the security of their burgeoning Caspian energy assets, with Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan also developing Caspian flotillas. While the global media focuses on rising US-Chinese naval tensions in the western Pacific, in isolated Central Asia a maritime arms race has been triggered by the resources of the Caspian, a cultural and political fault line where Christian Europe intersects the Muslim world. The sea, previously peacefully divided between the USSR and Iran, now has new players.

The 143,244 square-mile Caspian is the world’s largest enclosed body of water and is an endorheic sea: rivers only flow into it, with no egress to the open ocean.

What assets are the five nations scrambling to protect? Reserves, offshore production fields, undersea pipelines and tankers. In 2009 the US Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian could contain up to 250 billion barrels of recoverable oil along with an additional 200 billion barrels of potential reserves and 9.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas.

Before 1991 the Soviet Union and Iran divided the inland sea amongst themselves. Under the 1921 Soviet-Iranian Treaty of Friendship, each had an “exclusive fishing rights in its coastal waters up to a limit of 10 nautical miles,” while the 1940 Soviet-Iranian treaty which supplemented the agreement further declared that the “parties hold the Caspian to belong to Iran and to the Soviet Union.” Needless to say, both treaties became invalid with the breakup of the USSR.

Ripples of discontent

Since the December 1991 implosion of the USSR, three new nations arose in the Caspian region and contested the bilateral arrangements: Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. ever since, the five nations have wrangled about how equitably to divide the Caspian’s waters and seabed, but little has been achieved. Adding to the confusion, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) did not definitively declare whether the international law of the sea or the law of inland lakes applied to the Caspian, labeling it instead as “a special inner sea.”

Ethnicity, Economics and Energy – Russia’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe

17 May 2012

Gas pipeline ‘pig trap’

Russia’s energy supplies ensure that Moscow maintains a geopolitical foothold in the European part of the former Soviet space.

By Sonia Rothwell

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Yesterday we began charting how Russia seeks to maintain economic and geopolitical leverage across the former Soviet space. Our analysis inevitably reflects that it is now over two decades since the former USSR splintered into its constituent parts. Yet the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian Presidency nevertheless provides us with insights into how Moscow might attempt to increase leverage in its former sphere of influence over the next 5-10 years. It is currently estimated, for example, that almost 70% of Russia’s export receipts are made up of transfers of natural resources, with the former Soviet space being a major recipient of end-products. A very healthy trade-surplus of more than $500bn provides Putin with opportunities to use Russia’s finances to its flex geopolitical muscle. During his election campaign, Putin pledged to invest approximately $750 million in Russia’s defense sector.

But to what extent do the former Soviet republics look to their old imperial master for security and economic cooperation? To answer this question, today we focus upon three sub-regions of the former Soviet Union – the Baltic States, Ukraine and Moldova. While each of these regions are forging economic and political relations that look beyond Russia, Moscow has the potential to use its energy supplies – and to a lesser extent its ethnic ties – to maintain a strategic foothold in Central and Eastern Europe.

A Changed Eastern Europe

From an economic and geopolitical perspective, the Baltic States have done the most out of all the former republics to distance themselves from their Soviet past. Each state is now a fully-fledged member of the European Union (EU) with Estonia (whose trade and cultural links have traditionally favored Finland) taking a step further away from Moscow after it joined the Eurozone in 2011. Like the Baltic States, Moldova also aspires to closer economic ties with the West in general and Europe in particular. Recently, Moldova’s Prime Minister and President re-affirmed their commitment to membership of the EU. Moldova’s efforts to also join NATO are largely encouraged by Romania and underpinned by linguistic and cultural affiliations between the two countries.

Russia nevertheless maintains a significant strategic foothold within Moldova. Its 14^th army is stationed in the self-proclaimed majority Russian state of Trans Dniestra with Moscow also providing financial assistance to the government in Tiraspol. Strategically, it is in Russia’s interests to safeguard Trans-Dniestra’s independence to maintain Moscow’s influence within the region and divert Moldova’s attention away from full EU membership. Nevertheless, Russia maintains strong bilateral trade links with Moldova and there are calls for the country to join Russia’s nascent Customs Union. So in sharp contrast to the Baltic States, Moldova is seemingly pulled in two directions by its near- neighbor Romania and an economically significant Russia.

Asia-3 Key to Syria Crisis

By Javad Heydarian  May 10, 2012

There are many reasons why Syria isn’t another Libya and so requires an alternative model of resolution, perhaps, similar to Yemen and Egypt where a political arrangement paved the way for leadership transition. This is precisely where the role of Syria’s main Asian allies is crucial to any kind of lasting progress.

Clearly, Syria is in the midst of a protracted humanitarian crisis. With thousands killed and ongoing deadly clashes between security forces and armed opposition – including a bombing attack Thursday in Damascus that killed dozens and shaved the facade off a military intelligence building – the international community  is still struggling to effectively implement a roadmap to peace.

Ongoing shelling of opposition strongholds, especially in Homs and Idlib, has further intensified calls for some kind of international intervention, sentiments given voice at the Friends of Syria Summit at the end of March in Istanbul. Yet it’s also clear that there’s little appetite, especially among many NATO countries, for intervention, whether in the form of establishing humanitarian buffer zones or the imposition of a no-fly-zone.

On top of the mission creep associated with the Libyan intervention, Syria’s superior defensive capabilities, relatively astute and intact leadership, densely populated landscape, and lack of hydrocarbon resources has so far deterred any direct intervention. Yet what makes Syria so special is the degree to which it enjoys tremendous operational, diplomatic, and strategic support from three Asian powers: namely, Iran, China, and Russia.

This means that there only two realistic options: first, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) plan to step up its logistical and financial support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in order to reverse the regime’s military edge; or an international mission followed by independent monitoring and an eventual political settlement between the government and all relevant factions in the opposition, especially the Syrian National Council (SNC).

Nicaragua divided over death of revolutionary leader

Tomás Borge was the last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN).

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, center right, and first lady Rosario Murillo, center left, attend the funeral of the late Tomás Borge in Managua, Nicaragua, Wednesday, May 2.
(Arnulfo Franco/AP)

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By Tim Rogers, Correspondent
posted May 3, 2012 at 5:19 pm EDT

MANAGUA, Nicaragua

The firebrand revolutionary and last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), Comandante Tomás Borge, died this week, reopening old divisions from the tumultuous decade of revolutionary rule and counterrevolutionary war in the 1980s.

To his supporters, Mr. Borge was a stalwart revolutionary who fought bravely and endured months of imprisonment and torture to help overthrow the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. He was both loved and feared by many Nicaraguans for his role in the insurrection in the 1970s and in the subsequent revolutionary government of the ’80s, when he served as the iron-fisted minister of the interior dressed in Cuban-made, olive drab military uniforms. Critics claim Borge quickly went from victim to oppressor, repeating the torture and attrocities of the dictatorship he helped overthrew.

The Sandinista Revolution became a cold war proxy and the United States boosted the Contras to fight the FSLN.

As Sandinistas remember Borge’s life, they are calling him a “man of exemplary courage and principle,” “an example for the youth,” a “great revolutionary,” and even “a prophet of God.” Supporters remember him as a sensible and rational man who was both dedicated to the revolution, but humble enough to recognize the mistakes it made in the 1980s.

“We were victims of arrogance,” he told me in 2005, as we sat in his office amid walls covered in photos of Borge posing with a virtual “who’s who” list of US-identified bogymen: Fidel Castro, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, and Yassir Arafat, to name a few. Borge also kept a photograph of Sandinista namesake Gen. Augusto Sandino posing with his father, a revolutionary from the 1930s.

Borge told me the next Sandinista government, which returned to power in 2007, would implement “more realistic” policies and not repeat the mistakes of land confiscations, nationalizations, or mandatory military service. And so far, despite a couple of notable stumbles, the Sandinista government of today has clearly set a different tack than it did in the 1980s.

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?

Posted May 1, 2012 5:00 AM CDT By Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?Washington, D.C., attorney Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force, debate whether the U.S. should learn the practicalities of winning a cyberwar—and then ask lawyers for their input—or, instead, set the legal ground rules before conducting cyberwarfare in Patriots Debate: Contemporary Issues in National Security Law. The book is sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, which invited both writers to address the legal approach to cyberwar.

STEWART BAKER’S POSITION

Stewart A. Baker

Lawyers don’t win wars.

But can they lose a war? We’re likely to find out, and soon. Lawyers across the government have raised so many showstopping legal questions about cyberwar that they’ve left our military unable to fight, or even plan for, a war in cyberspace.

No one seriously denies that cyberwar is coming. Russia may have pioneered cyberattacks in its conflicts with Georgia and Estonia, but cyberweapons went mainstream when the developers of Stuxnet sabotaged Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, proving that computer network attacks can be more effective than 500-pound bombs. In war, weapons that work get used again.

Unfortunately, it turns out that cyberweapons may work best against civilians. The necessities of modern life—pipelines, power grids, refineries, sewer and water lines—all run on the same industrial control systems that Stuxnet subverted so successfully. These systems may be even easier to sabotage than the notoriously porous computer networks that support our financial and telecommunications infrastructure.

No one has good defenses against such attacks. The hackers will get through.

Even very sophisticated network defenders—RSA, HBGary, even the Department of Defense’s classified systems—have failed to keep attackers out. Once they’re in, attackers have stolen the networks’ most precious secrets. But they could just as easily bring the network down, possibly causing severe physical damage, as in the case of Stuxnet.

So as things now stand, a serious cyberattack could leave civilians without power, without gasoline, without banks or telecommunications or water—perhaps for weeks or months. If the crisis drags on, deaths will multiply: first in hospitals and nursing homes, then in cities and on the road as civil order breaks down. It will be a nightmare. And especially for the United States, which has trusted more of its infrastructure to digital systems than most other countries.

We’ve been in this spot before. As Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell predicted, airpower allowed a devastating and unprecedented strike on our ships in Pearl Harbor. We responded with an outpouring of new technologies, new weapons and new strategies.