Strategic Arms Control in a Trilateral World

The website warontherocks.com looks at how the US might use strategic arms control negotiations, such as the new Start treaty wth Russia, to affect the overall relationship between the US, Russia and China.  It thinks the negotiations with Russia might tend to weaken Russia-China ties and give the US more leverage with both of the other parties.  It says:

The United States and the Soviet Union both used arms control to, among other objectives, drive a wedge in adversarial coalitions. The Limited Test Ban Treaty exploited Sino-Soviet differences in terms of the nuclear balance, and SALT I emphasized different Chinese and American policies toward the Soviet Union. In both cases, the wedge drivers achieved some limited success. Washington aggravated the Sino-Soviet split beyond repair. Moscow delayed and dampened encirclement by the United States and China for six years, from Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 to the normalization of Sino-American relations in 1978. The success of these wedge strategies turned upon different strategic circumstances. The test ban treaty capitalized on an already disintegrating alliance, while SALT I countervailed anti-Soviet convergence by conciliating the United States on key issues.

Risk of India-China Nuclear War

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has published an article, “After the Border Clash, Will China-India Competition Go Nuclear?” evaluating the possibility of nuclear war between India and China.  It concludes there is low probability of the conflict turning nuclear. 

China’s nuclear capabilities are far in advance of India’s.  The conflict in the mountainous region of their border does not lend itself to nuclear warfare.  Neither country sees the other’s nuclear capabilities as a significant factor in the current faceoff. 

China perceives the likelihood of an India-Pakistan nuclear conflict as more likely, and as something that could draw in China on Pakistan’s side.  Even that possibility, however, seems remote. 

So, the Carnegie Endowment’s conclusion as to whether the conflict might go nuclear seems to be no. 

Outer Space Arms Control

The Hill newspaper published an article on “How to avoid a space arms race” by several authors, including Bill Courtney, with whom I used to work at the State Department. 

The article reports that Putin has proposed an agreement to prohibit the stationing of weapons in space and the threat or use of force against space objects, but that there is nothing new in Putin’s proposal  Despite the Outer Space Treaty, which bans stationing weapons of mass destruction in orbit, Russia, China, and the US are all concerned about the possibility of warfare in space.  They all use space assets for gathering intelligence, for communications, for GPS location services, for monitoring weather, land use, etc.  These assets are potentially threatened by activities that are on their face peaceful, such as servicing old satellites.  If you can maneuver close to a satellite, you can probably destroy it.

A new space arms control agreement will be difficult, but the increasing importance of space for commercial and military purposes makes it more desirable as time goes on. 

Gates on Foreign Policy

In an article in Foreign Affairs, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls for less emphasis on military power in America’s foreign policy. 

Regarding the use of military power, Gates criticizes the failure to define clear goals for US military involvement and to let mission creep change the goals after military intervention starts.  There are many examples of this in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but also in the US intervention in Libya, which changed from humanitarian assistance to regime change. A new national security threat, cyber warfare, needs more attention

While he was Secretary of Defense, Gates often called for a bigger role for the State Department in Iraq.  He often pointed out that there were more members of military bands than Foreign Service officers.  Trump’s gutting of the State Department has made this situation even worse.  Gates calls for strengthening State and making it less bureaucratic, saying that the National Security Council cannot perform all the functions of the State Department, and he calls for re-establishing the roles of the related agencies, the US Agency for International Development, and the old US Information Agency.  USAID has withered while Chinese assistance to developing countries has expanded dramatically un the Belt and Road Initiative.  USIA has been rolled into the main State Department and has basically ceased to exist while the battle for world public opinion continues. 

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China Policy

Foreign Affairs has published a dialogue on US policy toward China between Princeton Professor Aaron Friedberg and a number of China hands, including Stapleton Roy, with whom I served in Bangkok, before he was Ambassador to China. 

The group responding to Professor Friedberg’s article basically argues for treating China more or less like any other important country, trying to work with it, not singling it out a threat to the US which requires special economic and security policies to rein it in.  They argue:

U.S. policymakers must adopt a more careful and considered approach. The United States must coordinate with allies and partners not only to deter and compete with China when needed but also to incentivize Beijing to cooperate in addressing shared concerns such as global warming and current and future pandemics. Washington should aim to diminish the likelihood of nuclear war, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, a costly arms race, and the spread of terrorism. It should seek a stable power balance in the Asia-Pacific region that respects the interests of all countries—including those of China. And it should revise and expand multilateral trade and investment agreements and foster international efforts to better address natural disasters and human rights abuses in all countries.

 

New North Koran Missile

 

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has commented on two unknowns about the new, large North Korean ICBM. 

One question is how mobile the new missile will be.  It is liquid fueled and huge, which means it will be hard to move, although it was displayed on a mobile vehicle.  Since it is liquid fueled, it  most likely would have to be moved to a fixed launch site and then fueled, allowing some advance notice that it is about to be launched. 

The other question is how many warheads it will carry.  After weighing the pros and cons of a multiple, MIRVed payload versus a single large warhead, the Bulletin seems to come down on the side of a single warhead as more likely to be within the technical prowess of the North Koreans. 

Biden Election

 

Joe Biden is saying all the right things since the election.  Unlike Trump, he has tried to soothe the national psyche by calling for calm and patience.  His decency is a welcome change from Trump’s vulgarity.  I believe he did win the election and should be inaugurated as the next President of the US. 

That said, however, this was not a good election.  The polls all predicted a “blue wave” and an easy election for Biden.  That did not happen.  Boden barely squeaked by.  The way the media hyped the incorrect polls indicates there was something rotten behind the media support for Biden.  The cities which put him over the top were all cities with large black populations known for political corruption.  There may not have been any, but the appearance is bad.  Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee were the key cities where the black vote put him over the top. 

The black votes in these black cities were clearly racist.  While whites and Asians vote on a number of issues – economics, education, taxes, social issues, etc. – blacks vote on only one issue – race.  As a result, the black vote is monolithic.  Something like 90% off all blacks vote Democratic.  They don’t care if the schools are good, only if they are integrated.  They don’t care about the economy as long as they get their welfare. 

I’m not sure anything illegal happened to sway the election but it looks bad.  The black vote in the black cities was the last to come in.  Courts in those states ruled that voting on election day was too complicated and that blacks couldn’t manage it; they needed extra time to vote.  So, they counted ballots that arrived long after election day, although in theory they were turned in by election day.  In fact, because of all the special provisions, who knows exactly what happened?  The courts made it easier to commit voter fraud, whether fraud was actually committed is another question. 

The 2000 election showed that all this moralizing about every vote should count is ridiculous.  Most votes are counted, and some votes may be counted several times, but the election gives a general indication of what the voters want, and as long as the election is not too close, the voters get what they actually voted for.  If the vote is really close in places where there are more than a few thousand votes, it would be just a fair and accurate to flip a coin to choose the winner.  George W. Bush was not elected by the American people, he was chosen by the Supreme Court.  Al Gore did the right thing and conceded because he was an American patriot who ended the election nightmare, not because he was actually defeated at the polls.  Who knew that Gore was ceding to a man who would fail to protect America from foreign invasion and start a war that has lasted 20 years with not discernable benefit to the US. 

Hopefully, Joe Biden will be a better President than George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump were. 

The Politicization of the State Department

 The Atlantic features an article on the politicization of the State Department under Trump, Tillerson and Pompeo.  They have tried to demand complete loyalty from State Department officers to the Trump agenda.  They have forced out some senior Foreign Service officers, and many others left what they felt was a politically charged atmosphere which accepted no input from career officers.  It reached a peak during the Trump impeachment hearings, and was illustrated by the drafting of an Orwellian " professional ethos statement" that seemed to challenge professional officers' loyalty.  

50 Countries Ratify Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons

 Fifty countries have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, according to the UN, as reported by the New York Times.  The US and other countries with nuclear weapons have refused to accept it.  

Leading Candidates to Be Biden's Secretary of State

 Politico lists the leading candidates to be Biden's Secretary of State:

• Senator Chris Coons of Delaware
• Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
• Susan Rice, former National Security Adviser
• Anthony Blinken, former Deputy Secretary of State
• Samantha Power, former Ambassador to the UN
• Tom Donilon, former National Security Adviser
• Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State
• William Burns, retired Foreign Service officer, former Deputy Secretary of State
• Nicholas Burns, retired Foreign Service officer, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

State Department Needs More Science Specialists

An op-ed in The Hill newspaper calls for more scientists in the State Department

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/521444-the-state-department-needs-more-scientists

I was one of the first (and last) career science officers in the Foreign Service.  See my website.