July 2010 Archives

The saber-rattling on the Korean Peninsula continues. Both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week visited the DMZ dividing the two Koreas in an unprecedented joint show of support for South Korea. They also announced new economic sanctions against Pyongyang. Naval exercises with the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and South Korean forces ensue in coming days in the East Sea, otherwise known as the Sea of Japan.

North Korea, meanwhile, still refuses to take responsibility for the March sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, or apologize, and China is backing them up. Beijing is even telling the U.S. Navy to stay out of the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, waters the U.S. has exercised in many times before. Pyongyang says the exercises could trigger a "physical" response -- perhaps another nuclear weapons test, or firing of long-range rockets over the Sea of Japan.

Do the United States and South Korea risk going too far in the current standoff? How much of this is about the Cheonan and how much is about the succession process in North Korea, from Kim Jong-Il to his third son, and the economic crisis in the North? Will a new Pyongyang regime be more aggressive externally to consolidate its power internally? And are we boxing in China, which doesn't love Pyongyang, but doesn't want it to fall either? How is this going to play out?

5 responses: David Krieger, Michael Brenner, Ron Marks, James Jay Carafano, Loren Thompson

There are signs that the "Petraeus effect" is already being felt in Afghanistan. On July 14, Afghan President Hamid Karzai approved Gen. David Petraeus' plan to create as many as 10,000 "community police" and local defense forces -- read "militias" -- to act as a grassroots opposition to the Taliban. Meanwhile, at an international conference in Kabul this week, Karzai will announce a "reintegration" program designed to entice "reconcilable" members of the Taliban to switch sides, backed by $300 million in international funds. Of course, reconciling former insurgents and organizing them into local militias opposed to Al Qaeda was the strategy behind the "Anbar miracle" that Petraeus used to help turn the tide of the Iraq war in 2007.

This week we would like National Journal's expert bloggers to consider whether the "Anbar Miracle" is repeatable. Are local tribal elders and leaders in Afghanistan sufficiently fed up with the Taliban that they are ready to fight back, especially in venerable Taliban strongholds in the south and east? Is the tribal dynamic in Afghanistan too fractured and divisive to coalesce around such an initiative in any meaningful way? Can significant elements of the Taliban be co-opted if the insurgents believe they are winning the war and the United States and its allies are losing? Is the "Afghan surge" sufficient to convince mid-level Taliban otherwise? How likely is it that the United States is setting the stage for Afghanistan to return to a state of warlordism and civil war?

10 responses: Ron Marks, Michael F. Scheuer, Loren Thompson, Michael Brenner, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Joseph J. Collins, Wayne White, Michael Brenner, Gordon Adams

Since the Cold War ended (sigh), the James Bond movies aren't what they used to be and neither are the John le Carré novels. Real-life spying, too, seems in decline. The apparent Russian spy ring recently broken up by the FBI seems notable for how little serious intelligence work actually got done. The story has gone tabloid with Web video footage of the comely redhead who supposedly was one of the spooks. And if Israel's vaunted Mossad truly was behind the hit job on a Hamas official at a Dubai hotel in January -- as Dubai authorities allege -- then perhaps "vaunted" should be permanently consigned to the dustbin of spent plaudits. The assassins left hotel and airport video and cell phone fingerprints all over the place. And that raises a quite serious question: In the age of 24/7 global surveillance, does old-fashioned "trenchcoat" spying have a future anymore? Are covert operations still possible? Is the infamous Russian "illegals" program -- in which spies operate abroad, without diplomatic or other official cover -- a Cold War relic? What about U.S. covert ops? And how do you rate the quality of China's espionage efforts targeting Western countries?

6 responses: Col. W. Patrick Lang, Loren Thompson, Michael Vlahos, Michael Brenner, Paul R. Pillar, Ron Marks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is back in Washington this week, meeting with President Obama a few weeks after a similar White House visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and after an earlier visit by Netanyahu was postponed amid the Gaza flotilla fiasco. Bibi is publicly pushing for face-to-face talks with the Palestinians instead of the "indirect" talks now under way with U.S. assistance. He is using Palestinian rejection of direct talks to his public relations advantage, but Netanyahu clearly doesn't want to talk about final status issues such as borders and security that will inevitably come up in direct talks. Not talking about final-status issues of a two-state solution will quickly put him at odds with the Obama administration and yet talking about them will anger his right-wing coalition at home. He knows that Jerusalem is squarely on the table in such talks, yet he has said repeatedly throughout his career that he has no intention of agreeing to divide the city as the capital of both nations. His government rejects the "Clinton parameters" for peace established at Camp David in 2000 as leaving Israel with indefensible borders, yet his preference for essentially a demilitarized Palestinian rump state is also likely to put him at odds with Obama.

So why is he pushing for direct talks? Does he see it as an easy way to deflect pressure, knowing that as long as he continues to build settlements in East Jerusalem, Abbas cannot afford to enter into direct talks? Does he think such talks will go nowhere as long as Hamas continues to rule Gaza? Or perhaps he is seeking a trade: a softening of his position on Palestine in return for an ironclad US promise to confront Iran, militarily if necessary, if Tehran does not halt its nuclear program? What game is Netanyahu playing? And what should Obama's response be?

9 responses: Col. W. Patrick Lang, Michael F. Scheuer, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Michael Brenner, Michael F. Scheuer, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Paul Starobin, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Jim Phillips