While media attention typically focuses on the hard power role of the US military in the Pacific, the US Navy also invests significant time and energy in the soft power potential of humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the region. In the first of a series of dispatches from Washington, ASEAN Beat writer Eddie Walsh looks at the background of the US Pacific Fleet-backed annual Pacific Partnership mission – who is involved, what is the point and how much it all costs.

Over the past decade, stability operations have emerged as a core mission of the US military. In response, the US Navy established the Pacific Partnership – an annual training and readiness mission sponsored by the US Pacific Fleet that evolved out of the US military's response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. The mission is aimed at enabling the United States to conduct ongoing Humanitarian Civic Assistance (HCA) and theatre security missions in the US Pacific Command Area of Responsibility in concert with regional partners and non-governmental organizations. It also provides a means of demonstrating US strategic commitment to the region.

So who’s included in this year‘s itinerary? Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Micronesia are all listed as ports of call - nations that highlight the type of nation targeted through the programme. Over the past decade, many of this year's recipient states have experienced serious domestic instability, from the separatist movement that led to independence in East Timor to the domestic political violence in Papua New Guinea and Tonga. They’ve also tended to become heavily dependent on foreign aid and lack the capacity to provide basic social services, especially in the event of catastrophic crises.

Read more...

Osama bin Laden was found hiding in a military cantonment. Yet, the Pakistani establishment – the barely in control civilian administration, the all-powerful military and the supremely potent Inter-Services Intelligence – denies any knowledge of his presence in the country.

If this was any other man, these protestations could have been taken at face value. After all, Pakistan is a fairly large nation geographically and the sixth most populous country in the world. How could the government be expected to keep track of every one of its about 180 million citizens? But this was the al-Qaeda leader, and the most wanted man in the world.

Strangely, the US government is still ready to grant the benefit of the doubt to Pakistan, even while the trial of suspected Mumbai attacks conspirator David Coleman Headley is every day providing new details of the extent of the involvement of the military and the ISI in acts of terrorism.

Read more...

Delegates from over 50 countries travelled to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France last month to attend a two-day conference that highlighted the sustained threat of WMD terrorism. Since 2000, Interpol has been headed by American Ronald Noble, who has channelled the organization’s efforts more toward combating the threat of terrorism rather than its traditional emphasis on issues such as drug trafficking, people smuggling and war crimes.

Noble underscored the threat of WMD terrorism during the conference, urging his counterparts to recall that terrorists have actively pursued – and indeed used – this strategy before. He specifically pointed to Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 and the 2001 anthrax incident in the United States, reminding the audience that ‘a single individual with scientific knowledge and access to the right biological strain was able to murder five people, injure 17 and temporarily shut down the entire mail system of the United States for an estimated loss of $1 billion, while terrorizing other countries in the process.’

Interpol currently has a task force unit aimed at preventing radiological and nuclear terrorism, but it has decided to expand its mandate in order to address the issue of biological, chemical and explosive threats. In fact, Noble announced that the primary objective of the new entity was to ensure that Interpol built up its capacity to prevent a bioterrorist attack.

After a long delay, on May 24, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration finally unveiled its plan for human spaceflight, once the 30-year-old space shuttle programme ends in July.

The agency's plan is to use the basic design of Lockheed Martin's Orion space capsule, developed since 2005 as part of the ‘Constellation’ programme, which aimed to return astronauts to the moon by the 2020s. Constellation was cancelled by the Barack Obama administration last year, after NASA had already spent $5 billion on the Orion capsule.

Reviving Orion under the new Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle programme is part of the administration's plan to transport astronauts to Mars by the 2030s, bypassing the moon. But while the new capsule is funded, the rocket to launch it, and any long-term exploration initiatives that might require the capsule, aren’t.

Ever since the jailhouse door banged shut on disgraced Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, the bogeyman of cross-strait relations, we’ve grown accustomed to watching Taiwan-China ties assume a relatively smooth and positive trajectory. The notion of Taiwan abandoning the status quo has become remote, as too has the threat of China ordering its military to decimate the want-away island.

However, Taiwan and China’s generally warming relations may be about to experience a cold snap more reminiscent of the bad old days. China already has all the missiles it needs to deter Taiwan from ever declaring independence, but according to the Taiwanese government the build-up continues. Taiwanese intelligence now thinks that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has 1,600 missiles aimed at Taiwanese targets, and it says there will be 1,800 by 2012 – that’s despite the fact that China had until recently been expected to scale back its anti-Taiwan missile forces as a gesture of goodwill.

Moreover, National Security Bureau Director Tsai Der-sheng has also revealed that the PLA has stood up a new ballistic missile brigade in Guangdong, encouraging the Taipei press to muse on what kind of new missiles the brigade is operating: perhaps DF-16 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, or even the much-talked-about DF-12D anti-ship ballistic missile.

Taiwan’s revelations should be understood in the context of the visit of Gen. Chen Bingde, the PLA’s chief of staff, to the United States in late May, during which Chen bent Congress’s ear about ‘reviewing’ – by which he presumably meant ditching – the Taiwan Relations Act. The United States has been stalling on its commitment to supply arms to Taiwan, perhaps offering China encouragement that the US might cut Taiwan loose; but pressure in fact is building for Washington to make a sale, both in the United States and Taiwan.

The sale most likely to go through is that of 66 F-16C/D fighter aircraft (Taiwan wants submarines, too, but that isn’t going to happen). With nearly half the US Senate having just signed a letter to President Barack Obama – a.k.a. a welcome note to Gen. Chen – calling for the deal to go ahead, momentum over a sale is clearly building, and in the opposite direction to that espoused by Chen.

Unfortunately, the deal will be all about politics and business, not about defence and strategy. Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou wants the F-16s so that he can show voters he still has leverage in Washington, and that he is working to counter China’s widening military advantage. Obama may decide the time is right to fire a shot across China’s bows, with US voters increasingly agitated about the expansion of Chinese power; perhaps more importantly, the Americans want to keep the F-16 production line churning.

But strategically speaking, all the F-16 sale will do is rile the Chinese and make for choppier waters in the strait. Will 66 F-16s tip the military balance back in Taiwan’s favour? Not in the least. A lot of those 1,600 missiles are pointed at Taiwanese airstrips, and there are plenty of SAMs waiting in Fujian for any Taiwanese jets that actually manage to make it off the ground. The price of upsetting China seems high for an asset that does little to improve Taiwan’s strategic position. If the United States is going to sell weapons to Taiwan, it might consider selling something that would really strengthen the island militarily, not just weaken it diplomatically.

At the same time, it remains within China’s gift to outflank both the US and Taiwan on this issue: It could draw down some of those missile forces arrayed against Taiwan, and render American arms shipments to the island unnecessary.

Read more...

Regionalism is generally thought to have fostered a great deal of progress in Southeast Asia, and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are sufficiently enthusiastic about their regional project to be in the throes of setting up a more extensive ‘ASEAN Community’.

However, formalising the concept of a Southeast Asian region arguably has its drawbacks. One of them may be its encouragement of the sense that Southeast Asia is a ‘regional security complex’, Buzan and Wæver’s model of a group of states with interlinked security concerns.

The Philippine Navy’s reported pursuit of a submarine capability is an indication that Southeast Asia’s emergence as a regional security complex is putting undesirable pressure on countries situated within who can’t really afford to be there. For the Philippines, submarines are an annoying distraction: its chronically underfunded military has far more basic needs. But, with most of its neighbours busy procuring submarines of their own, Manila risks being sucked into the costly vortex of regional military balancing.

The 15 to 20 militants who attacked the Pakistani naval base PNS Mehran in Karachi on the evening of May 22 have once more exposed the magnitude of the security threat that violent Islamists pose to Pakistan.

The base is one of the country’s largest naval installations, and the significance of the attack is only rivalled by the October 2009 storming of the Army’s General Headquarters. The attack—claimed to be further revenge for the US killing of Osama bin Laden—was the third in a series of high-profile attacks since the US operation, which included targeting a paramilitary training compound.  

The dust has yet to settle, but the latest attack is believed once again to be the work of the Pakistani Taliban. More specifically, many media reports have attributed the attack to Ilyas Kashmiri, a veteran militant commander believed to be a former member of Pakistan’s Special Forces, a major leader during the anti-Indian jihad in Kashmir during the 1990s, and now the military commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Certainly, the sophistication of these attacks is in keeping with his style.

Read more...

George Orwell implored partisans to political debates to use words precisely. Terms flung around cavalierly, whether out of malice or simple carelessness, have a way of losing all meaning. They mislead, or degenerate into epithets. ‘The word Fascism,’ Orwell said, ‘has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”’

He might have said the same of ‘containment,’ a perennial in discourses about US-China relations. It’s a mantra among US policymakers that ‘the United States does not seek to contain China.’ President Barack Obama has uttered these words. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated them last autumn. Functionaries at all levels routinely follow suit. Nor is this a uniquely American statement. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard added her voice to the chorus during an April meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao, disavowing any policy of containment.

Yet many Chinese commentators insist with equal vehemence that the United States, Australia, and other Asian states are indeed constructing an alliance to hem China in. ‘Asia Version of NATO Resurfaces with Gillard’s Asia Visits,’ blared a headline in People’s Daily, editorializing on meetings at which Gillard denied any such thing. In a similar vein, Rear Adm. Yang Yi, the outspoken director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at China’s National Defense University, observes that for many of his countrymen, ‘US actions are perceived as a strategy to contain China. Some more radical Chinese scholars have already pointed out a “C-shaped ring of encirclement,” while others argue that the United States is organizing an “Asian version of NATO” directed at China.’ Among other things, Yang urges Washington to desist from naval exercises in China’s exclusive economic zone—thereby appeasing popular sentiment in China.

After a decade of steady expansion, the Chinese military has made significant strides toward limiting the United States’ ability to deploy its own armed forces in the western Pacific. A combination of new submarines, long-range anti-ship missiles and heavily-armed jet fighters underpins what the Pentagon calls Beijing's ‘anti-access, area-denial’ strategy, aimed at keeping the warships of the US Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, out of the South China Sea.

Successful area-denial would grant Beijing greater leeway in shaping the politics and markets of East Asia—and could even facilitate an armed attack on Taiwan, though this seems increasingly unlikely as relations between the two continue to warm.

Washington is taking this challenge seriously. The US Navy and Air Force are both developing robotic aircraft that could help erase China's recent military gains.

Read more...

A new UN report sheds light on long-held suspicions that North Korea and Iran have been involved in the trade of ballistic missiles. The 81-page report by a panel of UN experts found North Korea has apparently persisted in attempts to export ballistic missiles, missile components and relevant technology to Iran. The report also suggests that North Korea has finished, or is close to completing, a second launch complex for long-range missiles along its west coast. The Dongchang-ri complex’s facilities may, it seems, be ‘bigger and more sophisticated’ than the country’s first missile launch installation at Musudan-ri.

The panel was charged with monitoring North Korea’s compliance with UN sanctions, including a ban on trade in nuclear and missile technology, an arms embargo and the freezing of the assets of several North Korean individuals. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions against North Korea after it conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Yet these sanctions, which are supposed to prohibit commerce in atomic and missile systems with North Korea, have yielded only mixed results.

The sanctions have certainly severely impacted North Korea’s economy, but with the regime badly in need of funds, it is said to have ‘actively engaged in the export of complete (missile) systems, components and technology to numerous customers in the Middle East and South Asia.’ The panel also suspects that Pyongyang is likely to have swapped missile technology with Iran.

North Korea’s activities over the past year suggest that it has made substantial progress in its nuclear weapons programme, including the establishment of a new uranium enrichment plant and work on a light-water reactor. At the same time, as the report notes, North Korea has ‘continued to defy the bans on imports and exports of nuclear-related items, of conventional arms and of luxury goods.’ The UNSC sanctions have been ineffective in preventing North Korea’s nuclear development and weapons sales, though ‘they’ve made it more difficult and expensive for the country to pursue these.’

There are numerous gaps and weaknesses in international transportation and cargo regimes and Pyongyang has taken advantage of these shortcomings to transport its weapons to customers. Indeed, Pyongyang has specialised in setting up fraudulent firms and offshore banking operations, and has been employing people with fake names to disguise the identities of blacklisted firms and officials undertaking illegal operations. For example, the panel found that the sanctioned Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. has four fake names identified by the UN sanctions committee, as well as 12 other identities that weren’t designated.

The response from Iran, as expected, has been denial. It rejected charges of missile cooperation with North Korea. Slamming the panel’s findings as ‘fabrications,’ Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast argued that Iran’s own missile capabilities are so advanced that it doesn’t need outside help.

‘Iran’s (missile) technology and capability are advanced enough that we don’t need other countries to provide us technology or components,’ Mehmanparast said. ‘We have repeatedly rejected reports on the exchange of ballistic missile technology or parts with any country.’

However, an independent assessment made by US intelligence analysts suggests that Russia has also supported entities in China and North Korea to help Iran move towards self-sufficiency in the production of ballistic missiles. Indeed, Tehran’s collaboration with Pyongyang on missile development was evident during an October 2010 North Korean military parade, which showcased a new Nodong missile warhead. The warhead possessed what has been described as a strong similarity with the Iranian Shahab 3 triconic warhead.

The UN report goes on to state that North Korea is indulging in illegal trade of missile technology by transhipment ‘through a neighbouring third country,’ suspected to be China. The document increases apprehension over Beijing’s willingness to implement sanctions targeting the nuclear activities of North Korea and Iran. The banned materials are believed to have been transferred from North Korea to Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air. Since illegal shipment of cargo such as arms and related materials run the risk of physical inspection, North Korea prefers chartered cargo flights.

China has reacted strongly to the allegations of being North Korea’s most important ally. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said these assertions weren’t attributed to any country and that China wasn’t singled out. She added that the report hadn’t yet been adopted by the UN Security Council, and was therefore outside the ambit of the relevant Security Council sanctions committee.

However, China has a history of using its position as a veto holder to block the publication of UN reports that are critical of North Korea. The report has been sent to the 15 Security Council members for their approval, and will be released if all the countries agree. But the panel’s first report in May 2010 was held up by China and only released in November after Beijing dropped its objections. This time, the report’s submission itself was delayed after Chinese experts on the panel refused to sign the report, under pressure from Beijing. Such moves have raised serious questions over whether the panel was free of political interference.

Whatever China’s support for North Korea, though, it seems clear that the potential for Pyongyang to provide weapon-usable nuclear substances or atomic equipment to foreign nations continues to be a worry, and poses genuine challenges to international non-proliferation efforts. Besides the United States, Israel and other nations have also accused North Korea of illicitly aiding Syria in building an atomic reactor that was demolished in a 2007 Israeli air strike. The International Atomic Energy Agency is probing this matter.

There certainly seems enough evidence to suggest that Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment programme is primarily for military purposes. It seems clear, then, that if peace is to prevail in East Asia, Pyongyang must abandon its uranium enrichment programme and all aspects of its nuclear programme should be placed under international monitoring. How to check Pyongyang from being a proliferator remains a huge challenge for the international community.

Rajaram Panda is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) in New Delhi. This is an edited and abridged version of an article that was originally published by the organization here.