| ISN Security Watch Of all the world's actors, the US security establishment is perhaps most concerned with China as a future rival. Each year the Pentagon submits to Congress an annual report addressing the military power of the People’s Republic of China. This year's report warned that "the pace and scope of China's military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces. China's expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances." Another significant strategic document, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, released in 2006, pinpointed China as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages absent US countermeasures." But what countermeasures should the US employ? One Washington think tanker, Robert Martinage, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, is touting dissuasion as a key component of US strategy. Although formally adopted as part of US strategy, Martinage argues that dissuasion is not well understood or practiced by US policymakers. Dissuasion, which is hardly new, can be thought of as a form of "pre-deterrence," and is designed to discourage a rival from developing threatening capabilities. ISN Security Watch With less than a year to go in office, US President George W Bush is desperately seeking a foreign policy achievement for the history books. He has set his eyes, no less, on a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Bush invited the parties to talks in the US late last year, and followed up with a presidential trip to the region in January. Nothing short of a final settlement between the parties is Bush's ultimate goal. As recently as 29 January, when he delivered his annual State of the Union message to the US Congress, Bush reiterated the goal of "achiev[ing] a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year." If Bush is serious about the possibility of such an achievement before he leaves office, then he is repeating the same pattern of mistakes he made when he committed the US military and other resources to stabilizing Iraq and to establishing a functioning democracy in that country. An Obama cabinet preview?ISN Security Watch He is a Republican senator from Nebraska, a friend of his party's US presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and, like McCain, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. And yet, Chuck Hagel has refrained from endorsing the presumptive Republican nominee for president. The main reason: Hagel is a vociferous opponent of the Iraq war and of the Bush administration's overall foreign policy. In a speech earlier this month at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), in Washington, Hagel expounded his views on US foreign policy, views that sound very much like Barack Obama's in their emphasis on diplomacy, internationalism and consensus-building. Hagel has not endorsed Obama, but it is possible that Hagel regarded his appearance as an audition for an Obama administration cabinet position such as secretary of state or secretary of defense. If this sounds a little farfetched, consider this: The Washington Post reported on 29 May that Hagel's wife contributed money to the Obama campaign. In 2000, both Hagels supported John McCain for president. In a broad hint at his CAP appearance, Hagel urged the next president to choose cabinet members from the opposing party to promote national unity. It should come as no surprise that office seekers are starting to position themselves now that Obama has emerged as the likely Democratic nominee. The 61-year-old Hagel is retiring from the Senate next year after two terms. He serves as a senior member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and is the ranking Republican on that body's Subcommittee on International Development and Foreign Assistance. It seems he is betting that the next president will be a Democrat. Terrorism Index 2008: blindsided by Pakistan
ISN Security Watch The experts at the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine were hit broadside with a development they didn't foresee when compiling their annual Terrorism Index, released on 19 August: the resignation of Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf the day before. The fourth annual Index, which was gathered from opinion surveys of US foreign policy and security experts across the ideological spectrum, suggested a ray of optimism. A year ago, 91 percent of the experts said they believed the world was growing more dangerous for the US; this year, that figure fell to 70 percent. But Musharraf's resignation added a major element of uncertainty to the picture, acknowledged participants in the survey effort at a press briefing in Washington. It highlighted one of the major conclusions suggested by the Index: Pakistan now represents the central front on the war on terror. Musharraf's departure added a degree of instability to the country's politics and with that, greater risk. But these recent developments, they also said, should not necessarily detract from the sliver of optimism this year's terrorism report offered. US, Pakistan: Personality politicsISN Security Watch The assassination of Benazir Bhutto brought to an abrupt end the Bush administration’s policy of arranging a shotgun marriage between the slain leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the country’s president, Pervez Musharraf. The former prime minister’s return to Pakistan after eight years of exile was accompanied by strenuous efforts from Washington to broker a power sharing agreement between Bhutto and Musharraf. Bhutto was regarded in Washington as more secular, more moderate and more determined to fight Islamic extremists than any of Pakistan’s political alternatives, including the other principal opposition leader, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The Bush administration’s efforts in Pakistan - and their ultimate failure - illustrates the problems associated with a policy based on personality rather than process. | | ISN Security Watch Progressives in the US are bemoaning their country's besmirched human rights image of the last few years They blame the Bush administration, of course, pointing to atrocities such as Abu Ghraib and the absence of constitutional rights for Guantanamo detainees as examples of human rights abuses by the US government. These circumstances have damaged the credibility of the US to advocate for human rights elsewhere. "It is not the Statue of Liberty anymore that people associate with the United States," said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal, Washington-based think tank, at a human rights conference held last week at Georgetown University in Washington. "It is the black hole of Guantanamo and the picture of an Iraqi standing on a box with electrodes attached to him at Abu Ghraib." A new pro-Israel voice in Washington ISN Security Watch In Israel, it is not unusual for a large proportion of the public to oppose government policies on war and peace, often quite loudly and vociferously. But in the US, opposition to Israeli government policies is often termed "anti-Israel," an undesirable label for most US politicians since a large proportion of the US public supports Israel and Jewish Americans form an important voting constituency. This dichotomy is often attributed to Washington's "Israel lobby," with the main player being the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Critics say the AIPAC has been taken over by neoconservatives and has tied the knot with evangelical Christians, whose opposition to territorial concessions by Israel is matched only by the extreme Israeli right wing. On the other hand, public opinion surveys indicate that a majority of American Jews, including many prominent Jewish politicians such as Senators Joseph Lieberman and Frank Lautenberg, support a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A majority of Israelis are similarly disposed. US-Taiwan: status quo strain ISN Security Watch Strains in US-Taiwan relations were evident when a frustrated Taiwanese president addressed an audience in Washington from Taipei by way of a video hookup. That relations between Taipei and Washington should be strained is in itself remarkable, since there are no official ties between the two countries. But the Bush administration has come down hard on Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian and his plan to hold a popular referendum on whether the Republic of China - the official name of the island republic - should apply to the UN under the name Taiwan. US: Losing Europe?ISN Security Watch Will the next president of the United States improve American's image in Europe? It depends, of course, on who wins the November election. But only in part. America's Iraq fiasco and the Bush administration's unilateralism has so tarnished the US persona that even the country's closest allies, with only a few notable exceptions, have headed for the hills. The case in point is Afghanistan, the one conflict that the consensus opinion views as a necessary and righteous war against the perpetrators of 9/11 and their protectors. The US misadventure in Mesopotamia has so compromised US capabilities to confront the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan that it has soured America's NATO allies to the US conception of the global war on terror. The Germans have said recently that they will not deploy troops to the more dangerous areas of southern Afghanistan, while French and Turkish troops appear to have taken more of a peacekeeping than an offensive posture. So the task of polishing the US image to a shine will be a formidable one. The question is which of the approaches of the three remaining candidates is most likely to achieve this aim. Next Tuesday's other elections
ISN Security Watch Barack Obama may be the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States, but his race toward the Oval Office is far from over. Presidential races have notoriously tightened in the last week of campaigning, and sometimes the underdog pulls off a surprise victory. But there is another series of important elections taking place this coming Tuesday in the US: the congressional races. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 Senate positions are slated to be filled. Here, the outcome is clear and almost inevitable: The Democrats will add to their majorities in both houses of congress. American voters tend to shift political gears when they perceive their country to be going in the wrong direction. That is one reason why Obama is favored to win the presidency. But voters also consider their vote for president and for members of congress differently. Polls show that 75 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with their country's direction and that they will be taking it out on congressional Republicans on election day. The upshot is that the Democratic majority will be feeling quite muscular when the new US congress is sworn in next January. Even if they have a Democratic president to work with, a 60-percent Democratic congress will not be content to be water carriers for a President Obama. They will want to push some of their own agenda, which is likely to be further to the left than the middle ground Obama will try to stake out. Of course, the president can veto congressional legislation, but not even a President John McCain is going to veto everything. In any event, congressional initiatives are likely to play a bigger role in Washington come January than they have in the last eight years. | |