Some random thoughts and observations as January comes to a close.

- Mr. Obama sure has his priorities in order.  He blows off the largest gathering of world leaders in Paris to honor those killed during the Charlie Hebdo attacks, yet makes a beeline for Saudi Arabia to honor there new king.  At first, this seemed like some more Obama Administration miscalculations until I went to the gas pump on Sunday and filled up at $1.85.  I'm unconvinced Saudi Arabia is an active partner in combatting terrorism in the way that say the UK or even France are but by keeping their oil production up and prices low, they are helping to keep the Obama war machine turning.

-  Mr.  Obama then makes another speedy to trip to recognize the new PM of India.  Unlike events in Saudi Arabia, this actually does represent a paradigm shift for the US which has been at odds with New Delhi since the Cold War (and professing our continued support of Pakistan).  Alas it seems too little, too late as Russia has been involved with India since the days of the Soviet Union.  India has benefitted from Russian nuclear technology and now is on the cusp of receiving cheap Russian oil to help fuel an ever growing Indian economy.

- The challenge with deconstructing a given conspiracy theory is there is almost always a little truth to them.  Case in point, the conspiracy theorists have been labeling the Charlie Hebdo attacks as a "false flag" attack, meaning it was set deliberately to justify actions by other states usually leading towards war.  In this case, France had committed to sell two warships to Russia and was reducing their military which would mean fewer French troops and equipment would be available to support US led actions.  Now France is rethinking its drawdown.

- Speaking of the Charlie Hebdo attack, a renewed debate on guns has erupted on cyberspace.  The pro-gun side believes a well armed civilian populace would have prevented the massacre in Paris.  The gun-control side believes just the opposite that access to guns increases the likelihood for an even higher body county.  Now Interpol, the police agency consisting of countries with some of the most restrictive gun-control policies, has come out with a Hobson's choice; you either arm your citizens or impose martial law.  "Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem. One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security,” stated Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble.

- The US may need to figure which side of the argument it is on soon.  Our friends at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have in another demonstration of short-term thinking are shutting down 20 percent of the US coal-burning power plants.  Hooray!  Clean-air and less carbon emissions for all!  Except with coal accounting for 40 percent of US power production, and no new EPA approved plants coming on-line, this means our power grid is being constrained even more.  It won't take make much for either a physical or cyber attack on our power grids to put us down for the count.  But we will have cleaner air.

- The US poster-child for waging asymmetrical warfare (read, killing terrorists) is the aerial unmanned vehicle or simply drone.  These remotely piloted aircraft allow for the hunting and killing of terrorists in real-time.  They also present the illusion of conducting air warfare for less than using manned aircraft and without risking the lives of American pilots.  But time marches on and what was true just 10 years ago has greatly changed.  According to Gen. Mike Hostage, chief of the air service’s Air Combat Command, "Predators and Reapers are useless in a contested environment."  Whoops, isn't that exactly the kind of environment we DON'T want our pilots to fly in?  He goes on, "Today … I couldn’t put [a Predator or Reaper] into the Strait of Hormuz without having to put airplanes there to protect it."  Wait, you need to protect you unmanned aircraft with an manned aircraft?  Why yes, according to Gen Welsh who revealed that an F-22 — the planet’s most sophisticated stealth fighter — intercepted Iranian F-4 Phantom jets that were closing in on a U.S. Predator drone over the strait last March. In November 2012, Iranian Su-25 ground attack jets fired on, and missed, an American Predator over the strait. (Source:  Foreign Policy)

- Mr. Obama has instituted several changes to the US military during his tenure; allowing women in combat, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, and an increased focus on reducing sexual assault.  Any one of these would have be a major cultural shift for the US military, implementing all three while the US is still deploying troops to hostile areas has led to the lowest morale of the US military since Vietnam.  This is not to argue the merits of any of the decisions but to point out that in chasing the political side of the issue, the morale of the troops has suffered.  None of these issues are easy to implement, one need only look back on the history of race in the military.  To ask the military to sort through three major issues, while facing continued deployments as well as troop reductions, is just foolhardy.  If you are serious about these issues, then give the troops the time and support to change the culture.  Otherwise this is just politics and not about the troops.

- January is the month that US President's give their State of the Union address.  Mr. Obama said the U.S. was upholding 'the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small' by opposing what he called Russian president Vladimir Putin's aggression and supporting democracy in Ukraine (Source: Daily Mail).  Strong words from a president who has a military that  has been at war for 13 years, facing a drawdown, is going through major cultural changes, and flat out doesn't like their Commander-In-Chief (CINC). But now, according to the Daily Mail,  the Russians have claimed the speech showed how the United States believes it is 'number one' and is unable to be an equal.  The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Levrov reacted by saying, "Yesterday's speech by the president shows that at the centre of the U.S. philosophy is only one thing: "We are number one and everybody else has to respect that."

- The warmongering former POW and Senator, John McCain, now is pressuring Obama to increase troop presence, "American boots on the ground are necessary to defeat [the group] in Iraq and Syria." (Defense News).  Even McCain admits there is no coherent strategy for dealing with Daesh but he wants to add more troops?  A especially egregious recommendation from a Vietnam veteran, a war the defined the ridiculousness of quantifying military victory.

- The whole GOP/North Korea/Sony Pictures attack seems to have been forgotten.  However, now that the US is ramping up for the 2016 Presidential election, Iran is back on the front burner.  Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is expressing support for legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran if talks fail to reach a deal curbing its nuclear program (The Hill).  More troops for McCain plus more sanctions for Sherman seems to equal a future conflict with Iran?

- Finally, who will next lead the US through this chaos as the 45th President?  We've already heard enough about Hillary and Jeb, now we get other retreads such as Romeny, Biden, Christie and Rubio.  Elizabeth Warren is staying pat so far and as such, no other big name Democrats (other than Biden) are really coming out.  It is the Republicans to lose, I say that due to the sense of many people have had enough of Hillary.  She is tired and not nimble on her feet like her husband.  A prolonged campaign will invite too many opportunities for her to stumble and fall.  But if the Republicans front Jeb, the country may just turn off their electronic devices for the next election.

India

Writing any kind of political blog, especially one about foreign policy, attracts PR firms to send you offers to conduct interviews or receive press releases on a variety of topics (sometimes you wonder if they even bother to read your blog).  Even though I make no money from writing Losantiville, I see no reason to share my readership with some politician or pundit for free.

The reason for my rant is about a week ago I got a press release about Secretary State Kerry's Vision 2020 for India.  It was a professional press release full of all of the superlatives requisite for such a grand vision of partnering with a developing economic power.  I also thought it was perfectly ridiculous.  Kerry has never been to India as Secretary of State.  Neither had Hillary.  Kerry has been so tied up with Iraq, Ukraine, Israel, Egypt, Iran and Russia that I doubt he even remembers India.

Then I was perusing my news feed and came across an article from the Washington Post.  India elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a landslide victory back in May.  Here is where the story gets interesting.  The U.S. government had denied Modi a visitor’s visa for almost 10 years because of his inability to stop deadly religious rioting in 2002 when he governed Gujarat state.  An independent Indian panel concluded there was no evidence to charge him with a crime.

Ah but now Modi is the Prime Minister of the world's 10th largest economy (according to IMF figures for 2013), with 2nd largest population.  India also has nuclear weapons and does not get along with our "ally" Pakistan.  The US has completed ignored South Korea and Japan after announcing the "Pivot towards Asia" and left on their own, the two countries have found other things to occupy their attention.  South Korea has to worry about Kim Jong Un to the north.  Japan can't seem to make up their minds if they want to pick a fight with China or Russia over territory.

No wonder the US has to make nice with India.  But in typical fashion, the US is ready to jump on-board with another leader before they even understand what his government will be all about.  India is still sore after the arrest of an Indian diplomat last year.  India, like China, really does not have copyright laws so there is little appreciation for the US concern about protecting intellectual property rights.

Kerry has to dump everything that's been on his mind about the Middle East, including being lambasted by the Israeli press, and now try to lay the ground work for Modi's visit to Washington in September.  Kerry had this gem of a quote, "the moment has never been more ripe to deliver on the incredible possibilities of the relationship between our nations" (Washington Post).  A newly elected Prime Minister, that the US denied a visitor's visa for over 10 years, and the time have never been more ripe?  What a doof.

The foreign policy track record for Kerry and Team Obama in the last 8 months has been unimpressive.  India and Modi will not be so easily swayed, especially now that they are part of BRICS.  I wonder if I will get a press release about that?

BRICS

The BRICS development bank would seem to be about dumping the dollar and creating an alternative to the IMF, European Union and Federal Reserve.  However, upon further examination BRICS is something far more interesting.

First let's look at the membership.  

Brazil has the seventh largest economy in the world and its economic reforms has the country on par with some of the fastest growing economies in the world.  Brazil has a huge supply of natural resources and contrary to what Juan Valdez would have you believe, is the world's largest producer of coffee.

Russia is the country with the largest land mass in the world.  The Russian economy is the ninth largest in the world.  Russia is one of the largest producers in the world of oil and natural gas.  Russia also has tremendous mineral and other natural resource reserves.

India is the tenth largest economy and like Brazil, has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.  Considered a newly industrialized country, much of India's wealth is based on hi-tech.  India has the second largest population in the world.

China is the second largest country (by land area) in the world.  China has the world's second largest economy both by gross domestic product (GDP) and purchasing power parity (PPP).  China's economy is primarily based on manufacturing and exporting goods but they are also a major importer.

South Africa is the smallest member of the BRICS.  South Africa is the 25th largest country by land area as well as the 25th largest by population.  Like India, South Africa is considered a newly industrialized country and has the world's 28th largest economy (but has the 2nd largest economy in Africa).  Most of South Africa's wealth comes from diamonds and gold but like Russia, it also has vast resources of other strategic minerals.

Given this first list, it would appear that BRICS is merely a collection of countries with fast growing economies.  Most has large land masses and large populations meaning a good supply of resources and large workforce.  But that's how things look through the eyes of an economist.  

The BRICS share one other thing in common, something that trumps even their economic power.  Russia has the second largest inventory of nuclear weapons.  China has the third.  India has the fourth.  While South Africa currently doesn't have any nuclear weapons, it is the only African nation to have successfully developed nuclear weapons.  Brazil is only BRICS member not to have nuclear weapons.  All of the nuclear weapons combined under BRICS outnumbers all of the nuclear weapons of the US, UK and France combined.

Conventional forces are not to be ignored either.  China has the world's largest standing army (funded by the second largest military budget).  Russia has the second largest combined military.  India has the fourth largest combined military.  According to Global Firepower.com, Brazil has the 14th largest military in the world.  South Africa has the 14th.

Granted the comparisons are not apples to apples since there are cast differences in technologies between countries.  But technology can only compensate so far over numerical advantages.  For example, regardless of the F-35 advantages in technology, there are only so many copies of it to go around.  The F-35 demonstrates an inherent weakness of advanced technology; when things break it takes longer to fix.  According to Defense-Aerospace.com, the F-35A experiences a critical failure after 4.5 flight hours requiring 12.1 hours to repair.  

Obama is determined to reduce the size of the US military.  He began with reducing the number of nuclear warheads and the followed by instituting sequestration.  The US military has been at war for 12 years without and opportunity to reset.  Readiness is diminishing and there is little in the way of budgets to update legacy systems.  The US is not alone.  The UK, France, Australia and New Zealand are also beginning to drawdown their militaries.

The conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine continue to make the US look unable and unwilling to back up political rhetoric.  BRICS then stands as an unspoken threat to the former might of Western economic and military power. 

While I was away

I stepped away from the keyboard for a while to just read and absorb world events.  During that time, the war in Syria has raged on now involving the second or third major use of chemical weapons.  The Obama administration has verbally postured over "is it or is it really chemical weapons?" despite photographs and eye witnesses of mass casualties, more or less indicating the use of chemical weapons.  No other weapon produces mass casualties with bodies in contorted positions of pain.  The Obama administration now has decided to take a page out of the Clinton Administration and use cruise missiles to show their displeasure (which could, ironically, lead to more mass casualties).

The Obama administration was celebrating the Arab Spring a few years ago, the very event that has lead to the war in Syria and the mass rioting in Egypt.  The ouster of Mubarak and Qaddaffi have not lead to the rampant introduction of American style democracy.  Instead, old rivalries and desires for revenge control matters in Northern Africa.  The United States, badly over-extended from the war on terror, is in no position (physically or emotionally) to head into yet another conflict.

Even so, Al Qaeda recently sent the US State Department into DEFCON 1.  Embassies were closed throughout the Middle East due to the threat of imminent attack by Al Qaeda.  Somehow closing the embassies thwarted this imminent attack causing one to wonder, how serious was this attack?  Diplomats and US citizens working in those countries were not called back or evacuated so in theory, Al Qaeda could have still struck at US targets.

The announcement of the attack came on the heels of the revelation by Edward Snowden that the NSA had overcame the introduction of fiber optic networks by compromising telecommunications companies.  The NSA was created to intercept radio and telemetry signals by the Soviets and Chinese.  The same technology of course could be used to target anyone, even US citizens.  Then an interesting thing happened when copper cable began to get replaced with fiber; the NSA found fewer points to intercept signals.  Being a spy agency though, they quickly overcame this new technology by using third party vendors to sell modified prisms to telecommunications companies (hence the name "PRISM").  Unlike with copper, you can't tap a fiber optic capable (once the fiber is broken or crushed, light can't travel through it).  Prisms are used to splice signals into network operations centers.  The NSA used modified prisms that would basically send an exact copy of the incoming feed to NSA servers located near the companies network operations center.  There would be no loss of speed so until Snowden spilled the beans, no one was the wiser.

Snowden was hailed as a hero by a public that grown increasingly suspicious of big brother.  The Obama administration had to move quickly to vilify Snowden's actions and the threat of an Al Qaeda attack served as a timely way to discredit his actions.  Lost in translation was the fact the NSA and CIA exist to target FOREIGN enemies.  In days long ago, this meant the Russians or Chinese.  Today, terrorist has blurred this distinction were a threat to the homeland could be a US resident.

Taking advantage of the situation was Venezuela (no ally of the US since declaring the CIA poisoned their leader Hugo Chaves) offering Snowden asylum.  Unfortunately for Snowden, the offer came while he was stuck in Russia without a visa.  Putin initially played hardball indicating Russia would not grant Snowden asylum.  In the end though, Snowden did get to leave the airport and now is in Russia for the time being.

Times are very worrisome.  Syria and Egypt have been tearing themselves apart for almost a year yet the US has not directly intervened.  India has experience an epidemic of women being gang-raped (both foreigners as well as Indians), yet Hilary Clinton has remained remarkably silent.  Even when news reporters are raped or sexually assaulted in Egypt, the feminists in the US publicly remain quiet.  All of these events show that Syria, Egypt, India and of course Sudan are struggling with a level of internal strife that we can scarcely comprehend.  If we are unable to understand the beginnings, then I remain skeptical that we can accurately predict the end.

Is an India-China arms race brewing?

Just when it looked we were all set to watch a major flare-up in the Middle East, our friends in the Far East decided that they couldn't leave well enough alone. China's military build-up is well know but not as many people under the might of India.

India tends to be associated with more metephysicla things such as Hinduism and yoga. In reality, India is a warrior nation with a very proud and ancienty legacy. Shaolin monks learned martial arts from India.

Here we have two ancient cultures still locked over Arunachal Pradesh (north of Tibet) and could end-up having a modern war over the territory. According to Al-Jazeera, here's what we are looking at:

HOW DO THEY MEASURE UP?

China:

•China says it is to increase its military spending by 11.2 per cent in 2012 - to almost $110bn
•It wants to double that amount by 2015
•China's official defence budget is the second-largest in the world, after the US
•But its actual spending, according to some experts, may be as much as 50 per cent higher because China does not account for its expenditure on nuclear development and other programmes such as space
India:


•India's military power pales in comparison with China. Yet, it too is significantly increasing spending on defence
•The 2012 Indian defence budget was set at $36bn - an 11.6 per cent rise on that of the previous year, but still less than half of that of China
•India has the tenth-largest military budget on the planet
•Fifty-one per cent of India's military budget is spent on maintaining its considerable land army of more than one million people

The one item left off? Nuclear weapons. India developed a nuclear capability and while China most likely has more, it still is a factor in this situation. While all eyes turn to Iran and Israel, one must wonder what will develop here in the next few years.

Al Jazeera English

34 warships sent from US for Obama visit

Two things pop into mind reading this story. First, the huge cost of moving these ships plus the Secret Service detail (including vehicles) could probably help pay off part of the national debt. If India is so dangerous that we need to put all of this in place, why go? Our relations with Pakistan have suffered as a result of the Taliban's resurgence and US military actions causing civilians deaths. However, warming up to India does nothing to improve things in Southeast Asia. The whole trip is going to be a very expensive publicity stunt with little to no benefit to our foreign policies.

Update: Cost per day for this is $200 million.

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