Friday, August 30, 2013

Greenwald, Miranda, and Encryption Keys




It isn’t essential to my world view for Snowden et. al. to be supercompetent, supersecure, superleakers…or for them to be stupid, narcissistic, traitors.

But it seems to be important for some people…

So the British allegation that Miranda was carrying a written decrypt key on his person at Heathrow, and the British police have been able to decrypt 75 files has generated a considerable amount of hoo-hah.

My humble opinion:

Greenwald and Miranda could have been guilty of sloppy tradecraft.  Maybe.

But I think it’s equally possible that the British spooks are loading documents onto Miranda’s seized electronics themselves so they can recover them and announce the Snowden gang is a bunch of reckless and dangerous dingbats.

Only way that Greenwald could rebut the allegation would be to decrypt everything on the drive and say “You see! Those documents weren’t part of the dump (or already were in a different folder).  They’ve been added!”

Don’t see him doing this.

I had the same thought when the Independent published a document that it said was among the documents Snowden had taken.  I noticed they didn’t say “We obtained Snowden’s digital copy of the document.”  It was more like, “We got this document.  GCHQ says Snowden’s got it (too).”

That kind of activity helps divert the narrative from “Snowden reveals massive surveillance” to “Snowden endangers spooks and national security.”

I don’t think that’s an accident…and I think that it would be considered worth diddling with Miranda’s electronics to get this kind of result.

Just sayin…

Is the nine dash line dead?

In the context of the PRC charm offensive at ASEAN (leavened by a sharp slap at Philippine's President Aquino), the Beijing Review has published a detailed explanation of "core interests" that also provides some pretty significant looking and novel interpretations of China's South China Sea claims.

 In the article, dated August 26, China's declaration of key interests misinterpreted, the anonymous author rehashes the evolution of the "core interest" concept since 2005, including  "territorial sovereignty" as a bedrock value that cannot be compromised and must be defended by any and all means including armed force if necessary.

But then...

However, some media, think tanks and military officers have misinterpreted China's announcement of its core interests as a regional policy shift and an external show of strength. Their inaccurate portrayals have undoubtedly influenced Washington's China policy.
In July 2010, the Japanese and U.S. media quoted an anonymous American expert as saying that China has included the South China Sea in the country's core national interests, adding that the United States, Japan and India should join hands to contend against China on the issue.
However, no internal or public Chinese document or declaration at the time made claim to the entirety of the South China Sea—it has merely asserted its sovereignty over certain islands and islets in South China Sea, and stated that it will engage in negotiations and dialogues when disputes arise. China is committed to the Declaration on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea and respects and will maintain the freedom of navigation on the sea.
...
The false rumors have spread from the United States, Japan and some Southeast Asian countries that China has laid claim to the entirety of the South China Sea and will commit to an area denial strategy in the region. It is believed that these inaccuracies aim to escalate maritime disputes between China and its neighboring countries around the South China Sea, creating tensions that intend to justify the U.S. "pivot to Asia."
If this position holds, it seems the PRC is shifting away from the anachronistic nine dash line to a more UNCLOS-friendly restatement of its South China Sea claims as stemming from its sovereignty over specific above water features.

Source for map illustration: http://globalbalita.com/2013/04/20/no-useable-oil-in-disputed-areas-us/


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

China, Syria, Reuters, and the Security Politics of Middle East Energy




Reuters has a good article by Ben Blanchard on China’s frustrations in the Middle East.

Since it is unable to project power in the Middle East, the PRC has been forced to stand by as the U.S. makes a royal cockup of the region.

Unfortunately, I feel the article delivered a clanger in its conclusion—that the PRC relies on U.S. good offices to “guarantee stability” and keep the oil flowing:

China effectively relies on a strong U.S. military presence in the region to guarantee stability and the smooth flow of oil, especially through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened in the past to close in the event of war.

One thing the US has not delivered to the Middle East in the last fifteen years is “stability”.  

And I don’t think the PRC’s strategic thinkers necessarily believe that Middle East instability is a bigger threat to China’s oil supply than the US presence.

After all, if there’s one thing that everybody in the Middle East, including mortal enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia, is they all want to export to China.  

As to whether or not the United States is simply and altruistically interested in making sure that China’s energy purchases make it safely through the Straits of Hormuz…

…as the stabilizer and oil flow assurer-in-chief, the United States, the U.S. is distinctly aware of the strategic leverage it holds over China by maintaining its presence in the Middle East, as I pointed out in a recent rummage through the historical record:


In 2006, in the American Prospect, Robert Dreyfuss described the Cheney outlook on the People’s Republic of China, based on the account of Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson.  Dreyfuss wrote:


Two of the people most often encountered by Wilkerson were Cheney's Asia hands, Stephen Yates and Samantha Ravich. Through them, the fulcrum of Cheney's foreign policy--which linked energy, China, Iraq, Israel, and oil in the Middle East--can be traced. The nexus of those interrelated issues drives the OVP's broad outlook.



Many Cheney staffers were obsessed with what they saw as a looming, long-term threat from China.



...



For the Cheneyites, Middle East policy is tied to China, and in their view China's appetite for oil makes it a strategic competitor in the Persian Gulf region. Thus, they regard the control of the Gulf as a zero-sum game. They believe that the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. military buildup in Central Asia, the invasion of Iraq, and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf states have combined to check China's role in the region. …


One may speculate that Mr. Cheney’s determination to keep a threatening thumb over China’s Middle East oil artery lives on in the Obama administration’s continuing involvement in the bottomless pit of money, munitions, and misery that is US Middle East policy, despite the President’s avowed interest in pivoting away from the Middle East to the peaceful and profitable precincts of Asia.


As the U.S. dependence on Middle East oil has shrunk, thanks to the twin miracles of fracking and Canadian gunk, Chinese dependence on Middle East oil has become well-nigh absolute, a state of affairs that is, as Blanchard points out, imperfectly reflected in the state of affairs in the Middle East.

This shift in U.S. foreign dependency from Middle East energy to Pacific trade supposedly underlies the “pivot to Asia” a.k.a. “the rebalancing”.  But the U.S. still seems militarily stuck in the Middle East for a variety of reasons, and maybe because continued leverage in the matter of key global energy flows is simply too irresistible to abandon.

The Chinese have tried to pivot into the Middle East—diplomatically.  Since PLA power projection is about a decade away from aspirational, as the Reuters piece points out, the PRC has tried to midwife a Middle Eastern order based on stability through the principle of non-interference i.e. Saudi Arabia and Iran are welcome to deploy their resources in their pursuit of stability (suppression of domestic democratic sentiments) without Obama-style rabble-rousing in support of democracy, human rights, and freedom to connect.  And as Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, depose their authoritarian regimes and send new governments through the revolving door of populist/factionalist/military governance, China is always there with a welcoming handshake and offer of aid.  And the PRC has been reasonably surefooted in walking the Palestinian/Israeli tightrope, maintaining good relations with both sides.

If anything, events in Syria tend to confirm the wisdom of the Chinese approach.  So I found Blanchard’s observation that “The worsening Syria conflict has exposed an uncomfortable truth behind China's cherished policy of non-interference: Beijing cannot do much to influence events even if it wanted to,” a little off the mark.   

The PRC doesn’t want to influence events inside Syria.  It doesn’t want the U.S. to influence events inside Syria.  It wants Assad to influence events inside Syria.

The PRC has received precious little support from the Obama administration in its effort to quiet down the ruckus in the Middle East.  Perhaps the United States, driven its irresistible imperative to impose human rights, democratic, and non-proliferation norms in the region, is unwilling or unable to address China’s amoral and opportunistic desire for stability.  

Or maybe the U.S. security establishment remembers China’s free-riding on expensive U.S. initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and resents Chinese footdragging and backfilling on Iran sanctions.
 
Do Chinese establishment liberals debate whether the PRC should have thrown a few lives and a few million dollars into the bloody maw of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shown a greater eagerness to cripple the Iranian economy on America’s behalf on order to ingratiate itself to Washington?   

Maybe.  However, a look at recent history implies that U.S. hostility to the PRC is systemic and institutionalized, and there is no G2 nirvana in the offing.  So any U.S. gratitude to China—and willingness to consider Chinese energy anxieties when the next opportunity for a bloody Middle Eastern debacle, such as attacking China’s key energy partner Iran over its alleged nuclear transgressions, presents itself-- would be conditional, temporary, and unreliable.

It certainly is not a slamdunk cinch that China considers that its energy security is best served by a U.S. naval force lurking in the Straits of Hormuz, or even that the PRC’s interests would be better served by inserting a substitute PLA presence in the region.

I am sure that China security hawks are arguing that the PRC should attempt to replicate the U.S. precedent, and try to project PRC military power into the Gulf, thereby abandoning the principle of non-interference (and, inadvertently, providing a measure of vindication-by-imitation of a US policy of intervention that has yielded catastrophic costs but precious few benefits, which is why, I believe, any perceived Chinese drift from the principle of non-interference receives excited attention from the Western security press).

I also expect that there are voices within the PRC establishment who regard the U.S. formula for global relevance (whenever the dark cloud of instability appears, look for the silver lining of an opportunity for U.S. intervention) as a luxury that only the United States can afford.  And, even if the PRC decides to embark on the quixotic and expensive quest of Middle East military power (and somehow avoid tripping over India, which might have a few things to say about Chinese carrier groups sailing off its doorstep), as long as the US worries about China, the United States will not surrender its role as Middle East pot-stirrer in chief to the PRC.

Maybe there are better and more cost-effective ways to hedge against an interruption of shipments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and Iran.  Things like spending billions to buy friendships with those in power, instead of spending hundreds of billions on force projection (and getting forced into countless bad decisions about how to use that power, as is happening to the US in Syria).

As the center of gravity of the oil markets shift to China and Asia—and the attention and interest of the Middle East oil barons follow—perhaps China’s best hope is that the United States will tire of the Middle Eastern game, Saudi Arabia and Iran will decide that a prolonged shutdown of the Straits of Hormuz in a war of annihilation is an option not worth pursuing, and the region will refocus on its core business of pouring non-renewable energy down the thirsty throat of the Asian economic miracle.





Monday, August 26, 2013

It’s a Trap!




Did the Syrian rebels trap President Obama into military action by using his own words, specifically his definition of use of chemical weapons as a "red line"?

I, for one, am somewhat skeptical of the idea that the Assad regime decided to mount a chemical weapon attack against a Damascus suburb just as a UN chemical weapons investigation team was hunkering down in Damascus.

Assad is no angel, but, like most dictators, his survival skills—particularly, the skill of keeping his outrages below the level that provoke Western military action—seem pretty well honed.

As an alternative version of what might have gone down, imagine some guy, let’s say, Prince B---, tells President Obama:

Yeah, the chemical weapons attack was a false flag operation by the rebels.  Whatcha gonna do about it, Mr. Red Line?   Pin the attack on the rebels and destroy the Syrian uprising?  Do nothing and look like a wuss?  Or blame Assad, bury the truth about the attack under a pile of cruise missiles and propaganda, keep the insurrection going, and promote an image of American leadership in the Middle East?

For the rebels and their supporters, foreclosing the possibility of any West-brokered negotiated settlement with Assad might be worth a few hundred innocent lives.

The carefully prepared—written!—U.S. backgrounder laying the PR groundwork for some kind of military action against Syria deployed the “too late” argument, as in “The Syrian government was ‘too late’ in permitting access to the site of the alleged attack”.

I’m no expert on sarin forensics and the difficulties of detecting traces after five days, but I do have a pretty good recollection of the run-up to the Iraq War, when the Bush administration was rather anxious to bring an end to UN inspection process, primarily, I suspect because it had discovered an embarrassing lack of WMDs.

Here’s a nice item of “too late” memorabilia from CNN in September 2002:


Powell says it's too late for Iraq to negotiate


WASHINGTON (CNN) --Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that U.N. weapons inspectors must be allowed to go "anywhere, anytime" if they returned to Iraq -- rejecting that country's conditional offer to allow inspections to resume.
"If they have no weapons, what are they hiding?" Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

"They find all kinds of excuses, a thousand excuses -- 'There are spies on this team. We don't want this. When are sanctions going to be relieved and removed?' The issue is Iraqi noncompliance, and we should not allow them to move us off that issue."

At a news conference Saturday, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said his nation would allow inspectors to return only if the United States doesn't bring military action and if U.N. sanctions are lifted.

"If there is a solution which maintains Iraq's sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready," Aziz said.

President Bush brought his case against Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly last week, challenging the international organization to enforce resolutions seeking to disarm the Saddam Hussein regime.
Aziz denied Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of exaggerating the threat Iraq poses to the region.

Powell said it was too late for Iraq to negotiate the terms for the return of international weapons inspectors.

He said he was working with members of the U.N. Security Council to try to hammer out a resolution that lays out Iraq's violations of U.N. resolutions, what the country must do to meet the U.N. conditions and what the international community will do if it does not respond.

"The time for Iraq to respond was years ago," Powell said. "They now have an opportunity to respond now with this new resolution. But what we cannot allow to have happen is to get into this haggling and listening to the duplicitous comments that are constantly coming out of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz."

...

"Enough is enough," said Bush, who argued that Saddam has defied the United Nations 16 times since the Persian Gulf War. "The United Nations will either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be irrelevant, and that's what we are about to find out."

Bush also said if the world body did not act, he was prepared to take matters into his own hands.

"Make no mistake about it," Bush said. "If we have to deal with the problem, we'll deal with it."





Find this article at:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/09/15/powell.aziz.iraq