Bluepaper: BRIC Nations Not All About Economic Performance

Brazil, Russia, India and China, a.k.a. the BRIC nations, have Anders Aslund over at FP Magazine wondering what Russia's doing in the group. His questionable premise: that Russia's value to BRIC is its economic performance. Not necessarily.

BRIC heads of state have been meeting, not just their foreign ministries or top business players. One would expect geopolitics to come up if nothing else, to save valuable time on forwarding mutual agendas. Russia brings a large HUMINT and human security network to BRIC's table where information is an asset. It also has immense natural resources that could benefit BRIC's rising political economies with price limits on oil and gas in exchange for loans as was done in contract with China. Why not do the same for others with cash to lend?

Aslund questions why Russia has not been investing in its infrastructure, and criticizes the inefficiency of nationalized corporations such as Gazprom and Rosneft, whose inefficiencies he says are worsening. Russian power-brokers, a.k.a. the Putin government, nonplussed by the financial crisis, likely leapt at huge cash-influxes from lender nations while short-selling oil, gas and armaments in long range contracts.

There is less incentive to upgrade oil and gas infrastructure where the country is locked into less profitable supply contracts.

The Reset & Reality: US-Russia, & the Future

Reset in Context

When the Obama Administration canceled a planned East European missile shield in favor of a sea-launched ABM system, Russia announced that it was canceling plans to deploy responsive missiles in Western Russia. Honored mutually, that's a reset even though the latter days of the Cold War saw pithier accords.

Reality

Russia is nowhere near entering a new era of rapid mutual constitutional democratization with the US in the lead, however, increased cooperation may be closer than we think because of startling changes in the world that make the two former Cold War empires vulnerable to new players vying for WMD, superpower and great power status. In some quarters, prospective natural disasters could also force the world's traditional competitors together in unprecedented ways.

The Putin government has unleashed forces that should sober US policy makers against expecting sea change in US-Russian cooperation in the short to midterm: indoctrination of future leaders (youth) with Neo-Soviet Russian nationalism; capitulation to crime bosses with monetary interests in the status quo; and military-economic agreements with co-authoritarian China that has expressly pursued a model of imperial economic resource dominance.

Regional and Immediate Issues Tied to Missile Decisions

Other reasons for missile shield changes: Notwithstanding denials (Secretary of Defense Gates in the NY Times for example), Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates had long sought to build regional support for a successful completion of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. To shore up Russian support to this end, they have repeatedly called on US voices in and outside government to eliminate Cold War rhetoric and clearly show Russia that the Cold War was over. Russia's permission for NATO's resupply to its Afghan forces over and above Russia remains important because of Pakistan's instability.

Realistic Optimism: Mutual Benefits

A stable Afghanistan is also in Russia's and China's best interests. However, the latest on Afghanistan is that the US Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal predicts a failure there without larger NATO troop commitments. (See our earlier analysis on enlisting regional powers' assistance with security operations in their interest).

Failed border states become security and immigration nightmares for their neighbors, including Russia and China. Such failed states become breeding grounds for militants from disaffected populations, i.e. Chechens, Dagestanis, Uighers, Taliban and so forth. 

Regarding Russia, intelligence estimates and RAND reports put its problems in grave terms, especially its ethnic Russian de-population and its burgeoning Islamic population in the South and in Moscow. Such trends, despite Russia's energy wealth acquired through nationalization, could render her indefensible without counterproductive crisis-defense contingencies. Neither is it in US interests that Russia should become a nuclear and fossil resource power subject to Islamic theocracy that has shown itself vulnerable to radicalization and coalition with radical, like-minded regimes.

Conclusion

Long overdue: a mutual US-Russian quest for the better national project each could have become if not for the Cold War. The US anticipation of a "peace dividend" implied such a priority. Will the Putin and the American neoconservative era become a dated interlude in the history of US-Russian relations followed by breakthroughs in unprecedented cooperation? Such cooperation would benefit world stability and balance of power.

History Glance: U.S. Security, Cohesion & the Provocation Factor

McCarthy Era

Did the Soviets feed information or suggestion that would shape Senator Joseph McCarthy into a proxy agent provocateur? Most references define the term as persons sent to provoke an opponent to engage in extreme, rash, unpopular, or excessive reactions that discredit a person or idea dangerous to the agent's employer.

The agent need not be a person, but may be information. It may be true information, employed in a way to destroy its own credibility. It may be false information, appearing true. It may be half-truth. Or in the case of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, it may have been true information disclosed in a way calculated to activate McCarthy's personality type toward Soviet ends.

Without access to all classified (or destroyed) information, the McCarthy provocation argument is speculative. However it is a reasonable candidate for more research. Ten years ago, authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev obtained intelligence records from RARIO, Russia's Association of Retired Intelligence Officers, that suggested Joseph McCarthy's suspicions about large scale Soviet espionage efforts within the US were generally correct. Other verified information from sources such as the Mitrokhin Archive, defector Anatoly Golitsyn and comparative research by historian Christopher Andrew of the U.K., support Weinstein and Vassiliev's findings.

McCarthy's outspoken, egotistical style was consistent with persons prone to embattlement and overstatement. Central to Soviet oppression of its own dissidents were psychological manipulation techniques. Did the Soviets feed McCarthy's personality with information to activate behavior that would provoke resentment and doubt around him?

We know that McCarthy's extreme pursuit of communists all around wearied those subject to him with fear. At some point, cognitive dissonance pushed them toward disbelief in his messages, in part because of his penchant for pointing a fearful prosecutorial finger.

The Soviets knew that influential Americans were tiring of McCarthy. People wanted the fear campaign to go away with its sense of unpredictable unfairness. Those legitimately and falsely within McCarthy's crosshairs had an interest in amplifying both the extremity of the fear and the general sense of unfairness. The pressure predisposed people to want to believe McCarthy was mad, ridiculous and paranoid so that they could be released from the fear.

As few propositions can survive the ridicule or shaming of their key proponents, the public dismissed suspicion of greater magnitudes of Soviet espionage in the US after McCarthy the man was humbled.

The BBC has snippets of two speeches that tell us something about what was happening in the U.S. Senate in the thick of the Cold War. After hearing them, this discussion will turn to some eerily similar sounding rhetoric and technique from the past decade of politics and punditry in the US. Here are the two McCarthy era voices:

Sen. Margaret Smith Chase

Sen. Joseph McCarthy

The US Underbelly: Twenty-Four-Seven-Campaigning a Cold War Virus?

Having listened, fast forward to recent decades in which the US has waged a Cold War within itself using a 24-7 campaign mode made possible by media technology. This takes place within the traditional media, on the internet, and through government-influenced organizations.

Take for example, the popular and heavily attended Rush Limbaugh radio show. If you listen carefully to the BBC audio link above, you can hear a resemblance between Sen. McCarthy's speaking style, tempo and occasional word choices and that of Rush Limbaugh. The comparison here is not to suggest that either man is a traitor to the US, but that each man was highly influential, had a following, and both were polarizing figures within the US despite their differing fields.

The Limbaugh video I just linked to involves an issue, the substance of which is worth thinking about: whether developments in American government are contrary to individualism. What was your response to the fact that it was Limbaugh who spoke about the status of individualism in the US? Did you either discredit or not listen to whatever he said, or, totally agree depending on your predisposition? Did you take away everything he said, or whatever confirmed your initial response to him?

The national polarization that figures such as McCarthy and Limbaugh provoke ascended to extremes in recent history, when it embroiled multiple courts and ultimately the US Supreme Court in a contested US presidential election in Bush v. Gore. The conservative court would not likely have taken the case had the specter of instability through distrust not haunted the system. The extremity of that erosion should not be underestimated as a national security factor to be addressed.

The lessons taken from divisive figures should not be too simplistic. No one should make political or analytic laws that filter out the messages of such figures based on their negative approach or history. Policy makers during the Cold War should have avoided acceptance of a McCarthy-bad slogan specifically because of the possible employment of tactical agent-provocateur (intended, programmed or incidental) from the USSR against McCarthy. Today, Limbaugh-bad slogans or those applied to liberal polemicists are also unwise if they tend not to take seriously how such broadcasted messages may be used by nations adversarial or competing with the US.

If all we know is the badness of a McCarthy or Limbaugh, we will miss out on any letters of truth they may have carried in their burning mail bags. Someone needs to take the bags from them, put out the fire and sort the mail. But focus on the bag's contents. Search these influential persons thoroughly for what they actually have, or for what their propaganda (true and / or false) means. It's belief among large audiences is itself worth analyzing. If truth-tellers are hard to find, indicators derived from them may be more helpful.

What is the rational response to a McCarthy or Limbaugh? Did you listen to the BBC link's audio of Republican Sen. Margaret Smith Chase calling for unity against the enemy, not internecine political warfare within the two-party system?

Sen. Chase spoke to the emotional fatigue of the nation over McCarthy's divisive tactics, yet she also called for unity in awareness of the Soviet espionage and military threat. Her response was a more complex non-partisan stance simply delivered. It was free of the cognitive dissonance that had been falling out all around McCarthy. It was a refreshing view wisely chosen by BBC editors in the link above.

US Politics and Cohesion

Yet what if Cold War techniques infected US politics, culture and society? Are we our own agent provocateurs in the US, driven by the ceaseless campaign model? Have we not already seen the incivility decried in McCarthy's actions amplified in recent decades? Let's analyze an example from a recent senate contest.

Agent provocateur tactics may have played out in a recent North Carolina U.S. Senate campaign. Let's look at this response by Kay Hagan against incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Hagan responded to an attack on her Christianity by incumbent opponent Senator Elizabeth Dole's campaign after Hagan reportedly met with a group called Godless Americans PAC.

This analyst wondered why Hagan, a Presbyterian elder and Sunday school teacher running for office in a majority Christian state, would seek the support of a group called the Godless Americans PAC without a plan. The answer: she didn't. This analysis disagrees with that of Bill Bennett's on the CNN Wolf Blitzer link above in which he criticized Hagan's meeting with the PAC as politically unwise.

Hagan's meeting with the PAC, intended or not, worked as an agent provocateur. It tempted Senator Dole with a juicy slam dunk argument that Hagan must be Godless herself if she met with an atheist PAC. And once that hook was set, it enabled Hagan to air the devastating response that made Dole appear grasping, mean-spirited, careless and even fraudulent. Hagan cast the bait, Dole bit, and Hagan set the hook, reeling Dole out of the sea of power. This is ugly politics, but Hagan came out looking like the true Christian. Was she?

Conclusion

The 24-7 campaign culture hearkens back to Cold War divisiveness. It raises the question: do the partisans care whether what they do and say invites results planned for by opponent regime intelligence agencies? Even in campaigns?

Tectonic ideologic and religious division are exactly those sort of topics useful to an international opponent without a shot fired. Fomenting disintegration among them from top to bottom. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Not all of the technology in the world can stop it if it becomes deeply entrenched.

US partisans have moved into all-campaigning all-the-time, a sign that U.S. identity and cohesion are under attack outside of campaign season. If a nation is constantly in campaign mode, how can it have unified legitimacy of leadership? In 2000, the elections moved into the courts. Al Franken's race for the Senate became litigation.

The existence of the two parties dominating U.S. politics has long been a tool for a pendulum-like manipulation of extreme partisan fears on both sides. The politics of fear employed by both parties is territory ripe for foreign agency exploitation. It happened to the Soviets at immense human cost. Perhaps they learned its efficacy from the Nazis during WW2.

Update on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 02:23PM by ABP Analyst

The flap over Cambridge PD and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has become an excessive distraction to the US Presidency. Designed or not, the Cambridge situation became a provocation to the Obama Administration.

What divisions have not been exploited by two-party politics in constant campaign mode? Perhaps campaign activity would best be limited to time, place and manner just as commercial speech is. The place for specific cases and controversies over race issues to be most productively decided is through the courts and or via the Congress.

Race and ethnicity are among the most corrosive agents to the glue of a nation state. Enemies with the means will almost always exploit the propaganda value of a Cambridge incident, especially with timing so close to a scheduled Supreme Court decision on racial preferences in civil service tests. Such a schedule can be watched, planned for, and a provocation encouraged. Here, another civil service item mixed with racial tension arises on the heels of Ricci v. DeStefano. It may have been unprovoked and merely coincidental. Planned or not, it will be used.

Big Picture: Resolving Afghanistan-Pakistan

Is will be easier to establish unity among the great and rising powers surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan than in the two ailing countries themselves. AF-PAK are dysfunctional dualist states whose events affect one another.

Regional powers and transnational organizations, including NATO, should coordinate conditions that contain conflict and foster prosperity in Pakistan and Afghanistan without occupying them. It is going to take a long time for a passive, containing, engaging, and deterrent policy to bring change in what may accurately be called a chronic historical PTSD zone.

The collective containment and engagement approach would foster better relationships among the great regional powers, their organizations and alliances and NATO members while diffusing blame that inevitably comes from indigenous populations when bad things happen during an occupation.

Without such a joint effort, NATO countries will eventually have to pull out and leave potentially failed states. That is exactly NATO's selling point to get China, Russia and India more involved. China and India, once adversaries, have a chance to work together on a common cause. However, a NATO pullout requires trust that the authoritarian great powers of the region will cooperate with each other rather than use buffer states as pawns.

Update on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 09:12AM by ABP Analyst

NATO Airstrikes Kill 11 Civilians

This is the sort of predictable, recurring event that will continually delay occupation goals by giving the guerillas more influence in the back woods. The insidious argument to village elders by those who speak their native tongue or share their religious ID is: are you sure that 'collateral damage' was truly an accident? Tribal or village leaders who goes on trusting while that doubt is circulated among his villagers may not be long for the world.

Let's look at the Marine deployment. It is there because air strikes that miss the mark can be so corrosive of past counter-insurgency gains.

Bluepaper: Setting Aggressive & Proactive Goals Against Biological Warfare Threats

Much is made in homeland security and defense papers of "validating biological threats," and "deterring" them. Both are vitally necessary. However, there must be a more proactive, aggressive approach to the anti-bioweapon regime.

U.S. efforts should include funding for deployable, remotely transportable nano-technologies capable of entering into biowarfare facilities, navigating into biological weapons stocks, and microscopically destroying dangerous viruses and bacteria. In theory, these same devices would be useful in detecting and counteracting stolen bioweapons. The U.S. should never confirm or deny this capability, should it develop or not develop.

As a follow-up deterrent, nano-technologies must also be capable of monitoring every aspect of biowarfare research, production, testing, transport, error and development. The U.S. should neither confirm or deny this capability.

Perhaps the most important deterrent of all is universal education about the dangers of disease mutation, travel and world pandemic. If ever there was a "weapon" with fewer controls against unintended consequences for its users than biowarfare agents, this analyst has yet to hear of it.

Updated: Swine Influenza & Recent Assessments of US Bio-Preparedness Priorities

In 2006, the Trust for America's Health organization's Germs Go Global report said the US was ill-prepared for bioterror, bird flu and other health disasters five years out from 9-11. Last year ABP warned the incoming Obama Administration not to ignore bio-incident counter-measures, citing the ease with which economic target fixation could catch the U.S. flatfooted in a pandemic.

By 2004 the US had enacted Project BioShield, authorizing 5.6 billion dollars in funding over ten years. It was supposed to support rapid development and deployment of health countermeasures to microbiologic threats. According to the report, the Health and Human Services Administration (HHS) was to form the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) under the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006. In theory, BARDA would prioritize funds for advanced biomedical research into bio-incident countermeasures and support project BioShield. 

For fiscal years 2006-2008 Congress authorized 1.07 billion for BioShield, but only 102 million was appropriated in 2008 (Scroll to p. 21 of the report). 

While hundreds of billions have been spent propping up financial institutions after the financial sector meltdown of 2008-09, the survival of the nation's working population itself has rated scarcely over 100 million dollars during the same period.

Adding to HHS efforts, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was tasked with building a comprehensive national bio-surveillance system. DHS added some of its own acronyms to the effort: BioWatch and the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC).

By 2006, tens of billions had been spent on bio-terror research and development. This prompted a bipartisan group from Congress to request that the GAO study anti-biowarfare spending priorities. The GAO published these relevant reports in 2007-08:

Biosurveillance: Preliminary Observations on the Department of Homeland Security's Biosurveillance Initiatives 

Chemical and Biological Defense: Updated Intelligence, Clear Guidance and Consistent Priorities Needed to Guide Investments in Collective Protection.

DHS had apparently made progress toward making NBIC fully operational by September 2008, however, by the 2007 report still had not finalized all agreements with coordinating agencies, had not defined its own official capabilities, and was planning the purchase of new bioweapon detection technology.

In other words, five years after its mandate, DHS was 'making progress but still wading through government red tape and paperwork without a clear understanding of its capabilities.

By 2007, the Department of Defense still lacked coordination, consistency and efficiency in its anti-biological and chemical warfare upgrades, many of which were exposed when harsh desert conditions in Iraq made NBC protective gear prohibitive because of heat, mobility and functionality issues. The GAO report called for greater force protection coordination within DoD.

The US must boost emergency funding for BARDA and Bioshield to the levels originally authorized and immediately expand authorization and appropriations for comprehensive countermeasures against infectious disease pandemics. It should also implement the best recommendations of the Trust for America's Health October 2008 Germs Go Global report.

Some compare the 2009 swine flu now hitting Mexico to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 because both seem to hit young adults the hardest. Those killed by the current Mexican bug had respiratory system damage some attributed to possible overactive immune responses triggered by the virus. The short spike in swine flu cases and variable severities are not fully explained yet. The virus's morphology is not well understood yet. The fewer swine flu cases in the US have been milder. Some speculate that it is the season's weather change that has mitigated the flu's effects. Others credit a superior medical infrastructure. However, what will happen in the next flu season?

The world would do well with concerted action to avert another Spanish flu experience. The Spanish flu killed an estimated 20-40 million people worldwide and began with a short spike in cases at the end of one season, only to become a full-on breakout the next. The U.S. CDC says it has already gathered viral genetic material for the preparation of a vaccine.

It would be wiser for the CDC, governments, media and the general population to keep the flu pandemic story alive in analytic and editorial pieces. Critical mass precedes action. Preparations for next flu season should be intense and start now. A full investigation into the swine flu's source, whether there is more than one virus, and to rule out bio-terrorism should be underway now.

Deter Mercenary Piracy to Avoid Terrorist Piracy

The highest priority in the latest piracy news cycle is to prevent piracy as a terrorist platform. Mercenary piracy isn't the worst piracy danger to crews, nations and companies.

Sufficiently armed, mercenary pirates know they have the advantage in seizing civilian vessels because the ocean is so vast. However, keeping them or extracting gain from them is not so easy. Communications, GPS tracking and satellite technology mean pirates will have a tougher time getting away with what they seize. Terrorist piracy, however, puts a premium on seizure.

For a world view on piracy incidents in 2009, go to the International Chamber of Commerce's Live Piracy Map. There are maps going back to 2005. For more detail on each attack, go to Live Piracy Report. One of the deadliest years for international piracy was 2004, with 30 crew members murdered or killed.

Terrorist pirates' minimum objective may be met by seizure and destruction. Further objectives would be to 'improve' on destructive impact, knowing that a publicized terror success doubles as a terror recruiting ad. That is why deterrence and prevention is so important.

Terrorist use of a vessel could include high explosive or WMD deployment with the vessel as a mobile bomb device. Such a sinister vessel could cause steep human and infrastructural costs.

A sea marshal concept may work to deter piracy of ocean craft. A sea marshal plan in which marshals could deputize and arm crew members would harden targets and better deter piracy than a finger wagging secretary of state and an army of prosecutors jumping up and down on a distant coast.