The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.

The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel’s existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years.

The Historic Egyptian Threat to Israel

The center of gravity of Israel’s strategic challenge was always Egypt. The largest Arab country, with about 80 million people, Egypt could field the most substantial army. More to the point, Egypt could absorb casualties at a far higher rate than Israel. The danger that the Egyptian army posed was that it could close with the Israelis and engage in extended, high-intensity combat that would break the back of Israel Defense Forces by imposing a rate of attrition that Israel could not sustain. If Israel were to be simultaneously engaged with Syria, dividing its forces and its logistical capabilities, it could run out of troops long before Egypt, even if Egypt were absorbing far more casualties.

The solution for the Israelis was to initiate combat at a time and place of their own choosing, preferably with surprise, as they did in 1956 and 1967. Failing that, as they did in 1973, the Israelis would be forced into a holding action they could not sustain and forced onto an offensive in which the risks of failure — and the possibility — would be substantial.

It was to the great benefit of Israel that Egyptian forces were generally poorly commanded and trained and that Egyptian war-fighting doctrine, derived from Britain and the Soviet Union, was not suited to the battle problem Israel posed. In 1967, Israel won its most complete victory over Egypt, as well as Jordan and Syria. It appeared to the Israelis that the Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular were culturally incapable of mastering modern warfare.

Thus it was an extraordinary shock when, just six years after their 1967 defeat, the Egyptians mounted a two-army assault across the Suez, coordinated with a simultaneous Syrian attack on the Golan Heights. Even more stunning than the assault was the operational security the Egyptians maintained and the degree of surprise they achieved. One of Israel’s fundamental assumptions was that Israeli intelligence would provide ample warning of an attack. And one of the fundamental assumptions of Israeli intelligence was that Egypt could not mount an attack while Israel maintained air superiority. Both assumptions were wrong. But the most important error was the assumption that Egypt could not, by itself, coordinate a massive and complex military operation. In the end, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians, but at the cost of the confidence they achieved in 1967 and a recognition that comfortable assumptions were impermissible in warfare in general and regarding Egypt in particular.

The Egyptians had also learned lessons. The most important was that the existence of the state of Israel did not represent a challenge to Egypt’s national interest. Israel existed across a fairly wide and inhospitable buffer zone — the Sinai Peninsula. The logistical problems involved in deploying a massive force to the east had resulted in three major defeats, while the single partial victory took place on much shorter lines of supply. Holding or taking the Sinai was difficult and possible only with a massive infusion of weapons and supplies from the outside, from the Soviet Union. This meant that Egypt was a hostage to Soviet interests. Egypt had a greater interest in breaking its dependency on the Soviets than in defeating Israel. It could do the former more readily than the latter.

(click here to enlarge image)

The Egyptian recognition that its interests in Israel were minimal and the Israeli recognition that eliminating the potential threat from Egypt guaranteed its national security have been the foundation of the regional balance since 1978. All other considerations — Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest — were trivial in comparison. Geography — the Sinai — made this strategic distancing possible. So did American aid to Egypt. The substitution of American weapons for Soviet ones in the years after the treaty achieved two things. First, they ended Egypt’s dependency on the Soviets. Second, they further guaranteed Israel’s security by creating an Egyptian army dependent on a steady flow of spare parts and contractors from the United States. Cut the flow and the Egyptian army would be crippled.

The governments of Anwar Sadat and then Hosni Mubarak were content with this arrangement. The generation that came to power with Gamal Nasser had fought four wars with Israel and had little stomach for any more. They had proved themselves in October 1973 on the Suez and had no appetite to fight again or to send their sons to war. It is not that they created an oasis of prosperity in Egypt. But they no longer had to go to war every few years, and they were able, as military officers, to live good lives. What is now regarded as corruption was then regarded as just rewards for bleeding in four wars against the Israelis.

Mubarak and the Military

But now is 33 years later, and the world has changed. The generation that fought is very old. Today’s Egyptian military trains with the Americans, and its officers pass through the American command and staff and war colleges. This generation has close ties to the United States, but not nearly as close ties to the British-trained generation that fought the Israelis or to Egypt’s former patrons, the Russians. Mubarak has locked the younger generation, in their fifties and sixties, out of senior command positions and away from the wealth his generation has accumulated. They want him out.

For this younger generation, the idea of Gamal Mubarak being allowed to take over the presidency was the last straw. They wanted the elder Mubarak to leave not only because he had ambitions for his son but also because he didn’t want to leave after more than a quarter century of pressure. Mubarak wanted guarantees that, if he left, his possessions, in addition to his honor, would remain intact. If Gamal could not be president, then no one’s promise had value. So Mubarak locked himself into position.

The cameras love demonstrations, but they are frequently not the real story. The demonstrators who wanted democracy are a real faction, but they don’t speak for the shopkeepers and peasants more interested in prosperity than wealth. Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the West freezes when anything happens, dreading the hand of Osama bin Laden. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was once a powerful force, and it might become one again someday, but right now it is a shadow of its former self. What is going on now is a struggle within the military, between generations, for the future of the Egyptian military and therefore the heart of the Egyptian regime. Mubarak will leave, the younger officers will emerge, the constitution will make some changes and life will continue.

The Israelis will return to their complacency. They should not. The usual first warning of a heart attack is death. Among the fortunate, it is a mild coronary followed by a dramatic change of life style. The events in Egypt should be taken as a mild coronary and treated with great relief by Israel that it wasn’t worse.

Reconsidering the Israeli Position

I have laid out the reasons the 1978 treaty is in Egypt’s national interest. I have left out two pieces. The first is ideology. The ideological tenor of the Middle East prior to 1978 was secular and socialist. Today it is increasingly Islamist. Egypt is not immune to this trend, even if the Muslim Brotherhood should not be seen as the embodiment of that threat. Second, military technology, skills and terrain have made Egypt a defensive power for the past 33 years. But military technology and skills can change, on both sides. Egyptian defensiveness is built on assumptions of Israeli military capability and interest. As Israeli ideology becomes more militant and as its capabilities grow, Egypt may be forced to reconsider its strategic posture. As new generations of officers arise, who have heard of war only from their grandfathers, the fear of war declines and the desire for glory grows. Combine that with ideology in Egypt and Israel and things change. They won’t change quickly — a generation of military transformation will be needed once regimes have changed and the decisions to prepare for war have been made — but they can change.

Two things from this should strike the Israelis. The first is how badly they need peace with Egypt. It is easy to forget what things were like 40 years back, but it is important to remember that the prosperity of Israel today depends in part on the treaty with Egypt. Iran is a distant abstraction, with a notional bomb whose completion date keeps moving. Israel can fight many wars with Egypt and win. It need lose only one. The second lesson is that Israel should do everything possible to make certain that the transfer of power in Egypt is from Mubarak to the next generation of military officers and that these officers maintain their credibility in Egypt. Whether Israel likes it or not, there is an Islamist movement in Egypt. Whether the new generation controls that movement as the previous one did or whether they succumb to it is the existential question for Israel. If the treaty with Egypt is the foundation of Israel’s national security, it is logical that the Israelis should do everything possible to preserve it.

This was not the fatal heart attack. It might not even have been more than indigestion. But recent events in Egypt point to a long-term problem with Israeli strategy. Given the strategic and ideological crosscurrents in Egypt, it is in Israel’s national interest to minimize the intensity of the ideological and make certain that Israel is not perceived as a threat. In Gaza, for example, Israel and Egypt may have shared a common interest in containing Hamas, and the next generation of Egyptian officers may share it as well. But what didn’t materialize in the streets this time could in the future: an Islamist rising. In that case, the Egyptian military might find it in its interest to preserve its power by accommodating the Islamists. At this point, Egypt becomes the problem and not part of the solution.

Keeping Egypt from coming to this is the imperative of military dispassion. If the long-term center of gravity of Israel’s national security is at least the neutrality of Egypt, then doing everything to maintain that is a military requirement. That military requirement must be carried out by political means. That requires the recognition of priorities. The future of Gaza or the precise borders of a Palestinian state are trivial compared to preserving the treaty with Egypt. If it is found that a particular political strategy undermines the strategic requirement, then that political strategy must be sacrificed.

In other words, the worst-case scenario for Israel would be a return to the pre-1978 relationship with Egypt without a settlement with the Palestinians. That would open the door for a potential two-front war with an intifada in the middle. To avoid that, the ideological pressure on Egypt must be eased, and that means a settlement with the Palestinians on less-than-optimal terms. The alternative is to stay the current course and let Israel take its chances. The question is where the greater safety lies. Israel has assumed that it lies with confrontation with the Palestinians. That’s true only if Egypt stays neutral. If the pressure on the Palestinians destabilizes Egypt, it is not the most prudent course.

There are those in Israel who would argue that any release in pressure on the Palestinians will be met with rejection. If that is true, then, in my view, that is catastrophic news for Israel. In due course, ideological shifts and recalculations of Israeli intentions will cause a change in Egyptian policy. This will take several decades to turn into effective military force, and the first conflicts may well end in Israeli victory. But, as I have said before, it must always be remembered that no matter how many times Israel wins, it need only lose once to be annihilated.

To some it means that Israel should remain as strong as possible. To me it means that Israel should avoid rolling the dice too often, regardless of how strong it thinks it is. The Mubarak affair might open a strategic reconsideration of the Israeli position.

Read more: Egypt, Israel and a Strategic Reconsideration | STRATFOR

The South Korean military is considering the deployment of its domestic-built ship-to-ground cruise missile, the Cheonryong, on warships including a 4,500t KDX destroyer in the West Sea.

The Cheonryong missile has a range of 500km and is capable of hitting North Korean surface-to-ship missile bases on the west coast from the East Sea as well.

The indigenous missiles will serve as a deterrent against any potential North Korean provocations on the western front.

The missile, which has a 1,500km precision striking range from a naval vessel, can even be launched from a 3,000t submarine, which is currently under development.

According to government sources, the missiles have been developed based on homegrown ground-to-ground cruise missiles but have a wider and more flexible potential range than the latter.

“We’re planning to deploy the missile on Aegis ships such as the 7,600t King Sejong the Great Class, starting this year with the destroyer deployed at the Second Navy Fleet on the west coast in preparation for further provocations by the north,” added the source, speaking to english.chosun.com

By George F. Will
Wednesday, February 9, 2011;

Sixty years ago, American politics was embittered by an accusation couched as a question: “Who lost China?” The implied indictment was that America had fumbled away a possession through incompetence or sinister conniving.

In 1949, when communists came to power there, America bestrode both hemispheres shattered from war. Americans thought that their nation was at the wheel of the world and that whatever happened, wherever, happened at America’s instigation, or at least its sufferance, or was evidence of American negligence.

It is a sign of national maturity – the product of hard learning, from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan – that fewer American complainers are today faulting the Obama administration for not anticipating and shapingevents in Egypt. Israel, which lives next door to Egypt and has an excellent intelligence service, did not see this coming. So, a modest proposal:

Those Americans who know which Republican will win next year’s Iowa caucuses can complain about those who did not know that when a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, he would set a region afire. From all other Americans, forbearance would be seemly.

It also would be amazing, because there is a cottage industry of Barack Obama critics who, not content with monitoring his myriad mistakes in domestic policies, insist that there must be a seamless connection of those with his foreign policy. Strangely, these critics, who correctly doubt the propriety and capacity of the U.S. government controlling our complex society, simultaneously fault the government for not having vast competence to shape the destinies of other societies. Such critics persist because, as Upton Sinclair wrote in 1935, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

America has one source of leverage over Egyptian events – the close relations between that nation’s military leadership and America’s, including the material dependence of the former on U.S. assistance. But saying that Egypt’s military is the nation’s most impressive institution constitutes faint praise.

Can Egypt’s soldiers fine-tune a whirlwind? It is largely forgotten that when Mikhail Gorbachev began contemplating reform of the Soviet Union – before things spun out of control, as they have a way of doing – he imagined only a more efficient communism still administered by a one-party state. Today, residual sentimentality about him obscures the fact that real multiparty pluralism was not in his original plans. And two decades later, it still is not in Russia’s foreseeable future.

If there are Egyptian elections soon, America will be tempted to try to influence them. It did that successfully in Italy in 1948, when there was a substantial danger that communists would win. In Italy then, however, unlike in Egypt today, there were two clear sides – the Cold War was taking shape. And there was a more recent and robust parliamentary tradition, including political parties, than in Egypt.

In the National Endowment for Democracy and elsewhere, the U.S. government has access to reservoirs of talent for helping Egypt improvise an infrastructure of representative government. But this must be done with exquisite delicacy because, happily, the Egyptian regime is being shaken primarily by nationalists.

An encouraging aspect of the Egyptian protests is the widespread waving of the nation’s flag. Western intellectuals, who tend toward cosmopolitanism, tend to disdain the nation-state and nationalism as aspects of humanity’s infancy, things to be outgrown. But the nation gives substance and structure to thesecular pride and yearnings of the Egyptian people, who are demographically young but culturally ancient. Indelicate American assistance for democratization could cause a recoil from those crowds eager to be proud of an Egyptian outcome.

The question is: What comes after whatever comes next? In March 2003, as U.S. forces fought toward Baghdad, a then-two-star general, David Petraeus, speaking to The Post’s Rick Atkinson, “hooked his thumbs into his flak vest” and spoke five words that have reverberated ever since: “Tell me how this ends.”

Next, Petraeus said five unremembered words: “Eight years and eight divisions?” Atkinson explained: “The allusion was to advice supposedly given the White House in the early 1950s by a senior Army strategist upon being asked what it would take to prop up French forces in South Vietnam.”

We still do not know how the process begun by America’s intervention in Iraq will end – or, for that matter, how to mark the “end” of a great historical convulsion. In Egypt, Egyptians will tell us how it ends.

georgewill@washpost.com

Monday, February 7, 2011; 8:14 PM

DOES BEN S. BERNANKE, the Federal Reserve chairman, deserve the blame – or the credit, depending on your point of view – for Hosni Mubarak‘s plight? Some seem to think so. Last August, Mr. Bernanke announced further Fed asset purchases known colloquially as “quantitative easing II,” or “QEII” for short. The goal was to ease monetary conditions in the United States and fuel growth. But cheaper money lowered the costs and raised the rewards of speculating on food and energy, relative to some other investments. The latest rise in commodity prices began around the time of Mr. Bernanke’s announcement; expensive food triggered unrest first in Tunisia and then in Egypt. Ergo, Mr. Bernanke undermined Mr. Mubarak – or so the argument goes.

Is it a fair accusation? Well, yes and no. QEII does, at the margin, enable commodity inflation, both by incentivizing speculation and by stimulating U.S. growth, which makes demand for food and energy stronger than it would have been otherwise. International commodity prices are set in dollars, so QEII means more dollars chasing the same supply of goods. The Food and Agricultural Organization calls the dollar’s post-September 2010 weakening a “leading factor” in commodity inflation.

Still, Mr. Bernanke was probably right to deny that the Fed is “primarily responsible” for the current price run-up. The spike in wheat prices, which determines the price of bread in Cairo, began before QEII, when drought destroyed Russian crops. Subsequent floods in Australia have destroyed more wheat. As for other foodstuffs and oil, the continuing rapid growth of investment and middle-class consumption in China and India probably explains much recent inflation – just as it will probably drive future price increases in those goods.

This is not to say there’s no U.S. effect. Subsidies and consumption mandates for corn-based ethanol divert scarce crops and cropland – and taxpayer dollars – to a purportedly “green” industry that actually yields very little environmental benefit. Other U.S. policies – such as protectionism for sugar producers and direct payments to cotton farmers – also distort prices. Reforming those misbegotten programs would probably improve global commodity markets more than abolishing QEII, which ends in a few months anyway.

Higher food prices do, indeed, hurt the poor. But the focus should be on alleviating their suffering – not on alleged political effects. Costlier food all by itself is not destabilizing; there are no food riots in democratic India or the Philippines. As Egypt and Tunisia prove, it’s the combination of misery and tyranny that’s combustible.

The Indian Navy is prepared to enhance its combat capabilities in the next five to six years with a wide range of ships, submarines and choppers set to join its fleet.

The fleet will include two aircraft carriers, one from the Soviet-era and one indigenously built, two fleet tankers, two stealth frigates, three destroyers and an all-weather aircraft such as the MiG-29K.

Two fleet tankers, Deepak and Shakti, and the indigenously designed and built stealth frigate INS Satpura will be commissioned next year, according to the Indo-Asian News Service.

The first Kolkata-class guided missile destroyer, aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya will begin sea trials in 2011.

Indian Navy air capabilities include MiG-29K aircraft, which will be deployed on the Vikramiditya and on the indigenously-built carrier.

Production of the Scorpene submarines has also commenced and the first of the lot is expected to be commissioned in 2015.

The Navy will also receive eight Boeing P8I multi-mission aircraft and has plans to induct 56 helicopters in the next few years to replace the aging fleet of Chetaks.

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Friday, December 3, 2010; 8:54 PM

WE’RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”

We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

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By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 6, 2010; 7:28 AM

The United States has stepped up diplomatic pressure on China by accusing its leaders of “enabling” North Korea to start a uranium-enrichment program and to launch attacks on South Korea, a senior U.S. administration official said this weekend.

In response to the North Korean moves and apparent Chinese acquiescence, Washington is moving to redefine its relationship with South Korea and Japan, potentially creating an anti-China bloc in Northeast Asia that officials say they don’t want but may need.

In meetings with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing and in Washington since North Korea launched a deadly artillery barrage at a South Korean island on Nov. 23, U.S. officials have charged that China is turning a blind eye to North Korean violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, international agreements and a 1953 armistice halting the Korean War that China helped to negotiate.

The accusations mark a further deterioration of the tone and direction of the U.S. relationship with Asia’s emerging giant and come as both countries prepare for a second summit next month between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

“The Chinese embrace of North Korea in the last eight months has served to convince North Korea that China has its back and has encouraged it to behave with impunity,” said a senior administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “We think the Chinese have been enabling North Korea.”

The Korean Peninsula, the official added, has catapulted to the “top of the security agenda when President Hu comes here . . . and the Chinese are aware of it.”

Obama called Hu on Sunday night to discuss North Korea and urged China to help send a clear message to Pyongyang “that its provocations are unacceptable,” the White House said Monday.

“The president emphasized the need for North Korea to halt its provocative behavior and to meet its international obligations,” the White House said. “The president condemned the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island on November 23 and its pursuit of a uranium enrichment program in defiance of its obligations.” It said Obama “also highlighted the American commitment to the security of our allies in the region.”

The White House statement said Obama and Hu agreed on the importance of working together toward the “shared goals” of peace and stability in Northeast Asia and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But it made no mention of Hu’s response to Obama’s complaints about North Korea.”

A Chinese statement on the phone call said Hu “regrets the loss of lives and property” in the North Korean shelling last month. It was the first such comment from Hu about the attack, but it echoed an earlier North Korean expression of regret for killing civilians.

The U.S. exasperation with China over the Koreas has been evident since June, when Obama accused China of “willful blindness” in remaining silent over North Korea’s suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March. But the administration’s position now that China is in effect partially to blame for the problems is new.

At a meeting Monday with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hopes to begin the process of tightening the three-way relationship, as a response to the persistent North Korean provocations and China’s inaction. The United States and South Korea announced Friday the successful renegotiation of their free-trade agreement, which will be as important strategically as it is economically to the U.S. presence in the region.

This week South Korea joined ongoing U.S.-Japan military exercises as an observer – a significant move for a country that was once occupied by Japanese forces. And on Monday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, will go to South Korea to further show U.S. support for its ally.

While the new U.S. position reflects a growing frustration with China’s apparent unwillingness to rein in Pyongyang, it also underscores a sense that the United States and South Korea have run out of leverage with the North and are therefore left dependent on Beijing for a solution to the security of the peninsula.

But the United States has limited ways to pressure China because its leaders know that Washington, with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, doesn’t want another war. Also, U.S. alliance building in Northeast Asia has limits because there remains significant distrust between Tokyo and Seoul.

U.S. moves so far in the region have not paid off. The Obama administration has spearheaded enhanced U.N. sanctions on the North in an attempt to squeeze its leadership and block its advanced weapons sales, and South Korea and Japan have cut their food aid to the impoverished country.

But still the North continues its troublesome behavior.

In the space of eight months, it is believed to have sunk a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors; it also has unveiled a program to enrich uranium, which is a violation of a commitment it made during talks on its nuclear weapons program five years ago. And then it shelled Yeonpyeong island, launching the first attack on civilians in South Korea since the armistice was signed.

South Korea has struggled visibly with crafting a policy to halt North Korean harassment. Its defense minister resigned after the Yeonpyeong attack. Then its new defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin, threatened that South Korea’s air force would bomb North Korea if it used its artillery again. But such a move might be escalatory, and it is unclear whether the United States, which retains command of all forces in the South, would agree.

The U.S. plan to pressure China has met with resistance from Beijing. China’s support of North Korea, while always resolute, has gotten even stronger this year – despite some recent media reports based on leaked State Department cables that indicated that China might be ready to accept a united Korean Peninsula under the South’s leadership.

Beijing has hosted the North’s leader, Kim Jong Il, twice so far this year, and his third son, Kim Jong Eun, the heir apparent, once. It granted Kim the father a meeting with the full Standing Committee of the Politburo, a highly unusual honor. And it has increased its investment in and support of North Korea’s economy – to ensure that North Korea does not collapse and remains a buffer state between China and the capitalist South. At the United Nations, China has also tried to suppress a report on North Korean proliferation activity.

China’s attitude to the problems on the Korean Peninsula was on display Nov. 27 when its top diplomat, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, visited South Korea for talks. China, according to South Korean officials, notified South Korea 15 minutes before Dai’s departure that he was headed for Seoul and that he wanted to land at a South Korean air force base that is normally reserved for heads of state. China also informed South Korea that it wanted President Lee Myung-bak’s schedule cleared for an immediate meeting with Dai. The South did not agree and Dai met Lee the next day.

During that meeting, Dai essentially gave Lee “a history lesson on the relations between Beijing and Seoul” and did not mention the North Korean attack on Yeonpyeong, said a South Korean official. “He just told us to calm down,” the official said. Then at the end of the meeting, as the two were readying to shake hands, Dai, off the cuff, told Lee that China wanted to call an emergency meeting of the six-party talks, grouping the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and North Korea, to help lower the heat on the peninsula. Lee told Dai that – given North Korea’s actions, a meeting would be tantamount to rewarding North Korean bad behavior. But Dai ignored Lee’s rejection and when Dai returned to Beijing, China’s chief North Korean negotiator, Wu Dawei, announced what it framed as a bold Chinese initiative: more talks.

“The South Koreans were really ticked off,” said Daniel Sneider, an expert on Asian security at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University who was in Seoul last week. “The whole way it was handled smacked of a certain kind of arrogance . . . and signaled that the Chinese weren’t serious about reining in the North Koreans.”

Staff writer William Branigin contributed to this report.

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By Jackson Diehl
Monday, November 22, 2010;

For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past week, let’s return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time?

Well, first was the “nuclear freeze” movement, which was prompting mass demonstrations around the world by people worried about the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. Obama published an article about it in a campus magazine in which he invoked the vision of “a nuclear free world.”

The Middle East, meanwhile, was still reeling from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which was the apotheosis of the Zionist right’s dream of creating a “greater Israel” including all of the Palestinian West Bank.

Back to November 2010. The Obama administration is devoting a big share of its diplomatic time and capital to curbing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank – most recently, offering Israel’s right-wing government $3 billion in warplanes in exchange for a 90-day moratorium. Meanwhile, it has committed much of its dwindling domestic political capital to pushing a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia through a reluctant Senate.

So has nothing changed in the past quarter-century? In fact, almost everything has – especially when it comes to nuclear arms control and Israel’s national objectives. What hasn’t changed, it seems, is Barack Obama – who has led his administration into a foreign policy time warp that is sapping its strength abroad and at home.

Start with the New START treaty that Obama has made a priority for the lame-duck Senate, at a time when Americans don’t yet know what income tax rate they will pay on Jan. 1. The treaty resembles the landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control treaties that were negotiated in the years after Obama wrote his article – and it would perpetuate their important verification measures.

The difference is that no one stages marches today about U.S. and Soviet – now Russian – strategic weapons, and with good reason. The danger of a war between the two states is minuscule; and treaty or no, Russia’s arsenal is very likely to dwindle in the coming years. The threat of nuclear weapons now comes from rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Syria, and maybe from terrorist organizations. Obama believes that U.S.-Russian treaties will lead to better containment of that threat – but that’s at best an indirect benefit.

That doesn’t mean the START treaty is worthless. The Senate ought to approve it if only to ensure the continued monitoring of Russian missiles. But does it merit dispatching the vice president and the secretaries of state and defense to Capitol Hill for a desperate (and uphill) lobbying offensive? It’s hard to see why.

The same might be said about Obama’s preoccupation with stopping Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank and Jerusalem – a campaign that even Palestinian and Arab leaders have watched with bafflement. True, almost everyone outside Israel regards the construction as counterproductive, and only a minority supports it inside Israel.

But that is just the point: The dream of a “greater Israel” died more than 15 years ago. Even the Israeli right now accepts that a Palestinian state will be created in the West Bank. The settlements have become a sideshow; the real issues concern how to create a Palestinian state in a Middle East where the greatest threat is not Israeli but Iranian expansionism. What to do about Hamas and Hezbollah and their Iranian-supplied weapons? How to ensure that the post-occupation West Bank does not become another Iranian base? Those issues did not exist in 1983 – and the Obama administration seems to have no strategy for them.

Not all of the administration’s foreign policy is anachronistic. Obama’s tour this month of India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan reflected a cutting-edge concern with rebuilding U.S. influence in Asia and forging alliances with its democracies in response to a rising China. Iran has been the target of a relatively successful multilateral sanctions campaign, though that has yet to affect its nuclear program. The START treaty with Russia is part of a larger strategy to coax its brutish regime toward more responsible behavior.

Still, this administration is notable for its lack of grand strategy – or strategists. Its top foreign-policy makers are a former senator, a Washington lawyer and a former Senate staffer. There is no Henry Kissinger, no Zbigniew Brzezinski, no Condoleezza Rice; no foreign policy scholar.

Instead there is Obama, who likes to believe that he knows as much or more about policy than any of his aides – and who has been conspicuous in driving the strategies on nuclear disarmament and Israeli settlements. “I personally came of age during the Reagan presidency,” Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope.” Yes, and it shows.

Related Articles

• Ratify START treaty, says Obama (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Republicans Still Playing Politics With Ratifying START Treaty (crooksandliars.com)
• START Treaty: Recalling Reagan (blogs.wsj.com)
• Obama Echoes Reagan On START Treaty: “Trust But Verify” (sayanythingblog.com)
• Facing setbacks, Obama presses his foreign policy (sfgate.com)
• President Obama’s Middle East morass? (politico.com)
• “Netanyahu: Champ or Chump?” and related posts (desertpeace.wordpress.com)
• Obama, Medvedev urge Senate to ratify START (reuters.com)

By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2010; 12:57 AM

A cheap and simple fix in the computer software of new airport scanners could silence the uproar from travelers who object to the so-called virtual strip search, according to a scientist who helped develop the program at one of the federal government’s most prestigious institutes.

The researcher, associated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he was rebuffed when he offered the concept to Department of Homeland Security officials four years ago.

The fix would distort the images captured on full-body scanners so they look like reflections in a fun-house mirror, but any potentially dangerous objects would be clearly revealed, said Willard “Bill” Wattenburg, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Livermore lab. The scanners normally produce real-time outlines of the naked human body, and the Transportation Security Administration has been embroiled in controversy since installation of the new scanners began last month.

“Why not just distort the image into something grotesque so that there isn’t anything titillating or exciting about it?” Wattenburg said.

TSA spokesman Nick Kimball said he could not immediately confirm Wattenburg’s 2006 conversation with federal officials. “That was another administration,” Kimball said.

But Obama administration officials made an effort over the weekend to address travelers’ complaints.

People who object to the scanners are given the option of an “enhanced” pat-down by TSA agents that includes the touching of clothed genital areas. For many, that option is even less palatable; opponents have likened the process to sexual assault.

President Obama said in Lisbon on Saturday that he had asked TSA officials whether there’s a less intrusive way to ensure travel safety. “I understand people’s frustrations,” he said, adding that he had told the TSA that “you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people‘s safety.”

Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole reiterated in a statement Sunday that the agency would make screening methods “as minimally invasive as possible.”

Last week Pistole defended the body scanners and “enhanced pat-downs” in the face of questions from two Senate committees.

On CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who isn’t subject to the screening, said she understands “how difficult it is and how offensive it must be for the people who are going through it.”

But terrorists are “getting more creative about what they do to hide explosives in, you know, crazy things like underwear,” she said. “So, clearly, there is a need.”

If she did have to be screened, she said, she would opt for a pat-down instead.

Protests in security lines

Some travelers are planning a protest against the new security measures on the day before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the year.

An Ashburn man, Brian J. Sodergren, is organizing a national “opt out” day to encourage passengers to say no to using the new body scanners. He wants people to insist on public pat-downs.

“Many people only fly around the holidays and may not be aware of the security changes,” Sodergren told The Washington Post. “I think once people are made aware of what is happening, they may have reservations about the new procedures.”

The pat-downs will also probably slow security lines. According to the TSA, the body scan takes about five seconds, with an extra 10 to 15 seconds for processing. Pat-downs take 1 to 2 minutes.

According to a holiday travel message by Pistole that was released over the weekend, you can opt out of using the full-body scanner, but if you make that choice “you will receive a thorough pat-down by someone of the same gender. If you alarm either the metal detector or the [body scanner] , you will also receive a thorough pat-down by someone of the same gender.”

Pistole says fliers can request that the pat-downs be conducted in a private room and can request that it be “witnessed by a person of your choice.”

A California man became an instant folk hero among the protestors when a recording he made with his camera phone at airport security in San Diego went viral on the Internet. In the video, he threatens a TSA agent with arrest if “you touch my junk” during a pat-down. Last week in Indianapolis, a passenger was arrested after he submitted to a body scan and then punched a TSA agent who didn’t respond to his questioning about enhanced security procedures.

Last week, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) even introduced a bill, the American Traveler Dignity Act, to discourage the new screenings.

“It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any U.S. law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person,” Paul said on the floor of the House.

For most Americans, however, the new system appears to be an acceptable next step in a series of security upticks to combat terrorism. In a CBS poll, 81 percent of people said they supported using full-body scanners. With 1.6 million Americans planning to fly during Thanksgiving weekend, the TSA said that Internet and talk show conversations have morphed rumors into incorrect “facts.”

A predicted outcry

Wattenburg said that when news reached Livermore in 2006 that the TSA planned to buy the new generation of “backscatter” full-body scanners, the problem seemed clear. “We knew what was going to happen,” he said. “People are immediately going to scream like hell because they’re taking the clothes off everybody.”

Livermore engineers have been deeply involved in enhancing airport security.

Wattenburg said a Livermore colleague, Ed Moses, turned to him and said, “There must be some way to modify the scanner images so that they do not reveal embarrassing things about a person’s body profile.”

Wattenburg, whose long resume includes designing anti-terrorist devices, sketched out a possible solution and delivered it to Moses, whose computer experts refined the concept.

“Materials you were looking for would still be there, but body shapes wouldn’t be apparent,” Moses, the principal assistant director of the Livermore lab said on Saturday. “From the point of view of imaging it’s very straightforward. Someone should do a quick study of it in an operational setting.”

The Livermore laboratory sent off a final application to the U.S. Patent Office on Nov. 23, 2006, and about three weeks later Wattenburg said he called the Department of Homeland Security to share the good news. The patent application is on appeal, according to government records, but the federal government owns the rights to the idea.

“These guys usually come to us when they have a huge problem,” Wattenburg said on Thursday. “If it’s something simple, we tell them and they don’t listen.”

Wattenburg says the program is so simple that “a 6-year-old could do the same thing with Photoshop.”

He said the TSA scanners could be altered so that they “would record an image that you would recognize; it would be totally uninteresting,” but any potentially dangerous objects would be just as evident as they are now.

“There is absolutely nothing that they would lose in terms of the imagery by using this,” Wattenburg said.

Wattenburg said the new TSA machines could be readily reconfigured. “It’s probably a few weeks’ modification of the program,” he said. “It’s like changing the video card in your computer. They just strip out all the coding and put the very simple algorithm in. You could teach a kid how to do it.”

David McCallen, a deputy director for national security at Livermore who developed the idea with Wattenburg, said the concept is simple and should be put through rigorous field testing.

“What it needs is vetting with real testing,” McCallen said Saturday. “This is important stuff so you want to do very thorough testing.”

TSA official Kimball said the agency is working on development of scanner technology that would reduce the image to a “generic icon, a generic stick figure” that would still reveal potentially dangerous items.”

“It isn’t up to the standard we would like, but it’s getting close,” Kimball said.

Wattenburg is semi-retired and works as a consultant to Livermore and several major government contractors. Familiar with the federal bureaucracy, he said he doubts the TSA will take the simplest course of action.

“They are so far down the road in buying all the equipment that they’re too embarrassed to reverse course,” he said. “Their very sophisticated equipment can be made to do this.”

halseya@washpost.com Staff writer Derek Kravitz contributed to this report

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