Category: International relations

Posted on

Drawing Parallels.

The April 22 attacks by Kashmir Resistance (KR), a (at least tacitly) Pakistani-backed irredentist group in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in which 26 people were murdered, has some unfortunate parallels with the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Although many more Israelis died in the latter (nearly 2000) and the costs to Palestinians living in Gaza (and to a lesser extent the West Bank) from the subsequent Israel war campaign against them have been astronomical (53,000 dead in Gaza alone while the India-Pakistan conflict is just now beginning and its outcome is as of yet undetermined), there are enough similarities between them to offer some observations about them, as well as their differences.

Hamas and Kashmir Resistance are both ethno-religious-nationalist irregular warfare movements that violently resist occupation and apartheid-like segregation. Both are animated by pre-modern if not primordial hatreds. Both are Muslim, opposed to Indian Hindu nationalism in the latter case and Israeli Zionism in the former instance. Both are proxies for other States, those being Iran in the case of Hamas and Pakistan in the case of KR. For their part, in their present political guises both Israel and India (who quietly support each other in their respective conflicts) prefer that their rule lead to consolidation of ethno-States dominated by their respective Jewish and Hindu majorities, including in the disputed territories over which their respective conflicts have periodically erupted.

The October 7 and April 22 attacks were provocations designed to prompt an over-reaction from the stronger State adversary which in turn was supposed to spark a broader conflict that would draw in other actors and create international pressure on, if not popular protests against the respective State adversaries. For a short moment, Hamas appeared to have succeeded, as the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza is by any definition disproportionate and indiscriminate in effect, involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in doing so. Hamas’s tactical objective was to spread the IDF thin as it encountered armed resistance in Gaza, the West Bank and coming out of Lebanon, and have Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis eventually join in a multi-front struggle against the “Zionist entity.” This would in turn draw in more actors from the region and elsewhere as public pressure mounted for an end to the Israeli campaign (including in Israel), thereby forcing a diplomatic compromise that recognised Hamas’s status as the main Palestinian interlocutor (rather than the Palestinian Authority). The mounting toll of victims (including hostages taken on both sides) was a pawn in this larger game.

Protests erupted world-wide against the Israelis, causing civil unrest in many Western democracies as well as throughout the Muslim diaspora. Iran and its regional proxies, Yemeni Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon, attempted to widen the conflict into a regional war while fomenting pro-Hamas unrest in Arab States. For the first year of the conflict it looked like the Hamas strategy was working, especially after a coalition of US-led nations broadened the fight by sending a naval flotilla the Red Sea to thwart Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the maritime choke point in support of Hamas. This was seen by Hamas and its supporters as confirmation that the West was on Israel’s side regardless of its behaviour and therefore not just anti-Palestinian but anti-Islamic as a whole (because the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran are Shiites while Hamas is mostly Sunni Muslim).

For its part, KR hoped and may still be hoping that an Indian overreaction in the form of attacks on Pakistan and/or ethnographic-religious purges in Kashmir that will lead to Muslim uprisings throughout India and anti-Indian violence in surrounding countries with significant Muslim populations such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That may be wishful thinking.

Whatever initial propaganda gains may have been made in the first six months after October 7, Israel’s response against Hamas and the Palestinian people has been multi-faceted, overwhelming, relentless, devastating and successful. It has ramped up its repression in the West Back while now moving to permanently occupy Gaza. It has intimidated Iran by killing some of its leaders on Iranian soil while launching missile attacks on military facilities, all while threatening Iran’s nuclear sites. It has conducted strikes against the Houthis and Hezbollah in their territories (including in foreign capitals like Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa) and killed scores of their leaders using conventional and unconventional means (such as the pager bombs used against Hezbollah, missile attacks on Iranian diplomatic facilities in Syria and the murder of a Hamas leader in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard guest house). It has occupied swathes of northern Lebanon and western Syria for good measure and shows no signs of withdrawal from anywhere anytime soon.

In other words, the Hamas “sucker ploy” (getting a stronger adversary to over-react to a provocation so world attention is focused on the response, not the initial atrocity) may have worked over the short-term but has now backfired spectacularly because, among other things, no other country or the community of nations appears able or willing to persuade or force the Israelis to stop their scorched earth campaign. In fact, Israel appears to see October 7 as an excuse and window of opportunity for its territorial expansion and direct control of Gaza and territorial strips from neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Syria. Much of that is also due to the US blanket backing of Israel with weapons and aid, something that as of yet is not a factor in the India-Pakistan conflict. But for Hamas, it means that its provocation may well result in its annihilation.

An obvious difference is that unlike the David versus Goliath nature of the Palestinian-Israeli war, the KR provocation has resulted in a peer conflict between two nuclear-armed States, again, with neither receiving the unequivocal backing on any Great Power (in fact, US president Trump initially said that the US should just “let them go to it and sort it out” or words to that effect). More subtly, the India-Pakistan conflict has become a bigger proxy clash between arms weapons suppliers, with Pakistan mostly fielding PRC-made weapons while India has diversified amongst Russian, French and Israeli platforms. That arms supplier competition is an ominous incentive to broaden the conflict into a conventional war.

Israel can engage in a scorched earth campaign against Hamas and other irregular warfare actors because it is a nuclear power with the strongest and most experienced conventional military in the region, one that has no significant challenger to its supremacy. It has cowed Iran and its proxies into acquiescence to its logic of force, if not submission to the new status quo. All with the backing of the US and other Western nations.

The situation is different in South Asia. India and Pakistan are nuclear armed peer competitors (although the Indian military is much larger). Notwithstanding some of the alarmist rhetoric of armchair pundits (including in NZ), neither is interested in using nuclear weapons for non-existential reasons, so this puts a cap on the escalatory potential of the conflict. Whereas Israel is free to mete out collective punishment on Palestinian civilians as it pleases, arguing that they harbour terrorists and disguise the terrorist’s infrastructure (and it is likely that due to their life histories and upbringing many Palestinians do indeed hate Israel and Jews, which still does not justify committing atrocities and war crimes against them), India and Pakistan have to tread more lightly. So far India has targeted “terrorist infrastructure” and air defence systems in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan itself, with Pakistan retaliating with limited air strikes across the border aimed at as of yet indeterminate (presumably military) targets. So long as the Indian targeting remains focused on military sites and irregular warfare proxies’ staging and hiding places, and the Pakistanis limit their response to military targets, then the escalatory potential for the conflict is low. It will be a limited conventional military tit-for-tat rather than a rush towards a conventional or nuclear Big Bang.

This demonstrates the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, at least when in the hands of rational actors like the Indian and Pakistani military leaderships. Civilian groups, politicians and ethno-religious partisan media may agitate for all out war but unless there is a hot-head or two in the high commands of both countries, the chances of either ordering a nuclear strike–a first use one at that–is remote. Not impossible if things do not go as foreseen above, but pretty unlikely in any event.

Truth be told, the Indo-Pakistani conflict is about saving military face and national honour rather than conquest or retribution no matter how much historical baggage is layered onto it by war-mongering actors on both sides.

Perversely, the fact that Israel is (yet) the only nuclear power in the Middle East deters all would-be adversaries from openly posing real existential threats against it. For all of the talk by Iran and its proxies about erasing the “Zionist entity” from the face of the Earth, in practice they steer clear of actually attempting to do so. They know what that will bring, and this was the case before they were militarily and diplomatically neutered by the current Israeli war effort. In a strange way, all of this suggests that in both instances nuclear deterrence works and can be used to a nuclear-capable country’s advantage as a conflict limitation device under given circumstances. That is of no solace to Palestinians of course, but it may spare Indian and Pakistani civilians similar levels of devastation given the different nuclear context in which the conflict has begun.

This is where KR may have erred in emulating the Hamas provocation strategy. Rather than induce a sucker ploy scenario that garners global sympathy for the plight of Muslims in Indian-controlled Kashmir (and elsewhere in India), it has led to a peer clash between adjacent nuclear armed States that have previously fought conventional wars against each other. This very different context suggests that the conflict will not only be a two-sided rather than a one-sided affair, but that interests of State will prevail over ethnographic-religious hatred and ambitions for territorial expansion by either of them. For KR, much like for Hamas but in a different way, April 22 may well have sown the seeds of their own demise, at least as an armed irregular warfare group. Their ideology will remain and give hope to future resistance fighters, but for the moment current exigencies mitigate against widening their war and in fact suggest that they may be sacrificed in the pursuit of larger interests.

Other parallels may well be drawn as the Indo-Pakistani conflict evolves, but for the moment let us leave on this note: Sometimes the lessons learned from the experience of others are not the ones that were hoped for or intended to be.

That is the ultimate parallel of all.

Posted on

The Comparative Notebook on Trump’s Tariffs.

The ever brilliant Kate Nicholls has kindly agreed to allow me to re-publish her substack offering some under-examined backdrop to Trump’s tariff madness. The essay is not meant to be a full scholarly article but instead an insight into the thinking (if that is the correct word) behind the current moment of trade madness. However unpleasant, there is a method to it, and there is a twist to how it may be applied today.

The link is here. It is well worth the read.

Posted on

Signalling Deliberate Reckless Disregard (updated with a NZ angle).

Some thoughts on the Signal Houthi Principal’s Committee chat group conversation reported by Jeff Goldberg at The Atlantic.

It is obviously a major security breach. But there are several dimensions to it worth examining.

1) Signal is an unsecured open source platform that although encrypted can easily be hacked by signals intelligences agencies as well as criminal entities (it is a major part of what they do). The Pentagon issued warnings about using Signal to discuss sensitive information a week before this chat group was set up and yet National Security Advisor Waltz (who set up the group chat) went ahead and used it anyway, then inadvertently included Goldberg in the conversation;

2) Who was there and who was not. The 18 member group (including Goldberg) did not included any military officer, either from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Central Command (which organised and conducted the strikes on Houthi targets). It did include people who had no reason to know classified details of the war plans, including the Treasury Secretary and his Chief of Staff, Secretary of State and his Chief Counsel and several lower-ranking staffers from the White House and other agencies. All could have received general unclassified briefs rather than highly classified advance notification of the details of the strikes. Most tellingly, the US Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, a member of the group chat with no need to know specifics of the strikes, was in Moscow at the time, where he was very likely to be under close electronic and personal surveillance;

3) All participants in the group had easy access to dedicated secure communications, including in some cases at their homes as well as part of their travel parties. They did not use them and instead opted for the unsecured commercial platform;

4) This matters because if reports are correct, weapons, targets, sequencing of attacks and location of platforms (air, sea, land) were specifically mentioned, as well as the name of a CIA agent, two hours before the attacks began. If hostile actors were monitoring any of the group’s Signal accounts, then the Houthis could have been warned in advance. One wonders what else these accounts may have offered adversaries if the use of Signal was commonplace amongst them;

5) There are reports that Signal was used to avoid Freedom of Information ACT (FOI) and Official Records Act (ORA) scrutiny. This was recommended by Project 2025 to eliminate information data that might be considered prejudicial or controversial if made public under the FOI or as part of ORA obligations (since apps like Signal permanently delete conversations once they are closed, so no records of them are kept. In this case Waltz set the closure date at one week after the chat ended). Deliberately trying to circumvent the ORA is illegal. Think of the historical precedent: Nixon’s Watergate tapes;

6) The chat involved diplomatic as well as operational security. Operational details of such strikes are obviously classified in advance of them and often after the fact because lives as well as US interests can be put at risk. Diplomatic security refers to frank discussions between government peers that they consider to be private/in-house because foreign interlocutors may not be happy with them (think of it as a buffer hiding a lack of discretion among officials). In this Signal chat group European allies were disparaged by SecDef and the VP, and Deputy Chief of Staff Miller spoke of extracting economic concessions from the likes of the Egyptians for providing the muscle in breaking the Houthi blockade (Egypt imposes levies on shipping in the Suez Canal as they transit to/from the Mediterranean and Red Sea, so lesser vessels in the Suez Canal due to the Houthi blockade means less revenue for Cairo. Breaking the blockade is therefore to the economic benefit of the Egyptians and Miller advised the group to demand compensation for doing so). There were differences in the group regarding the timing of the strikes because of differing perceptions of who would benefit the most–Europe or the US. The group also spoke of pre-empting the Israelis when it came to attacking the Houthis in order to get the political credit for doing so. All of this is sensitive insofar as it reveals the mindsets of the group participants with regard to allies. That mindset, in a word, is undiplomatic to say the least;

7) Given who was in the group and what was discussed, it appears that the Signals Houthi Principal’s Committee was basically a PR task force of sorts that was designed to get behind a specific narrative about the strikes. That is even openly mentioned in the conversation–staying on script, being united in the messaging, etc. That in and of itself would be fine if the conversation did not include any classified information. But if it did…

8) The administration states that no classified information was discussed and has resorted to smearing Goldberg as a deflection. That is a short-term solution. If the chat did not involve any classified information then Goldberg is free to release it to the public, or at least to investigative committees and agencies (he has very ethically chosen not to publish what he calls the classified details that he was privy to because of the risks involved). If there was classified material discussed in the chat, then DNI Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe came perilously close to perjuring themselves before a Congressional Committee today, and Waltz and Hegseth have now lied to POTUS (assuming that Trump was unaware of the chat until after the fact) as well as the public.

All of this will undoubtably be a source of concern for US intelligence partners and allies in general. Although military and intelligence professionals in the security decision-making chain are continuing to do their jobs professionally, the cavalier if not reckless approach to information security exhibited by these partisan loyalists at the top of the Trump security apparatus is bound to cause alarm. After all, if loose lips sink ships, then the loose lips are on the Trump boat’s bridge.

NZ RELEVANT UPDATE: The New Zealand Navy is currently in command of JTF-150, the joint maritime patrol force leading the response to the Houthi attempted blockade in the Red Sea. NZDF also has targeting teams and other intelligence assets in the JTF-150 AOR (Area of Responsibility), which obviously includes Yemen and other Red Sea littoral States. Given that a CIA agent’s name was mentioned in this Signal chat group session, it raises the question as to whether other Signal chats were used by Trump administration officials to discuss classified information that may have included details of the activities of JTF-15 partners, including the NZDF. If so, that would be very problematic in terms of ongoing operational security for the NZDF personnel currently deployed in that theater. https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-150-maritime-security/#:~:text=CTF%20150%20is%20a%20multinational,on%20a%20four%2Dmonth%20basis.

To reiterate. If Signal was used to circumvent the ORA and potential FOI obligations whether classified information was mentioned or not, then criminal liability is now on the table for those who organised and participated in the group chat.

Except for Jeff Goldberg.

Posted on

A Return to a US Gilded Age?

I have been trying to figure out the logic of Trump’s tariff policies and apparent desire for a global trade war. Although he does not appear to comprehend that tariffs are a tax on consumers in the country doing the tariffing, I can (sort of) understand that he may think that this is a good way to protect US manufacturing and employment. But because the evidence that tariffs wind up hurting domestic consumers and do not necessarily bring back manufacturing, farming or employment in those or other sectors, I found myself somewhat mystified as to why Trump is determined to push them through.

I realise that he is using them as a form of leverage to obtain concessions in non-trade areas like illicit drug interdiction and immigration. But he seems to want to go further than forcing neighbouring countries to tighten their border controls in exchange of a lifting of tariffs or reduction in the amount of them (both in terms of reducing tariff costs–say from 25 percent to 10 percent–as well as the range of goods subject to tariffs). He truly does appear think that tariffs are good for the US, all evidence to the contrary.

Because of his intellectual limitations (remember my empty vessel argument of a couple of weeks ago), I then thought about his economic advisors and how they may see the issue. Here is where I think I have found the answer to Trump’s obsession with tariffs. It has to do with the so-called Gilded Age.

Readers may recall Trump speaking of president William McKinley and the “Gilded Age” when the US was prosperous, expanding and turning into the global superpower that it eventually became. He even restored the name “Mount McKinley” to the mountain in Alaska known as Denali by indigenous people and has otherwise extolled the virtues of the 25th US president even though McKinley was assassinated while in office in 1901 (Vice President Teddy Roosevelt succeeded him). As it turns out at least one person (an anarchist) was not happy with his policies. Yet it seems that Trump seeks to return to a new US Gilded Age in light of what he and his advisors see as the failure of capitalist globalisation.

Needless to say, there have been global trade systems since ancient times. Notions of Riccardian and competitive advantage were eventually developed around them to explain and justify the commonweal benefits of global trade. This accelerated with the technology-driven globalisation of production, consumption and exchange that emerged as of the 1990s and grew exponentially in the following two and a half decades. While all economic boats would be lifted by this rising tide, the argument went, the expansion in trade was expected to benefit the US the most because it was the core of the global capitalist system, including finance, advanced manufacturing, information and high-tech services, logistics and even value-added primary good extraction.

For its adherents, the post-Bretton Woods moment was the US’s oyster and free trade under standardised monetary exchange conditions was considered to be so universally positive that theories (known as “neo-modernization” theories after the original 1950s variants) were advanced that posited that joining global systems of trade would lead to rising middle classes and eventually democracies in poorer authoritarian countries that adopted the export-import logic and other development models such as the so-called “Washington Consensus.” The Consensus (by industrialised nation’s finance ministers of the time) married neoliberal domestic economic theories based on the primacy of finance capital in determining a country’s investment opportunities in a macroeconomic environment characterised by the reduction of the State’s role as both manager and direct producer of national goods and services, on the one hand, with an abject faith in the invisible hand dynamics at play when national markets were opened up to unfettered foreign competition.

As it turns out, things did not go as planned. Rather than benefit the most as the core of the globalised system of trade, the US saw significant declines in domestic manufacturing, mining and other extractive enterprises as well as a number of value-added business sectors (textiles, shoes, ship-building) when US firms migrated abroad in pursuit of cheaper labour and supply chain inputs. Even service sectors saw business move abroad–think of off-shore call and computer service centres–something that in the aggregate saw the economic decline of the so-called Industrial Age-originated “Rust Belt,” growth of increasingly precarious labor markets and the rise of a host of social pathologies associated with that decline (the book Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance sums them up pretty well even if it is a fictionalised account of his own life story pre-politics).

Put bluntly, instead of being at the top of the globalized pile, when it came to many US domestic businesses, profits were prioritised over patriotism, they moved their businesses abroad and the benefits of globalisation went to them (in terms of re-patriated profits), not their former employees and the communities that depended on their livelihoods. When it comes to free trade and open markets, businesses acted as capitalists first, and that made them globalists rather than nationalists.

The bottom line is that while the US remains the core of the global economy, the location of where globalisation impacted negatively the most within the US and the perception of its general decline as a result is a strong component of the economic nationalist discourse that propels the modern US Right. From Pat Buchanan to Rand Paul to Steve Bannon, US economic nationalists see US decline as rooted in two main things: 1) the migration of industries away from the Heartland to foreign countries which do not adhere to the overly restrictive environmental, labor, welfare and taxation standards of the US; and 2) the “woke” cultural transitions associated with granting equal rights to everyone regardless of merit while opening admission to immigrants from foreign cultures that are inherently anti-Western in orientation and yet upon which the US was increasingly dependent for both skilled and unskilled labor.

This is where economic nationalists on Trump’s staff like Peter Navarro come in. It is he and his colleagues that put the thought of the McKinley Gilded Age into Trump’s otherwise adderal-addled head. For them, a global trade war suits the US because as the biggest economic bully on the block, others will fold their cards before it has to. The belief is that although there will be short-term pain in the US domestic economy, eventually foreign countries and businesses will, for their own political as well as economic reasons, bend a knee and comply with US demands on trade and non-trade issues. Some manufacturing and other businesses may return to the US but even if they just adjust their bilateral export pricing and other trade measures in line with US demands, the view is that the US will eventually win and ultimately prosper because the advantages it has when it comes to complex economies of scale.

We need to underscore that many trade globalisation supporters did not see the US as necessarily benefitting more than others under the modern trade framework. Instead, they saw all nations receiving some benefit in excess of what they would accrue if they did not join the network, and within that “limited gains” perspective the US would still do well even if it lost uncompetitive businesses to foreign markets that held comparative and competitive advantages like lower wages and costs and proximity of raw materials, rising educational standards etc. They believed that the US would simply specialise in higher-end production and services that used advanced technologies and value-added capital goods while continuing to domestically supply most consumer non-durables like food staples and the like.

This is different than what the economic nationalists envisioned, and whereas the globalist economic vision is an integral part of the liberal internationalist perspective and institutional order codified in the likes of the IMF, WTO and World Bank, economic nationalists see the entire combine as inimical to US economic supremacy and hence an existential macroeconomic threat that increased US economic dependency on the whims of others such as the PRC and EU. Where globalists see trade interdependence and mutual benefit, economic nationalists see trade dependency and economic vulnerability The latter is the dominant rationale in the White House at the moment.

With Navarro and other economic nationalists back in the West Wing and the liberal international order in disarray for more than just economic reasons, the in-house consensus is that the time is ripe to push for another Gilded Age on the back of a tariff-based national economic restructuring. Coupled with a new version of gunboat diplomacy and carrying a foreign policy Big Stick, Trump is offered as the champion of and vehicle for that metamorphosis.

The trouble is that US capitalism today is not the capitalism of a century ago, nor is the nature of its connections to a globalized capitalist world with multiple centres of economic gravity. Think of the Middle East, the Arab oil oligarchies and their sovereign hedge funds. Think of the reach of the PRC’s Belt and Road initiative. Think of the rise of the Global South and emergence of the BRICS as an economic bloc. All of this suggests that while Trump may see himself as McKinley bringing in a new US Gilded Age, he is just a real-time protagonist in his economic advisor’s pipe dreams. What may have worked at the turn of the 20th century in terms of tariffs benefiting the US is unlikely to work in the early 21st century, at least not in the measure envisioned. So even if some countries cave to US demands on a host of issues, the chances of the US “winning” a truly global trade war seem long at best, and even if the US “wins” the economic contest, the political costs of subjecting the US electorate to consumer price hikes and supply chain disruption through the 2026 Congressional midterm elections and 2028 presidential vote may spell serious trouble for Trump, MAGA and the GOP regardless of who may or may not succeed him. The political fallout of the tariff moves, in other words, may yield negative dividends even if it is “successful” because the short-term economic pain that Musk and Trump talk about as necessary may not be tolerable for many voters, including those in Red States.

If that is the case, all the tariff-led economic gilding project may just turn into political rust.

Posted on

Thinking about life in a nuclear armed crowd.

The title of this post comes from Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 seminal essay Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd. In that essay he contemplated a world in which several nations had nuclear weapons, and also the strategic logics governing their proliferation, deployment and use (mainly as a deterrent). For years after his essay was published, the number of nuclear-armed states remained low. Today they include the US, UK, France, PRC, Russia, India and Pakistan, with Israel as an unacknowledged member of the club and Iran and North Korea as rogue aspirants. At one time late in the Cold War, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but abandoned them as part of the their transitions to democracy. By and large the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the acquisition of nuclear weapons in check, something that along with various arms control agreements between the US and USSR/Russia (SALT I and II, START, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)), helped stabilise a low number nuclear weapons state status quo for five decades.

But that may be about to change. Not only have nuclear powers like the PRC, India and Pakistan opted to not be bound by international arms control agreements and others like Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan and DPRK have ignored the NPT. All of the major bilateral treaties between the US and Russia governing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons have been allowed to lapse. The non-proliferation regime now mostly exists on paper and is self-enforcing in any event. There are no genuine compliance mechanisms outside of voluntary compliance by States themselves, and in the current moment nuclear armed states do not wish to comply

The situation has been made considerably worse by the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Although he speaks of securing some sort of “deal” with Iran that freezes its nuclear weapons development programs, his threats of withdrawing from NATO, including withdrawal of security guarantees under the collective security provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, coupled with his pivot towards Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, has forced some countries to reconsider their approach towards nuclear weapons. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament this week that Poland “must reach for the most modern possibilities, also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons” because of the threat of Russian aggression and unreliability of the US as a security partner under such circumstances. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea of extending a French “nuclear umbrella” over Europe (read: NATO and the EU) should the US renege on its Article 5 obligations.

The perception that the US is no longer a reliable security partner, at least under the Trump administration, must be considered by front-line states such as South Korea and Taiwan, perhaps even Japan and Germany, that are threatened by nuclear armed rivals and which until now were heavily dependent on the US nuclear deterrent for defending against aggression from those rivals. The situation is made worse because Trump is now using extortion (he calls it “leverage”) as part of his approach to security partners. His demands that Ukraine sign over strategic mineral rights to the US and that Panama return control of the Panama Canal to the US under threat of re-occupation are part of a pattern in which US security guarantees are contingent on what the US can materially get in exchange for them. Even then, Trump is notoriously unethical and prone to lying and changing his mind, so what US guarantees may be offered may be rescinded down the road.

Trump wants US security partners to spend 2 to 5 percent of GDP on defence and threatens to not honour US agreements with them if they do not. Although this may well force some NATO members and others to up their spending on defence (as Australia, Poland and South Korea already do), the one-size-fits-all percentage of GDP demand fails to recognise the circumstances of small and medium democracies such as NZ, Portugal and Holland, among others. Trump may call it driving a hard bargain, others may say that his approach is “transactional,” but in truth he is extorting US allies on the security front in order to gain concessions in other areas. And for “whatever” reason, he admires Putin and deeply dislikes Ukrainian president Zelensky as well as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, something reflected in his approach to bilateral issues and the way he talks about them. The personal is very much political with Trump, and he is an impulsive bully when he believes that it suits him to be.

The US pivot towards Russia under Trump has been much discussed in terms of its implications for the world order, strategic balancing among Great Powers and the future of the US-centric alliance systems in Europe and Asia. It truly is a major transitional moment of friction in world affairs. But the issue of nuclear proliferation as a response to the changed US stance has gone relatively unnoticed. Remember, these are not the moves of rogue states that are hostile to the old liberal international order. These are and may well continue to be the responses of democratic and/or Western aligned states that were integral members of that old order, who now feel abandoned and vulnerable to the aggression of authoritarian Great Powers like Russia and the PRC.

In the absence of the US nuclear guarantee and in the security vacuum created by its strategic pivot, indigenous development and deployment of nuclear weapons becomes a distinct possibility for a number of states that used to have the US nuclear guarantee but now are unsure if that is still true, and have the technological capabilities to do so. The global spread of high technologies makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons easier than in previous eras, and if time, money and willpower are devoted to doing so, nuclear proliferation will inevitably happen. Remember that nuclear weapons are primarily deterrent weapons. They are designed to deter attacks or retaliate once attacked, but not to strike first (unless destruction of the targeted society is the objective and retaliation in kind is discounted). They are the ultimate hedge against aggression, and now some non-nuclear states are reconsidering their options in that regard because the US cannot be trusted to come to their defence.

Russia has repeatedly raised the spectre of using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should it feel cornered, but even the Kremlin understands that this is more an intimidation bluff aimed at comfortable Western populations rather than a serious strategic gambit. But that only obtains if the US still honors its nuclear defense commitments under NATO Article 5, and if it no longer does, then the Europeans and other US allies need to reassess their nuclear options because Russian threats must, in that light, be considered sincere.

Even so, first use of nuclear weapons, specially against a non-nuclear state, remains as the ultimate red line. But that line has been blurred by Trump’s equivocation. Nuclear hedging has now become a realistic option not just for front-line democratic states facing authoritarian aggression, but with regards to the US itself because it is a no longer a reliable democratic ally but is instead a country dominated by an increasingly authoritarian policy mindset at home and in its relations further abroad. Ironically, the “madman with a nuke” thesis that served as the core of deterrence theory in the past and which continues to serve as the basis for resistance to Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs can now be applied to the US itself.

There are two ways to look at the situation. On the one hand the chances of nuclear proliferation have increased thanks to Trump’s foreign policy, especially with regards to US international commitments and alliance obligations. On the other hand, deterrence theory is in for an overhaul in light of the push to proliferate. This might re-invigorate notions of flexible response and moves to provide stop gaps in the escalatory chain from battlefield to strategic war. Notions of nuclear deterrence that were crafted in the Cold War and which did not change with the move from a bi-polar to a unipolar to a multi-polar international system must now be adapted to the realities of a looser configuration–some call them metroplexes or constellations–in which the spread of advanced technologies makes the possibility of indigenous development of nuclear deterrence capabilities more feasible than in the old security umbrella arrangements of previous decades.

The irony is that it is the US pivot towards Russia that has popped the cork on the nuclear proliferation bottle. States like Iran and the DPRK have been subject to sanctions regimes that have slowed the development of their nuclear arsenals. But that happened against the backdrop of the US providing binding security guarantees to its allies, offering a credible nuclear deterrent to those who would seek to do harm against them and giving material support to the NPT. That is not longer true. It is the US that now must be viewed with suspicion, if not fear. The briefcase with nuclear codes is within a few arm’s lengths wherever Trump goes and he is now staffing the highest ranks of the US military-security complex with personal loyalists and sycophants rather than seasoned, politically neutral, level headed professionals with experience in the practice of strategic gamesmanship, including nuclear deterrence and war planning. Under those circumstances it would be derelict for military and political leaders in erstwhile US allied states to not hedge their bets by considering acquiring nuclear weapons of their own.

This was not what Wohlstetter envisioned when he wrote his essay. But after a period where that nuclear armed crowd appeared to stabilise and even shrink, some of his insights have become relevant again. It may no longer be about MAD (mutual assured destruction), but it sure is SAD.

Posted on

Empty vessel and strategic disruptor?

I have been trying to make sense out of the shifts in US foreign policy under Trump 2.0. I understand his admiration for authoritarians and supination to Putin (which I believe is because Putin has dirt on him), and I also understand the much vaunted “transactional” nature of his view of foreign relations. Moreover, it is clear that he is a racist (remember his comments about “s***hole countries”), so he has a dim view of soft power projection into the underdeveloped world and the benefits of global engagement. His neo-isolationism is apparent, although it doe not fit well with his delusional designs on Canada, Greenland, Gaza and the Panama Canal Zone (I am of the opinion that his medications have been changed in order to make him speak in a more moderate monotone even if his message remains as deranged as always) . In any case even if I can reconcile all of this, the open move to side with Russia in its conflict with Ukraine and his attacks on erstwhile European allies are perplexing on the face of it. But perhaps there is a method to his madness, so let me try to unpack things. Let’s be clear: this may be a stretch but it is within the realm of the possible given what has happened so far.

First, let start with some background. Trump is an empty intellectual vessel. He has no foundational morals or guiding principles other than making money and garnering power. That makes him non-ideological as well as transactional in his worldview. Remember that at its core ideology is a coherent set of value principles that organise reality over time and specify the relationship between the imaginary (what could happen) and the real (what is happening). That is important because as a non-ideological empty intellectual vessel Trump is susceptible to whatever advice and suggestions appeal to him in the moment. Scapegoat immigrants? Sure. Demonize transgender people? Why not? Rename geographic locations? Sounds good. Embrace Christian nationalism? Halleluja! Champion guns, state’s rights and NASCAR? Dang right! And so forth. There is nothing too petty or trite that he will not stoop to when it comes to patriotic symbolism if it advances his interests under the pretext of making the US great “again.” The ghost whisperers who surround him know this and play upon his vainglorious ignorance.

But there is a serious side to his intellectual influences. They come in the form of disruption or chaos theory, on the one hand, and neo-reactionaryism on the other.

Chaos or disruption theory posits that stagnated status quo’s can only be “broken” by chaos or a disruptive force. That force may come in the form of “disruptors” who take advantage of chaos to impose a new order of things. The origins of this ideological belief in chaos or disruption theory come from many sources but include Milton Friedman, the father of neoliberalism, who justified his support for the 1973 Chilean coup and a number of other pro-market dictatorial interventions as the only means of breaking the hold of welfare statism on national economies. The depth of the crisis determined the extent of the disruption, be they coups in Latin America, Southern Europe and East/Southeast Asia or socially dislocating macroeconomic reform done under emergency in places like NZ and England. A political disruption was necessary in any event in order to break the extant economic model via chaotic reform.

Chaos and disruption theory see the moment of crisis as a circuit breaker, a means to end cycles of social decay and vicious circles of bureaucratic parasitism and clientelistic rent-seeking. Under proper guidance by “disruptors” as change agents, societies can re-emerge from the ashes of the old order better and stronger than before.

Reports have circulated for years that Trump embraces his own form of chaos theory in which he pits his underlings against each other in order to shake out the ideas that best suit him. Although he seems to have toned things down when compared to his first presidency and what may have worked for him in the private sector may not work in the public sector (as his first presidency appears to have proven), it is possible that his advisors believe that he will welcome the “disruptor” role where he makes order out of chaos. This may be psychological manipulation by his advisors but if so it seems to be working.

That s where the second ideological strand poured into Trump’s empty vessel comes into play. Neo-reactionism holds that democracy no longer is fit for purpose. The main reason is that political equality 1) allows stupid people a vote equal to that of smart people, which in turn leads to 2) inefficient and self-destructive economic and social outcomes because elected officials and the bureaucracies that they oversee will always seek to accomodate the interests of the stupid majority over those of the enlightened few. Because of this, the ranks of the non-productive beneficiary classes grows while the entrepreneurial class shrinks, in what is seen as a form of reverse social Darwinism with a twist. Adding to the mix “progressive” policies like refugee and other migrant admissions from low IQ societies and providing social services that individuals otherwise would have to provide for themselves further dilutes the gene pool and perpetuates a cycle of dependency in the ever-expanding mass of dumb rent-seeking parasites.

The solution lies in creating an elected oligarchy that makes popular appeals and promises but which rules in a beneficent authoritarian manner, as in, for example, Singapore. It is they who know what is best for the polity and it is they who define what is in the public interest and public good. Elections are seen simply in instrumental terms, as a means of securing and maintaining power that also serve as legitimating devices for their rule.

It does not matter if this view of society and governance is a grotesque caricature of what is really happening in the US. It is what the technology entrepreneurs known as “tech bros” imagine and therefore believe it to be. Led by Elon Musk, it is the ideology of this sub-strata of wealth-horders that has gotten inside of Trump’s head. As we currently see playing out, via DOGE they are now in the first phase of implementing their vision of how the federal government should look and act.

Against that backdrop, the question then turns to US foreign policy and the dramatic shifts in it. Again, this may be a stretch but what could be happening is that the US is embarking on a foreign policy disruption and reset of its own that is designed to realign the international system that followed the Cold War. It could be that Trump (or, more precisely, his foreign policy advisors) are looking down the road and envision a new world system that, transaction by transaction and incremental reneging on the rules of the old international “liberal” order, replaces the emerging and somewhat chaotic multipolar/polyarchic/multiplex networks of the last 20 years. They are not interested in re-hashing the causes of US decline and the rise of the Global South or the ways in which international relations are no longer an exclusively State-centric and -dominated affair. They are not interested in the international liberal order. They want to re-assert US primacy after a period of challenge.

For that to happen it appears that Trump 2.0 has taken inspiration from the Cold War and is attempting to re-invent a tri-polar international system, The idea is to re-align with Russia because of shared Western traditional values and pull it away from China’s growing sphere of influence. The Russian hinge will be what balances the US-PRC relationship, giving Russia a sense of restored prestige and the US a better sense of security vis a vis the PRC.

Here again, Trump and his advisors are deeply racist in their views (think Stephen Miller) and have an abiding fear and loathing of the Chinese. The US has made clear that it wants to turn away from Europe and the Middle East and concentrate strategic attention on curtailing Chinese power expansion in Asia and elsewhere. The PRC is already mentioned–and has been for a while–as the US’s main “peer competitor,” and US war planning is heavily focused on gaming contingency scenarios versus the PRC. Trump’s attempt at territorial expansion into Greenland, the Panama Canal Zone and even (however farcical) Canada is designed to create a US lebensraum equivalent to the notion of Russian buffer states in which its interests are undisputed and inviolate (which is what Russia claims about Ukraine).

A rapprochement with Russia could tip the geopolitical scales in US favour by moving Moscow away from China’s embrace while forcing Europeans to accept new Russian-drawn buffer border boundaries and stop their security dependency and corresponding rent-seeking from the US. The US can then focus on its Asian partnerships and military planning versus the PRC, and Russia is restored, thanks to US recognition, to the community of nations (where it already enjoys support in the Global South, especially in Africa) whether the Europeans like it or not (some do, most don`t).

That is where the rubber hits the road. The move will involve sacrificing Ukraine in some form or another, be that a land-for-peace swap or some other type of security guarantees. No matter what, Ukraine will come out the lesser for its troubles and Russia will be rewarded for its aggression. But that is no longer the point because the bigger picture is what is more important in Trump’s eyes, especially if he can secure rare mineral concession rights in both Ukraine and Russia (as has been discussed lately, something that demonstrates the power of US coercive diplomacy versus Ukraine and the power of Russian persuasive diplomacy versus the US). The stagnation of the Ruso-Ukrainian war invites the application of disruption theory to the conflict, even if there will be significant collateral damage to Ukraine and US-European relations as a result.

This gambit also rests on the assumption that Russia is an honest actor and will in fact prefer to normalize relations with the US while distancing itself from the PRC (since it would be part of any negotiations to betray Ukraine unless Trump is completely owned by Putin). That may be a mistaken belief, which would make all the claims about Trump’s ability to play “three dimensional chess” a bit of a pipe dream. It also discounts the PRC reaction, which also would be a mistake.

The bottom line is that precisely because Trump is an empty intellectual and ideological vessel he is more susceptible than other presidents to the suggestions of his advisors, especially when they appeal to his narcissism and bigotry. Chaos or disruption theory-derived policy recommendations are a good way of doing so, especially when coupled with the suggestion that he is the only “King” (remember last week’s White House-generated Time Magazine cover) capable of imposing a new order both at home and abroad. If that advice is coupled with suggestions that the pivot towards Russia could earn him the Nobel Peace Prize (something that he has repeatedly said that he thinks that he deserves), then the neoreactionary ideological project will have started to bear fruit in terms of US foreign relations.

Judging from what is going on in terms of changes to US domestic policy under Trump 2.0, the strategic shift in foreign policy appears to be just one side of the disruptor’s coin. But is that a coin secured in hand by a long-term strategic plan or one that is simply being tossed to see how it lands?

Posted on

About that PLAN flotilla in the Tasman Sea.

Here are some thoughts about the hysteria surrounding a Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) flotilla conducting freedom of navigation exercises in the Tasman Sea, including live fire drills.

1) The flotilla has been tracked for over a week by New Zealand and Australian forces. The tracking began when the flotilla was well NE of the Australian northeastern coast.

HMAS Arunta shadowing PLAN vessels in the Tasman Sea. Source: ADF handout/AFP.

2) The flotilla is operating in accordance with international law and maritime regulations regarding military operations in international waters.

3) The flotilla has no air cover deployed with it and therefore no effective means to defend itself against a coordinated air assault. It is basically a sitting duck for Australian air defences and even NZDF air defences (because the NZDF P8s and Seasprite helicopters carry air to surface munitions as well as torpedos).

4) The flotilla may have a submarine deployed with it.

5) The presence of the PLAN ships in the Tasman is a form of military diplomacy, showing the flag in a distant body of water as a demonstration of blue water power projection capabilities.

6) The PLAN freedom of navigation (FON) exercise in the Tasman Sea may well be a response to a joint Australian-New Zealand FON exercise in the Taiwan Strait in September 2024. Those waters are far more disputed than the Tasman Sea (because the PRC claims them as territorial waters), so the PRC objected to the exercise at the time and declared that it would formulate an appropriate response in due course. This could be it. But the PLAN vessels are far from Australian and NZ territorial waters, so the legality of their presence in open seas is indisputable.

7) The presence of the PLAN flotilla conducting live fire drills (5 conventional surface to surface rounds fired from the Type 055 destroyer Zunyi’s main gun at a floating target, as observed by personnel on the HMNZS Te Kaha) and other exercises is an excellent opportunity for Australian and New Zealand to hone their naval counter-force capabilities, including tactical signals and technical intelligence intercepts and collection from the flotilla. If a submarine is involved then the Antipodean allies can refine their anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities as well, which is exactly what their P8 patrol and ASW aircraft are designed to do. As it stands, Australia and NZ are using air and surface platforms to shadow the PLAN boats.

8) Much has been made about the lack of warning given by the PLAN before the live fire drills. Such warnings are a courtesy, not part of any formal protocol. They are usually issued 12+ hours prior to the drill in order for interested parties such as civilian aviation and maritime operators to plan accordingly and clear away from the target area. The PLAN gave 15 minute warnings, forcing a few planes to adjust course away from the no-fly zone. That was perhaps rude as far as courtesy goes, but nothing more.

9) Most of the hysteria about the flotilla is led by Australian opposition figures in politics and media in an election year. Most of the alarm in New Zealand is led by Sinophobic media commentators or people with little knowledge of military affairs or the nuances of military diplomacy, much less naval operations (especially in NZ). All of them want to tie the exercises to broader Chinese moves in the Southwest Pacific such as the recent bilateral strategic agreement between the PRC and the Cook Islands. For their part, Ministry of Defense officials on both sides have been muted in their response and military officials have been largely silent (presumably because they know what is really happening).

10) It is clear that the PRC is “flexing” its military might in more and more distant places, as any Great Power would do. But not every display of power capability constitutes an imminent threat. Should Australia and NZ pay attention to the exercise? Absolutely, especially because it can be used as a learning tool for their respective naval counter-force platforms. Should they feel threatened by the exercises? Absolutely not. Claims of the exercise posing a threat, being a provocation or an act of intimidation by the PRC betray the biases of those who make such claims. The PRC is just doing what Great Powers do, and if anything it is reminding others of its capabilities while testing them in front of foreign eyes.

Sailors aboard an Australian navy ship look out at Chinese vessels on February 13, picture by the Australian Defence Force

Sailors aboard the HMAS Arunta observe the PLAN flotilla in the Tasman Sea. Source; AFD handout/AFP

11) In the end, if the US, UK, French or other Western navies conducted the exact same exercise in the Tasman Sea, there would be little controversy about it. Because it is the PLAN, however, anti-PRC elements in Australia and New Zealand want to use the occasion to stir up trouble in pursuit of their own agendas. But the truth is that the PRC is not designated as an adversary or hostile state by either Australia or New Zealand, who in fact enjoy largely cordial and beneficial trade relations with the Asian giant. Although there have been moments of friction between Australia and New Zealand, on one hand, and the PRC on the other over a number of political, diplomatic and military strategic issues, and the PRC remains a major concern for the Australian and NZ security communities for a number of reasons, none of this justifies turning what is a relatively small display of power projection into an international incident.

Everyone needs to clam down and relax.

Posted on

A reminder about soft power.

Waste and fraud certainly exist in foreign aid programs, but rightwing celebration of USAID’s dismantling shows profound ignorance of the value of soft power (as opposed to hard power) in projecting US influence and interests abroad by non-military/coercive means (think of “hearts and minds,” “hugs, not bullets,” “honey versus vinegar,” etc.). Soft power is also a component of “smart power” and “sharp power” strategies in which a combination of foreign policy instruments are used in concert in pursuit of a variety of non-kinetic ends (i.e. objectives short of war).

This razor-gang approach is short-sighted at best and stupid at worst given that the humanitarian/developmental aid vacuum left by US withdrawal from such efforts opens up the field to potential inroads by US rivals. Add to that the fact that USAID pays US farmers around $2 Billion for surplus rice, soy, corn and other agricultural commodities that otherwise would not be grown or go to waste, and the MAGA/DOGE move against USAID is a double-sided own-goal.

The NZ government, which currently is under the sway of MAGA/DOGE-style public policy ideologies, might do good to remember this when it deals with soft power competition in the South Pacific. Waving a (thornless) stick (say, in the form of withdrawal of foreign aid) at Pacific Island Forum countries when they negotiate bilateral economic, diplomatic and developmental aid agreements with non-“traditional” (non-Western/colonial) partners is likely to elicit some blowback of its own.

After all, regardless of the specific compacts agreed to in the past, sovereign States, whatever powers and protections they may have ceded to “traditional” partners, ultimately are autonomous agents of their own destinies. Foreign aid is a good way to remind them that that may be true but destinies can often be intertwined for mutual benefit even if other parties come late to the table.

Posted on

A turn to the Big Stick.

This is from the 36th Parallel social media account (as brief food for thought).

We know that Trump is ahistorical at best but he seems to think that he is Teddy Roosevelt and can use the threat of invoking the Monroe Doctrine and “Big Stick” gunboat diplomacy against Panama and Greenland to leverage concessions from them. But he is no Teddy Roosevelt and this is not the early 20th century. Trump may find that abrogating Treaties and engaging in coercive diplomacy may suit Putin but may not be the useful tools that he thinks they are when dealing with two friendly democracies/military partners (Rio Treaty/NATO) in today’s world. Who is advising him on this?

Because it smacks of mobster thuggery mixed in with gross ignorance.

Trump’s reasoning appears to be rooted in his fear of Chinese influence in both countries. Chinese firms have invested in Greenland’s strategic minerals sector for over a decade while US and other Western firms have not. Trump and his advisors see this as a threat now that the Arctic Passage is opening thanks to global warming (that Trump refuses to acknowledge much less address), but neither the autonomous Greenland government or the Danish government that oversees it (the relationship between the two is akin to that of NZ and the Cook Islands) seem particularly bothered by their presence and welcome the investment. Even if it stationed military personnel there in WW2 and has mounted Arctic expeditions using military personnel stationed at a Greenland base, the US has no claim to Greenland whatsoever. It is Danish territory with a local independence movement (something that Trump may attempt to exploit), which means that he is eying the internationally recognised territory of a NATO partner for annexation or acquisition.

Since 1996 Hong Kong based maritime transport firms (COSCO in particular) have managed the container terminals at both ends of the canal. The locks are manned by a mixture of Panamanian, US and other nationalities, so the Chinese do not “control” it. Contrary to Trump’s lies, there are no PRC “soldiers” in the Canal Zone and the management of the canal, including passage fees and related levies, are not discriminatory against US-bound, US-originated or US-flagged vessels. Under the terms of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty that replaced the original Treaty signed in 1903 (in which the US paid Panama a flat sum and yearly rents for a ten-mile swathe of land on either side of the canal), no military personnel other than those of the US and Panama can be stationed in the Canal Zone, and foreign military forces must ask for permission to transit the waterway. The result is that the Canal Zone is sovereign Panamanian territory whose security is partially guaranteed by the US rather than be threatened by it.

As for the invocation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine as a reason to intervene in Panama, beyond the imperialistic motivations behind it, the reality then and now is that the Doctrine is just a proclamation by one US president backed by military force. Its original focus was on deterring European powers (and Russia) from establishing footholds in the Western Hemisphere but over time it became an umbrella excuse for US interventionism even if it was not particularly effective in preventing the establishment of a Soviet naval base in Cienfuegos, Cuba, or Marxist/Maoist inspired and backed guerrilla revolutionary movements from cropping up throughout the region in the post-WW2 Cold War era.

Most importantly, the Monroe Doctrine has no basis in international or US law. It is not a Treaty (unlike the Panama Canal Treaty) that has been ratified by the US Congress, and therefore has no legal standing. It just survives as a historical relic propped up by notions of customary usage as a general justification for US interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. I had to deal with it when I was the Western Hemisphere Regional Policy Analyst in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, and let’s just say that US security hawks like it because they believe that it gives them unilateral carte blanche to meddle in Latin American and Caribbean affairs. They now have a chance to test that belief.

For some background on the Panama Canal see these US briefs on how the Panama Canal Treaties came into effect.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/panama-canal#:~:text=In%20his%20new%20role%2C%20Bunau,guarantee%20the%20independence%20of%20Panama.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/panama-canal

The text of the 1977 Treaty restoring Panamanian control over the canal can be found here: https://pancanal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/neutrality-treaty.pdf

Posted on

About Syria.

I have been thinking about Syria and coverage of the fall of the Assad regime, and to be honest I believe that there is something missing from the picture being painted, at least in NZ. Although I am no expert on Syria or the Middle East, I do have some experience working with irregular and unconventional fighting groups as well as writing about authoritarian regime demise and the modalities by which that occurs. I will therefore take a moment to reflect on what I think is missing.

Media reporting has it that the attack on Aleppo and rapid, two-week drive through Hama and Homs to Damascus was a surprise. That may be true for the media, many non-Syrian laypeople and perhaps the Russians and pro-Assad Syrians themselves, but otherwise I beg to differ. The reason is because the training and massing of rebel fighters in Northern and Central Syria would have taken time (some believe the uprising has been 5-10 years in the making), and would have therefore been detected by Western and regional intelligence services some time ago. If we think about satellite and aerial imagery, signals intercepts, ground based thermal and other technical acquisition capabilities as well as human intelligence on the ground, then consider that Syria and its armed factions are in the middle of a larger geopolitical conflict in the Levant and wider Middle East, and then think about who has a direct vested interest in Syria’s fate (as well as their partners and patrons), it is probably safe to assume that intelligence agencies grouped in the 5 Eyes, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, France and/or Germany were monitoring at one level or another developments in rebel-held areas long before the assault on Aleppo was launched.

And then there is the pro-Assad intelligence community.

Perhaps distracted by events elsewhere, the Russians appear to have been genuinely caught off-guard, although it has been reported that they started pulling out personnel from Syria weeks before the attacks began (which would suggest they knew something was about to happen). Likewise, perhaps distracted by their own concerns regarding Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranians eventually airlifted key personnel out of Damascus shortly after Aleppo fell, so even if they were blind to the preparations for the uprising, they clearly believed, correctly, that momentum was with the rebels once the assault was launched. More tellingly, weeks ago there were credible claims that the Syrian State had been “hollowed out” by senior officials (i.e. state coffers were raided, corruption and drug-dealing was endemic and public service provision halted), who then fled the country. Make of that what you will.

All of this would have given some clear indications that the Syrian status quo was about to change and Assad and the rest of his henchmen were soon to exit one way or another. What is telling is that the intelligence agencies that would have known about the rebel’s preparations (including NZ via its connections to 5 Eyes and other Western intelligence agencies including Mossad), maintained excellent operational security and did not let it be known, either by leaks or mistakes, that a major coordinated assault by the rebels was in the making. This was done not so much to spite the mainstream corporate media, which clearly had zero boots on the ground in rebel-held areas prior to the assault, but to prevent the Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas and Russians from learning about the uprising before it was underway. By the time the “axis of resistance” realised what was happening, it was too late to do anything but wait, watch and if need be, flee.

Whether the Russian, Syrian and Iranian intelligence failures were caused by them being stretched too thin on the ground, distracted with external events and/or incompetence, there are lessons to be learned learned from their lack of forewarning.

Israel’s successful (at least for now), multi-front campaign against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis, with some sidebar strikes on Syria thrown in for good measure, degraded the axis of resistance’s capabilities to detect and prevent the uprising. Now it appears that Israel is opening another front in Syria with an eye to significantly changing the geopolitical landscape in the region. Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated as military forces. Iran has been intimidated into passivity. The Houthis have gone largely silent. This, thanks to Israel’s scorched earth, targeted assassination and long-range missile strike operations against all of them. Now Israel has launched a two-pronged offensive in Syria, conducting a bombing campaign against weapons storage facilities (some containing chemical weapons stockpiles) while simultaneous targeting command and control facilities as well as the entirety of the Syrian Navy (which shares major port facilities with the Russian Mediterranean fleet at the city of Tartus, which in turn raises the question of what will become of the Russian presence there and at a nearby airfield once the rebels seize control of them).

The IDF has also sent ground forces into and beyond the UN-monitored buffer zone separating Syrian control from Israel within and beyond the Golan Heights. Much like in Southern Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, Israel has seized the opportunity provided by neighborly discord in order to expand its presence in its neighbours’ territory, perhaps with an eye to redrawing their common borders. Since there is no foreign power capable of stopping Israel or willing to do so, it looks like the Israeli gambit will pay off. But that may depend on what the rebel-led government in Syria does next.

If foreign powers were aware in advance of the rebel’s plans, it is also very likely that they conducted more than passive observation and information-sharing amongst themselves. The US has 900 troops in Syria, most of them US Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Green Berets’ main mission is to train, advise and assist local forces in any given conflict, so it is possible that they had working ties to the rebel groups in advance of the assault on Aleppo. The US also has combat troops stationed in Jordan, Israel and Iraq and a variety of military assets in Turkey, effectively surrounding Syria’s land borders. Likewise, in part because of the lingering presence of ISIS in central and eastern Syria, a number of other countries–NATO members most likely–have special operators and/or military intelligence assets “in theatre.” Turkey acknowledges its military working relationship with one of the rebel groups, the Syrian National Army (SNA) in Northern Syria. The US has close ties to Kurdish insurgents in Northwest Syria and Northwest Iraq. The Jordanians are said to have operatives in Southern Syria and one can assume that, if not an surreptitious military presence, Israel has its covert hand in the pie as well.

What this means is that it is quite possible that foreign forces provided training, advising and intelligence and logistical support in the years, months, weeks and days leading up to and through the assault on Aleppo. If so, it should not be surprising that he rebels maintained an unusual amount of discipline previously unseen in their ranks, and that the various armed factions worked well together, sometimes in coordinated fashion. Even some of their combat fatigues and weapons look new and Western in origin!

So who are these rebels? Basically they are Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), who are the remnants of a group formerly known as Jabbat al-Nusra (Nusra Front), an al-Qaeda and ISIS-connected Islamicist group; the Free Syrian Army (an anti-Assad “secular” group backed by the West); and the afore-mentioned, Turkish-backed SNA. There are also Kurdish PKK/YPG/SDF militias in the mix who control approximately one quarter of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates River (and major oil fields), although these divide their time between mopping up Syrian Army troops in Northeastern Syria and fighting ISIS militants, the SNA, the Turkish military and pro-Turkish militias.

The rebel coalition has formed a tactical alliance against its common enemy. None of the constituent parts are particularly democratic in orientation, and in spite of HST’s claims that it has served all ties with ISIS and does not espouse (Sunni) Islamicist beliefs such as Salafism or Wahhabism, such statements must be taken with a grain of salt. There are numerous reports of lethal attacks on Christians and Alawites (which is a Shiite sect) by rebel forces in Aleppo and Hama, so the proof of the rebel’s good intentions remains to be seen, especially if military discipline has broken down amid the quest for collective revenge.

The sectarian nature of the rebel coalition is worth noting because the Assad regime was Alawite, which is a mostly coastal minority community in an otherwise Sunni-dominated country. Assad reserved many of his governments’ top positions to co-religionists in the Syrian Baath Party (originally related to the Iraqi Baathists led by Saddam Hussein), so retribution and revenge against those who formed the support base and bureaucratic staff of the Assad regime can be expected, HST assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. What is promising is that HST has agreed to form an interim (not yet transitional) government with various sects represented and some carry-overs from the Assad regime appointed in order to restore and/or maintain continuity in public services.

The HST-led government is now focused on rooting out Assad loyalists, imposing social order, securing military and police facilities (including notorious prisons), and bringing public services back to life where possible. But reconstruction of battle-damaged areas will be lengthy and difficult process given that Syria’s treasury has been emptied, many public offices looted and/or damaged, and corruption is rampant within and between various sectarian groups. The international community will be asked to foot the bill and provide the human, material and financial capital required to return the country to some semblance of normalcy. This is complicated but the fact that the HST and PKK/YPGSDF have been designated as terrorist entities by the UN and a number of countries (although for different reasons, with HST designated because of its ties to ISIS and the PKK/YPG/SDF designated at Turkey’s insistence because of their irredentist activities in pursuit of an independent Kurdistan in territory now controlled by Syria, Iraq and Turkey). Before international relief can be offered, the terrorist designations will have to be lifted, something that will not please many interested parties for a variety of reasons.

More broadly, the fall of the Assad regime is one variant of what is known as “bottom-up transitions,” where before the regime is prepared to exit it is forced to do so by public pressure and mass collective action. Bottom-up transitions can stem from revolts, rebellions, general strikes, mass protests and the ultimate sub-type, revolutions (which, unlike the others, involve parametric change in the economy, social order and political society). These are not to be confused with top-down transitions, in which the outgoing regime frames the conditions by which it relinquishes power. This can be done peacefully or by a coup d’état, which is essentially an armed quarrel amongst elites in which the military acts as the arbiter of who wins and loses in the power struggle by siding with those that favour an exit strategy and transition to a different regime type. Examples of peaceful top-down transitions were seen in Brazil in the 1980s and Chile in the 1990s, where power was devolved from military control and handed over to elected civilian rule rather than be overthrown by force.

In Syria as has happened elsewhere, there will be major tensions between so-called “moderates” and “militants” (soft-liners and hard-liners) in the HST-led coalition. Hardliners and militants tend to come from fighting backgrounds. They tend not to seek compromise and conciliation because they have succeeded in imposing their will by force of arms. They are reluctant to forgive their defeated adversaries and many are sworn to avenge the affronts committed against their families, friends and communities (and in Syria, the affronts included atrocities and other forms of barbarism committed by Assad’s forces against the civilian population). Moderates, on the other hand, tend to come from the non-fighting political opposition, religious, business and community leaders and foreign interlocutors. These seek to draw a line behind them when it comes to dealing with the past in order to facilitate the reconstruction of society and promote national reconciliation.

The key to keeping the post-Assad transition relatively peaceful is for the moderates and softliners to gain the upper hand in negotiations to form the new government. For that to happen, inducements and constraints (think carrots and sticks) must be offered to and placed on the militant hardliners. Inducements can include open trials for those accused of heinous crimes committed on Assad’s behalf, placement of senior rebel commanders in leadership roles the Syrian security apparatus, establishment of Truth and Reconciliation Tribunals that address past sins committed on all sides, and even material rewards for those who refrain from continuing to use violence as a means to an end. Constraints could include weapons impoundments, criminal prosecutions, and other legal and material disincentives that discourage continuation of hardline or militant behaviour.

None of this will be easy but it is necessary is stability is to return to Syria. It is possible that the armed factions and their political and social supporters can use the common ground forged fighting the common enemy to expand the basis for commonality into other aspects of Syrian life. It could start with something as simple as national sports or cultural traditions and then move to the more thorny issues of governance, economic accumulation and distribution, religious and secular civil rights, and so forth.

What is clear is that, for the short term at least, the big losers in Syria are Alawites, Iranian and Russians. Assad is gone and his minions routed. Iran has lost its major overland transit route connecting it to Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (Hamas) as well as the intelligence, forward basing and logistical support of the Assad regime. Russia has lost it foremost ally in the Middle East as well as the intelligence and military assets that it had stationed in Syria prior to Assad’s fall (assuming that the new regime will confiscate the Russian facilities at Tartus and Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia city). Reputationally, both Iran and Russia have taken a major hit with their weaknesses as a security partner now exposed.

Israel appears to be the primary short-term beneficiary of Assad’s overthrow. To a lesser but significant extent, so are Western and Middle Eastern powers with a stake in the Levant. But a longer-term prognosis is more difficult to ascertain because the direction of the HST-led government has yet to be determined, and the post-Assad settling of scores has yet to be decided. Whether or not this involves a return of Islamicists with or without the ISIS brand is foremost among the concerns of many security agencies.

In any event the best we can do is embrace the uncertainties inherent in the moment, attempt where possible to bolster the moderate/softliner positions within the new government and offer concrete steps based on the experience of others as part of the path towards national recovery. History will be the ultimate judge of the process but for the moment all we can say is that we live in interesting times.