Survival

 

 

Spring 2001 (Vol. 43 No. 1)

• The World and President Bush

  Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He writes a monthly column for The Washington Post and is contributing editor at The Weekly Standard. He is co-editor, with William Kristol, of Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in Americna Foreign and Defense Policy, published in autumn 2000 by Encounter Books.

  The world was kind to America in the 1990s. It is unlikely, however, that the next decade will be so accommodating. Clinton administration policies on China and Iraq, inadequate defence spending and delays in building a national missile defence are intimately related failures that may well converge most unpleasantly for the Bush administration. Since the end of the Cold War, Americans have confused themselves by asking the wrong question: 'Where is the threat?' Yet the danger to be faced does not fit neatly under the heading of 'international terrorism', 'rogue states' or 'ethnic conflict'. The danger, rather, is that the United States, the world's dominant power, on which the maintenance of international peace and the support of liberal democratic principles depend, will neglect its responsibilities and allow the international order that it created and sustains to collapse.

   

• Bush, missile defence and the Atlantic alliance

  Philip H. Gordon, is Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and Director of the Center on the United States and France at the Brookings Institute, Washington DC. From 1998-1999 he was Director for European Affairs at the US National Security Council. This article was originally prepared for the Institut francais des relations internationales (IFRI) and will be published in French in a forthcoming IFRI book in spring 2001.

  To the consternation of many Europeans, US President George W. Bush has made clear that he intends to deploy a national missile defence (NMD) as soon as possible. Whereas Bush sees NMD deployment as indispensable in a world of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, Europeans worry that it will spur an arms race with Russia and China; decouple Europe from the US; and waste scarce resources on technologies that may never work against a threat that may not exist. Narrowing this gap is critical, however, because the US needs European support - in the form of radar sites and diplomatic cooperation - if the NMD project is to succeed. As it moves forward, the Bush administration should make clear that NMD is not directed at Russia or China; make good-faith efforts to modify the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; not rush into deployment; and stand ready to provide missile-defence coverage for Europe as well.

   

• Prudent or paranoid? The Pentagon's two-war plans

  Michael O'Hanlon, is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is Defense Policty Choices for the Bush Administration (Washington DC: Brookings, forthcoming).

  The United States needs military forces sufficient to deter, and possibly even fight, wars in two places at the same time. But the Pentagon's current two-war concept - under which the US would send more than half a million troops to each of two all-out wars that began nearly simultaneously and overlapped in time - is excessive. Under a more realistic approach, the United States would plan for only a single all-out war that included a prompt massive ground offensive to overthrow an enemy government and occupy its territory. In a second possible war, it would rely more heavily on air-power in the early going - or on naval power, in the case of war in the Taiwan Strait. It would also rely more on key allies.

   

• Korean changes, Asian challenges and the US role

  Kurt M. Campbell and Mitchell B. Reiss. Kurk M. Campbell, Senior Vice President and Director of International Security Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies, was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and the key Asian architect at the US Department of Defense between 1992-2000. Mitchess B. Reiss Dean of International Affairs and Director of the Reves Center for International Studies, College of William and Mary, was Senior Advisor to the Korean Energy Development Organisation.

  The George W. Bush administration faces difficult challenges in Asia associated with the rise of China and the potential for instability in Indonesia. Yet perhaps the most pressing early decisions facing the new administration concern the Korean Peninsula. This Korean challenge is a somewhat incongruous one. Major strategic issues in Asia are usually associated with negative developments, such as instability across the Taiwan Strait. The June 2000 North-South Korean summit, however, has presented the United States with the opposite dilemma. Enhanced stability on the Korean Peninsula raises the prospect of an overall improvement in the strategic situation in North-east Asia. But these developments also carry uncertain implications for the United States and its influence in Asia.

   

• Putting Europe first

  Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Goldgeier. Ivo Daalder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and co-author most recently of Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosove (Washington DC: Brookings 2000). James Goldgeier is associate professor of political science at George Washington University, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, and author most recently of Not Whether But When: The US Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington DC: Brookings, 1999)

  For more than 50 years, the United States has pursued a policy toward Europe that aimed at strengthening the democratic core: first in the West and, once the Berlin Wall came down, in the East. The immediate challenge for the Bush administration is to ensure that the process started at the end of the Cold War will be brought to fruition, so that a peaceful, undivided and democratic Europe, stretching from the Atlantic to beyond the Urals, will finally have been created. That implies clear policy choices: Washington should fully support the development of a strong Europe; NATO enlargement must continue; Russia cannot be left to its own devices, but must be encouraged into a cooperative partnership; and some American troops will have to remain in the Balkans for quite some time. In effect, this requires a continuation of the Clinton administration's strategy of putting Europe - and not NATO or Russia - first.

   

• Biological terrorism and public health

  Christopher F. Chyba, is Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and holds the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute. He was formerly Director for International Environmental Affairs on the staff of the US National Security Council.

  A biological terrorist attack probably would first be detected by doctors or other health-care workers. The speed of a response would then depend on their rapid recognition and communication that certain illnesses appeared out of the ordinary. For this reason, preparing for biological terrorism has more in common with confronting the threat of emerging infectious diseases than with preparing for chemical or nuclear attacks. Defence against bioterrorism, like protection against emerging diseases, must therefore rely on improved national and international public-health surveillance. Too often, thinking about bioterrorism has mimicked thinking about chemical terrorism, a confusion that leads to an emphasis on the wrong approaches in preparing to meet the threat.

   

• A fresh start for Ukrainian military reform?

  James Sherr, is a Fellow of the Conflict Studies Research Centre, RMA, Sandhurst; Lecturer in International Relations, Lincoln College, Oxford; and a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defense Committee. His latest article for Survival, 'Ukrainian-Russian Rapprochement?' was published in Autumn 1997. The views expressd are not necessarily those of the Ministry of Defence.

  Pressing domestic and external problems require not only the reduction, but also the restructuring of Ukraine's defence and security forces. Internally, the dangerous deterioration of the economy makes cuts in defence spending unavoidable. Externally, renewed Russian pressures and the Kosovo conflict of March-June 1999 enhanced Ukraine's sense of geopolitical vulnerability. Moreover, the impending enlargement of the European Union reinforces pressure to develop European standards of border control, along with security forces capable of countering illegal migration and transnational crime. To meet these challenges, the five-year State Reform Programme appears, in most respects, to be realistic and practical. However, the military still wants to maintain a larger defence establishment than economic circumstances allow. And there is still insufficient awareness of the connections between defence reform, economic reform and democratic reform. The struggles to democratise Ukraine and to strengthen its security are becoming increasingly inseparable.

   

• Against the grain: the East Timor intervention

  James Cotton, is Professor at the School of Politics, Australian Defense Force Academy, University of New South Wales, and visiting Centennial Professor at the Department of International Relations and Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics.

  Modern Asia has been shaped by intervention, but the principle of non-interference is an integral part of the 'Asian Way'. Countries of the region have doggedly opposed any suggestion that state sovereignty should be softened by a new doctrine of 'humanitarian intervention'. The participation of some of these countries in the 1999 intervention in East Timor - an action sanctioned by the United Nations for specifically humanitarian purposes - was thus out of character. This departure was a consequence of specific historical and political factors, most importantly, the fact that the UN had never accepted Indonesia's incorporation of the territory as legitimate. Once the United States adopted a more critical attitude, after Australia pressured Indonesia to test local opinion on East Timor's future, the internationalisation of the issue became inevitable. There are certainly lessons in the East Timor case for coalition operations and other interventions in the region. But the actions of the Australian-led coalition do not indicate a wider regional acceptance of the norm of humanitarian intervention.

   

• The political economy of the Syrian succession

  Volker Perthes, is a senior Research Associate at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin. He is in charge of the Institute's Middle East and Mediterranean Programme.

  The succession of Syria's leadership from President Hafiz al-Assad to his son Bashar arguably weakens the country in some respects, but it has also reset political priorities in a way that critics have often demanded. Under Hafiz al-Assad, the dominant assumption was that serious domestic reforms would have to wait for a peace process with Israel to be concluded. Under Bashar, the linkage between foreign policy and domestic reform has changed. For as long as the peace process is stalled, Bashar al-Assad can devote more attention to domestic issues. He also has strong incentive to do so: his domestic priority is to consolidate his position and extend his power base. Most probably, compared to his father, he feels a stronger commitment to meet the expectations of his own generation.

   

• Europe and the concept of enlargement

  Paolo Cecchini, Erik Jones and Jochen Lorentzen. Paolo Cecchini is a former Commission official. Erik Jones is Jean Monnet Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the University of NOttingham. Jochen Lorentzen is Associate Professor of International Business at Copenhagen Business School. This argument was first developed as a series of joint presentations at North Carolina State University and at the European Union Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  The idealistic rationale of European enlargement has a deeply practical side to it. When the European Community took in Greece, Spain and Portugal in the early 1980s, the principal objective was to shore up the democracies that had emerged after the collapse of more authoritarian regimes. A similar objective lies behind the present enlargement. Specifically, the European Union's expansion to the east and south is an attempt at risk management: the major economic transformations underway in Eastern Europe have unleashed forces that - while not unfamiliar in most advanced industrial societies - could topple fledgling democracies. This challenge is different from that confronted in the case of Greece, Spain and Portugal, not only because of the greater disparities in economic capacity between the candidate countries and existing member states, but also given the difficulty of stabilising political regimes through the process of developing market economies.