A quick review of "The Beijing Consensus" and Central Asia

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to read the Beijing consensus to see what it said about the role of China in Central Asia.  The answer is that it depends.  There is very little in the book that talks about the region.  In fact there were only two or three mentions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at all - and these were really just in passing.

The more complicated answer is that the overall thesis of the book is about the ways that Beijing is circumventing the west's ideal of linking liberal economies with liberal polities.  The appeal of the China model is great for the autocratic rulers in the Central Asian states who face some similar issues as the Chinese. The primary motivator for these states is a need for stability.  This is shared by all the states in the region.  China and Russia are at the top of the list of states that have based their foreign policy on the stance that internal stability is the trump card.

For leaders around the world that look at the aftermath and continuing problems of the Arab Spring and the Euromaiden revolution brewing in Ukraine, the ideal of stability is attractive. The adherence of these states to the Westphalian ideal of sovereignty is a key to understanding Russian foreign policy and its positions in the UN.

This book is an important read for those that are interested in nuanced narratives of the way the world works.  It is important for reminding academics and policy wonks alike that there is a competing market in the world for ideas, and that there are powerful states that are backing a different set of ideas and ideals.

Central Asia and China - Research Note and Questions

Questions

I am beginning an interest in security issues in Central Asia.  I am interested in a few aspects of security.  The first is the continued existence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its future.  How does a a treaty organization with two great powers that have traditionally been enemies work out?  What are the consequences of China's growing economic ties and Russia's historical ties to the area?  I am also fascinated by the fact that India is a member of the organization, but is a democracy.  How will the organization hold up in the long-term, and what shape will it take if it does survive?

Central Asia as Cake

Some of these questions are brought up in an article on the RFE/RL site:
General Liu Yazhou of China’s People’s Liberation Army perhaps summed up China’s interest in Central Asia best when he said, “Central Asia is the thickest piece of cake given to modern China by the heavens.” 

Central Asia’s energy resources -- oil, natural gas, uranium -- are the cake.
China needs these resources to fuel its economic growth and Beijing is seeking them everywhere in the world. 

But why send oil tankers half way around the world when Central Asia has numerous pipelines, railways and roads are being constructed, largely with Chinese money. All that can bring oil, gas, uranium, and various minerals from Central Asia to China. And the Chinese loans that the Central Asian governments are accepting to develop their oil and gas fields and build the infrastructure needed to export these resources to China are in fact pre-payment for goods to be received later.

Link to full article

The article goes on to downplay the potential expansionist/empire building motivations for China. One key portion of this argument is that China has enough problems within its own borders without expanding them and inviting further unrest. The article also notes that Russia's continued interest in - and support of the military forces of states in the region (Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) make it unlikely that China will be able to military dominate the region.

Exercising Restraint

One interesting aspect of the SCO is that its mission has remained defensive.  The organization won't take over security aspects of Afghanistan with the withdrawal of NATO, for example (RIA Novosti). This fits with Russia's own policy urging restraint in the internal matters of other states.

China's own foreign policy of engaging with dictators has not been going well either. States such as Sudan and Venezuela are becoming less stable and less attractive as economic partners.  As Zachary Keck argues in the Diplomat:

This underscores, however, that far from being a strength, China’s dictatorship diplomacy is a sign of its weakness. Because China entered the globalization game relatively late, almost all the most attractive economic partners already had strong and long-standing ties to Western nations. As a result, China to some degree has simply had to settle for the more problematic nations that the West refused to deal with. This inevitably required taking on more risk, and this risk has not paid off for China. Indeed, in the course of just a few short years China’s dictatorship diplomacy has virtually imploded all over the globe.

I have more questions than ideas about security in Central Asia right now, but I am starting a reading list. The first book I have on there is The Beijing Consensus.


See it on Amazon

If you have other books you recommend, please leave them in the comments! 

The Syria Squeeze: What will US Involvement mean for US-Russian Relations?

This post is in response to a question from a friend on Facebook.  He asks:

Excuse me, Dr. Willardson, but I would be very interested to hear your opinion on Syria, their relationship with Russia, and the potential consequences if the US decides to take military action.

That is an excellent question, and one which bears thinking about in general.  Syrian intervention is not something that the US public is really pushing for.  There is a great interview with a scholar, Matthew Baum, about the public's reluctance to enter the conflict.  I recommend that you read the entire interview if you are interested in the effects of public policy on presidential decision-making in these cases.

Matt Baum: I think that the fact that the polls say Americans are wary in Syria does not mean all that much. If the Obama administration is able to do something that has a decisive effect, they will look like heroes. And if they look impotent in their use of military force, it will rebound against them. But the polling numbers showing American reticence, as of right now, doesn’t add up to much, because it’s really not a salient issue. It’s not enough to look at the numbers of people opposing intervention; you have to look at how much people care and at this point it isn’t very high on the list, as of today. That can change if things escalate and it starts to look like a “real” war, as opposed to Libya — which was obviously real if you were there — but from the United States the perspective was that no Americans were on the ground and no American planes were being shot down. If Syria looks like that, the pubic won’t get all that engaged. It would potentially be a foreign policy success for the Obama administration, though coming awfully late, after a lot of horrible things have happened there. But if it doesn’t go well and America is gradually sucked in — throwing good resources after bad — eventually it could become a big political liability, and you could get significant public engagement. This could have happened in Afghanistan, too, if more Americans started getting killed. But it hasn’t escalated in that way.

Read the entire interview here: http://journalistsresource.org/skills/research/syria-intervention-public-opinion-research-chat-harvard-matt-baum

So this is one strand to the discussion.  Why are we threatening to intervene in the first place?

A second strand of the discussion is one that I hadn't considered until I saw this piece on Lawfare earlier today - that is the issue of the president actually overstepping his constitutional bounds to involve U.S. troops in the conflict. Jack Goldsmith argues that to commit forces to Syria without Congressional approval in this case pushes presidential power further than it has been pushed in other conflicts - even Kosovo and Libya. Here is a salient portion of his argument:

There are many reasons why it is a stretch even under OLC precedents.  The main ones, as I alluded to a few days ago, are (1) neither U.S. persons nor property are at stake, and no plausible self-defense rationale exists; (2) the main non-self-defense U.S. interest that the Commander in Chief has invoked since the Korean War to justify unilateral uses of force – upholding the integrity of the U.N. Charter – appears (as Wells argued) to be disserved rather than served by a military strike in Syria; and (3) a Syria strike would push the legal envelope further even than Kosovo, the outer bound to date of presidential unilateralism, which at least implicated our most important security treaty organization commitments (NATO).

Read the entire piece here (it's worth it!): http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/why-doesnt-president-obama-seek-congressional-approval-for-syria/

So now that I have talked about the U.S. side of the equation, let's get to the Russian side.   On the Russian side there are three considerations that are at play here:

1. Precedent 
2. Interests
3. Pride/prestige

Precedent

Russia has not been happy with the Arab Spring and the response by the West in general.  Moscow tends to take a dim view of protesters (See the issue with the Pastafarians in St. Petersberg in the last week) in general.  Protesters that turn violent and try to overthrow the government are even worse.  The Russian government prizes stability over nearly everything else - and so movements that threaten regimes are seen as dangerous.  This is true even for democratic movements such as the color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that led to governments that were less friendly to the Russian state. Russia is unhappy that the U.S. and NATO coalition supported protesters and rebels against Qaddafi in Libya and at the vacuum of stability that has created.  This leads to the second point -

Interests

Russia has interests in Syria. I have written about some of those interests in a post a couple of years ago (Link).  These interests are both commercial (arms sales, technical assistance, etc.) military (advising - leading to more equipment sales) and strategic. Russia's only foreign naval post is located in Syria.  Russia's ability to project power in a region where it was once very influential - a region just outside the "near abroad" where Russia's influence is still strong - is seen as damaging to the state's geopolitical position.

Prestige

Finally there is the issue of prestige.  Russia allowed itself to be taken out of the discussion by abstaining in the security council vote on Libya.  That gave NATO and the U.S. a free pass to operate. In the case of Syria Russia has actively opposed moves in the security council to pass resolutions on Syria.  If the U.S. acts in Syria it will be truly unilateral, and in direct opposition to what Moscow wants.  Even if Russia is not the superpower it once was, the leaders of the state are upset when they are railroaded in international affairs.  U.S. action in Syria will be such an act.

So what are the consequences of such action? I don't know.  It will definitely increase the tension between the two states, but as far as concrete retaliatory action, I am not sure. I anticipate that Russia will take an even more active role in opposing U.S. actions in all spheres.  Active opposition by Russia in matters of trade, security, and finance would be very damaging.

State Guarantees in the Defense Sector

From RIA Novosti.

Here is the latest news from Russia on domestic (government) support for the defense industry.  From PM Medvedev:

The provision of state guarantees is the first this year, Medvedev said, and stressed the beneficial effects it would have on the economy as a whole. 

“Everything invested in the defense industry has an influence on industry. Actually, the defense sector helps boost adjacent industries,” he said. 

State guarantees allow defense enterprises to obtain loans at a time when they face a shortage of working capital and have no other sources of financing, Medvedev said. 

Over a half of the state loan guarantees for defense producers this year will go to shipbuilders and developers of intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the government resolution.

 In general there have always been arguments about beneficial spillovers from government spending on defense into the civilian economy.  This issue seems to be more important for the Russian economy. I often go back to the work of Gaddy and Ickes[1] that illustrates the distortions of Soviet Economy.

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[1] Gaddy, Clifford G., and Barry W. Ickes. 2002. Russia’s Virtual Economy. Washington  D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Russia's Internal Arms Consumption

Russia is trying to re-equip its own army (LINK).  This has been going on for awhile.  P.M. Medvedev announced recently that the goal for new equipment in the Russian military is being raised to 75 percent new equipment by 2020.

There are a few implications for this, both internally and externally.  The first is that this is a move that is both about the military and about the militarized economy.  One of my favorite books about the subject of Russia's military economy is by Gaddy and Ickes (2002) [1].  This book talks about the distortions caused by the Soviet Union's militarized economy.  Russia's economy is still riding the oil and gas boom, but employment in those sectors is still small.  There are numerous factory towns (large and larger) whose existence and employment base was dependent on the militarized economy.

Vladimir Putin has elevated arms sales to the same level of state enterprise as the oil and gas industries.  The reasons for this are plentiful. One reason is that arms still are symbolically important.  The more states that use Russia's weapons, the greater Russia's perception of its own uniqueness and importance.  A second reason is hinted at above - Putin needs to employ individuals.  One way to do that is to continue to ride the distortions of the Soviet economy (to a lesser scale) by emphasizing the military industrial complex.

There have been some reports that Russian firms are unable to produce arms sufficiently to meet their obligations to external customers, let alone to fulfill such an ambitious rearmament agenda.  However, by emphasizing internal purchasing of weapons the Kremlin is sending a strong signal that these industries will have the continued support of the state - and that may goad them into ramping up production through hiring, streamlining processes, etc.

This will be an interesting phenomenon to keep an eye on.  To what degree will the Russian military re-arm itself in the coming years?[2]
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[1] Gaddy, Clifford G., and Barry W. Ickes. 2002. Russia’s Virtual Economy. Washington  D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

[2] I did not tackle the issue of corruption in this post. I have addressed it earlier (here and here). That will be an even bigger issue as more funds are funneled into the defense sector.

Note: It has been a while since I've posted anything here.  This is not a widely-read forum in general (and for now I'm okay with that), and has been more of a way for me to keep my thoughts together and to have a little fun doing side projects.  I have finished my dissertation and am in the process of moving to a visiting professor position at UNLV.  I may not be writing much over the summer either.

Link-O-Rama: Russia's Domestic Market & Russian Arms Exports

Today I am sharing a number of links I keep saving in my Google Reader to get to later.  They deal with Russia and arms transfers primarily.  It is a mix of positive (for Russia) developments, negative developments, and some weirdness.  The weirdness is that Russia continues to fight against the rest of the world community on the arms to Syria issue. While it is true that arms sales to Libya have not yet been banned (primarily because of Russia's adamant opposition to the possibility), the consensus of the world is coalescing against the regime.  That is potentially long-term bad news for Russia's arms sales to that state.

However, the arms deal to Iraq (see below) is a sign that Russia may be able to regain some of its lost ground in the region.  The items from Libya are a bit confusing.

The bad news for Russia's arms industry is that it is losing past customers (even present allies) for its radar systems.

The last point I want to make before I get to the links is that Russia is really playing the embattled and encircled card on the issue of arms in general.  There is no doubt that the arms industry is a key component of Russia's foreign policy portfolio.

Putin wants to Re-arm Russia 

“In June, we in particular discussed implementation of a state armament program regarding aviation,” he said. “We will keep the issue under constant control.” 

“We will have no other historic chance to solve these ambitious tasks the country is now facing to ensure its defense capability in due time and with due quality when [the required] funds are available, thank God,” Putin said. “Tomorrow we will have none of these funds, and time will be lost.”

Part II

Russia will continue to build up its own defense capabilities according to foreseeable threats stated President Vladimir Putin at a meeting at the Defense Ministry, reports the Voice of Russia's correspondent from the session.

There are multiplying and expanding zones of instability on the planet: with non-stop armed conflicts in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the danger of radicalism and chaos being exported to Russia from neighboring regions. 

"At the same time there are methodical attempts being carried out to undermine the strategic balance," President Putin said.

Russia at War over Arms Sales

MOSCOW, March 2 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is facing a ‘real war’ aimed at hampering the country’s legal deliveries of weapons to Syria, the head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation has said. 

“A real war has been declared against us,” Alexander Fomin told Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday without specifying who has declared the war. 

“The [Russian] ships are lured into ports and arrested there under various devised pretexts. When the ships are at sea, any insurance is canceled,” Fomin said adding that any attempts to deliver the contracted goods are being thwarted.

Libya and IRAQ
Iraq 

Indeed, when it became known that Iraq had problems with the Russian deal, there was widespread speculation that Washington had pressured Maliki to stop buying from Moscow to keep him dependent on the United States. 

That and the widespread accusations of corruption in the deal... 

Libya

There were denials all round at the time but the Americans, like the Russians, need hefty exports to keep assembly lines running amid massive cutbacks in domestic defense spending [1]. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said Feb. 27 he will shortly ask the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo imposed in 2011. 

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Monday that Moscow had reservations about that, given the Tripoli government's lack of authority and multiple security threats but he said Russia was ready to help the new Libya "facilitate the possible acquisition of arms." 

Russia's RIA Novosti new agency reports Algeria, another Cold War client, is another target, but Algiers has quarreled with Moscow on the quality of its arms and isn't expected to be a major buyer of Russian systems.

More on Libya

The Libyan authorities should do everything possible to stop the spread of Libyan weapons in the region and beyond, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Wednesday. 

Rebels in Libya, some of them from Islamist groups, ousted and killed long-standing dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011 after a months-long uprising, in which they received assistance from NATO forces. Government arsenals across the country were looted during the conflict.

Wouldn't arms leakage present an opportunity for more sale to Libya in the long-run if they get the contracts?

Russia and Vietnam

Moscow will proceed with plans this year to help Vietnam launch a new submarine fleet and train the crews, Russian Defense Ministry Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday.

Vietnam ordered six submarines in order to counter Chinese expansion in the area. 

Estonia (and Belarus)

TALLINN, March 7 (RIA Novosti) - Estonia’s Air Defense Forces have dismantled their last obsolete Soviet-made radars, the General Staff of the country’s armed forces said on Thursday. 

One P-37 type radar will be installed as a monument at the Amari military base, while another will be sent to an aviation museum. 

At present, two radar stations monitor Estonia’s airspace - a TPS-77 at Kallavere, in western Estonia and an ASR-8 at Amari, not far from Tallinn. 

In late March, a new radar station will be opened on Muhu Island featuring a medium-range Ground Master 430 3D air-defense radar [2] with an effective range of up to 470 kilometers (295 miles) and an altitude of up to 30 kilometers (100,000 feet). 

Another post-Soviet republic, Belarus, said in mid-February it would replace a Russian radar station with an indigenous one and dispose of its Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 fighters.

The fact that even Belarus (Russia's erstwhile ally) is moving away from Russian-produced radar does not bode well for the reputation of Russian defense products.  This is a serious problem for Russia given its priority of exporting weapons.
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[1] One of the assumptions I make in my dissertation is that both the US and Russia can use arms transfers as foreign policy tools because their domestic markets can support the arms industry.  This assumption does not seem to be holding up well.

[2] These are manufactured by the Thales group, a French firm.

Soviet Soldier Found Alive in Afghanistan

This story from RIA Novosti is pretty amazing.  It reminds me of the Japanese soldiers that they kept finding long after WWII had drawn to a close.  As someone who has lived through the ravages of war, the idea that this young man simply walked away from that and found a life for himself is inspiring.  If I had the proper linguistic skills and hadn't been married at the time, I may have done the same thing during my first tour in Iraq.  Living among the Kurds in northern Iraq was very appealing to me.

MOSCOW, March 5 (Alexey Eremenko, RIA Novosti) – There is a traditional healer living in the Shindand District in Afghanistan, known as Sheikh Abdulla, an elderly-looking, impoverished widower with a wispy beard leading a semi-nomadic life with a local clan. 

His real name is Bakhretdin Khakimov and he is a Soviet soldier who has been missing in action since the first months of a nine-year-long bloody war that began when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in late 1979. 

Khakimov, an ethnic Uzbek, was tracked down two weeks ago by a search party of the Warriors-Internationalists Affairs Committee, a nonprofit, Moscow-based organization, operating under the aegis of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), whose activists spent a year following the missing soldier’s decades-old trail.

I am glad that there are still those in Russia who are trying to find those that were so cruelly treated by their government.  A government, which for a long time refused to acknowledge the extent of the sacrifice that so many young men were asked to make.

The committee’s operations are funded by countries of the CIS, a confederation comprising most former Soviet republics. Though the expenditures are a mere 12,000 rubles ($400) a year per missing soldier, some countries, such as Ukraine and even oil-rich Turkmenistan, dodge the financial support responsibility, Lavrentyev said.