Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (40 page)

Indeed, Clinton has called her Iraq vote one for coercive diplomacy, not for war. As she argued, coercive diplomacy is a tool presidents must have in their arsenal. Obama uses it so poorly that one wonders whether he genuinely understands it.

American foreign policy is in retreat around the world; our security is endangered by Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks; U.S.–Russian ties fall far short of the much-touted “reset” goals; and we consistently lose ground, economically and otherwise, to the Chinese. American rhetoric no longer carries much weight. As cited in the epigraph to this chapter, former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller
analyzed the Obama failings this way: “The problem with words is that the administration is very good with them. Words aren’t the problem here. The problem is the sizeable gap that has opened up between rhetoric and action.”
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Miller’s assessment applies not only to the situation in Syria and Ukraine but also to the growing threats in Iran and North Korea, and indeed across the many other areas where the United States seems to be on the defensive as its adversaries move aggressively to pursue their interests.

ROGUES AND NUKES

“Our program is transparent, but we can take more steps to make it clear to the world that our nuclear program is within intl regulations,” the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, tweeted in August 2013.
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With a growing threat from Hezbollah in the region—and specifically in Iran—the United States rightly regarded with caution Rouhani’s pledge not to develop nuclear weapons. President Obama sent Rouhani a letter in September 2013, urging him to “cooperate with the international community, keep your commitments and remove ambiguities” about the Iranian nuclear program; in exchange, the president suggested, the Iranians might get some relief from economic sanctions.
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Iran clearly wanted that relief badly, along with a lessening of its international isolation, and the six-month deal brokered with Secretary of State John Kerry sent some conciliatory signals in pursuit of these goals. But even though the ink hasn’t had time to dry on the deal, Tehran has made it clear that it can be undone in less than a day. Their program can be up and running again in just 24 hours. Experts assess that it might be barely a year, or perhaps a year and a half, before Iran has the bomb. Tehran might already have a device capable of delivering one by the time this book is published. What’s
more, despite Rouhani’s rhetoric, Tehran continues to enrich uranium.
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The Iranian–American nuclear standoff is nearing a climax despite this apparent diplomatic solution.

Time will tell how the new deal plays out, but the United States must also actively pursue international consensus for military action against Iran should it fail. We could, for example, use a series of air strikes on chemical-weapons depots and other game-changing weapons systems. Many critics warn that any military action against Iran would have catastrophic consequences in the Middle East, perhaps leading to a wider regional war. But in 2013, when the Israelis conducted airstrikes against Syria to remove some Russian-supplied missiles, no serious retaliation resulted.
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As noted Jewish journalist and historian Abraham Rabinovich argued in the
Washington Times
in May 2013, after Israeli airstrikes in Syria: “Israel’s airstrikes served as a reminder, particularly to Iran, that the Jewish state has intelligence capable of silently keeping track of its enemies, operational capabilities to execute complex missions, and the national will to do so if necessary. The strikes also showed Washington that effective operations in murky circumstances can be carried out without the sky falling in.”
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Andrew Brookes, of the Royal United Services Institute, also argues in favor of airstrikes, which he sees as the only feasible military option regarding Iran. Ground troops, he believes, would fare poorly in a country where weapons facilities are hidden and buried everywhere. “The only credible military option is an air attack,” he writes. This is especially true with American military exhaustion and troop pullbacks in the Middle East.
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The U.S. should continue to work toward formalizing the 4+1 defense pact, in which Israel would join up with several moderate Arab states—Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear capability.
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By encouraging the Israelis to share anti-ballistic missile technology in exchange for
access to early-warning radar in Arab states, we will create a buffer of American-aligned states against continued Iranian expansionism. The
Times of Israel
reported: “The so-called 4+1 plan is being brokered by Washington, and would mark a sharp shift in stated policy for the White House, which has insisted the U.S. is not interested in containing Iran but rather stopping it before it reaches nuclear weapon capability. The Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Jordan are all opposed to Tehran shifting the regional power balance. Though Turkey maintains strong trade ties with Iran, it has found itself opposed to Tehran over the issue of Syria.”
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Building such an alliance focused on the more modest goal of containment makes good practical sense as a hedge against our potential failure to prevent Iran from developing nukes.

*****

Twice in 2013, North Korea offered to enter into talks with the United States, but the U.S. wisely held off, insisting that North Korea make meaningful concessions before we begin any serious diplomatic discussions. Where there is room for some nuance and complexity regarding the Iranian nuclear negotiations, the North Korean situation presents no such complexity. The outlaw regime is simply too unstable, too ruthless, and too dangerous to be approached with anything other than unbending resolve and the military and political tools that reinforce it.

At the top of that list of tools is defense: missile defense primarily, but also the military and naval assets in the region that are necessary to maintain a decisive force posture. As we discussed in our “Nuclear Security” chapter, the United States’ retreat from missile defense is highly disturbing. Regarding North Korea, though, we probably retain sufficient means to defend ourselves—at least under current conditions. We should also work closely with our allies in South Korea to enhance defense systems in Seoul.

We’ve been consistently critical of the Obama administration, but here we can offer some praise: The administration’s response to Pyongyang’s provocations in March 2013 was effective and shrewd. The military sent a B-52 bomber from Guam along with a pair of B-2s—flown from Missouri—close to the North Korean border to send an unmistakable message of American power to the regime. “The U.S. wants to let the North Koreans know,” wrote White House press corps reporter Paul Brandus, “that in addition to the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea, and the 35,000 in Japan (including the Navy’s Seventh Fleet), the U.S. can strike in many ways, and from many places.”
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This is precisely the way we need to proceed with Pyongyang—not toward deliberate provocation, but with the will and determination to defend ourselves and our allies. We must make clear to North Korea that there will be real-world consequences for its deeds, not just angry words. The next time the North Koreans take out a South Korean vessel, we might answer by “taking out North Korean naval assets,” suggests American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt.
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The point is to let the regime know at every turn that its provocations and brutalities have a serious price.

Toughness should be the operative word in the economic realm as well. We should pursue tighter sanctions on North Korean elites to rein in banking, travel, and criminal activity such as drug running and counterfeiting. We did this effectively in 2007, when we blacklisted Banco Delta from doing business in United States dollars. We must remember that the North Korean regime is dangerous in part because it is weak—economically especially—and that our failure to use our power will only delay the day when the North Korean people can be liberated. As Brandus puts it, “Clarity, conviction, and a stealth bomber or two: That’s the way to deal with North Korea.”
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We cannot solve the North Korean problem alone, of course, and where we can work with the Chinese—where, that is, we have reason to trust that China may actually work constructively—we should do so. There is no question that Beijing has begun to acknowledge North Korea’s destabilizing role in East Asia and has started to play ball on sanctions. China’s primary concern is that North Korea might collapse under the crippling weight of economic sanctions.
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If America makes clear that North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and military drawdown are the preconditions for sanctions relief, the Chinese will have no excuse for opposing a new round of talks. Likewise, the United States should make it publically embarrassing and politically costly for China to continue behavior such as its stonewalling of the UN’s comprehensive human-rights report on North Korea.

Beijing, after all, has a vested interest in stabilizing the Korean Peninsula. “China really, really doesn’t want North Korea to collapse,” Matt Schiavenza writes in
The Atlantic
. “For one thing, the trickle of North Koreans currently crossing the border would turn into a flood, leaving China with a messy humanitarian situation on its hands. Secondly, a North Korean collapse would no doubt foster the creation of a unified, pro-U.S. Korea on China’s northeastern flank, depriving Beijing of a valuable buffer against American interest. For these reasons, China needs North Korea to stay afloat—and North Korea knows it.”
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Thus we should continue to encourage Chinese economic sanctions on North Korea to help cripple Pyongyang’s nuclear-arms program, which Chinese diplomats have publicly condemned.

Additionally, we should push Seoul to tie its Chinese trade to progress on North Korean issues. The United States should accept South Korea’s request that America retain wartime command of Seoul’s forces beyond 2015, the date when transfer of authority was to take
place. The North’s recent provocations have changed that calculus, and South Korea wants the Americans to keep the reins for now.
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We should send every signal that the United States remains highly invested in the security of the Korean Peninsula.

MILITARY PREPAREDNESS

The event of the last several years—wherein both Russia and China have vigorously beefed up their military capabilities, directly threatened, bullied, and even invaded their neighbors; and begun holding joint military and naval exercises—should have made clear to the Obama administration that America’s extensive defense drawdown is ill-suited to the world we face today. We have already cut the Pentagon budget far too steeply, and more cuts are to come. The sequestration cuts are expected to trim $52 billion, or roughly 10 percent, from the Pentagon budget request in fiscal year 2013, with the largest percentage of reductions coming from weapons programs.
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The cuts have already taken a toll. Our scaling back in the South China Sea has left U.S. interests increasingly vulnerable and forced us to rely more on our alliances in the region—alliances, which, in several cases, have become strained. (In December 2013, for instance, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, visited a shrine associated with his country’s militarist history; the visit enflamed relations with China and South Korea, and also drew criticism from Washington.
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Certainly the issue of Pentagon costs is a legitimate one, but we’re going to have to find savings in ways other than slashing the capabilities that ensure our national security. We could tackle the sensitive issue, say, of how to incentivize and compensate our troops. High-cost benefits such as pensions and health care could be rolled back to 2001 levels, saving $10 billion annually.
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We also need to find better ways to persuade tech-savvy people to pursue military careers.
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Our entire system of military bases in East Asia can be made less costly financially and less controversial politically (especially in Okinawa) by moving the Marines now in East Asia to bases in California and Guam and flying them to forward-based ships during a crisis, an option the Pentagon has already begun to explore. Building a runway at Okinawa’s civilian airport, and making it available to the U.S. for military purposes, would be a similarly pragmatic arrangement.
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Keeping American soldiers and assets mobile within a broader region would be more affordable than basing them in specific sites permanently.
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Our cooperation with Australia
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and, more recently, the Philippines
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to create facilities for temporary forward deployments is instructive.
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Finally, the Pentagon needs to change its procurement system and culture. As in any healthy free-enterprise system, program managers who save taxpayer money should be rewarded. Pentagon procurement is inefficient and wasteful. Experiments with online bidding for defense contracts yielded a 12 percent savings with no loss in hard-power capabilities. We should waste no time in implementing better procurement practices. At the same time, a review body should be established to find ways to improve the process.
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Finally, as Hugh White argues in his book
The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power
, and as he repeated at a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2013: “Everybody in Asia fears living under China—everyone wants the U.S. to find a way to stay in Asia. . . . The U.S. needs to show intent and commitment to stay, but also a willingness to work with China. Nothing less than a fundamental change in the relationship will do.”
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We agree.

NUCLEAR SECURITY

Further cuts to the American nuclear arsenal, even if matched by Russia, are deeply unwise and will erode our strategic advantage to a degree
that endangers our national security. Paul Nitze’s Cold War–era nuclear logic continues to hold true: “The greater the margin (and the more clearly the Communists understand that we have a margin), the less likely it is that nuclear war will ever occur.”
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More recently, extensive research by Georgetown’s Matthew Kroenig has borne out the truth of Nitze’s words and exploded the myths cherished by denuclearization advocates. Kroenig conducted a comprehensive historical review of the relationship between national security and the size of a nation’s nuclear arsenal. His findings, dating back to the beginning of the atomic age, make clear that nukes remain central to any great power’s defenses: