Honest Opinions on China

At the USNI/AFCEA West Conference last week there was an excellent panel on the last day that focused on the operational challenges and partnership opportunities that exist with China. It started out as a casual discussion about China, but about 21 minutes into the panel Captain James Fanell, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence and Information Operations for US Pacific Fleet decided he was going to give his honest opinion.

In China it is illegal to give an honest opinion about China, and there are times I wonder if the same law exists in Washington, DC. Several folks are discussing Captain Fanell's comments, even if he is just a Captain. I leave my thoughts over at the USNI Blog.

Enjoy! And as you would expect, Toshi Yoshihara is great too. I highly recommend Toshi Yoshihara's book (coauthored by the always brilliant James Holmes) Red Star Over the Pacific for those who haven't read it.

IP and Military Diffusion

In this week's Diplomat column I return to a topic of interest, intellectual property and military diffusion:

1. The nature of intellectual property theft in the military sphere will change. Rather than purchasing (or otherwise appropriating) entire systems and then reverse engineering, future theft will likely involve cyber-attacks on states, companies, and even the law firms that protect patents. 
2.  While states such as India, China, and Russia have had strong incentives to defect from intellectual property compliance in the past, their status as producers and exporters will increasingly make them IP defenders, in general. In specific instances, however, they will continue to pursue the appropriation of critical foreign technologies, often through illicit means.
3.  There is potential for cooperation between the major arms producers on an international IP compliance regime, which would set guidelines or “rules of the road” for export. However, continuing political and strategic disagreement between these producers will limit the overall impact of such a regime.

I'll be coming back to this issue, particularly on questions of how intellectual property law will affect patterns of military technology diffusion. Until then, interested in everyone's thoughts on the topic.

Sea Shepherd's Southern Ocean Armada

The Sea Shepherd's 9th Southern Ocean Campaign - "Zero Tolerance" - is in full swing. To date, the reported highlights in this year's operations have only involved some strategic maneuver, a bit of deception, and lawfare.  Even so, the photograph above is fairly remarkable in that a non-state actor has privately assembled a maritime force of ocean-going ships, helicopters, and UAVs, sailed it once again into unforgiving Antarctic waters, and taken a photograph in a formation normally seen only with mainstream navies. Stay tuned.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

Bring On The Sequester

The Republic has wrestled with its fiscal incompetence for some time now, and in the process created the monstrosity of "sequester" in order to create a gun of sufficient size against which each party's head would be pressed in order to ensure a coherent solution.  In the meantime, we had a National Election in which the people voted to continue divided government.  It would be improper to state that the American people chose the sequester, but it would not be improper to infer that they are complicit in bringing it on.  We get the government we deserve, and right about now we deserve what we are getting.

Therefore, I say, bring it on.  I know this is an intemperate stance, I realize I will receive criticism from several quarters, and I get that many of our national leaders disagree with me, the latest of whom (Secretary Panetta) today on Meet The Press called "shameful" the possibility that it might happen. 

But I sense we've reached the end of the line on reasoned compromise, with both parties held hostage by their more "fringey" elements, and no great threat on the horizon to create a sense of urgency.  While many of us believe a rising China is something to be wary of and something for which to be prepared, it is difficult to make that case for the immediate future.  Many people believe that we are beginning to put the great financial crisis of 2007-2011 behind us, so no great domestic crisis looms on the immediate horizon.

Both the debt bomb and the ascendance of China are in the "too hard" and "too far away" category, and so our elected leaders will have the compromise that they were unable to reach in a reasoned manner forced upon them by a suicide pact fitted by themselves.

That is however, overly dramatic, especially within DoD.  The magnitude of the cuts--roughly $60B a year for ten years, is serious, and it will force (or at least SHOULD force) new thinking.  But the manner in which those cuts are directed--basically horizontal cuts across most accounts--is the legislated instantiation of the folly of Jointness, and it will create a shrunken version of the military we have today; less capable, smaller, and able to impact events in fewer places. 

This is why every time I hear someone in the Pentagon talk about QDR 2014 as "QDR-lite"--pointing to the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance as having already answered most of the questions--I shake my head in disbelief.  If anything, QDR14 should be the most consequential QDR since Congress created the mandate.  We have not--since the fall of the Berlin Wall--had a greater need for strategic thinking on a grand scale.  Congress must not allow DoD to slow-roll them on this front. 

And so, bring on the sequester. Perhaps it will be enough to force both sides of the Potomac to engage in real strategic thinking and the making of tough choices.  If it doesn't, well then in the course of just a few short months, the incredible incompetence of our political class will result in nearly $2T of debt relief over ten years, which is not to be sneezed at. 

We get the government we deserve.

Bryan McGrath

Unqualified Should Mean Disqualified

Photograph: Christy Bowe/ Christy Bowe/Corbis

I described Jonah Goldberg as "remarkably sophomoric" for describing Chuck Hagel as "never overburdened with too heavy a reputation for insight, knowledge, or humility." I'll stand by that description of what Jonah Goldberg said, but after listening to the hearing today I will also admit that Jonah Goldberg apparently knew what he was talking about in regards to Chuck Hagel's insight and knowledge, but he may have been wrong on the humility part.

The profile I built for Chuck Hagel was built primarily using content in speeches he has given over the last decade, 14 different speeches to be accurate. I learned two things during today's confirmation hearing of Chuck Hagel. First, Chuck Hagel has had a really smart speechwriter for years, but second, it is hard to believe that anything Chuck Hagel has said in his speeches over the past several years are actually his ideas in his words, indeed it slowly became clear over the course of the day that Chuck Hagel doesn't appear to have any core beliefs he is willing to stand firm on, and it also became clear that Chuck Hagel doesn't know enough about the President's policies to suggest he stands firm with them either.

Chuck Hagel couldn't defend the positions he has made in the speeches he had given in the past, and when he tried to defend those arguments, he couldn't articulate the substance behind ideas he has been credited for without stumbling over his words or outright confusing the issue that was being discussed. Prior to his official nomination by the President, Chuck Hagel was a mess when trying to answer questions to the media about serious issues of defense policy, but I think a lot of people expected that once he got in the DoD and the DoD handlers and coaches were able to prepare him, he would be fine.

Not so, Chuck Hagel was even worse today showing no improvement at all in publicly discussing issues of policy, even after weeks of coaching and preparing for what amounted to fairly obvious questions. It didn't matter if it was a good question, a bad question, a hard question, or an easy question because to most questions on Thursday Chuck Hagel had very few good answers.

And lets be honest, those were either the smartest questions the Senate has ever asked a nominee for Secretary of Defense, or Chuck Hagel was completely unprepared. Every single question I heard, and granted I missed some of the hearing over the 8.5 hours, was a fairly predictable question. Senator Levin must be exhausted bailing water out of the Hagel canoe all day, because Chuck Hagel would find ways of taking on water with his responses to even the easy softball questions by Democrats who like and support the guy. It is hard to imagine the folks in the DoD didn't prepare him for the questions he was peppered with today, as it was all basic stuff about Israel and Iran that most professionals could have easy answered, dodged, or dismissed without looking foolish. No one expected any "Wow moments" during the Chuck Hagel confirmation hearing, but there were at least 20 such moments today in the hearing, and none of them were "Wow, that was smart!" - indeed all of them were "Wow, did he really just say that? What?"

What happened Thursday was all on Chuck Hagel, and it was so uncomfortable that it is going to be difficult to find an unedited video of Chuck Hagel's testimony that makes him appear prepared or qualified for the job.

I am less sure who Chuck Hagel is today than I was before the hearing, because it is not clear at all he has ever given a speech that represented his ideas or opinions, nor that he actually believes in the positions he has been associated with throughout the nomination process. It would be difficult for anyone to quote any speech he has given as representative of him after his testimony today. Not only could he not answer questions related to previous comments he has given, he often couldn't remember what he was trying to say or what he did say. Chuck Hagel is clearly not an articulate man, and this is the guy we want to send to talk to allies and competitors on defense issues? Chuck Hagel wasn't articulate when he spoke to the press prior to the official nomination, and he was anything but articulate in front of the Senate today. Not good.

When Senator Jack Reed - who supports Hagel - asked a super softball question about Chuck Hagel's discussions with President Obama during the nomination process, Chuck Hagel answered the question by saying "When he asked me why am I qualified, I said I'm not."

Obviously.

Something is wrong if Senate Democrats just rubber stamp this nomination choice by the President, as it is obvious to everyone, including apparently Chuck Hagel, that he should not be Secretary of Defense. Chuck Hagel was the least prepared, least articulate, and least intelligent sounding person speaking in a Senate Committee hearing on Thursday, and lets be very honest - someone has to work real hard to be the least intelligent sounding person in a Senate Committee hearing.

I admit I am pretty clueless when it comes to politics, but I wouldn't want Chuck Hagel on my team. This nomination makes little sense when the next person on the bench is Michelle Flournoy, who I think everyone knows would have been the smartest person in the Capitol building, much less the room, on defense issues had she been the nominee.

While the nation is still at war, Obama has picked the remarkably unimpressive and clearly unqualified Chuck Hagel who appears to be in way over his head as the Secretary of Defense nominee, when the administration could have picked the incredibly qualified and brilliant Michelle Flournoy to become the first female Secretary of Defense. I originally dismissed outright the absurdity of the President being peppered with questions on diversity on his cabinet last week, because his response was that his criteria for cabinet selection was based solely on merit. Well, I think today proved merit is not the criteria being used in the Obama administration's cabinet selection process, in fact today we must ask if merit is even a criteria at all.

It is starting to look like the Obama administration second term plan for defense is less money and fewer smart people. Plan accordingly.