2016-11-05 By Danny Lam

There are few territorial disputes as muddled as the South China Sea.

Republican China (ROC), despite its irrelevance from 1950 onwards, steadfastly maintained a claim – initially made in 1947 when the government was on the verge of defeat – to vast stretches of the seas in the 9, 10, or 11 dash line claim.   The People’s Republic of China, as a UN member, acceded to the UNCLOS II in 1982 and ratified it on 1994 with only minor active disputes despite the overlapping claims of many states in the region.

Something changed around Year 2,000 coincidentally with the rise of China as a great trading power and the recognition of the value of undersea resources in the South China Sea.

Concurrently, Chinese fishing fleets have expanded and became a major factor in the depletion of fisheries in South China Sea and around the world.

The People’s Liberation Navy and paramilitaries like the Chinese Coast Guard, Fisheries Patrols and “merchant” or “fishing” boats experienced explosive growth particularly after the reorganization of constabury units in 2013.  But there are significant regional differences.

Assets like oil drilling platforms to assert claims in the South China Sea.   Jin class submarines are primarily based on Hainan Island, vs. the Xia class submarine based at Laoshan.

Presently, China’s carrier is based in Dailian, but there are indications that a future Carrier base will be on Hainan island to house additional carriers under construction.

In parallel is the growth of the Chinese Merchant fleet, and acquisition of formal overseas bases and facilities.

Rational actor paradigms are generally problematic for net assessment.   Nowhere is there more true than in divining the intent of the PRC regime.

Western analyst’s weakness in local and regional knowledge as to the concerns, calculus and constraints faced by regional PLA/PLAN commands severely hamper the ability to make sense of these deployments.

In the past decades, there are many tantalizing hints of the weakness of Beijing and their loose grip on their local military regions that at times, resulted in contradictory policies being pursued by the central and local military commands that mirror the inability of Beijing to exercise a strong grip on their Provinces.

During the initial search for Malaysian Airlines MH 370, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand were able to mobilize first.  PLAN and other vessels mobilized slowly, with several units from Shanghai rather than the plentiful assets operating in South China sea.

These patterns reflect the longstanding Chinese cultural norm “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.”

The power of Chinese central authority is limited to when it is directly watching / inspecting and utilizing their theoretically absolute power to force compliance.

At other times, it can be safely and legitimately ignored.

Visit any Chinese dominated area in Asia, and this belief is operationalized in the preponderance of illegal structures, unlicensed or unlawful businesses, and generally “illegal” behavior with respect to the letter and spirit of the laws.   Chinese law and regulations, in that respect, do not have the presumption of legitimacy in Western systems.

Central authority has little capacity to fully control or enforce the raft of rules and regulations even within Beijing.

To truly understand what is going on, one need to divine not just the formal assertions of the Central authority (Beijing), but the semi-illegitimate actions and aspirations of the local authorities which at most times, overpower the diktats of Beijing: as they did before Commissioner Lin tried to stop the formal opium trade.

Today, observers rarely question the official version of the cause of the first opium war as the Ching Court banning trade in narcotics then being humiliated by militarily stronger western powers.

Few western historians acknowledge that the pre-opium war British trade with China was widely supported by southern Chinese merchants who made fortunes form both legal and illicit trade at the expense of domestic inland Chinese opium producers.

From this perspective, the opium war was caused by a protectionist trade measure by inland Chinese opium producers who gained the ear of the Ching court against coastal southern Chinese merchants (compardors) allied with British merchants .   This would make for a messy reading of history before consideration of the longstanding role of Chinese secret societies in undermining Ching authority.

Chinese society is abound with secret societies, whose in its most illegitimate form are triads or criminal enterprises, but also exist as innocuous but often illegitimate societies that can be based on religion, politics, similar ethnic, regional, or professional ties.   All of these organizations exist in a state of semi-illegitimacy and in turn, exercise power with a subtle interplay with other (nominally illegitimate) authorities of the peasantry playfully referred to as the lao bai xing.

Hidden authorities are crucial in the maintenance of order in China, as is around the world.

Applying this approach to the South China Sea disputes, it is hard to see how the sea grabs is solely a product of Beijing policy to effectively unilaterally abrogate the UNCLOS treaty obligations of the PRC.

Local business interests, like the fishermen and other commercial interests, right to including the ship builders and their suppliers, that is benefitting from the naval buildup with business they would otherwise not have; and, the regional PLAN/PLA, the “Coast Guard” and “Fisheries Patrol” in the area are all major makers and executers of policy.

What about the criminal or semi-illicit enterprises engaged in piracy, extortion, smuggling, or illegal immigration that have extensive networks throughout Southeast Asia that no doubt play a key role in the disputes?

Or the competing grabs by all the formal and informal claimants?

Into this mix of competing authorities, demands on the Beijing regime of China to honor their UNCLOS treaty obligations and push back against Chinese activities like PLA/PLAN land reclamation and the building of bases on disputed territories have been at best, ineffective in moderating Chinese behavior at the local level.

Rare and occasional FONOPs by primarily US vessels and aircraft have had no impact and perhaps, made things worse by demonstrating the impotence of the US and allies in this policy area in establishing and maintaining a rules based order.

What this calls for is a different approach than the present strategy of parlee with Beijing as if Beijing is the sole and major problem for the South China Sea.

In order to develop a more nuanced and effective policy, the US and allies need to develop a far more granular and detailed picture of the non-Beijing actors in the policy area, whether it be the local branches of the PLA/PLAN, Coast Guard, Fisheries Patrol, or other units in the area, their ties to military owned or controlled businesses, and non-state actors.

Ideally, such expansion of the knowledgebase shall encompass actors from every other state in the area. But to do so will require a different skill set and allocation of intelligence resources.

Armed with better knowledge and information, the US will be able to forge a policy that cans precision target incentives and sanctions to support a UNCLOS compliant regime to all parties that matter in these disputes.

And not just Beijing.

2016-11-05 By Garth McLennan

The hell that is the Russian-backed siege of Aleppo in Syria has forced the administration of American President Barack Obama to contemplate options it otherwise wouldn’t.

In early October, as the latest U.S.-driven effort at a real ceasefire in the country was falling apart, The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin reported that the Obama administration was contemplating air strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime, with airfields being the most likely targets.

The rumored strikes have not yet materialized, for reasons having as much to do with the now daunting tactical and logistical challenges involved as they do the far more publicized political difficulties long associated with the Syrian battlefield.

The day before Rogin’s piece was published, Russia completed deployment of the S-300 (or the SA-23, in NATO parlance) surface-to-air missile system to its naval base at Tartus, effectively reaching what now appears to be a long-term objective of the Kremlin’s, the establishment of an expeditionary Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) in Syria.

The result of deploying such a modern, advanced platform, equipped with radar-guided hit-to-kill interceptors, is the finalization of an imposing anti-access/area denial web that envelops almost all of Syria as well as significant portions of the Middle East and, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vow to shoot down any jets threatening the Assad regime, significantly narrows the list of American military options in the theater.

There clearly is no free ride in terms of Western air strikes.

The Russian IADS in Syria

It was a significant move; the S-300, with a range of 150 km, joins a formidable roster of already deployed Russian SAM assets in Syria, the most powerful being the S-400 Triumf. Sent to Hmeymim Air Base near Latakia on Thanksgiving last year, and with a purported range covering up to 400 km (250 km confirmed), the S-400 forms the upper-tier of Russia’s Syrian IADS and can reach the American-used Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and the United Kingdom’s Akrotiri Air Base at Cyprus.

Additionally, Russia also operates the S-300FM, the sea-based equivalent of the S-300, off a Slava-class guided-missile cruiser in the eastern Mediterranean, the S-200, and the K-300 Bastion P coastal defense system out of Tartus; these intimidating long-range SAMs are layered with shorter-ranged systems like Pantsir-S1 and the Buk-M2E. On top of Russia’s assets, Syria also fields its own range of air defense platforms, though there is some dispute over the veracity of what Damascus brings to the table.

Russia’s Syrian IADS is truly expeditionary in nature, with a clear emphasis on survivability. The systems belonging to it are modern, disparate, interchangeable, and almost all road-mobile, and have the capability to operate independently of one another or together in an integrated fashion.

Taken together, the Russian-Syrian IADS presents serious tactical challenges to any prospective opposition air campaign (which, it must be pointed out, can only mean the United States and its coalition allies.

Neither the Syrian rebel groups nor the Islamic State have air assets of note, and no other regional adversary exists that could threaten Russia’s position in Syria beyond the coalition).

What must be understood is that these deployments are part of a Russian overarching strategic framework that strives to raise the disincentive for American intervention.

This is the essence of an access/area denial strategy, and it greatly complicates how America can respond to Assad’s depravities.

The imposition of a no-fly zone, a proposal bandied about for years (though, notably, not by the Pentagon), is now impractical.

As Mike Benitez and Mike Pietrucha recently outlined for War on the Rocks, “the success of a no-fly zone relies on the premise of conventional deterrence backed by the resolve to swiftly and ferociously enforce it if challenged”. The proliferation of Russian air defense systems greatly threatens US assets, whose saftey must be assured before a no-fly zone can be established, and thereby the entire premise of that deterrence.

A successful no-fly zone requires not just air superiority, but supremacy; 15 years of counterrorisim and counterinsurgency styled combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East, where American aircraft have enjoyed virtually uncontested dominance, has distorted the significant differences in what these principles mean.

Historically, the United States has could further its strategic interest through the utilization of a no-fly zone when, as Benitez and Pietrucha point out, the tactical goal is containment and the opposition cannot realistically challenge it.

Washington lost two jets and had to station intelligence assets further afield when its no-fly zone was challenged by the Serbian Air Force, hardly as sophisticated a foe as Russia, and its associated air defense platforms during the Kosovo War in 1999.

Suppression of the Russian IADS in Syria would require a far greater commitment of force than Washington finds tactically, strategically, and politically acceptable.

Following this line of thinking, any meaningful attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Syria now would likely result in capacity issues for the USAF as well.

The result of this is a far greater freedom of action for Russian and Syrian forces, as well as real restrictions in how the United States can respond to situations like Aleppo.

The lack of air supremacy is a tactical reality with major strategic implications for Washington; no-fly zone advocates have touted the humanitarian safe areas for Syrian civilians that could be created if the skies overhead are guaranteed (Turkey has long pushed for this).

Russian air defense made this impractical, which in turn forced America’s European allies, desperate to staunch the flow of Middle Eastern refugees streaming across their borders, to strike a dubious refugee bargain with Turkey that has greatly accelerated Ankara’s slide toward unchecked authoritarianism.

Policy prescriptions uninformed of this history and strategic complexity are both misleading in what is needed to accomplish the mission and likely to fail.

This is not 2013, when President Barack Obama’s threat to strike the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons was operationally credible. Russia was a central player in what passed for a resolution to that drama, and undoubtedly looked to the danger it posed to Russian interests in Syria when Moscow intervened in 2015 and began laying the groundwork for its air defense architecture.

A Wider Strategy

Typically, anti-access/area denial scenarios are almost always associated with China, and understandably so. International headlines have for years been filled with dramatic island reclamations in the South China Sea that have served as a direct way to organize and conceptualize such principles. Russia however, has instituted these principles across several regions that constitute the former Soviet periphery.

Most recently, the border regions of Ukraine have seen their own substantial Russian military buildup over the last several months. Groundless accusations of Ukrainian special forces infiltrating Crimea on August 7 were used as a pretext to rapidly deploy forces to Ukraine’s northern, eastern, and southern frontiers, as well as to the Crimean Peninsula; The S-400 was sent to Crimea on August 12, and the Peninsula was soon equipped with a K-300 coastal defense system alongside additional air, ground, and naval units and assets. It also has a powerful IADS network centered on the heavily fortified Russian exclave at Kaliningrad that covers large portions of the Baltics and northern Poland.

If one widens the lens, a familiar pattern has emerged all along the Russian near-abroad that has turned several such regions into effective A2/AD exclusion zones.

Moscow has carved out an integrated and layered missile defense web that dominates large swaths of not only the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, but the Baltics, Eastern Europe, the Black Sea, and parts of the Caucuses (through the Joint Air Defense Network with Armenia, of which Belarus is also a member) and Central Asia as well.

Conclusion

One of Russia’s core reasons for intervening in Syria involved establishing a reinforced base for power projection into the Middle East. The year-long process of building a layered IADS on the Syrian coast has accomplished this by denying the American-led coalition its accustomed air supremacy and, to a certain degree at least, boxing out Washington’s influence.

The Kremlin has sought to do this through several regional exclusion zones in areas it considers to be in the core Russian interest, of which air defense is just one component.

From the direct military support it provides to separatist rebels in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, to the heavy conventional force buildup on its southwestern border with Ukraine, to entrenched troop presences in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Transdniestria in Moldova, to its perennial pot-stirring in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan to, now, its intervention in Syria, Russia has built a political-military architecture for Russian relations with its near abroad that allows for substantial power-projection. This architecture is organized around a strategy of creating effective speed bumps that deter western influence and intervention, in whatever form it may take.

Garth McLennan is a freelance strategic analyst who has written on missile defense issues for The Diplomat, 38 North, International Policy Digest, and Second Line of Defense: Delivering Capabilities to the Warfighter. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2015.

Editor’s Note: The Chief of Naval Operations recently challenged the use of the anti-access/area denial concept as one which significantly overstates the capability of adversaries to deny U.S. entrance into an area of interest.

This is undoubtedly true if the area of interest is really of SIGNIFICANT interest and one involving strategic clarity, something that certainly is not the case in Syria.

But what has happened is that Russia has shifted its resources to shape a more expeditionary military within which air defenses are seen as a chess piece which indicates their strategic interest and to raise the threshold of force necessary to displace them.  

In this sense, modern air defenses are viewed by Russian leaders as an effective chess piece, but, of course, when they are destroyed in combat they become less effective.  The Bekaa valley experience in the early 1980s is never far away from the Russian leader’s memory bank. 

Also of note is how the Russians have supported their air campaign.  They have a limited airlift fleet but have not simply relied on that fleet to support operations, but have used their various naval assets to ship supplies to Syria.

Clearly, the Inside the Beltway discussions which assert concepts such as “no fly zones” as solution sets in the Middle East, need to be put aside in favor of understanding the Russians are not only back but that there has been significant air power modernization in the region which is non-American.

2016-11-06 Based on his recent travels to the former Soviet Union, Richard Weitz provides his second piece looking at the potential evolution of the Russian-American relationship and rivalry under the next Administration.

According to Weitz: “I spent the last few weeks in Russia giving presentations and holding meetings at various Russian institutions in Moscow, including The Gorbachev Foundation, the Moscow State University, the Financial University, the American Centre, the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian International Affairs Council.

“I then spent four days at the annual Valdai Conference in Sochi, attended by President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials as well as more than one hundred foreign experts, many of whom were former high-level government officials or long-time Russian experts.”

According to Weitz, given the choices, Vladimir Putin indicated at the conference that he felt that Trump would be a more realistic politician to work with rather than Clinton.

In part, this is no doubt his experience of Clinton announcing a reset of relations with Russia and that reset boomeranging and then not really having a clear way ahead to deal with Russia and the competition.

And certainly Syria poses significant challenges to liberal interventionists.

Putin Considers the Possibility of a Trump Administration

By Richard Weitz

Russians offer diverse reasons for respecting Trump—he is seen as a strong leader, successful businessperson, and firm against terrorism—but the most important reason, unsurprisingly, is that Trump advocates cooperating with Russia to address mutual threats.

Compared with Clinton, Trump more readily personifies the U.S. relationship with Russia in terms of whether President Vladimir Putin respects the U.S. president and how skilled the U.S. leader is at resolving differences with Moscow through pragmatic deals. Trump expresses considerably more optimism than Clinton about resolving U.S. differences with Russia.

The Kremlin welcomes Trump’s stance. At Valdai, Putin formally pledged to work with whomever the Americans elected president, but made clear his preferences for Trump as is future American interlocutor:

“We don’t care much about this [who wins the election], but we cannot but welcome words, thoughts and intentions about the normalization of relations between the United States and Russia.”

Putin praised Trump for being a man of the people and for seeking good relations with Russia. Trump “behaves extravagantly,” Putin told us, but he represents the interests of ordinary people, he presents himself as an ordinary person criticizing those who have held power for decades.”

Putin gave one of is more interesting sociological digressions at Valdai.

In his view, people vote for unorthodox candidates like Trump because they have no confidence in the political establishment or that they can influence this elite: “even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power. People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course.”

According to Putin, when the establishment loses a major vote, mainstream Western politicians and media “sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda.”

Regarding the current U.S. presidential elections, the Russian speakers at the panel on Democracy 2.0 accused the U.S. media and other establishment institutions of using administrative resources to assist Clinton’s quest for the White House.

Putin also charged Clinton’s team with inventing stories beforehand about Moscow’s supporting Trump to discredit him. Putin also said that candidates find it easier to talk about Russian spies, hackers, and agents of influence rather than focusing on Americans’ real problems like public debt and gun violence.

Many Russian speakers held the policies pursued by the Western establishment since the Cold War as primarily responsible for Moscow’s alienation from the United States and its allies. For example, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cited NATO’s membership expansion as having “spoiled” the possible “establishment of the united and indivisible world.”

Putin added that the alliance’s war against Serbia, the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq, the NATO intervention in Libya, and Western missile defenses also ruined Russia’s relations with the West.

“We expected equal dialogue, that our interests would be respected, that we would … meet each other halfway,” Putin said at the concluding panel, but the West “offered only unilateral solutions and pursued its objectives at all costs.”

Trump also has said that he wants to deescalate tensions, restore mutual trust, and cooperate more against common threats, above all Islamist terrorism, but also China’s growing power.

He thinks the two leaders could work out a realistic bargain.

Although not supporting Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea or intervention in Ukraine, Trump argues that Washington should have left it to neighboring European powers to deal with the geographically limited Russian threat.

In Syria and the Middle East, Trump has said he wants to get the United States out of the regime-change business and has recognized that the Russian military intervention in Syria helps relieve the U.S. burden of fighting terrorism.

Securing greater Russian-U.S. cooperation regarding terrorism seems plausible. At Sochi, Putin regretted that the United States failed to respond to the information Moscow had sent Washington about the Tsarnayev brothers, who perpetrated the Boston marathon terrorist attack. “If contacts and trust between us and our partners had been better this could have been avoided.”

In contrast, he recalled how “the Americans have provided us with real help, during the preparations for the Olympic Games in Sochi.”

Putin said that Moscow had appealed to Washington to form a joint front against terrorism but had been rejected.

Deescalating tensions in Europe will prove difficult for either candidate.

If Trump wins Tuesday’s election, he and his team will have to face the challenge of how best to resolve differences with Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere.

It should be noted that the last two U.S. administrations made genuine efforts to improve ties with Moscow but the initial forward momentum soon stalled and arguably regress