Passing through

Busy day today, but thought I'd throw out a couple of nutty clusters to chew on for the gang here.

SecState Pompeo delivered a real tubthumper of an address at the Nixon Library last Thursday about those tricksy Chinese. They're devious heathen devils, and apparently all the Western efforts to civilize them since "Nixon went to China" in the Seventies have gone for naught, so now it's time to muscle up and beef them around:

(Pompeo said that)..."the U.S. will organize the free world, while alienating and undermining the free world; he extols democracy, while aiding and abetting its destruction at home; and he praises the Chinese people, while generalizing about the ill intent of Chinese students who want to come to America.

Pompeo is also ultra-loyal to a president who cares not one whit for democracy, dissidents, freedom, or transparency overseas. Trump’s long track record on this is well documented, and it has defined his personal approach to China."

As we discussed here a while back, I'm all in favor of treating the PRC with cautious skepticism. But the problem here is that, having made it clear that if you're a Trumpkin, you're "America First" all the way, this administration has little diplomatic throw-weight to actually mobilize any sort of large-scale pushback against Chinese geopolitical ambitions. And then there's the whole "you are, too!" problem:

"The Chinese Communist Party wants a tributary international system where smaller countries are deferential to larger powers, instead of a rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal rights. The CCP also sees no place for universal rights or global liberal norms, and wants to ignore the principles of open markets to pursue a predatory mercantilist economic policy.

So does Trump."

All this will undoubtedly rachet up tensions in the East Asian littoral. What that means in practice? I'm not sure; right now the U.S. is too busy being devoured by the Plague to make anything as distant as the South China Sea fairly low on the priority list...

Meanwhile, half a world away the same U.S. administration has directed the USDOD to move about 12,000 military bodies out of the Federal Republic of Germany.

This does not, in case you're keeping score, count as a "Donald the Dove" peace proposal. These people aren't going to become VISTA volunteers. Many are going to other parts of Europe, including Poland(?), Belgium, and Italy. But some of this may tie into the aggressive rhetoric against the PRC:

“Several thousand troops currently assigned to Germany may be reassigned to other countries in Europe,” Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said in an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. “Thousands may expect to redeploy to the Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. maintains a military presence in Guam, Hawaii, Alaska and Japan, as well as deployments in locations like Australia.”

It's difficult not to be cynical about seeing this as a Trumpian revenge against the German government and his bete noir, PM Merkel, for being insufficiently fawning.

Anyway...interesting times.

Blundering into the blast zone

Forty years ago yesterday (May 13, 1980) as Dick Waitt records in his 2014 work In the Path of Destruction, the Washington State Department of Emergency Management and other agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey were forced by public pressure to open up large portions of the forest lands around the then-unquiet Mount Saint Helens volcano that had been off-limits since the end of April.

(then-Governor Dixy Lee Ray had signed an order establishing a "red zone" around the volcano on 30 APR 1980 that turned out to be, in fact, grossly undersized - something like 50 of the 55 to 60 people who died in the eruption on 18 MAY were outside the original "red zone" - see below).

But that wasn't enough for the people who made their living in the woods, or who had cabins or houses near the volcano, or who just wanted to go back into the forest to mine or pick mushrooms or whatever.

Saturday, 17 MAY, something like 50 vehicles drove into the area that had been closed to bag up their stuff. The eruption took place at 8:32am, before the second planned caravan enetred the blast zone at ten, and since it was a Sunday the active logging tracts were empty.

Still, somewhere in the vicinity of 55 people were killed.

That ain't Pompeii...but, then, we knew more than they did back in the First Century, and knew how damn deadly dangerous these stratovolcanoes were. The volcanoligists of what eventually became Cascades Volcanoes Observatory warned the State of Washington that this monster could do all sorts of unpredictably deadly things. And the state government listened...until people grew bored and restless and demanded to "reopen" the woodlands around an actively erupting volcano. We learned a hard lesson about the power of convergent margin tectonics and nature in general.

As a geologist I find it kind of interesting to reflect on that, just at the moment.

Why?

Oh...y'know. No reason.

Just a thought.

The Second Great Pacific War..?

From Future Warfare in the Western Pacific (Biddle and Oelrich, 2016):

"This article thus provides a more systematic assessment of the potential military effectiveness of Chinese A2/AD (anti-access area denial). We ask not whether ASB would be escalatory, but whether it is necessary. That is, to what extent will ongoing technology trends allow either side to deny freedom of movement to the other, and over what area? Will China be able to push U.S. forces far enough from its shores to threaten U.S. alliances? If so, which ones, and how gravely? And what, given this, represents the best military strategy for the United States to adopt for the long term?"

One of the most common complaints I've heard, both here and from other former military types, is that the exclusive concentration of resources on "little war" expeditionary-force and internal defense of client-state governments has left the United States armed forces unable to successfully respond to a peer foe in a conventional war.

Biddle and Oelrich (2016) is an attempt to analyze one element of what may be one of the two potential peer-foe conflicts; a predominantly naval/air war between the United States and its allies against the People's Republic of China (PRC); specifically, what potential does the PRC's pursuit of A2/AD systems - "...missile launchers, command posts, sensors, supply networks, and communication systems..." - have for creating a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" centered around mainland China, one that is robust enough to control the West Pacific rim in the face of a United States assault?

This seems like an interesting enough question to suggest reading the linked paper and discussing in the comments section. So...hopefully you will enjoy the exercise and come in weapons free.

ADIZzy in the East China Sea

Mildly interesting activity off the east coast of the People's Republic of China this week.

First, the PRC announced the creation of an expended "Air Defense Identification Zone" that covers a fairly large portion of the west side of the Pacific that lies between the PRC to the west, Taiwan (ROC) to the south, Japan to the northeast, and the Republic of Korea to the north:

Note the gray area; that's the overlap between the western edge of Japan's own claimed ADIZ (the black line on the left side of the gray area) and the east edge of the PRC's new ADIZ.

Why is this important?

Well, and ADIZ is, in effect, a milder form of "territorial waters", an assertion of sovereignty. The FAA defines it, in part, as "an area of airspace over land or water in which the ready identification, location, and control of civil aircraft is required in the interest of national security." The PRC is insisting that it has the right to enforce the ADIZ regulations, which include

"...flight plans, as well as radio and logo identification, of all aircraft operating in the zone. The state-run news agency, Xinhua, said if an aircraft did not supply its flight plan, “China’s armed forces will adopt emergency defensive measures.”" (NYT, 11/26/13)

.The United States responded by sending a pair of B-52 bombers through the ADIZ without doing so. The message to the PRC couldn't have been clearer; bite me, PRC, we consider this area international waters and don't recognize your effing ADIZ.

Analysis of this action here, here, and here.

So...do I think "This means woah!"? No.

But it is an intriguing bit of geopolitical gamesmanship from the PRC, for two reasons:

1. The territory involved includes the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and seems to be a likely part of a stepped-up assertion of sovereignty over those ocean rocks, during a period when the issue has become increasingly contentious, and

2. The way the Chinese claiming their new ADIZ rules work. Typically these zones affect aircraft en route to the polity claiming the ADIZ; that's how the U.S. zones work:

But the Chinese are saying that their ADIZ applies to ALL aircraft transiting this zone, not just aircraft inbound for the PRC. This is actually a pretty significant reach; it would be like the United States claiming the right to query and, if not satisfied, stop or even detain any vessels transiting within it's 100-mile limit. This would have the effect, if enforced, of challenging the traditional legal standard of "innocent passage"; "...so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State. Such passage shall take place in conformity with this Convention and with other rules of international law." (UNCLOS, Section 3(A)(19).

Why is China doing this? Why now?

Good questions. I don't know; I suspect that a LOT of people aren't sure. In some ways the PRC is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. Clearly someone is feeling cocky about the PRC's strength in the East China Sea. Who? Why? And to what purpose?

Again; all good questions and ones that it'd be nice to know the answer to.