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| July 25, 2002 |
NATO Invaded In Second Instance of the Clash of Civilizations
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org
Some say it is the fabled island on which Odysseus was held in loving captivity by the nymph Calypso. But Greece doesn’t figure in the dispute; Spain and Morocco do.
Spain calls it Perejil -- Parsley in English -- because that’s what grows on the 33-acre islet three miles from (and purportedly part of) the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta. Spanish claims go back to 1581, when Portugal, which had "conquered" Ceuta and Perejil in 1415, ceded both to Spain. In 1746, Spanish troops occupied the islet, although a "permanent" military presence did not begin until 1912 (and ended in 1960). Spanish police "regularly" visit Perejil, which, Madrid says, is used for recreational diving and smuggling by Spaniards.
Leila is the name Morocco uses for the islet, which lies 216 yards from its coast in the 12 mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar. Rabat’s claims rest on what has not been said about who has sovereignty over the islet. An 1860 Spanish-Moroccan peace treaty about Ceuta says nothing about Leila. Nor is Leila mentioned in a 1949 Spanish declaration of sovereignty over Ceuta. And when Spain’s protectorate over northern Morocco ended in 1956, any claim over Leila ended also (according to Rabat) as it was not named as Spanish territory, as was Ceuta. Finally, Moroccan goats graze on the islet, which is also used for smuggling illegal immigrants and drugs by Moroccan criminals.
In fact, Morocco’s July 11 "invasion" of the islet by a dozen lightly armed security personnel ostensibly was done to get control of smuggling operations. Moreover, Rabat claims it was acting also to prevent terrorists from using the islet, a claim possibly related to recent confessions by non-Moroccan al Qaeda terrorists that they were monitoring U.S. and British warships in the Strait with the intent to blow them up.
Spain disagreed, and on July 17 some six dozen heavily armed Spanish troops landed and -- without bloodshed -- expelled the six Moroccans still on Leila/Perejil. Warships from both countries reportedly maneuvered around Ceuta and Melilla, another Spanish enclave. Rumors had Moroccan troops en route to take Melilla, and Spanish helicopters were reported flying over the islet and over Ceuta while Madrid sent forces to establish or strengthen its military presence on other bits of land near Morocco’s coast claimed by Spain.
NATO, perhaps because no shots were fired, decided this was a bilateral dispute and did not invoke Article 5. The European Union, backing Spain, called for negotiations. The Arab League, supporting Morocco’s claim, also called for negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was said to have made 30 telephone calls to Rabat and Madrid. In the end, the Spanish troops left, both sides claimed victory, and talks began over future relations.
The world might be forgiven if it doesn’t regard Perejil/Leila as a major flash point, but it reflects the state of affairs between Spain and Morocco that could be seen as embodying more important cultural clashes. For example, illegal immigration from countries on the south shore of the Mediterranean into those on the north has become a serious concern for the Europeans. Trade and trade restrictions are another issue. Morocco withdrew its ambassador from Madrid last October while Spain recalled its envoy for "consultations" during the Leila/Perejil flap. Morocco has from time to time claimed sovereignty over not only the islet but over Ceuta and Melilla -- and even over the Canary Islands, which lie 65 miles off the coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean but have been claimed by Spain since 1496.
Moreover, Madrid and Rabat are divided over the future of the former Spanish (Western) Sahara, which Spain left in 1976. The territory subsequently was contested by Mauritania and Morocco as well as by the indigenous Polisario Front, which sought independence. In the latest developments, Spain is backing a U.N. plan for a referendum on self-determination for the Western Sahara while Morocco wants an alternative plan under which the Western Sahara would have "substantial autonomy" with the Moroccan state. The fact that a U.N. peacekeeping mission -- the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, or MINURSO -- has been in place since September 1991 but no referendum has been held attests to the difficulty in finding a resolution to this problem, a resolution that would remove a point of contention between Madrid and Rabat.
With all the dangers and real crises that beset areas in the Middle East, in
South Asia, and in other parts of Africa, the last thing Colin Powell or the
U.N. need is a distraction that can be interpreted as another resort to arms
by the West against an Arab nation. Fortunately, it now appears that the dispute
has been resolved -- at least for now.
The islet will return to its pre-July 11 status -- uninhabited and sovereignty
undetermined.
There was no word about the Moroccan goats.
Sources: The Guardian (UK), July 13-22, 2002
A Call to Arms in Europe? Not Quite
Tomas Valasek, Senior Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
As rumblings in Europe about Washington’s possible war on Iraq increase, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his EU partners to, in effect, put up or shut up. "If we want to have greater sway and greater power, then instead of complaining about America, we’ve got to face up to what we need to do," Blair said in a recent interview. As a starting point, the British Prime Minister suggested building a real army and a foreign policy apparatus. What is needed, Blair said, is "a coherent defense capability and a set of institutions to allow Europe to speak strongly." But Blair’s words are less a call to arms than a reminder of the relative weakness of Europe vis-à-vis the United States. And as long as the discrepancy exists, U.S. domination in the military and foreign policy realm remains not only undisputable, but also (quietly) welcome in Europe.
On paper at least, the Union has the potential to successfully challenge the United States’ supremacy in military and diplomatic power. The EU is more than the sum of its parts. The Union as a negotiating party holds greater clout and power than any individual European state or even all EU member states together. EU membership instills a sense of discipline, which makes the Union a formidable negotiating partner -- or an opponent. The very breadth of the intra-Union cooperation, and the close links binding the different issues on its agenda increase the cost of -- and reduce the probability of -- a defection by any EU member from a Union-wide consensus. As a consequence, the EU presents to the outside world a far more unified face than the diversity of opinions within it would normally dictate.
The benefits of the tight cooperation are apparent on trade and other economic issues. The EU has been able to successfully influence and even modify policies of outside parties, including the United States, on issues such as trade and antitrust policy. In 2001, the Union managed to block a planned merger between two U.S. companies, Honeywell and General Electric, which, in the Union’s view, would have had an adverse effect on competition in the electronics market in Europe. The strength of the EU also allows it to fend off or water down attempts by non-EU countries to change the Union’s own rules and policies, as was the case in the 1999-2001 dispute over banana imports to Europe.
But the EU’s strength varies from issue to issue. In the realm of foreign policy and defense, EU members have displayed a remarkable lack of unity and even willingness to rely on the Union to advance their goals -- and thus found themselves unable to replicate the Union’s successes in trade and antitrust disputes. The EU’s success depends on two key components -- power, and the will among the member states to use this power. In the economic realm, the United States and the EU are peers. The gross domestic product of the EU zone is nearly equal to that of the United States ($7,836 billion to $9,896 billion), and both have roughly the same share of the world imports and exports. But when it comes to military might, the EU simply lags far behind its peer, the United States. As for the second requirement, Union members, for a variety of reasons, have been either unwilling or unable to make the EU an active instrument of foreign and defense policy.
EU members have fallen far behind the United States in both the size and the quality of their military forces. The United States spends far more on defense than all EU countries combined. Moreover, the United States spends a larger percentage of its funds on purchases of equipment than all but three of its allies. Most of the European allies are still saddled with large, static and manpower-heavy forces left over from the Cold War. Finally, the United States spends a far larger percentage of its defense budget on research and development of new weapons than any of its European allies, thus assuring itself of supremacy in the field of new military technology.
Some of Europe’s largest countries recently moved to start closing the military gap. Britain announced on July 15 a $5.5 billion hike in defense spending between 2002 and 2006, the largest such increase in 20 years. The same week, French President Jacques Chirac announced a $1 billion a year increase in military spending. (Germany, under pressure to keep its rising budget deficit from violating the European Monetary Union-imposed limit, has mostly tried to finance new military investment with proceeds from reforms and reductions of the armed forces, without much success.) However, the new money -- if any -- is only a starting point. Some of the gaps in Europe’s capabilities may be relatively easy to fill -- precision guided munitions, for example, can be bought from the United States (although fitting them to existing European aircraft may well require substantial modifications). Other components will take time. Most EU states committed to buying the Airbus A400M as a way to fill their need for long-range transportation. But Airbus does not expect to deliver the new aircraft, which is still on the drawing board, until 2007 at the earliest.
Without some key ingredients needed to stage a successful military operation, whether a peacekeeping one or even a lower-intensity mission such as intervention in cases of environmental disasters, EU members will have to rely on NATO -- effectively the United States -- for assistance. A sizable, fully autonomous EU military operation -- particularly one on the scale of those conducted by the United States -- is simply out of question for the near future.
But lest one dismisses the current state of affairs as a failure of EU policies, it is important to note that a degree of dependency on NATO is in fact highly desirable for at least some EU members. The relationship persists by design rather than by default. For a variety of reasons, many if not most EU members are unwilling to delegate to the Union the responsibility for their own defense or even for implementation of non-defensive military operations outside the EU area. Just as importantly, a number of EU members clearly prefer the close military ties with the United States.
Security is different from trade -- an open confrontation or disagreement on military issues would have grave consequences not only for the United States and EU members but also for the larger world. A trade war is an acceptable risk and an established -- if unpleasant -- tool of U.S.-EU relations, whereas a real war is not.
Similarly, an open disagreement between the EU and the United States on defense
policy toward a third party invites instability, which threatens to weaken both
Washington and its allies. While Europeans often decry America’s twitchy trigger
finger, there is a tacit understanding, at least among some European elites,
than a display of firepower is often necessary. When dealing with the world
outside Europe, wrote Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat and an advisor
to Blair, "we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era --
force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary." As long as
Europe is incapable or unwilling to muster the same amount of military power
that Washington does, the United States will remain an indispensable -- if not
always well liked -- partner.
EU’s military dependency on the United States thus becomes a way of preserving
the close cooperation on defense between Washington and Europe. It keeps the
Union from carrying out its own operations and forces it to turn to the United
States. Joint operations in turn require that the two sides seek to resolve,
at least partly, their policy differences. As a result, EU and Washington work
closer together than the divergence in their worldviews and threat perception
would otherwise dictate -- a state of affairs that suits many EU states just
fine, at least for now.
Second Global Hawk UAV Crashes in Afghanistan
Victoria Samson, Research Associate, vsamson@cdi.org
The crash of an RQ-4A Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) on Wednesday, July 11, brings into question how reliable and feasible this much-lauded program is.
This second loss of a Northrop-Grumman Global Hawk in the Afghanistan theater prompted a temporary grounding in the test program until developers determined that engine failure caused the crash.
The first Global Hawk to go down was Air Vehicle No. 5, which crashed on Dec. 30, 2001. A review panel recently determined that the $40.6 million craft crashed because of the faulty installation of an actuator nut plate bolt in the aircraft’s V-tail. In its report, the panel noted that the UAV had been rushed into combat while still in the Advanced Concept Technology and Demonstration (ACTD) stage. One result was that "there were no estimated maintenance inspections procedures" in place.
This month’s crash leaves two Global Hawk UAVs still in-theater, only one of which has the full Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS) that consists of a charged-coupled device camera, an infrared camera, and synthetic aperture radar. Two more sensor suites are in production, as is an additional air vehicle, so accelerated deployment is possible.
But this also might be a good time to stop and formalize DoD’s operational requirements for UAVs. At first, UAVs were touted as a way to cheaply and relatively easily improve situational awareness on the battlefield without endangering pilots’ lives. Specifically, the Global Hawk was touted as an eventual replacement for the U-2 high-altitude (and manned) observation plane. The Global Hawk can fly 1,200 nautical miles (nm) to an observation point, spend 24 hours on-station, and fly back 1,200 nm, spending a total of 35 hours aloft. With a wingspan of 44 feet, it can reach a top speed of 400 mph and fly high above anti-aircraft artillery.
The Global Hawk and a smaller UAV, the Predator, were rushed into combat while still in their development stages to improve intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) in Afghanistan. While they were helpful, users complained that their imagery was not always easy to analyze. Moreover, the Global Hawk’s top cruising altitude of 65,000 feet rendered its video camera useless for tactical intelligence. Now Secretary of the Air Force James Roche talks excitedly about adding signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities to increase the Global Hawk’s ISS aperture and thus enhance its collection abilities.
When the CIA added two Hellfire anti-tank missiles on each of its Predator air vehicles, some analysts and Pentagon officials suggested that perhaps more UAVs should be fitted with more offensive weapons.
But attempts to make UAVs all things to all people could derail the whole program. UAVs run the risk of becoming so loaded with electronic gadgets and armaments that they will price themselves out of being the throwaway vehicles they were originally designed to be.
In its present developmental stage, each Global Hawk airframe costs $16-20 million. The sensor packages add $11 million, and the ground control stations needed to fly the craft are another $45 million. The Air Force warns that more advanced models of the Global Hawk could run to $70 million each, making their cost advantage to manned airplanes questionable. A review panel is attempting to halve the cost of the UAV, hopefully before the Air Force buys its designated 51 Global Hawks.
The above amounts do not include the cost of fully training new crews to operate the new UAVs or compensate for the insufficient number of currently qualified operators -- as pointedly illustrated by a 1999 crash of a Global Hawk when its operator accidentally punched in instructions to halt the test flight. But given all the "hype" associated with UAVs, merely putting "unmanned" in front of a program pretty much guarantees funding.
The Pentagon is already working on the next "unmanned" vehicle type, an unmanned combat air vehicle, or UCAV. Both the Navy and Air Force have programs, with the latter working with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and Boeing on a $256 million contract.
Experts predict that the next decade could see the UAV effort climb to as much as $7.5 billion. As costs and complexity mount, however, the basic question remains: at what point do the costs of adding extras to "dispensable" UAVs so outweigh the benefits of mission support to the commander that UAVs (and UCAVs) no longer are cost effective?
Pentagon In Campaign to Find Allies for Missile Defense – The Department of Defense has dispatched two teams to Europe to drum up support for, and offer participation in, U.S. missile defense programs, the Times (U.K.) reports. The teams are scheduled to visit Germany, Denmark, Britain, France, and Poland, among others. The allies have loudly criticized U.S. plans for fielding a national missile defense system but their opposition became somewhat muted after Sept. 11. The Pentagon is attempting to build support for its U.S. homeland missile defense program by extending it globally and by offering participation by foreign defense companies. BAE Systems, Alenia and EADS, three of Europe's largest aerospace companies, are said to be negotiating with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively, about joining their missile defense manufacturing teams, the Defense News reported.
Quotation of the Week --
What About Responsibilities to the American Public?
“Bless their hearts, the chairman of a committee has a first responsibility to his committee.” House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) on efforts to prevent the new Department of Homeland Security from absorbing some federal agencies.
This Week on SUPERPOWER: Global Affairs TV -- “Facing China”
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This Week on SUPERPOWER: Global Affairs TV – “Facing China”
This week, Superpower examines the current U.S. relationship with China. What is the significance of the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power? Will efforts to focus on commercial trade between the United States, China and Taiwan help avert military conflict? How do other countries perceive China and the U.S. - China relationship?
This week's episode will feature a discussion of whether or not China poses a threat to the United States. Guests James Lilley, Senior Fellow for the American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. Ambassador to China; Minxin Pei, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Rollie Lal, of RAND; and Michio Hayashi, Foreign Affairs Correspondent for The Yomiuri Shimbun.
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