Monday, January 2, 2012

Making Strategic Thinking Post-Containment

Recently there has been a lot of focus on what to make of strategic thinking as we move into a post-financial crisis world with existing defense challenges. Part of this means the juggling of what to spend more or less on and how to spend on defense to ensure you have your focus in mind. Recently, Jonathan Dowdall wrote an article for publicmic.com which spoke around these points. He suggests there is increasingly a lack of 'strategic logic' with a vocal focus on expanding Washington's commitment to the Asia-Pacific region and putting maritime assets necessary to meet that policy on the "chopping block". The worry in his case is that Washington is saying one thing to the world, but domestic interests are leading to cuts which is ultimately bringing about something else - Dowall doesn't count the deployment of Marines in Australia for much after all. But in him holding that worry, I find myself upon another worry asking what strategic challenges exist currently that warrant a force built more so for a cold war era type confrontation. The big 'hot spots' of the region I would point to as being the Korean Peninsula, and perhaps Taiwan, as well as the Spartan Islands - what are we to expect, focusing on Korea for example. But more then just that, to what extent are the current budget cuts reshaping foreign policy and leading to a post-containment era of thinking.

Let me look firstly to the example of North-South Korean case to show you what I mean. The strategic situation that exists on the Korean Peninsula has been a 'hot spot' brought back into the 'lime light' with the death of Kim Jung IL and the uncertainly of what that means for the future, and the possibility of confrontation. Minxin Pei recently wrote an article for The Diplomat called 'How Kim Death Risks China Crisis' expanding that concern to relations between the United States and China with a worst case scenario playing out on the Korean Peninsula. His fear stems from the fact that a reaction by either the United States or China to a situation - like a crisis post a North Korean collapse or aggressive military action by North Korea - could be seen by the other side as "provocative and ill-intentioned". He goes on to suggest that a crisis in North Korea that involves South Korean efforts to restore order beyond the 38th parallel and the loss of North Korea as a 'buffer state' for China could be a frustrating situation for China which might lead to military action in response. I think however that the focus of North Korea as a 'buffer state' speaks to cold war era type thinking. China might for instance have greater interest in seeing a stable Korean Peninsula without the constant worry of a regime crisis causing a North Korean refugee crisis into China. He also makes this point as though having General MacArthur suggest the war against communism should be extended beyond the Korean border with China happened just yesterday - are tensions really that high? China is far from the 'self conscious' state it was at the time of the Cold War, and its also unlikely to involve itself in a war that could hurt its economic development. I think the United States, South Korea and China could avoid conflict with a multilateral agreement to acknowledge both sides sovereignty, but not before a crisis comes about like Minxin Pei suggests, that would just raise suspicion about intentions. A position like mine talks to post-cold war thinking, but what about post-containment thinking?

Just a few days ago Gareth Evans wrote an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer called: 'Foreign Policy isn't About Good and Evil' which argued along what I would call post-containment thinking. He makes two important points, firstly he warns of the risk of limiting our options as a result of casting those world nations that we don't like as "irredeemably evil" - bringing one ultimately to have to use a gun like the case of Iraq to make ones case. This point with relation to North Korea leads me to Kim Jong-un who some consider as a figure more closely related to Kim Il Sung, likely to use military actions to leverage power against the South for aid and increase his political support amongst those in the military in North Korea as Michael J. Green points out in an article for Foreign Affairs. One can get a very different point of view from reading Cheo Sang-Hun's article for the New York Times where the focus is on North Korea's recent call for implementation of an inter-Korean summit to help see investment between the two nations, something that many in both nations believe could lead to less fragile relations. It could also be the first wave in an eventual opening up China style of North Korea's economy. The aim is not to argue to North Korea's innocence. One could argue that Kim Jong-un is a fresh face with a relatively clean past as Cheo Sang-Hun points out, but that leads me to Gareth Evan's second point in asking: Do countries really always have to be evil? Is there not still the potential for a turn around?

Containment is founded on two pillers, the first directly relates to the threat of 'domination' such as was ideological in the cold war. The secound relates to a notion of putting a country in a cage, and waiting. Hedley Bull made a unique point about world relations saying that countries are able to pursue what he talked of as "purposes beyond ourselves". In doing so, a country is able to behave without any direct payoff in sight. This type of thinking doesn't assume that countries don't always behave with their own interests in mind, but instead that countries can behave without their own interests in mind - in doing so, one leaves a unique opportunity to cooperate selflessly - and change the reputation a country like North Korea might be held to. The concern for the Korean Peninsula in the case of China and the United States isn't about domination, its about greater regional stability that won't be had by the strong invention by either side. But the demise of a policy like containment doesn't rest simply on the changed relations between countries like the United States and China since the end of the cold war. Instead post-containment thinking involves leaving the window for a country to change open. The bigger challenge for the region isn't just seeing the behavior of a state like North Korea beyond a 'black and white' psychopathic mask its often given, but instead giving North Korea an opportunity to behave without wearing that mask to the better of its reputation and be outward engaging. If one is to think along lines like these, one is thinking post-containment.