Saab on Saudi and UAE Defense Industrialization

Bilal Saab of the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center released a report today called "The Gulf Rising: Defense Industrialization in Saudi Arabia and the UAE." (Link is to the announcement; the full report (PDF) is here.)

While so far I've mostly read the Executive Summary, it looks like an important study of defense industrialization in the Gulf.

Saab and Singh: One Carrier in the Gulf is More Than Enough

For those of you interested in defense debates, an area I once wrote about a lot myself, here's a challenging piece by defense analysts Bilal Saab (also a contributor to the current issue of MEJ) and Joseph Singh: "Forget the Second Carrier, It's Time to Rethink the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf."

Do read their reasoning. 

New Blog on ME Arms Control and Regional Security

There's a new blog in the Middle East blogosphere, and it looks like it's off to an impressive start. It's called Arms Control and Regional Security in the Middle East, and it's about, well, what do you think it's about with that title? It's run by Bilal Y. Saab and Chen Kane, both of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The initial articles are by the two of them but they also say they'll welcome outside contributors. Both are accomplished specialists in the field.

I will note that though many of you will be familiar with the work of Bilal Saab on security issues either in is present or his previous positions, if you drill down in his resume (there's a link on his blog profile to the fuller one, which is the one you need), you'll see that he was once (way back when, though I was there at the time) a researcher  at the Middle East Institute. He has since passed through several great universities on several continents, not to mention some major think tanks, but I'll nevertheless assert my profound conviction that MEI taught him all he knows. I hope he will be gentleman enough not to contradict me since I am plugging his blog. It's my story and I'm sticking with it.

It should be worthy of a bookmark, from the looks of early indicators.

Prince Salman's Appointment Suggests No Early Shift to Younger Generation

 With the death of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan and he elevation of Interior Minister Prince Nayef, 78, to the position of heir to the throne, speculation resumed, naturally enough, about when the Saudi throne might pass to the generation of the grandsons of the Kingdom's founder. Since the death of the patriarch King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud (the man the West called "Ibn Saud") in 1953 — 58 years ago — all five Kings of Saudi Arabia (Sa‘ud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, ‘Abdullah) have all been sons of his; the grandsons' generation have grown gray and, while holding many key positions, have not been positioned in the line of succession. The elevation of Nayef to the post of Crown Prince makes clear that (assuming he survives King ‘Abdullah), there will be at least one more King from the older generation.

But the announcement over the weekend that Prince Salman, Governor of Riyadh for decades, would succeed Sultan as Minister of Defense and Aviation makes it likely that he, too, is being positioned to succeed. One of the seven "Sudairi" or "Al Fahd" full brothers (including Fahd, Sultan, and Nayef), Salman is respected and influential. He had not, however, held any positions related to security or external affairs; the Defense Ministry fills that gap.

The key to watch for would be if the King designates him as Second Deputy Prime Minister down the road. Every King since Faisal has been his own Prime Minister, and the Crown Prince has been the First Deputy Prime Minister. In most cases, designation of a Second Deputy Prime Minister implies that prince will be next in the line of succession.

Prince Khalid bin Sultan, who had effectively been running the Armed Forces under the long-ailing Prince Sultan, was designated Deputy Defense Minister, so Sultan's family influence in the Ministry does not disappear.

Why There's Not Much Left of That Lost Helicopter

A sidenote to the Bin Laden op: via Aviation Week, one reason the damaged helicopter was pretty thoroughly destroyed before the team left is that it was apparently a highly secret stealth version of the Blackhawk: an Av Week blog reports:

Well, now we know why all of us had trouble ID'ing the helicopter that crashed, or was brought down, in the Osama raid.

It was a secretly developed stealth helicopter, probably a highly modified version of an H-60 Blackhawk. Photos published in the Daily Mail and on the Secret Projects board show that the helicopter's tail features stealth-configured shapes on the boom and tip fairings, swept stabilizers and a "dishpan" cover over a non-standard five-or-six-blade tail rotor. It has a silver-loaded infra-red suppression finish similar to that seen on some V-22s.

No wonder the team tried to destroy it. The photos show that they did a thorough job - except for the end of the tailboom, which ended up outside the compound wall. (It almost looks as if the helo's tail hit the wall on landing.)

This could have something to do with the fact that Pakistani air defenses didn't apparently detect the operation.

The F-35s for Settlements Deal

It now looks as if Binyamin Netanyahu will impose a 90-day moratorium on settlement building, in exchange for the package of incentives offered by the Obama Administration, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The proposal is expected to split Israel's diplomatic/security Cabinet, which must approve it. Since the religious Shas Party is expected to abstain, Netanyahu is likely to be able to count on about seven votes for the proposal, versus six against, for the narrowest possible win, by one vote.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, from Labor, has said the defense package is more important than Likud's internal quarrels.

Israel had already ordered 20 of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighters, but the cost of the package was controversial; the US offer now would apparently provide them free in return for the 90-day setltement freeze.

Some are comparing the situation to 1991, when the George H.W. Bush Administration threatened to withhold loan guarantees unless Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to the Madrid Peace Conference. But the present incentive package seems to be all carrot, while that instance was mostly stick.

Mark Lynch today sagely asks, "What if they don't solve Israeli-Palestinian borders in 90 days?"
As he notes:

It's easy to be skeptical. The United States seems to be giving a lot for a temporary fix which only kicks the can down the road another few months, while neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians seem to see this as a moment of opportunity. The deal only makes sense if serious progress on reaching agreement on borders can be made in three months. But the three months in question include Thanksgiving, the Eid al-Adha, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years, and the seating of the new U.S. Congress. Even if the parties have already sketched out the contours of the deal -- and I sure hope they did that spadework before committing themselves to such a high-stakes deadline, though I'm kind of afraid that they didn't -- experience suggests that getting that deal through the Israeli and Palestinian systems won't be easy. Since the United States promises not to ask for another extension, the 90-day deadline gives all kinds of incentives for those who don't really want a deal to stall. Oh, all right… I'm skeptical.

So am I, mostly because of the sense of deja vu. We are essentially bribing Israel for a 90 day freeze, but for all the reasons noted above, does anyone really think the next 90 days are going to produce an agreement? And then what? Do we ante up more F-35s?

If Netanyahu does carry the deal by a single vote in the security Cabinet, he'll be unlikely to take even greater risks for future extensions. The present coalition, which is mostly to the right of Netanyahu, is hard to envision making hard decisions on settlements, but unless Netanyahu is ready to fight new elections for peace (which he's shown no sign of being eager to do), I'm not sure we'll be getting our money's worth.

Droning on About Drones: Israel's "Iran-Capable" Heron TP

A few days ago there was a flurry of reporting about Israel's introduction of a new, large-bodied unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which the press likes to call a drone, namely the Heron TP. Here's the video:



Now, if you do a little googling you'll find that half the newspapers played this as "Israel unveils drone that can reach Iran." Well, yeah. But it was "unveiled" in the sense that it's become operational. Its existence has been reported for some time; its Hebrew name is Eitan. It's big, though there are questions about it being the world's biggest UAV. As far back as Vietnam the US was using remotely piloted fighter aircraft, and apparently the Global Hawk has a bigger wingspan.

One of the few commenters not to jump on the "can reach Iran" bandwagon is Jeremy White at Huffington Post in this piece, "Israel's New Drone Not for Use Against Iran." Generally he makes the important points — it's slow-moving, vulnerable to air defenses, and probably can't carry the heavy bunker-buster munitions you'd need to take out hardened Iranian nuclear facilities. His article is spoiled a bit by the phrase "Despite the fact that the Heron TP does look quite like an F-15 . . ." It looks less like an F-15 than this overweight 62-year-old white-haired blogger looks like George Clooney. No one with even marginal eyesight could mistake it for an F-15. Watch the video above.

Still, the points made are good. This thing would have to fly over either Turkey (and Turkish-Israeli relations are bumpier than they've been for years) or Iraq or Saudi Arabia. And it's highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. We use Predators against the Taliban because they don't have any air defense. It's slow and cumbersome. It probably can't carry anything like the ordnance required to take out hardened underground sites. Iran can relax: iuf Israel attacks, this won't be the vehicle. Though I'm sure the decision to publicize it at this time was intended to create the illusion it was intended for Iran.

In fact, the Israelis were true pioneers in the UAV field. While the US Armed Forces spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s developing some basic ancestors of the Predator, both Israel Aircraft Industries and Tadiran had cobbled together two functional UAV's prior to the 1982 war in Lebanon. They were pretty much wooden remote-controlled hobby aircraft with cameras and downlinks, but they did the job.

But I think Iran needn't worry about the Eitan/Heron TP. That doesn't mean Israel isn't going to strike, but this is a red herring. Or red Heron.

Amin Huwaydi, 1921-2009

Having established a certain track record in noting the passing of security men and spooks such as Nabawi Isma‘il and Meir Amit, I guess I really should note the passing (on halloween) of former Egyptian Mukhabarat chief and Defense Minister Amin Huwaydi. Here's the BBC Arabic report. Here's his bio in Arabic Wikipedia. Not much has shown up in the English media, at least so far.

That's probably because his role on the Egyptian stage (or at least center stage) was a brief one. Though an early supporter of Nasser's Revoluti0n, it was really only after the 1967 War that he had his moment of fame, and that ended when he split with Anwar Sadat in 1971.

As the obits note (I'll link to an English one if I can find one, but haven't yet), he was the only man to serve simultaneously as head of General Intelligence and Minister of War (as the Defense Ministry was then called). He had been deputy director of the Mukhabarat and took it over after the war. Later, after Vice President ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amr's suicide in the wake of the war (or "suicide" if you're a skeptic) and the firing of War Minister Shams Badran, there was considerable reshuffling of the high command, and he took over the War Ministry as well, at least for a short time. (His War Ministry doesn't even seem to be listed on the present Ministry of Defense Website.)

He ran the Mukhabarat during the War of Attrition in 1967-70. That period seems remote now, and Huwaydi was among those linked to the ‘Ali Sabri group, who clashed with Anwar Sadat and were generally ousted/resigned in the May 15, 1971 events that Sadat liked to call the "Corrective Revolution" and others see as Sadat's purging of the old Nasserists. By that time he was Minister of State.

Robert S. McNamara and the Middle East

The death of Robert S. McNamara at the age of 93 has naturally brought on the expected reflections on his role in Vietnam — the role which haunted him throughout his career — and in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those were the critical moments for which he will be remembered, for good or ill, from his long period as Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The historian in me feels compelled to add a few footnotes, however: though it never became his central focus as first Cuba and then Vietnam did, the Middle East did intrude on McNamara's attention from time to time. It is easy to forget, because in the world we are familiar with US military support for Israel seems to have always been a feature of the landscape, but it was the Kennedy-Johnson years that marked the real beginning of the US supplying military equipment to Israel.

In the early years of the state, Israel depended heavily on French armaments, in a relationship largely built up by the then-young Shimon Peres. It was only in the Kennedy Administration that the US moved to sell Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel. That was the turning point, along with Charles de Gaulle's disillusionment with Israel and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, that evolved into the close US-Israeli defense supply relationship we know today. It does not seem to have been primarly McNamara's doing — Deputy Secretary William Bundy is sometimes given credit — but the change in the defense relationship did begin under McNamara's watch at the Pentagon.

That, and the 1967 war, were the main defense concerns involving the Middle East, and they were still largely framed in Cold War terms. (The Kennedy Administration also interested itself in the Yemen Civil War for a while, but not to the extent of providing military aid.)

Some Thoughts and Observations on Somali Piracy

I haven't completely defined my geographic range for this blog yet, but MEI as a whole and the Journal in particular have long taken a "greater Middle East" view, going all the way back to 1946. Besides:

1. Somalia is a member of the Arab League.
2. The anti-piracy mission is part of the operational area for US Fifth Fleet and Central Command's Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), based in Bahrain.
3. The sea lanes giving access to the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean are clearly a strategic element vital to the oil-producing states of the Middle East, and Somali piracy has already exacted considerable ransom from tankers on the Gulf run.

Before talking about anything else, I want to note three interesting things that as of this writing I haven't seen noted by the various talking heads and bloggers:

• The American ship that was attacked, the Maersk Alabama, is home-ported at Norfolk, Virginia. Knowing the area well, I immediately reflected on the fact that just across Hampton Roads, in the town of Hampton, is the spot known as Teach's Point, where the Royal Navy in 1718 once stuck the no-longer-attached head of one Edward Teach on a pike. The late Mr. Teach is generally better remembered as Blackbeard the Pirate.
  

• Combined Task Force 151, which patrols the area under the overall command of Fifth Fleet/NAVCENT, and will likely be even more involved now that a US-flagged vessel has been attacked, is currently commanded by Rear Admiral Michelle Howard, who was previously the first African-American woman to command a Navy warship.
  

• Oh Lord, this is almost too much: the destroyer heading to the scene is the USS Bainbridge, the latest of many Navy ships named for William Bainbridge, who among other things in a long career, surrendered his frigate Philadelphia to the "Barbary Pirates," leading to the campaign that brought the Marines to North Africa ("the shores of Tripoli") for the first time. It seems to have been the nearest vessel to the incident, but the synchronicity is weird.
  

The fact that, if reports are accurate, this has turned from a hijacked-ship story to a hostage story, the crew having retaken the ship but not recovered their captain, means the options for US Naval response will be rather different. I won't speculate about what, precisely, will be done. The question of dealing with piracy is a complex one, especially since parts of Somalia have become the sort of open pirate enclaves that Port Royal, Jamaica was back in Blackbeard's day. Part of the problem is the anarchy on the ground in Somalia.

At a time when the Somali central government's writ does not run even in Mogadishu, the particular pirate's nest apparently behind the Maersk Alabama attack, Eyl, is part of the autonomous region that calls itself Puntland, which declared its autonomy of the central government over a decade ago. (Unlike "Somaliland," to its West, which proclaimed its own independence, Puntland apparently still considers itself part of Somalia.) Eyl does not seem to be under the control of the Puntland government, either.

The Somali government cannot control its own capital and certainly is unlikely to develop an effective coast guard anytime soon. The local population presumably tolerates piracy because the big ransoms that the pirates are raking in adds to local prosperity in a country with no functioning economy. It's quite possible that the single largest source of foreign exchange in Somalia today is ransom. That tends to be an incentive for tolerating the pirates.

The pirate nests of the 17th and 18th century, like Port Royal and Kingston, were eventually eliminated by the Royal Navy. (Well, in the case of Port Royal, they had the help of an earthquake.) The present task force in the region is multinational, which always raises issues of unity of command and of coordination. Americans also have the singularly unpleasant memory of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, memorably depicted in the book and movie Black Hawk Down. Up till today, no American ship had been directly attacked, so the US had less incentive to take direct action.

Some of the talking heads today have noted that the ocean involved is a huge space and that it is impossible to patrol all of it. That's true, but an Aegis cruiser or two, a carrier with E-2C Hawkeyes, possibly AWACS operating out of Saudi or Omani air bases (admittedly a political issue), a couple of helicopter carriers, and it would be difficult for a pigeon to fly through that area undetected. (Slight exaggeration, I know. But if the pirates now have GPS, we now have a lot more than that.)

Of course, military action has its limitations, especially against "asymmetric" threats. Mogadishu in 1993 was a reminder of that, but so far not a single country has sought to mount any kind of special operation against the pirates, not even a commando recovery of a seized ship. I suspect that will change as the costs rise and the US finds itself more of a target. [UPDATE: my commenters keep me honest; one notes: "British radio news reported that a French commando raid had freed a small vessel taken by pirates, and the Indian Navy recently attacked and destroyed a 'Pirate Mothership' which eventually turned out not to be. Both of these took place off of Somalia in the past 12 months." I stand corrected.]

One thing that I do not fully understand is the fact that so few, if any, of these merchant vessels carry any kind of self-defense weapons. Four Somalis with AK-47s feel safe attacking a container ship or oil tanker, because they assume the crews are unarmed. Some of these big vessels are so automated they have only tiny crews, but the Maersk Alabama reportedly had 20 people aboard, and in the end they were able to overpower armed men though without arms themselves. But why not arm the ships? Armed merchantmen have a long history in combating piracy, unrestricted submarine warfare, and other threats to the sealanes.

I'm not the first to note this of course, but not only do the Marines sing about the "Shores of Tripoli," but Marine officers' swords are still modeled on the Mamluk sword presented to Presley O'Bannon. What started the campaign against Tripoli, you may recall, was the capture by the "Barbary Pirates" of the frigate Philadelphia, commanded by William Bainbridge, namesake of the destroyer sent to help the Maersk Alabama.

I'm not suggesting an equation between then and now — the so-called "Barbary pirates" were actually acting under color of state authority — but freedom of navigation is one of the oldest principles of US foreign policy, since the days of the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812.

Another point: although both terrorism of the al-Qa‘ida variety and piracy are fueled and strengthened by failed states and anarchic conditions, they are distinct things. Al-Qa‘ida is fighting for a religious and ideological goal; pirates want money. Pirates are a lot less likely to die for a cause, and thus can be suppressed by coercive means. There are no suicide pirates: there's no money in it. But some aspects of counterinsurgency theory can work against piracy as well: the key is to gain the support of the local population who, at the moment, see the pirates as an economic boon. If they start to see them as bringing the wrath of the international community down on Eyl and other towns, the pirates might lose some of their support base. (There's a complicating factor here, namely clan loyalty; clans are more important in Somali society than almost any other factor, and that is hard to dislodge. Just as the Pushtun code is so strong in Afghanistan, we may find it very hard to undermine clan solidarity in Somalia.)

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts, not prescriptions. I suspect we'll be paying a lot more attention to Somali piracy now that a US ship is involved. And this isn't just a jingoistic, insult-to-the-flag sort of issue: it's a genuine threat to the sealanes that contain much of the world's oil and container traffic. It's certainly an issue for Middle Eastern states.