Things to Read Over the Weekend

Robert Haddick's (Small Wars Journal)analysis of China's moves in the South China Sea - Salami Slicing in the South China Sea | Small Wars Journal

But what about an adversary that uses "salami-slicing," the slow accumulation of small actions, none of which is a casus belli, but which add up over time to a major strategic change? U.S. policymakers and military planners should consider the possibility that China is pursuing a salami-slicing strategy in the South China Sea, something that could confound Washington's military plans.

Japan is moving to increase its maritime security:

Japan plans to deploy new patrol vessels to bolster maritime security around its far-flung islands in the wake of the recent landing of Chinese activists on its Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

The Land Ministry has decided to seek a budgetary provision of about $130 million in the 2013-14 fiscal to strengthen the country's Coast Guard with a fleet of four new 1,000-ton class patrol vessels and three midsize helicopters, Japanese media reported on Thursday.

The Ministry also proposes to equip patrol boats with video transmission systems so that they can immediately send images of suspicious vessels to the Coast Guard headquarters.

A crtique of the current administration's national security efforts, "Taking the easier path to a worse place":

The most important national security problem facing our nation -- the crushing load of debt that will crowd out discretionary spending by our government -- was addressed in the context of cutting military spending. The president who has doubled our national debt in three years now claims "I will use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work rebuilding roads and bridges and schools and runways, because after two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it's time to do some nation building right here at home." That is, defense is the bill payer for his domestic programs.

U.S. maritime security is looking at some new robotic helpers as set out in "Ocean Power Technologies to Work with U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Wins New Autonomous PowerBuoy Grant" which may be a boring headline, but is about an interesting topic:

... a joint technology transfer initiative to show how the Autonomous PowerBuoy can be used with multiple surveillance technologies. OPT will leverage its experience from the LEAP program in surface vessel detection to demonstrate an enhanced tracking technology covering a wider variety of vessels. This technology will feature an acoustic sensor system in addition to the existing HF RADAR. This will allow the PowerBuoy to collect data for ocean observing applications at the same time as it performs its enhanced surveillance duties, demonstrating the dual use of the PowerBuoy technology.

Oh, "spybots" of sort - or perhaps "dectobots?" More on the Navy's LEAP project here. Pictures of LEAP buoy nearby, including one of a U.S. Coast Guard vessel placing the buoy.

An explanation of the LEAP buoy mission:
17-06 - TOME

Maritime Security: Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security 2020: The Future of Defending the Homeland Day 1 - Maritime Security

A couple of hours of interesting discussion described by the hosts as:

With ninety percent of the world’s trade transported by sea, a major terrorist attack focused on one or more U.S. ports would significantly impact the U.S. economy and our ability to project military power. While Congress has passed legislation to protect America’s ports, it’s important to evaluate its effectiveness, as well as that of intelligence measures taken since 9/11. Join us as our panelists examines what policies and capabilities the U.S. needs to develop in order to prevent or recover from possible attacks and better protect the homeland.

Fearless Navy Bloggers Take to the Air: Episode 17 Homeland Security 4/18/2010 - Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Episode 17 Homeland Security 4/18/2010 - Midrats on Blog Talk Radio at 5pm/1700 U.S.Eastern:

Join EagleOne of the blog "EagleSpeak" and Sal of "CDR Salamander" as they discuss homeland security and the role the maritime services have to play in it.

Our guests will be Jim Dolbow and Mark Stanovich.

Jim Dolbow is a writer, blogger for both USNI blog and CGBlog.org, Coast Guard Reserve Officer, and former defense staffer on Capitol Hill. He has served as Legislative Director/Military Legislative Assistant for Congressman John Hostettler (IN-08), Legislative Director for the Conservative Action Team (CATs), and legislative assistant for Rep. Jim Ryun (KS-02). In his USCGR responsibilities, he ha served as a SAR Controller training, recalled to active duty in support of OPERATION NOBLE EAGLE, served as a watch stander for the Joint Operations Command Center in Washington, D.C., harbor patrol team leader, post-Hurricane Katrina operations, and served as a legislative affairs analyst on the staff of the Principal Federal Official, Admiral Thad W. Allen, USCG. He holds a BS in Political Science from Marymount University, an MA in National Security & Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, and an M.A. in Statecraft and World Politics from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. His works on national defense and homeland security issues have appeared in Proceedings, The Washington Post, Washington Times, Sea Power, National Defense, Navy Times, Armed Forces Journal International, to name a few.

Mark Stanovich is a is a Lt. Col. in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, an Artillery officer with 22 years of service. He has served in all four Marine Divisions, and is a combat veteran of OIFII. In his civilian occupation, he is an emergency planner in New England, and is a qualified exercise developer who has participated in the planning and conduct of myriad federal and state exercises with scenarios ranging from natural disaster to terrorism to cyber attack. His current USMCR unit supports Title X war games for all services.

Add the Chinese to the list, too

When the People's Daily picks up on a story like this "Increased security checks at U.S. airports slammed as racial profiling", after laughing yourself silly, it's time to add Chinese to the list for extra scrutiny, too:

As of Jan. 4, 2010, anyone flying into the United States, traveling from or through Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, will be required to go through increased security checks.
***
South Asian Network, a grassroots, community-based organization dedicated to advancing the health, empowerment and solidarity of persons of South Asian origin, and partner organizations have sent letters to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), asking to remove these changes because they would lead to more racial and religious profiling as well as targeting based on national origin.

That'll make it fairer. After all, adding 1/4 of the earth's population lessens the impact on other groups. Statisically speaking, of course.

Just like Chinese security.

As soon as New Zealanders attempt to blow up something in the U.S., we can add them to the list. Along with elderly nuns. Or flying nuns.

Al Quaeda: "The War Goes On"

Al Quaeda Takes Responsibility for Terror:

Yesterday, al Qaeda's ascendant franchise in the Arabian peninsula saved Secretary Napolitano the trouble of plowing through all the layers of the national-security bureaucracy for an answer.

The terrorist organization put out a pointed statement not only claiming responsibility but also mocking the U.S.'s ability to stop them. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, they said, "dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is."

What this means is that we have to think more broadly about jihad and the potential recruitment of terrorists anywhere in the world, including inside the United States. We and our European allies have to revisit the problem of fiery imams using mosques as recruitment depots for airline suicide bombers. The close call in the airspace over Detroit gives "probable cause" new meaning.

Al Qaeda has sent a message to the Obama Administration: You are in a war. Someone in our government needs to say clearly that they now understand the message.

A couple of hundred people here, a couple of hundred there, pretty soon you've got a body count that might just catch the attention of all the "talking heads."

The Failing Narco-Terrorist State Next Door

Mexico is a mess, as well set out in Drug Gangs Have Mexico on the Ropes:

Tally all this up and what you get is Mexico on the edge of chaos, and a mess that could easily bleed across the border. The U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., warned recently that an unstable Mexico "could represent a homeland security problem of immense proportions to the United States." In a report titled "Joint Operating Environment 2008," the Command singles out Mexico and Pakistan as potentially failing states. Both "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse . . . . The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels."

The National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 says that Mexican drug-trafficking organizations now "control most of the U.S. drug market," with distribution capabilities in 230 U.S. cities. The cartels also "maintain cross border communication centers" that use "voice over Internet Protocol, satellite technology (broadband satellite instant messaging), encrypted messaging, cell phone technology, two-way radios, scanner devices, and text messaging, to communicate with members" and even "high-frequency radios with encryption and rolling codes to communicate during cross-border operations."

Queries: Would legalizing drug use collapse all the criminal gangs and stabilize Mexico?

One view:

Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds -- cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) -- or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and "precursors" used, for example, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the U.S.'s prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption. In other words, we are the source of Mexico's "drug problem."

The remedy is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.

Regulated legalization of all drugs -- with stiffened penalties for driving impaired or furnishing to kids -- would bring an immediate halt to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the cost of these drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and treatment and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive. In an ideal world, Mexico and the United States would move to repeal prohibition simultaneously (along with Canada). But even if we moved unilaterally, sweeping and lasting improvements to public safety (and public health) would be felt on both sides of the border. (Tragically and predictably, just as Mexico's parliament was about to reform its U.S.-modeled drug laws, the Bush administration stepped in, pressuring President Vicente Fox to abandon the enlightened position he'd championed for two years.)

With drugs stringently controlled and regulated by our own government, Mexico would once again become a safe, inviting place for American tourists -- and for its own citizens, who pay the steepest price of all for our insistence on waging an immoral, unwinnable war on drugs.

A counter view:

Recall also that most people in drug treatment are there because of some form of coercion. Very few walk in on their own. Take away coercion, and you take away treatment for all but a few burned-out addicts.

John Stuart Mill, the father of modern libertarians, argued that people can only restrict the freedom of another for their self-protection, and society can only exert power over its members against their will in order to prevent harm to others. I think that the harm to others from drug legalization will be greater than the harm--and it is a great harm--that now exists from keeping these drugs illegal.

And the "Drug Watch International" view:

Drug Watch International
Position Statement

AGAINST THE LEGALIZATION OR DECRIMINALIZATION OF DRUGS

The legalization or decriminalization of drugs would make harmful, psychoactive, and addictive substances affordable, available, convenient, and marketable. It would expand the use of drugs. It would remove the social stigma attached to illicit drug use, and would send a message of tolerance for drug use, especially to youth.

Background:

Drug legalization or decriminalization is opposed by a vast majority of Americans and people around the world. Leaders in drug prevention, education, treatment, and law enforcement adamantly oppose it, as do many political leaders. However, pro-drug advocacy groups, who support the permissive use of illicit drugs, although small in number, are making headlines. They are influencing legislation and having a significant impact on the national policy debate in the United States and in other countries. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is the oldest drug user lobby in the U.S. It has strong ties to the Libertarian party, the Drug Policy Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union. These groups use a variety of strategies which range from outright legalization to de facto legalization under the guise of "medicalization," "harm reduction," crime reduction, hem/marijuana for the environment, free needle distribution to addicts, marijuana cigarettes as medicine, and controlled legalization through taxation.

Rationale:

The use of illicit drugs is illegal because of their intoxicating effects on the brain, damaging impact on the body, adverse impact on behavior, and potential for abuse. Their use threatens the health, welfare, and safety of all people, of users and non-users alike.

Legalization would decrease price and increase availability. Availability is a leading factor associated with increased drug use. Increased use of addictive substances leads to increased addiction. As a public health measure, statistics show that prohibition was a tremendous success.

Many drug users commit murder, child and spouse abuse, rape, property damage, assault and other violent crimes under the influence of drugs. Drug users, many of whom are unable to hold jobs, commit robberies not only to obtain drugs, but also to purchase food, shelter, clothing and other goods and services. Increased violent crime and increased numbers of criminals will result in even larger prison populations.

Legalizing drugs will not eliminate illegal trafficking of drugs, nor the violence associated with the illegal drug trade. A black market would still exist unless all psychoactive and addictive drugs in all strengths were made available to all ages in unlimited quantity.

Drug laws deter people from using drugs. Surveys indicate that the fear of getting in trouble with the law constitutes a major reason not to use drugs. Fear of the American legal system is a major concern of foreign drug lords. Drug laws have turned drug users to a drug-free lifestyle through mandatory treatment. 40% - 50% are in treatment as a result of the criminal justice system.

A study of international drug policy and its effects on countries has shown that countries with lax drug law enforcement have had an increase in drug addiction and crime. Conversely, those with strong drug policies have reduced drug use and enjoy low crime rates.

The United States and many countries would be in violation of international treaty if they created a legal market in cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs. The U.S. is a signatory to the Single Convention on Narcotics & the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and has agreed with other members of the United Nations to control and penalize drug manufacturing, trafficking, and use. 112 nations recently reaffirmed their commitment to strong drug laws.

Would a really good border enforcement program spare us some trouble or just lead to more corruption?

What would the effect of drug legalization be on terrorist funding?

Take the profit out of the drug semi-submersible business?