China and It's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" Clone Plan

Well now, it seems the gloves, if not coming off, are being tugged at. Bonnie Glaser notes in a tweet about the following South China Morning Post artice:

Chinese oceanographic researcher says this part of an effort to breach the Second Island Chain.

Breaching the second island chain? Why?

Andrew Ericson and Joel Wuthnow explain in Why Islands Still Matter in Asia: The Enduring Significance of the Pacific “Island Chains”:

The extensive chains of Pacific islands ringing China have been described as a wall, a barrier to be breached by an attacker or strengthened by a defender. They are seen as springboards, potential bases for operations to attack or invade others in the region. In a territorial sense, they are benchmarks marking the extent of a country’s influence.

“It’s truly a case of where you stand. Perspective is shaped by one’s geographic and geostrategic position,” said Andrew Erickson, a professor with the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College.

“Barriers is a very Chinese perspective,” said Erickson. “It reflects a concern that foreign military facilities based on the islands may impede or threaten China’s efforts or influence.” …

An excellent discussion of China's island "layers of active defense" at Jon Solomon's Potential Chinese Anti-Ship Capabilities Between the First and Second Island Chains which includes a posting of this U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence graphic:

and this:

The sea lanes in question pass through the waters between the First Island Chain and the line stretching from Hokkaido through the Bonins and Marianas to the Palaus (e.g, the “Second Island Chain”). I’ve recently written about the PLAAF’s effective reach into the Western Pacific, and it’s been widely understood for years that late-generation PLAN submarines possess the technological capability to operate for several weeks in these waters before having to return to port. China would be hard-pressed to achieve localized sea control anywhere within this broad area; its own surface combatants and shipping would be just as vulnerable to attack. It wouldn’t need sea control, though, to achieve its probable campaign-level objectives of bogging down (or outright thwarting) an effective U.S. military response, or perhaps inflicting coercive economic pain upon one or more embattled American allies. The use of PLA submarines and strike aircraft to pressure U.S. and allied sea lines of communications would be entirely sufficient. And as Toshi Yoshihara and Martin Murphy point out in their article in the Summer ‘15 Naval War College Review, these kinds of PLA operations would be consistent with the Mao-derived maritime strategic theory of “sabotage warfare at sea,” albeit at a much greater distance from China’s shores than the theory originally conceived. Such operations have been widely discussed in Chinese strategic literature over the past two decades

That link regarding the "first island chain" goes to a Wikipedia piece:

The first island chain refers to the first chain of major archipelagos out from the East Asian continental mainland coast. Principally composed of the Kuril Islands, Japanese Archipelago, Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the northern Philippines, and Borneo; from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Malay Peninsula. Some definitions of the first island chain anchor the northern end on the Russian Far East coast north of Sahkalin Island, with Sahkalin Island being the first link in the chain.[1] However, others consider the Aleutians as the farthest north-eastern first link in the chain.[2] The first island chain forms one of three island chain doctrines within the Island Chain Strategy.

The first island chain has its purpose in Chinese military doctrine. The People's Republic of China views the first island chain as the area it must secure and disable from American bases, aircraft and aircraft-carrier groups, if in defending itself it must tactically unleash a pre-emptive attack against an enemy. The aim of the doctrine is to seal off the Yellow Sea, South China Sea and East China Sea inside an arc running from the Aleutians in the north to Borneo in the south.[3] According to reports by American think tanks CSBA and RAND, by 2020, China will be well on its way to having the means to achieve its first island chain policy.[4]

The Yoshihara and Martin article (pdf here) notes China's Mao inspired concept of "active defense"

At length, in March 1956, the Central Military Commission issued military strategic guidance under the rubric of “active defense, defend the motherland.” “Active defense,” a concept that Mao developed and refined in the 1930s, called for the employment of offensive operations and tactics to achieve strategically defensive goals. The navy’s role was to support the army and the air force against the enemy on land. Under active defense, the PLAN’s missions were to conduct joint counter landing operations with ground and air forces; wreck the enemy’s sea lines of communications, severing the supply of materiel and manpower; weaken and annihilate the enemy’s seaborne transport tools and combat vessels; jointly operate with ground forces in contests over key points and locations along the coast; guarantee the security of our coastal base system and strategic locations; support ground forces in littoral flanking operations; act in concert with ground forces to recover offshore islands and all territories

For years China was not a true naval power, so it turned to the lessons it had learned from the guerrilla war its new leaders had fought and won. The leader of the PLAN, an army general, reached back:

After consulting Mao Zedong’s military writings from the 1920s and 1930s and those of Soviet experts, Xiao articulated the operational concept of “sabotage warfare at sea” (海上破袭战). Confronted with better-armed enemies, he understood that China was in no position to fight them head-on. Drawing on his own battlefield experiences, the admiral reasoned that inferior Chinese forces had to “use suddenness and sabotage and guerilla tactics to unceasingly attack and destroy the enemy, accumulate small victories in place of big wins, fully leverage and bring into play our advantageous conditions, exploit and create unfavorable conditions for the enemy, and implement protracted war.” Mao would have instantly recognized these ideas as his own.

Four key features characterized Xiao’s sabotage warfare at sea. First, it called for the use of all available weaponry to deliver all possible types of attacks against the enemy. Second, it emphasized covert action and sudden surprise attacks to overpower unsuspecting or unprepared adversaries, so as to seize the initiative. Third, it required offensive campaigns and tactics to assault unceasingly the effective strength of the enemy. Fourth, it demanded the agile use of troops and combat styles to preserve one’s own forces while annihilating the opponent. Xiao essentially codified what his forces had practiced out of sheer necessity in previous years. In contrast to a “naval strategy” as such, seeking to align available means with larger political aims, the admiral furnished a concept that was largely operational and tactical in nature. Xiao, in essence, identified methods for winning battles

This thinking breeds maritime militia, anti-ship ballistic missiles and a rapid expansion of a navy.

All this being prelude to the bit Ms. Glaser points to in this innocuously titled article,
US spy planes kept eye on Chinese scientists during research expedition near Guam

Xu Kuidong, a lead researcher with the mission who is affiliated with the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, Shandong, said the scientists on board were “well aware” of the area’s sensitivity.

“It is all about the Second Island Chain,” he said, referring to a series of archipelagos that stretches from the eastern coast of Japan to the Bonin islands, to the Mariana islands, to Guam and the island country of Palau.
The US-controlled islands initially served as a second line of defence against communist countries in East Asia during the cold war. Today they are regarded as a major constraint on China’s rapidly expanding marine power and influence in the Pacific Ocean.
***
The team’s findings would be shared with the Chinese military and other interest groups in government, Xu said.
***
“There are many efforts going on to breach the Second Island Chain, this is part of them,” he said.
***
According to Tom Matelski, a US Army War College Fellow at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, China was seeking to build a military base in Micronesia.
Micronesia, with a population of about 110,000, has received a large amount of aid and investment from China since 2003. The money helped build some of the nation’s largest farms, schools, bridges and power plants, as well as the residence for the president and other senior government officials.
Since Micronesia lacked its own military, it had “outsourced” its defence to the US since the end of the second world war. But in 2015 Micronesian lawmakers introduced a resolution to end the exclusive partnership with the US as early as 2018.

If the Chinese military got a foothold on a Micronesian island, “the US could potentially lose their access to the strategic lines of communication that connect the Pacific Ocean to the vital traffic of the East and South China Seas”, Matelski wrote in an article published on the website of The Diplomat magazine in February last year.
Possession of portions of the Second Island Chain would give China a “springboard against foreign force projection,” he said.

So, China - currently through obstensibly peaceful means - seeks to do what the Japanese tried to do before the start of WWII - developing bases on trade routes, expanding their presence, developing what amounts to a clone of the Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Or, more accurately:

As noted here by Andrew Ericson:

“Back when imperial Japan was trying to gain control of the first, second and even a third chain – the Aleutians – there was a concern that if Japan didn’t control the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii the Americans would, to Japan’s geostrategic detriment,” said Erickson. “At the outset of World War II, Japan made an extraordinary effort to use part of the chains as a springboard, and they were indeed benchmarks of Japanese military progress. That was only halted then the US turned island-hopping in the other direction.”

“Today, Japan is concerned about Chinese attempts to influence and control areas and to develop weapon systems vis-a-vis these island chains,” Erickson added. “And there’s a lot of Japanese concern about ongoing Chinese efforts to penetrate the chains using increasingly powerful and complex groups of naval vessels. I think Japan feels very much connected to these island chains. As China looks to the chains and aspires to do things, I think Japan feels very targeted by that, it feels it very acutely.” …

“Many Chinese sources emphasize their view of Taiwan’s status as a key node on the first island chain,” Erickson said. “Some Chinese sources see this not only as a springboard against mainland China, but a number of sources express aspirations of eventually [bringing the island] under mainland control, perhaps in a very robust fashion that would allow for some form of Chinese-controlled military facilities. We see discussion of ports, particularly on the east coast of Taiwan, allowing for China to conclusively break out of the confines of the first island chain once and for all.”

“I see no other part of an island chain that is really in the category of what some Chinese strategists ultimately aspire to control and own themselves,” Erickson said. “That definitely sets Taiwan apart.”

And while most attention is focused on the first island chain running south along the eastern edge of the South China Sea, the significance of the second chain, which includes the US territory of Guam, could grow.

“A number of Chinese sources see this as a rear staging area for US and allied forces,” Erickson said.

“But the second island chain will grow in China’s geostrategic thinking. As China continues to send naval forces afield, it will be a benchmark.”

Over time, he added, “China can do more to hold Guam and other parts of the second island chain at risk.”

Not just the "second island chain" either, as James Holmes points out in Island Chains Everywhere: Some Chinese strategists see Hawaii as Asia’s ‘third island chain.’ What does this view say about US-China ties?

At least some Chinese strategists think of Hawaii as an appendage of Asia rather than a geographic feature of the Pacific Ocean, placed closer to the Americas than to the Chinese coastline. The concept of first and second island chains is familiar to Asia specialists, but the concept of a third island chain, positioned only 2,400 miles from San Francisco, is a novel one. It appears on a map of the Pacific found in a recent translation of Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783—the same translation whose front cover blares, ‘Does China Need an Aircraft Carrier?’

For Hawaii to fit the island chain template, however, it would need to be (1) a very long series of islands that (2) runs north-south fairly close to Asian shores, (3) encloses the Asian mainland, and (4) is inhabited by a prospective rival or rivals of China able to project military power seaward. Hawaii meets the last test but fails the first three miserably. We may as well describe the Americas as Asia’s fourth island chain. That the island chain metaphor sounds outlandish to American ears when applied to Hawaii, while many Chinese take it seriously, nonetheless reveals something discomfiting about US-China relations.

As Chinese naval proponents see it, the first and second island chains complicate their nation’s nautical destiny so long as they remain in potentially hostile hands—as they will in the case of Japan, to take the most obvious example. Japan’s combination of geographic position, multiple seaports suitable for military shipping and resources makes it a permanent factor in Chinese strategy. Forces stationed along the island chains can encumber the Chinese navy’s free access to the Western Pacific while inhibiting north-south movement along the Asian seaboard. How to surmount or work around these immovable obstacles understandably preoccupies scholars and practitioners of naval affairs in China.

But what about Hawaii? That the archipelago commands enormous strategic value for the United States has been axiomatic for American strategists for over a century. For example, Mahan—whom the Timesof London colorfully dubbed the United States' ‘Copernicus’ of sea power—lauded its geopolitical worth. Unlike their forebears from the age of sail, steamships could defy winds and currents, but they also demanded fuel in bulk to make long voyages. Accordingly, he exhorted a United States with commercial interests at stake in Asia to forge a ‘chain’ of island bases to support the transpacific journeys of steam-propelled merchantmen and their guardians, armoured men-of-war.
***
Taken to extremes, Beijing’s habit of appraising Pacific and Indian Ocean geography through the island chain lens—that is, seeing geographic features as an adversary’s defense perimeter that must be punctured, or a wall that must be fortified for defense—could misshape Chinese maritime strategy. Prodded by such conceptions, the Chinese leadership could take an unduly pessimistic view of the strategic surroundings, needlessly straining relations with the many seafaring powers that ply the Western Pacific and China’s near seas.

The game is afoot.

It's why we have a Navy to limit this before it gets out of hand. But we need a bigger force, one well thought out to insure international trade routes stay free.

Well, yeah - "China’s New Islands Are Clearly Military, U.S. Pacific Chief Says "

Kevin Baron of DefenseOne reports "China’s New Islands Are Clearly Military, U.S. Pacific Chief Says" :

“I believe those facilities are clearly military in nature,” Harris said at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering in Colorado of dozens of top U.S. national security leaders, convened by the Aspen Institute.

In his notably undiplomatic remarks, Harris called on China to show meaningful diplomacy to resolve the territorial disputes. But the four-star admiral also appeared resigned to seeing further construction and eventual deployment of military aircraft and ships.

Fiery Cross Reef sits smack in the middle of South China Sea sea lanes

“They are building ports that are deep enough to host warships and they’re building a 10,000-foot runway at Fiery Cross Reef,” Harris said, referring to one of China’s construction activities in the Spratly Islands that Japan has protested. “A 10,000-foot runaway is large enough to take a B-52, almost large enough for the Space Shuttle, and 3,000 feet longer than you need to take off a 747. So, there’s no small airplane that requires a runway of that length. They’re building rebutted aircraft hangers at some of the facilities there that are clearly designed, in my view, to host tactical fighter aircraft.”

Development on Fiery Cross Reef

I think the Admiral probably said "revetted" and not "rebutted" but that's a minor note. The major note is that -

The top U.S. military officer in the Pacific sternly warned China on Friday to immediately cease its “aggressive coercive island building” in the South China Sea, which he argued was intended clearly for China’s military use as forward operating bases in combat against their regional neighbors.

UPDATE: These maps from an older post might be helpful in visualizing sea lanes a/k/a sea lines of commerce:

Killing ISIS?

NYTimes map

Robert W. Merry at The National Interest writes, "America Must Destroy ISIS":

. . . ISIS represents an ominous threat to U.S. security if it is allowed to establish itself permanently as a state or quasistate in the heart of the Middle East. It’s easy to bemoan the tragic American foreign-policy folly of the past eleven years that has destabilized this crucial region and paved the way for this horrendous turn of events. But that doesn’t obviate the reality that those events now pose a serious threat to regional stability and the safety of the West and America.

Okay, suppose Mr. Merry has a case that we need to "bell the cat", but his answer of exactly how to accomplish the destruction of ISIS is . . . well, mouse-like:

 . . .[O]nce the decks have been cleared and a policy devised that is both coherent and comprehensive, the United States must move not just to thwart the ISIS menace, but to destroy it. It isn’t clear what that will take, but whatever it takes must be brought to bear.

Robin Simcox at the Foreign Affairs website has suggestions in, "Go Big or Go Home: Iraq Needs U.S. Ground Troops More Than Ever:

The U.S. government has set entirely understandable political goals for Iraq, but it has almost certainly chosen the wrong strategy for achieving them. Since the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in June, U.S. President Barack Obama has insisted that Iraq needs an inclusive government capable of winning support among not only the country’s Shia majority but also its Sunni minority. Obama also declared that the formation of such a government must precede any attempt to defeat ISIS. Washington’s current military intervention reflects that analysis: until Baghdad agrees to Washington’s political vision, the United States has declared that it will commit only to conducting limited air strikes -- that is to say, air strikes that are sufficient to halt the extremists’ progress but not to defeat them.

Washington’s strategy is backward. Any diplomatic leverage in Iraq would come from demonstrating that it can defeat ISIS. In other words, if the United States wants to influence the political situation in Iraq, it must first make itself an indispensable military player there.

If there is a consistent pattern in U.S. policy toward Iraq over the past several decades, it is that Washington can achieve significant diplomatic gains only if it is prepared to make significant military investments.
***
If Obama’s diplomatic goals are as significant as he claims, his military ambitions ought to match them. The United States should actively assume responsibility for decisively defeating ISIS. Needless to say, limited air strikes outside the northern Iraqi city of Erbil will not be sufficient to the task. Instead, the U.S. military should be actively ordered to attack ISIS positions in strongholds such as Mosul. The Iraqi air force has launched such attacks, but the United States’ military precision is greatly needed -- ISIS can be overthrown only if the Sunni civilian population agrees to support the mission, and that will happen only if civilian casualties are kept low.

Given their vast experience and world-class capabilities, U.S. special forces should be deployed to Iraq so that they can conduct counterterrorism operations, gather intelligence, and advise Iraqi forces. Washington should also extend military assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq, and offer to provide their militias with the heavy military equipment they need to properly defend themselves. (Given that the Kurdish government is not a sovereign state, the provision of these arms may need to be organized by the CIA or other covert agencies rather than by the Pentagon.)

This mission would require a long-term commitment; in the absence of sustained attention and military force, terrorist networks tend to regenerate. It’s true that the mission would put the lives of U.S. troops in danger. But it’s the only military strategy that could accomplish a significant military goal -- namely, the decisive defeat of ISIS, a group that over the last decade has presented a clear threat to the West.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Margaret Keith/Released

At the same site, Michael O"Hanlon offers up How to Win in Iraq: Why Air Strikes Might Not be Enough:

Although the president has been correct to use only limited airpower so far (even while warning that U.S. involvement in Iraq could last for months), he needs to avoid any sense of complacency that he can limit the United States’ role to modest actions taken several thousand feet up in the air. For now, the United States’ only realistic goal in Iraq is to prevent further ISIS advances. But ultimately, the collective aim of the United States, Iraq, and others in the region should be to fully push back the radical and brutal group, which is committed to the creation of a caliphate throughout much of the broader Middle East and even parts of Europe, and is willing to employ brutal tactics to achieve its aims. This group simply cannot be allowed to remain in power in large sections of Iraq and Syria indefinitely.
***
But then we come back to the difficult questions. After containing ISIS, the United States will need to consider what comes next -- how to help form a suitable government in Baghdad and assist it in expelling ISIS from cities such as Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, and Tikrit, where its legions have by now largely infiltrated civilian populations. And here, Obama needs to be fair to his critics and avoid suggesting that those in favor of doing more want to return to the Iraq mission of 2003–2011. In fact, there are many options in between an all-out use of U.S. combat forces and the limited measures employed in recent days.

The history of using limited airpower in wars like this one shows that a few pinpricks from the sky rarely make a difference on the ground.
***
One option is to deploy a significant number of special operations teams, well above the very modest number that may be in in the theater now as part of the detachments of several hundred U.S. planners sent to Iraq over the last month. But how many? If there are 10,000 dedicated ISIS fighters that U.S. and Iraqi units must ultimately remove from the battlefield, experience in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests that the U.S. and Iraqi units will need to conduct perhaps several thousand raids informed by good intelligence. Ideally, the United States would strike hard, fast, and early in any operation so that the enemy does not have time to adjust. To do that, it would need up to several dozen in-country commando teams (or those based in neighboring countries in some cases), making for a grand total of 1,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops. In all likelihood, such a mission would last perhaps several months at peak intensity. However, the United States need not take the lead on most such operations and need not continue them indefinitely.

The other option involves a type of military unit, developed in recent years in Afghanistan, called a Security Force Assistance Team. This is a small team of 10­–20 U.S. soldiers who are embedded at the small-unit level within indigenous forces. Since elements of the Iraqi army have, in some cases, already dissolved, such advisory teams -- which live with and deploy into the field with their counterparts -- could be crucial for rebuilding good tactics, unit cohesion, confidence in the leadership, and tenacity, as well as designating targets for air strikes. Assuming that such teams might be deployed with most of Iraq’s army battalions, and assuming roughly ten battalions per division, there could be a need for up to 100 such U.S. teams. Again, these would need to stay in Iraq for a period of several months to perhaps one or two years.

Foreign Policy's website has its doubters about the "commitment" of this administration to keeps U.S. troops out of combat in Iraq against ISIS, as set out in Gordon Lubold's "Obama Pledge to Keep Troops Out of Combat May Fall Flat":

James Dubik, a retired Army three-star general who commanded U.S. forces in Mosul, said it's hard to square the administration's words when it comes to defining the U.S. mission there without accepting that U.S. forces are in combat. "Pretty narrow splitting of hairs," he said in an email.

I suspect someone will have to tell those folks on the ground in Iraq and the pilots flying missions over the country that it's not "combat" if the Administration says it isn't.

But there is that other thing that this Administration keeps forgetting - telling the other side that you are not really going to go to war with them or stay the course if you do get involved just allows the "bad guys" the comfort of knowing that you are, as the Chinese used to refer to the U.S. back in the Cold War days, a "paper tiger" whose words are ". . . full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Or to go back to the Foreign Policy piece:

Breen, who left the Army in 2006 and believes fighting IS is in the nation's security interests, said the White House is sending dual messages while trying to avoid acknowledging that American military personnel are operating in a war zone.

"Attempting to convey to the American people that this is an operation that is limited in its goals and limited in its scope, unfortunately conveys something to [IS] and others in the region that is not helpful," he said.

As we say in the South, "it's time to fish or cut bait" for this Administration.

They have the tools if they need them.

USNS Robert E. Peary (T-AKE 5), left, conducts a vertical replenishment with USS Bataan (LHD 5). USS Roosevelt (DDG 80) is in the background. Bataan is the flagship for the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and, with the embarked 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (22nd MEU), is deployed in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class RJ Stratchko/Released)

UPDATE: The side of the fight Cut funding to ISIS and ISIS: World’s scariest terrorist group also the richest.

A Good Start to a Debate on Geopolitics

A couple of heavies fire broadsides in a discussion of geopolitics at Foreign Affairs:

First, Walter Russell Mead 's The Return of Geopolitics:

But Westerners should never have expected old-fashioned geopolitics to go away. They did so only because they fundamentally misread what the collapse of the Soviet Union meant: the ideological triumph of liberal capitalist democracy over communism, not the obsolescence of hard power.

Second, a reply from G. John Ikenberry in his The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order:

But Mead’s alarmism is based on a colossal misreading of modern power realities. It is a misreading of the logic and character of the existing world order, which is more stable and expansive than Mead depicts, leading him to overestimate the ability of the “axis of weevils” to undermine it. And it is a misreading of China and Russia, which are not full-scale revisionist powers but part-time spoilers at best, as suspicious of each other as they are of the outside world.

I think Mead's piece is available without an account, but the Ikenberry bit may require a log in (which may be free).

Read them both, though. Thinking is good for you.

You can read about H. J Mackinder's "The Geographical Pivot of History" (of which the illustration at the top is a representation) here or read his original piece as a pdf here.

Your views may vary.

Well, even a blind hog . . .: "U.S. and Russia Reach Deal to Destroy Syria’s Chemical Arms"

NYTimes reports "U.S. and Russia Reach Deal to Destroy Syria’s Chemical Arms."

Aside from the fact that what is to be destroyed (sometime in the next year) can easily be replaced, I suppose we should all be content that no American troops, missiles and angst will be wasted in saving our "red line capacity."

As golfers are wont to say, "Sometimes even a blind hog finds an acorn."*

Of course, sometimes there are landmines:

“This situation has no precedent,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “They are cramming what would probably be five or six years’ worth of work into a period of several months, and they are undertaking this in an extremely difficult security environment due to the ongoing civil war.”

Not to be cynical (or more cynical) but is the destruction "red line" before or after the next U.S. mid-term elections?


*If you are unfamiliar with this expression, see here. Geez, Friedrich Schiller? Huh.

North Korea and its "Missiles of Doom"

That the NORKs may have nuclear capable missiles comes as little surprise - since that's what they've been telling everyone with their fear-mongering bullying. How that might have been confirmed comes to us via Eli Lake's Yahoo! News piece, the poorly titled "How North Korea Tipped Its Hand":

After the North Korean launch, U.S. Navy ships managed to recover the front section of the rocket used in it, according to three U.S. officials who work closely on North Korean proliferation. That part of the rocket in turn provided useful clues about North Korean warhead design, should the next payload be a warhead rather than a satellite.

First off, "managed to" is a poor way to describe what must have been an impressive salvage operation.

Secondly, doesn't it give you pause about the level of intelligence we have on the NORKs? More from the article:

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a classified assessment last month saying that it now has “moderate confidence” that the “North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles however the reliability will be low,” South Korea has provided additional intelligence bolstering this conclusion, according to U.S. officials.
***
Intelligence suggesting North Korea could design a nuclear warhead has been building for many years. A.Q. Khan, the man considered to be the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, for example has said in interviews and correspondence that in 1999 on a visit to North Korea he was shown boxes of components for three finished nuclear warheads that could be assembled within an hour.

You'd think the intel we did have would have prompted a little quicker movement of Ballistic Missile Defense systems to the areas that could, in theory be reached by the DPRK.

On the other hand, perhaps there was the usual desire not to tip our hand on exactly how much we really know about what the NORKs are up to.

Okay, now we know of the threat. We now know that various sanctions regimes of the past have not stopped the DPRK from going nuclear. What should we do?

Do we continue to chat with the Current Kim-in-Charge? Secretary of State John Kerry has indicated a willingness to meet with the NORKs under certain conditions, as set out in the NY Times here:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that the United States was prepared to reach out to Kim Jong-un of North Korea if he made the first move to abandon his nuclear weapons program.
***
“What we really ought to be talking about is the possibility of peace,” he said in a joint news conference on Sunday with Fumio Kishida, Japan’s foreign minister. “And I think there are those possibilities.”

Sketching out his approach in his meeting later in the day with reporters, Mr. Kerry said that before talks could begin, North Korea needed to take tangible steps to demonstrate that it was serious about denuclearization.

But it seemed unlikely that that precondition for talks would be met by North Korea, given the country’s announcements that it considers itself to be a nuclear state and its dedication to a “military-first” stance that channels resources to its armed forces.

You can read Mr. Kerry's remarks in context here:

So – *** – hopefully North Korea will hear our words and recognize that for the future of its people and for the future stability in the region as well as on the peninsula itself, there is a clear course of action that they are invited to take, and they will find in us ready partners to negotiate in good faith to resolve this issue.

Okay. Talk with the NORKs some more.

What is the end goal for such talks?

For the NORKs to give up on nuclear weapons? Why in the hell would they do that?

Right now the North Koreans are a "one-trick pony" in a position to blackmail their neighbors because the cost of taking the current DPRK regime out is projected to be awfully high. Take away their nuke threat and they are a conventional land power with no place to go that doesn't place them on a path to a buzz saw.

So what do you end up with? Stuff like this from our SecState:

The North has to understand, and I believe must by now, that its threats and its provocations are only going to isolate it further and impoverish its people even further. And they have to understand also something that we have consistently made clear. President Obama has made it clear. I think I’ve tried to underscore the President’s policy as much as possible. And it is very simple: that the United States will do what is necessary to defend our allies – Japan, Republic of Korea – and the region against these provocations. But our choice is to negotiate. Our choice is to move to the table and find a way for the region to have peace. And we would hope that whatever considerations or fears the North has – of the United States or of others in the region that they would come to the table in a responsible way and negotiate that. We are confident that we can address the concerns with respect to their security and find ways together with China and the Republic of Korea and Japan and Russia and the members of the Six-Party Talks, we can find a way to resolve these differences at a negotiating table. I hope they will hear that and I hope they will respond to that, and any other choice by them will simply further isolate them in the world and make it clear to the rest of the world where the problem really lies here. That’s our hope.

Isolate NK further? Is that possible?

Good lord.

The NORKs must come to understand and truly know that any use of their nukes will end whatever life they currently enjoy.

Having a few nukes just means that any missiles the NORKs mount them on are "missiles of doom" - for the NORKs.

 

They have understand that it is not asymmetric warfare we are discussing here when we talk a nuclear exchange.The U.S. will not fight back with one hand tied behind its back.

The U.S. has the power to totally obliterate the DPRK.

THE DPRK does not have the power to destroy the U.S. or its response capabilities.

My suggested talking point to the SecState are along the lines of,

If you try to launch missiles that threaten the U.S. or its allies, we will shoot them down and then we will come after you and yours without mercy.

Do you understand what 'without mercy' means in this context? We have the most experienced combat force on the planet and you will get to meet them up close and personal if you do something stupid.

Perhaps you have seen the American movie, "Dirty Harry?" You might recall Harry's words to the killer creep who threatened some school children - let me modify them for you to make my point clear:

I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking "Will the Americans fight?" Now to tell you the truth sometimes we send mixed messages in all this excitement. But being this is the U.S. military, the most powerful military in the world and they would be itching to blow you head clean off if you attacked us, you've gotta ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

Things to Read

About the current administration's policy toward Iran and Israel: In From the Cold: Feckless and at "Shadow Government" portion of the Foreign Policy website, Hand-wringing while the Middle East burns

CDR Salamander's Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XLII with a link to a bit on the Chinese push in the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and the attendant claim to "2 million square kilometers of water" surrounding the islands. Ah, that exclusive economic zone stuff - a simple concept that could cause war.

Professor James Holmes piece at The Diplomat on Viet Nam's look at buidling "Model Maritime Militia Force" for . . . responding to China's moves in the Paracel Islands. (h/t Information Dissemination)


Map above is from news reports following the Chinese harassment of USNS ship Impeccable in March 2009.

Naval Power: Freedom of the Seas and the Global Marketplace

Interesting speech on foreign policy given by Senator Marco Rubio at the Brookings Institution with a key section (at about 1:25) highlighted over at the Heritage Foundation: "Rubio Is Right: Naval Power Pivotal to U.S. Foreign Policy". First, a portion of the speech, via a Brookings video: The Heritage Rubio money quote:

Even in our military engagements, the lasting impact of our influence on the world is hard to ignore. Millions of people have emerged from poverty around the world in part because our Navy protects the freedom of the seas, allowing the ever-increasing flow of goods between nations.

And some Heritage analysis:

Alas, however, in recent years, the importance of a navy in U.S. foreign policy has not enjoyed the attention it should. The Obama Administration’s much-announced focus on the Pacific theater and U.S.–Chinese relations is lacking in both conviction and capabilities. The absence of a rhetorically firm, well-coordinated, and multifaceted policy toward China’s deviations from liberal economic practices and abuses of human rights has been noted elsewhere, but of material concern is the inadequate defense structure that is taking shape in the midst of strategic ambiguity and looming, indiscriminate budget cuts.

By contrast, China’s military spending steadily increases. This is particularly concerning when one considers Chinese intimidation in the region. And now, China appears complicit in materially destabilizing the region’s security; evidence points to continued Chinese assistance in North Korea’s efforts to build a successful long-range missile program.

Strategy in Southeast Asia and Australia: The U.S. Marines Land

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation look at the strategic move of sending in the Marines to the Northern Territory.
A continuation of a 60 year alliance and a message.

ALAN DUPONT, INT. SECURITY STUDIES, UNSW: It's not so much the Marines themselves but it's the symbol - the signal it sends to the region that Australia is - and the United States are working together to meet these common challenges. So I think it's quite an important shift.

UPDATE: Robert Kaplan has a related analysis at Stratfor America's Pacific Logic:

Were the United States not now to turn to the Indo-Pacific, it would risk a multipolar military order arising up alongside an already existent multipolar economic and political order. Multipolar military systems are more unstable than unipolar and bipolar ones because there are more points of interactions and thus more opportunities for miscalculations, as each country seeks to readjust the balance of power in its own favor. U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific is needed not only to manage the peaceful rise of China but also to stabilize a region witnessing the growth of indigenous civil-military post-industrial complexes.

UPDATE2: Related - a port visit of a couple of U.S. Navy ships reported as Louisville Visits Malaysia During Western Pacific Deployment:

U.S. Navy photo by MCS 1st Class David R. Krigbaum

The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Louisville (SSN 724) arrived in Malaysia April 3 for a visit as part of its deployment to the western Pacific.

Louisville moored alongside USS Emory S. Land (AS 39) to receive tended support for [sic- from?] the submarine tender.

"We anticipate performing a variety of submarine support services for Louisville to ensure all systems are fully functioning and operational when she returns to sea," said Lt. Cmdr. James Hicks, Emory S. Land's production maintenance officer.

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Measuring more than 360 feet long and weighing more than 6,000 tons when submerged, Louisville is one of the most advanced and stealthiest attack submarines in the world. Louisville uses her stealth, mobility, endurance, and firepower to perform missions in undersea warfare, surface warfare, strike warfare, mine warfare, battlespace preparation including intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and combat search and rescue.