Iran is outside my usual geographical beat, but George Friedman of Stratfor just published a very smart analysis of Iran’s past and present strategy.

Four points to consider:

• The American decision to invade Iraq was a huge strategic victory for Iran. The destruction of Iraq and the failure of the American occupation has given Iran the opportunity to rise to the status of a major regional power
• The Iranian regime doesn’t want a nuclear weapon as much as it wants a nuclear program to use as geopolitical leverage (see North Korea)
• The United States is unlikely to attack Iran, but Israel may feel it is forced to
• An Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear program would actually be a big benefit for the Iranian regime, whether the attack was successful in the short term or not. The Iranians know this. It is unclear if Israel does.

I think the first point is pretty obvious and the last three make sense.

In 2010, a former CIA officer under the cover name of Ishmael Jones wrote a book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture” that detailed problems in the CIA’s internal culture and management structure. The US Government took him to court, and recently won a ruling that Jones published classified information in the book without permission.

While Jones is not likely to face any jail time over the breach, the government did try to strip him of any profits he made from the book. The problem? Jones had already donated all of his nearly $30,000 USD in profits to a fund for the children of American soldiers who died in combat, as well as a fund for the daughter of an Iraqi agent who worked with Jones, and was later murdered.

It is hard to find anyone with knowledge of the US intelligence community who doesn’t think the CIA needs substantial reform. I haven’t read the book yet, but given the author’s bona fides and seemingly heroic stand, I will add it to the pile on my nightstand.

Full article here on Secrecy News.

Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy News reports that while some US nuclear weapons are still ready to launch quickly, the US only targets its weapons on the open ocean. That way, an accidental launch won’t lead to an attack on another country or to an unintended nuclear war. That’s some comfort, at least.

“Although it is true that portions of the U.S. nuclear triad are capable of rapid execution upon authorization from the President, a robust system of safeguards and procedures is in place to prevent the accidental or unauthorized launch of a U.S. nuclear weapon,” said James N. Miller, Jr., Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in newly published responses to questions for the record from a May 2011 hearing.

Moreover, he added, “The United States continues the practice of open-ocean targeting of all ICBMs and SLBMs. This is so that in the highly unlikely event of an unauthorized or accidental launch, the missile would land in the open ocean.”

The Secrecy News blog also links to a transcript of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, in which Senators talk with nuclear experts about how to implement the New START treaty. It’s a long read, but interesting to see how the people in the field are thinking about making arms reductions practical.

Marie Colvin, a veteran American war correspondent, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer, were killed in an artillery barrage on February 22 in Homs, Syria. Two other journalists were injured in the attack. Some sources report that the Syrian military was aware that the house where the journalists hid was being used as a makeshift press center by Syrian rebels, and deliberately targeted the structure.

Journalists choose to put themselves in danger. They choose these risks, in order to be the voice of people who have no choice, and cannot speak for themselves. Marie Colvin was no stranger to risk, having already lost the sight in one eye covering the civil war in Sri Lanka. The very least we owe Marie Colvin for her sacrifice, and all the others, is to listen to what they have learned. Here is her final interview:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/22/video-journalist-syrias-government-lies/

In October, CSIS hosted a military strategy forum focused on the security situation in Africa. [Free video and audio on csis.org]

The guest speaker was General Carter F. Ham, who runs US Africa Command. He talked about AFRICOM’s support of the NATO air mission in the Libyan conflict. But he spent much more time discussing low-intensity conflict, and how to disable African-based jihadi groups like Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Perhaps surprising to hear (from the commander of a US regional military command) was General Ham’s focus on humanitarian assistance and partnership with African countries to improve regional development. He said that it may be wise to spend a few million dollars now to help our regional partners develop capabilities, rather than wait for violent conflict and then be forced to spend a billion or more on military action. Libya is a good case in point here.

When he got a question about the role of the Peace Corps from a former volunteer, General Ham responded:

“For many Africans, the only American they will ever see in their lives is a Peace Corps volunteer. That one individual, or that small team’s influence lasts for generations and has a dramatic effect. So thanks for volunteering. We need more, and as you know there are some places in Africa where the security situation is such that Peace Corps operations have been suspended. One of our roles [in AFRICOM] is to try to help those countries get back to a situation where the Peace Corps can come back in.”

It’s good to see DoD and State working together. Also good to see a top-level commander working to increase the security of the US by increasing the development and stability of countries in his area of responsibility.

The US government recently declassified a trove of documents on two older generations of spy
satellites, the KH-7 / 8 Gambit and KH-9 Hexagon (nicknamed “Big Bird”). AP and The Atlantic just published stories about the people and technology involved.

For those of us with a serious case of hardcore Cold War pathology, we can dive into a declassified
National Reconnaissance Office file called Critical for National Security: The Gambit and Hexagon Satellite Reconnaissance Systems. There is a good intro that runs 35 pages, with another 350+ pages of photocopies of the original secret documents, some of them still redacted or ‘missing.’

The technology was pretty amazing, especially considering the systems were designed in the 1960s.
Without modern digital photography or communications bandwidth, these satellites were built to carry thousands of feet of wide-format high-resolution film. The film was exposed in the satellite, then automatically loaded into canisters that were dropped into the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean. Specially-modified US Air Force C-130 transport planes would be waiting below, and actually snatch the capsules in mid-air as they descended by parachute. The coordination (and expense) involved is hard to conceive.

But this was important. The photography helped the US understand the actual extent of Soviet nuclear forces as they built up in the 1970s and 80s, and also assured the West that while the Soviets had great capability, they were not preparing for an imminent nuclear war. That knowledge may have helped keep the simmering tensions of the Cold War from boiling over into a paranoia-driven nuclear hot war. Arguably, the exercise was even noble.

The KH-7 /8 birds operated from 1963 to 1984, and the KH-9s from 1971 to 1984. The current generation of KH-12 and Misty satellites get around the dicey atmospheric capture problem by just beaming the encrypted data to the Milstar military comms satellite network, which bounces the signals down to the listening ground stations. All details of the current generation as well as the slightly older KH-11 birds are still classified.

Good article on the Washington Post on how electronic surveillance technology made by US and Western companies is falling into the hands of repressive governments. This has been happening for years and shouldn’t be a surprise. There are restrictions in the US on exporting this technology to countries like North Korea and Syria, but the loopholes are a mile wide, and don’t keep intermediaries from buying technology from US firms and then selling it on.

There is a scene in Winter Republic where Thomas, the main character, asks one of his local contacts how tight surveillance is likely to be in the Republic of Crimea. The contact replies that because the country’s telecommunications infrastructure is so old and decrepit, it makes organized surveillance much more difficult. Alas, there are few countries today where an investigative reporter or opposition group can afford to be as sanguine.

I just got the proof copy of the paperback in the mail. I’ve already found a few twitchy changes I need to make in the cover and some minor edits in the text. I’ve been working on this book for almost ten years now, so I’m continually surprised that it’s still possible to find edits, but there they are. It does feel great to see it in paperback form. I’m hoping to get the edits back to Amazon next week when I am in Vegas, so the paperback should be out the week after next.

Exciting times!

Winter Republic is now available for the Amazon Kindle! Paperback version should come out in a few weeks. http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Republic-ebook/dp/B006F45MGW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1322546333&sr=8-4

Nice bit of journalism on Newshour, on the blessing and curse of resource extraction in Liberia. http://video.pbs.org/video/2163162718

The story refers to the idea of the “resource curse” that has been all too common in developing countries. Historically, the discovery of valuable resources in a country too undeveloped to defend itself has always led to tragic consequences for the people of that country. Look at the mineral and oil wealth of Indonesia, or the wealth of exportable fruit in places like Guatemala, Panama or Honduras, or basically the whole history of Africa.

Liberia does indeed sit on a huge pile of mineral and oil wealth. And now that two civil wars and fourteen years of conflict in Liberia are over, international megacorporations like Chevron and ArcelorMittal (the world’s largest steel company, based in Luxembourg) are moving in. Twenty or thirty years ago, those circumstances would have seemed like the funeral dirge of any hope of reform or social development of the country. In the past, big companies have too often bought off the government and elite of resource-rich countries (or used mercenaries to dislodge them) and taken what they wanted, with almost nothing left for the countries’ usually destitute citizens.

But Kira Kay’s story about Liberia is more interesting and complicated than the old trope.

Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office in 2006, the first and only female head of state in the history of Africa. She just shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with two other prominent women, for “the non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

President Johnson Sirleaf has renegotiated the contracts with Chevron and other international resource-extracting companies, to get better terms for the government and at least in theory hold them to environmental compliance standards. Liberia is the first country to join EITI, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which requires companies to report what they pay governments, and requires governments to report what they were paid. This theoretically reduces the opportunities for bribery and corruption. The Sirleaf administration is working with civil society and traditional leaders (what some Westerners would call ‘tribal leaders’) across Liberia to negotiate a fair distribution of revenue from taxes on the foreign companies.

There are still questions about the capability of the Liberian government to police the corporate sector, but this feels like progress. The situation I wrote about in Winter Republic is the polar opposite. If I was writing this story as a piece of fiction, there would already be a coup in progress, with rebels supported by dirty foreign money, and lots of spooks and bad guys lurking around, doing what spooks and bad guys do.

I wish President Johnson Sirleaf only success and good fortune. Prove my instincts wrong.