January 29, 2008
Egypt Presses Abbas to Control Border

By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM — Egypt said Monday that it preferred that the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, take control of the breached border between Gaza and Egypt, seeming to exclude Hamas, the Islamist group that took control of Gaza from Mr. Abbas in June.

The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, told the United States and the European Union that Israel should cooperate with efforts to control border crossings “through the deployment of the Palestinian Authority” and “European Union monitors,” the ministry said in a statement. Mr. Aboul Gheit emphasized that Egypt would “carry out a gradual control of the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip and bring the situation back to an acceptable condition,” the statement said.

Hamas blew up the Israeli-built wall between Gaza and the Egyptian border early Wednesday after Israel had sealed off Gaza to try to stop rocket and mortar fire into Israel. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have traveled in and out of the northern Sinai, buying food, medicine, consumer goods and livestock.

Egypt has slowly tried to resecure the border, refusing to allow the resupply of goods to the border towns of El Arish and Egyptian Rafah and taking steps to narrow the breaches. Shops in El Arish and Rafah have largely run out of goods to sell, and tempers between Palestinians and Egyptians have begun to fray.

Egypt appears to want to return the Rafah crossing to the situation before June, when European Union officials monitored the border and Israel kept watch by videolink. But even then security problems often kept the Rafah crossing shut. And Israel regularly objected to Egyptian decisions to let certain groups of Gazans, mostly allied with Hamas, come and go, sometimes smuggling in large amounts of cash.

Hamas, which considers itself the legitimate Palestinian government because of its electoral victory in January 2006, has made it clear that it wants a role in operating the crossing and calls the old arrangement “a piece of history.” Israel also regards the old arrangement as problematic, given Hamas’s control over Gaza, and wants Egypt to do more to stop the movement of militants and weapons.

Since Hamas routed Fatah in early June, Rafah had been shut, but Egypt now seems to be unwilling to shut it completely again. At other crossings, Israel has allowed in only bare necessities and it has been cutting fuel supplies to ensure that Gazan life is uncomfortable at best so long as militants are firing rockets into Israel.

But Israel’s effort to seal off Gaza backfired with the border breach, and on Sunday the government agreed to resume sharply limited supplies of gasoline and diesel to Gaza, as well as industrial diesel for the Gaza power plant. Although Israel resumed some supplies last week, the plant was producing only 45 megawatts a day, compared with its capacity of 80 megawatts, meaning continued rolling power cuts. At the same time, Israel said it intended to cut approximately 1.5 megawatts of electricity from the 120 megawatts provided from Israel beginning Feb. 7. The Gaza border chaos has been overshadowed in Israel by the impending final report of the Winograd Commission into the 2006 Lebanon war and speculation about its impact on the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. A preliminary report about the first few days of Israel’s war against Hezbollah was fiercely critical of Mr. Olmert, the army and the defense minister at the time, Amir Peretz. The army has a new commander and has worked to learn the lessons of the war, and Mr. Peretz is gone, but Mr. Olmert has survived.

The final report, to be released Wednesday evening, is likely to be even more critical, focusing on the last days of the war, when 33 Israelis died in a final, aborted push into southern Lebanon before a United Nations-mandated cease-fire.

Mr. Olmert has argued that the last offensive was required to pressure the United Nations Security Council into passing a resolution more favorable to Israel, but the American ambassador to the United Nations at the time, John R. Bolton, has said that the offensive did not matter. Mr. Olmert has insisted to friends that he will neither resign nor be fired.

Ehud Barak, the defense minister who leads the Labor Party, will be key, carefully watching public reaction. If he pulls out of the coalition, the government will fall. But few in the government want new elections, which currently would favor Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr. Barak may instead encourage a coup inside Mr. Olmert’s party, so there would be a new prime minister without new elections. But it is considered now more likely that since Mr. Olmert is in peace talks with Mr. Abbas, which Labor favors, Mr. Barak may give the talks a chance and call for new elections to be held in the spring of 2009.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

To Connect the Gaps, Build the Bridge Underwater

As the Navy moves to develop a future fleet designed to reflect the strategical and tactical ideas that are prevailing in our time, we believe it is going to require new calculations in balancing the requirements of major war and soft power. As we noted last week, the Navy surface fleet of 2012 will be the greatest naval force in human history when measured by raw firepower. As we have also noted many times in the past however, the surface fleet has a number of emerging requirements which trend towards a greater capacity in security operations, in both blue and brown water, and a surface navy of fewer but more powerful large warships is ill suited to meet that challenge.

To meet future challenges, we believe the Navy should add a new dimension to its future fleet studies. We observe that on the advice of Julian Corbett, the US Navy should disconnect traditional function from traditional classification in its future fleet designs, and only by doing so will the balance between the strategic peacemaker and warfighter requirements be achieved in the future fleet while at the same time, potentially expanding tactical capabilities.

In all eras of naval warfare fighting ships have exhibited a tendency to differentiate into groups in accordance with the primary function each class was designed to serve. These groupings or classifications are what is meant by the constitution of a fleet. A threefold differentiation into battleships, cruisers, and flotilla has so long dominated naval thought that we have come to regard it as normal, and even essential. It may be so, but such a classification has been by no means constant. Other ideas of fleet constitution have not only existed, but have stood the test of war for long periods, and it is unscientific and unsafe to ignore such facts if we wish to arrive at sound doctrine.

The truth is, that the classes of ships which constitute a fleet are, or ought to be, the expression in material of the strategical and tactical ideas that prevail at any given time, and consequently they have varied not only with the ideas, but also with the material in vogue. It may also be said more broadly that they have varied with the theory of war, by which more or less consciously naval thought was dominated. It is true that few ages have formulated a theory of war, or even been clearly aware of its influence; but nevertheless such theories have always existed, and even in their most nebulous and intangible shapes seem to have exerted an ascertainable influence on the constitution of fleets.

-Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian S. Corbett, page 107

We are observing emerging trends and discussions towards the future fleet structure as the Navy struggles to match future resources with the future requirements outlined in new Maritime Strategy. With existing force structure plans in place, the challenge to meet the future strategic challenges with new future force structure requirements while also incorporating best tactical approaches that are counter to traditional roles is a daunting challenge for the Navy. We know the process is already underway, we acknowledge the challenges both political and institutional, but we have also observed the trends particularly apparent with the recent shuffle in leadership.

We recently observed a comment by Thomas Barnett, whom we believe is heavily influencing the strategic ideas that in turn contribute to the strategic requirement set for the future fleet. His influence in several articles of the January 2008 issue of Proceedings is further evidence of his strategic ideas taking hold within the Navy. We see this trend as a good thing, however we also note that his recent comment highlights Corbett's warning that it can be "unscientific and unsafe to ignore" alternatives to function and classification on the basis of tradition alone.

Truth on subs is that they're only good at three things: go after shipping, go after each other, hold nukes.

The last one is still marginally useful in small numbers.

The challenge in the design of the future fleet is to connect the strategical and tactical ideas that are driving future fleet metrics, but also connect those ideas to manage not only the warfighters major war role, but also manage the Navy's emerging peacemaker role in addressing the non integrating gaps driving the approach outlined in the new Maritime Strategy. To meet the future challenge, the surface fleet that is currently around 75/25 high/low mix warship structure will need to shift to a high/low mix somewhere closer to 40/60, perhaps even 35/65 if it is to meet the metrics of the surface navy peacetime requirements. We have previously outlined those metrics to include manned presence, persistence on station, quantity of force, and distribution of force to the vast regions involved. As we have previously noted, unmanned systems can be force multipliers for the warfighter, but there is no substitute for the presence of a sailor as a peacemaker. If the Navy is going to bridge future requirements of both warfighter and peacemaker, we believe part of that bridge should be built underwater.

As Corbett notes, function based on classification needs not to be constant, and we believe it is past time for a new calculus that addresses the emerging tactical and strategic requirements of our time. Barnett is discussing 'traditional' roles for submarines, but like many aspects of the nations military force designed in the cold war, the Navy is learning that 'traditional' isn't always best. In this regard, new ideas are required to maintain tactical superiority while also addressing strategic priority. We believe the submarine is best suited to be such a bridge.

The emerging future submarine force is very different than the submarine force of the cold war. Today's active duty submarine force offers the Navy 574 VLS cells specific to a cruise missile deep strike capability. A future fleet projected to include all 4 SSGNs, and perhaps 48 SSNs with VLS will feature close to 1200 cells for cruise missiles. From a tactical perspective, a true stealth platform like a submarine can conduct launches of land attack cruise missiles much closer to the enemy coast, allowing it much greater range, and can do so against a minor power with limited sea denial tactical capability, or a major powers with an advanced anti-access / area denial capability that would keep surface ships far back from the engagement line.

Strategically speaking, migrating a portion of the strike firepower the Navy requires for supporting warfighter requirements from sea off the surface fleet reduces the size requirements of the surface vessels that make up the surface fleet. The reduction of size implies not only a reduction in cost per unit, but a greater number of units that can ultimately be leveraged for the Navy's peacemaker roles.

Submarines offer very little to peacemaker roles beyond intelligence gathering and special operations, both of which (as Dr. Barnett accurately points out in a later comment) can be conducted to equal effect by surface forces. If the Navy intends to build a peacemaker force in the future that aligns to the ideas and ideals expressed in the new Maritime Strategy, the Navy would be both strategically and tactically wise to migrate more of the warfighter responsibilities to the submarine force, with the intention to expand the peacemaker capabilities of the Navy of which can only be conducted by the surface navy.

The truth on submarines we see is that for the Navy to evolve and balance its Leviathan role and SysAdmin role in the spirit of Thomas Barnett, the Navy should apply the strategical and tactical ideas of our time by transitioning the warfighter function to the underwater service as a means to enable the peacemaker capabilities of the surface fleet. The surface fleet, when relieved to some degree of one of its many primarily traditional functions, should then be in a better position to offer the contributions required to meet the strategic peacemaker objectives desired in spirit by the Cooperative Maritime Strategy.

We see it as both ironic, and understandable, that Dr. Barnett would dismiss the submarine casually as an instrument of the Leviathan to conduct war. Indeed it is exactly that! However it is also the key enabler for the Navy to remove some of the warfighter burden from the surface fleet, a surface fleet that is in high demand in dealing with the world that emerges within the content of Dr. Barnett's writings and vision.
Posted by Galrahn at 1:40 AM

Labels: Strategy, Underwater Warfare

Comments (18) | Trackback

OK. Sooo...how would you do this? Are you talking about a submersible arsenal ship-like platform, then?

If you are, there's a problem here. A key piece of deterent is, sometimes, showing the "big/high-end/primary warfighter force. As far as subs go, we haven't yet mastered that...And, if we're talking about larger subs, then we'll be especially loathe to reveal them or show them off.

There's a difference between "sending a message" by carrier transit of, say, the Tiawan Straits and dispatching a sub that nobody--aside from a few folks--even know that the sub is around.

Also, if we went this route, and shunted more of the warfighting teeth to subs, it would require a lot of discipline--because there will always be pressure for the sub to shed weapons in favor of more "immediately" useful, largely ancilary peacetime equpment.

We'd also need to enforce mission discipline--in World War II, Pacfic, far too many subs were directed towards "secondary" missions (intel, commando, etc) than, say, Japan's oil transport network.

In short, it sounds sound, but you'd have a hell of a time crafting a coordinated concert.

And Congress would never let you, anyway!

Good stuff!
Springbored | Homepage | 01.24.08 - 5:31 am | #

Coming around to my way of thinking!

Springbored: We already have a "submersible arsenal ship-like platform", called the USS Ohio SSGN.

Cheap and expendible gunboats (not billion-dollar DDG-1000 battle cruisers) for the show-the-flag, forward presence role, and submarines for sea control and long range strike. Cost and precision guided weapons are gradually but undeniably forcing the Navy to choose to build one of its many battleships.

Great article! More! More!
Mike Burleson | Homepage | 01.24.08 - 9:35 am | #

I'm not suggesting shifting the entire VLS package to submarines, but even if you moved 20% off surface ships to a mix of SSN/SSGN you free up what is today the costs of about 20 of your DDG-51s.

For the cost of 20 DDG-51s (now at $1.6 bil), you can build all 55 proposed LCS (at $400 mil) with $10 billion to spare.

You can do this with a mix like 10 total SSGNs and 36 SSNs. That would be 12 fewer SSNs for 6 more SSGNs. Surely the industry can build 6 SSGNs with the cost of 12 SSNs, roughtly $24 billion.
Galrahn | Homepage | 01.24.08 - 9:36 am | #

Khamenei snubs Iranian president
Iran's supreme leader has overruled its president by ordering him to implement a law to supply gas to remote villages.
Iran is having its coldest weather in years and parliament had ratified a law to release extra funds to supply gas to rural areas undergoing shortages.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to implement it, prompting the speaker to appeal to the supreme leader.

A BBC correspondent says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's action is a rare public humiliation for President Ahmadinejad.

Jon Leyne in Tehran says President Ahmadinejad has come in for growing criticism over his handling of the crisis.

The main problem has been shortage of gas, which has led to gas pressure being lowered, or supplies cut off altogether in some places.

The supreme leader agreed that the law should be implemented and his letter ordering that it should was read out in the parliament.

Threat of war

About 64 people are reported to have died and tens of thousands have been stranded by severe blizzards.

The temperature has fallen as low as -24C and for the first time in living memory there has been snow in the country's southern deserts.

Critics of the president have become more vocal as the threat of war with the US or Israel over Iran's nuclear activities appears to have receded.

The political battle is heating up with parliamentary elections in two months, our correspondent says.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7201213.stm

Published: 2008/01/21 18:43:21 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

January 22, 2008
Iran Leader Backs Parliament in a Dispute With Ahmadinejad

By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme religious leader, in what appeared to be his first public dispute with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sided with Parliament on Monday in a conflict over energy policy.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intervened after Mr. Ahmadinejad had refused to carry out a measure that required his government to supply gas to remote villages during this year’s exceptionally cold winter.

The government provides natural gas to the state-run gas company for a fee, and the gas is then sold to customers. Most of the country is running short, and rationing has been discussed. It is unclear what the legislation requires, but the villages involved presumably are among the hardest hit by the shortages.

“All legal legislation that has gone through procedures stipulated in the Constitution is binding for all branches of power,” the ayatollah said in a letter to Parliament, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

The speaker of Parliament, Gholamali Hadad Adel, said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had complained to him in the past months about some of the measures passed by Parliament. But Mr. Hadad Adel said he was surprised by a recent letter from Mr. Ahmadinejad in which he said that the natural gas law was unconstitutional.

“I was surprised by the president writing to Parliament to say a bill was against the Constitution,” he was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Mehr news agency. “This is unprecedented.” He added that it was the job of the Guardian Council, which is appointed by the supreme leader, to decide if a law passed by Parliament was unconstitutional.

Mr. Hadad Adel said he had sent a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei seeking his intervention to avoid further confrontation with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Iran Leader Under Fire for Gas Shortages

Monday, January 21, 2008 10:00 AM

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's supreme leader Monday reversed a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ordered him to implement a law supplying natural gas to remote villages amid rising dissatisfaction with the president's performance.

The move by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a major rebuke to the hardline president, whose popularity has plummeted amid rising food prices and deaths due to gas cuts during a particularly harsh winter.

In response to a request by the conservative-dominated parliament, Khamenei ordered the president to implement a law spending $1 billion from the Currency Reserve Fund to supply gas to villages after he balked for budgetary reasons.

"All legal legislation that has gone through (the required) procedures stipulated in the constitution is binding for all branches of power," Parliamentary Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel quoted the supreme leader as saying in a statement.

Haddad Adel called Ahmadinejad's refusal to implement the law "surprising" and said his appeal to Khamenei was aimed at "defending the dignity of the legislature." His comments, which were broadcast live on state-run radio, prompted chants of "well done" from the chamber.

Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. He now faces increasing criticism for failing to meet those promises.

"We don't want (you) to bring oil money to our table ... just restore heating gas immediately," lawmaker Valiollah Raeyat said in an open session of the parliament last week.

Iran has the second largest natural gas reservoir of the world but its supply network has been overwhelmed by high demand. Both reformists and conservatives are increasingly asking the president why Iranians are dying from the cold while sitting on the massive gas fields.

As much as 22 inches of snow fell in areas of northern and central Iran in early January, the heaviest snowfall in more than a decade. Local media have reported 64 cold-related deaths this winter and say gas cuts are to blame.

State Inspection Organization chief, Mohammad Niazi, said Monday that Ahmadinejad's administration ignored suggestions to set aside gas supplies in case of an emergency, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.

"Earlier, (we) had warned executive officials about saving fuel but unfortunately warnings were not heeded ... there is no strategy for gas supply in the country," he said.

Ahmadinejad, who portrayed himself as a champion of the poor when he swept to power, is being challenged not only by reformers but by the same conservatives who paved the way for his victory in 2005.

Even conservatives say Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy _ and they have become more aggressive in calling him to account.

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