Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Peering into metal with muons

When cosmic rays collide with molecules in the upper atmosphere, they produce particles called muons. About 10,000 of these strike every square metre of the earth’s surface each minute. These particles are able to penetrate several tens of metres through most materials, but are scattered to an unusual extent by atoms that include large numbers of protons in their nuclei. Since this includes uranium and plutonium, muons could have valuable security applications.

Muon tomography is a form of imaging that can be used to pick out fissile materials, even when they are embedded in dense masses. For instance, a tunnel sized scanner could examine entire semi trucks or shipping containers in a short time. Such tunnels would be lined with gas-filled tubes, each containing a thin wire capable of detecting muons on the basis of a characteristic ionization trail. It is estimated that scans would take 20-60 seconds, and less time for vehicles and objects of a known configuration.

Muons have also been used in more peaceful applications: such as looking for undiscovered chambers in the Pyramids of Giza and examining the interior of Mount Asama Yama, in Japan.

The ugliness of war

Artillery monument, Ottawa

Today’s Ottawa Citizen has an article about how the Canadian War Museum is being pressured to change some of the text in its Bomber Command exhibit. Veterans had complained that it makes them out to be war criminals. The text reads:

“The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command’s aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war.”

The museum consulted four contemporary historians, after complaints from the National Council of Veteran Associations, and they each affirmed the accuracy of the text. Two of them, however, lodged some complaint about the tone employed.

All this strikes at one of the tough moral questions that arises when you treat war as the subject of law. If the London Blitz was a crime, surely the bombing of Berlin, Tokyo, and Nagasaki were crimes as well. The targeting of civilians was a crime committed by those who chose where the planes should drop their deadly cargo. The dropping of the bombs was a crime committed by those who followed the illegal orders. (See: this related post) Alternatively, one can adopt the view that none of these undertakings were criminal. I suspect that neither perspective is a very comfortable one for those who were involved, but it seems difficult to come up with something both different and defensible.

In the end, it seems wrong to give anyone the comfort of thinking they were on the ‘right’ side and this somehow excused what they did. Their actions are equally valid objects of moral scrutiny to those of their opponents, though they are much less likely in practice to be thus evaluated.

None of this is to say that all the combatant states in the Second World War had equally good reason to get involved, nor that there is moral equivalence between the governmental types in the different states. What is hard to accomplish, however, is the translation of such high level concerns into cogent explanations for why former Canadian strategic bombers should be honoured while Germans launching V2’s into London should not be. The generally unacceptable character of the intentional bombing of civilians is firmly entrenched in international law; as such, the sensibilities of current veterans do not warrant changing the text.

[Update: 30 August 2007] Randall Hansen, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, has written a well-argued editorial in the Ottawa Citizen attacking the museum’s decision to change the wording.

Afghan opium

The Senlis Council, an international policy think tank, has developed an alternative plan for dealing with Afghanistan’s record crop of opium poppies. Their Poppy for Medicine Project aims to address the global shortage in medicinal opiates (such as morphine) while also providing a sustainable basis for the Afghan economy. Providing poppies for legal medicinal purposes will offer an income alternative that does not fuel the illicit drugs trade. Romesh Bhattacharji, India’s former narcotics commissioner, has offered his support for the plan, citing the high incidence of cancer in the developing world and the lack of access to pain killers.

This year, Afghan opium exports were worth about $60 billion at street prices in purchasing countries; that is 6.6 times the total gross domestic product of Afghanistan. No wonder coalition forces have been having such a hopeless time trying to eradicate this production. Within Afghanistan, the trade is worth about $3.1 billion, though less than a quarter of that accrues to farmers. Village level schemes of the kind Senlis is proposing could increase that proportion, while decreasing the share that goes to organized crime, smugglers, and insurgent groups.

The idea that NATO troops can win hearts and minds in Afghanistan while simultaneously destroying the opium crop that is the basis for much of the economy has always been foolish. While I was in Oxford, the reality of this situation was privately acknowledged by a number of British military officers. If Afghanistan is to be in any way prosperous or secure by the time western forces eventually withdraw, a bit more intelligent engagement and a bit less dogmatism would be in order.

[Update: 28 August 2007] Here is a similar argument.

A show of force in the Gulf

No matter how much one tries to focus on the non-security bits of international relations, anyone who reads the news and is concerned about the world will get exposed to it pretty regularly. Yesterday, for instance, nine American warships carrying 17,000 military personnel were sent into the Persian Gulf. Some speculate that this was intended as a corollary to an announcement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Iran’s ongoing nuclear program. The strike group included two Nimitz carrier battle groups and 2,100 marines in landing ships. The ongoing war games will apparently “culminate in an amphibious landing exercise in Kuwait, just a few miles from Iran.”

According to the IAEA, Iran has about 1,300 centrifuges online at Natanz, with another 600 likely to become available over the summer. Having 3,000 operational centrifuges would produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb per year.

The question of how to deal with challenges to the existing non-proliferation regime is an acute one. More and more states will gain the technical capacity to make bombs in the next few decades. Many will be in dangerous parts of the world, with hostile neighbours who can be plausibly expected to be building bombs of their own. Furthermore, the inability of the current regime to prevent the North Korean test raises the question of how much influence the international community really has, especially when some states are willing to become pariahs.

No Mercator projection

Grabbed from Metafilter, this page of maps distorted to show relative rates of things like military spending is quite interesting. Unsurprisingly, the map of war and death is especially grotesque.

Some higher resolution versions are over at Worldmapper: by total population, landmine casualties, and wealth (per capita).

Looking at these, one is immediately struck by how heterogeneous the world is. Of course, we all knew that before, but seeing the information in a new way can change one’s perception of it quite a bit. While there is the danger of such data being misleading, I would say it counters the greater danger of extrapolating from personal experience. Aggregated statistics, while not perfect, are a lot better than on-the-fly human intuitions, when it comes to assessing massive problems quite beyond the scope of anyone’s personal experience.

Noisy skies

Somerville College, Oxford

During the last day or so, there has been an unusually large amount of military air traffic over Oxford. Less than a minute ago, I saw a 101 Squadron Vickers VC-10 fly overhead, northwards (official site). The VC-10 is fairly unmistakable, due to the engine configuration: two on either side of the fuselage, back near the tail. Last night, we saw at least three large, slow moving transports heading in the same direction. I would have suspected that it was a Boeing C-17 Globemaster, from the 99 Squadron but apparently they only have one of those (official site).

They are probably flying to Brize Norton: the largest airbase operated by the Royal Air Force. It is located just eighteen miles west of here, between Carterton and Whitney. It might be an interesting place to visit at some point.

Quite possibly, the volume of traffic is connected with the recent British announcement that they are pulling forces out of Iraq. With 1,600 troops returning to the UK during the next few months, there must be a lot of gear and people to move around.

Nye and Roberts on democratization

Last night’s talk on democratization by Joseph Nye and Adam Roberts basically encapsulated the most dominant strand of academic thinking on the subject. It was heavily focused on the American role in the Middle East (though Russia’s apparent slide towards autocracy was not entirely ignored) and essentially concluded that the US can and should continue to spread democracy, but must do so in moderate and locally tailored ways, rather than just stomping on people. There was agreement that the next administration (whether Clinton or McCain) would pursue more or less this path.

Both speakers agreed that attacking Iran would be an appalling error: both strategically, given the capacity of that state to cause havoc in the region, and politically, because of how an attack would unify moderates and conservatives in Iran around the present regime. It would also further diminish American credibility in the Muslim world.

Finally, there was some discussion of narratives: the one that Osama bin Laden propagates, that of the United States, and the kind that Europe might fruitfully deploy. As a continent that has managed to come together into peace and prosperity, after an appalling history of war, perhaps the European experience can be illustrative for other regions.

All of these points are sensible and sound, as you would expect from professors from Harvard and Oxford – the latter even knighted. One question that remains sitting on the table is how to deal with allied states that have less than excellent democratic credentials. It certainly damages US soft power to be so reliant upon the House of Saud, as well as people like Pervez Musharraf and Hosni Mubarak. It creates many opportunities to accuse the US of hypocrisy. That said, the generally cautious approach recommended by both speakers suggests a course of constructive engagement, rather than something more aggressive (though not forceful).

On a side note, the St. Antony’s International Review seems to be doing a very good job of publicizing itself. This is very welcome, given Oxford’s notable lack of a quality international relations journal. I should try to get a book review or something into it, before I leave Oxford.

‘Able Archer’ and leadership psychology

If you have any interest in nuclear weapons or security and you have never heard of the 1983 NATO exercise called ‘Able Archer’ you should read today’s featured Wikipedia article.

One fascinating thing it demonstrates is the amazing willingness of leaders to assume that their enemies will see actions as benign that, if they had been taken by those same enemies, would be seen as very aggressive. Case in point: the issues America is raising about Iranian intervention in Iraq. If Iran was involved in a major war on America’s doorstep, you can bet that there would be American intervention. This is not to assert any kind of moral equivalency, but simply to state the appallingly obvious.

OUSSG seeks new webmaster

Studying at Oxford? Interested in Strategic Studies? Web savvy? If these characteristics apply to you, consider nominating yourself to be the next webmaster of the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group. At present, I am serving in this capacity, but I will be leaving Oxford at the beginning of July.

The workload is very reasonable: uploading a termcard in HTML and PDF format once a term and then formatting speaker biographies and photos for each week of term time. Documentation that describes all of these processes, step by step, will be available. No coding skill is necessary; indeed, anyone who can run a blog can use Mambo, the content management system behind the OUSSG site. Basic knowledge of FTP use, HTML, and photo cropping would be assets.

Nominations for President, Vice-President (my other current role), and Secretary open at this Tuesday’s meeting at 8:30pm in All Souls College. Anyone interested in the webmaster position should contact any member of the executive in person or by email.