Left Flank

Yes, that's right! Pirates. The US Navy can do a job and entertain.

Lost Nomad's Gar recounts the thrilling tale of how the USS James E. Williams helped North Koreans to retake their ship. But, the dastardly pirates are winning, it seems.

The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday coalition naval forces belonging to Combined Task Force 150 had pursued the pirates into Somali waters and opened fire, destroying speedboats the seized vessel had in tow that were used in the raid.

«CTF-150 responded to a distress call from the tanker Golden Nory, warning shots were fired and the skiffs in tow were engaged and sunk,» a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said by telephone from Bahrain.

There were no reports of any casualties. He said coalition forces had opened fire in the Gulf of Aden.

«The operation is ongoing (to recover the ship) and there are indications a number of pirates are still on board,» the spokesman said, adding that a number of battleships were in the area.

Mwangura said the Golden Nory was carrying the inflammable and toxic chemical, benzene, and was being held off the northern Somali province of Puntland.

Still, for my tax money, in a debate about how the US should spend its defense dollars, I'd take Robert D. Kaplan's argument.

A great navy is like oxygen: You notice it only when it is gone. But the strength of a nation’s sea presence, more than any other indicator, has throughout history often been the best barometer of that nation’s power and prospects. â€ūThose far-distant storm-beaten ships upon which [Napoleon’s] Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world,â€? Mahan wrote, describing how the British Royal Navy had checked Napoleon’s ambitions. In our day, carrier strike groups, floating in international waters only a few miles off enemy territory, require no visas or exit strategies. Despite the quagmire of Iraq, we remain the greatest outside power in the Middle East because of our ability to project destructive fire from warships in the Indian Ocean and its tributary waters such as the Persian Gulf. Our sea power allows us to lose a limited war on land without catastrophic consequences. The Navy, together with the Air Force, constitutes our insurance policy. The Navy also plays a crucial role as the bus driver for most of the Army’s equipment, whenever the Army deploys overseas.

Army units can’t forward-deploy anywhere in significant numbers without a national debate. Not so the Navy. Forget the cliché about the essence of the Navy being tradition; I’ve spent enough time with junior officers and enlisted sailors on Pacific deployments to know that the essence of our Navy is operations: disaster relief, tracking Chinese subs, guarding sea-lanes, and so forth. American sailors don’t care what the mission is, as long as there is one, and the farther forward the better. The seminal event for the U.S. Navy was John Paul Jones’s interdiction of the British during the Revolutionary War—which occurred off Yorkshire, on the other side of the Atlantic. During the quasi-war that President John Adams waged against France from 1798 to 1800, U.S. warships protected American merchant vessels off what is today Indonesia. American warships operated off North Africa in the First Barbary War of 1801 to 1805. The War of 1812 found the Navy as far down the globe as the coast of Brazil and as far up as the North Cape of Scandinavia. Peter Swartz, an expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, observes that because operating thousands of miles from home ports is so ingrained in U.S. naval tradition, no one thinks it odd that even the Coast Guard has ships in service from Greenland to South America.

Great navies help preserve international stability. When the British navy began to decline, the vacuum it left behind helped engender the competition among major powers that led to World War I. After the U.S. Navy was forced to depart Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992, piracy quintupled in the Southeast Asian archipelago—which includes one of the world’s busiest waterways, the Strait of Malacca. In an age when 90 percent of global commerce travels by sea, and 95 percent of our imports and exports from outside North America do the same (even as that trade volume is set to double by 2020), and when 75 percent of the world’s population is clustered within 200 miles of the sea, the relative decline of our Navy is a big, dangerous fact to which our elites appear blind.

Norman Polmar points out an alternative to producing 12 of the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

While aircraft carriers have proved to be invaluable for U.S. military operations, from the Korean War through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, today many of their traditional missions can be carried out as effectively and possibly more so in some scenarios by other «systems.» These mission areas include strike, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare.

At the same time that the cost of carriers is increasing and the carrier force is below the authorized level of 12 ships, Navy shipbuilding programs are coming under increased congressional and executive branch scrutiny as the littoral combat ship (LCS), new amphibious ships (LPD), and some other ships are suffering massive cost overruns. It is unlikely that - with an average shipbuilding budget of $11 billion planned for the foreseeable future - the Navy will be able to afford building to the current goal of 313 ships. The Navy now operates about 279 ships.

The world situation for the foreseeable future will see a need for additional «carriers» to support U.S. political-military interests.

An alternative to constructing «the next» large CVN-type ship is to procure additional LHA/LHD-type amphibious ships. These VSTOL/helicopter carriers, which can operate the new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, could carry out some mission that traditionally required a large-deck ship. The LHA/LHD-type ships, of some 40,000 tons full-load displacement, can carry some 1,700 troops for sustained periods as well as operating about 40 VSTOLs and helicopters. These «amphibs» - currently in production - cost about $2.5 billion per ship.

Large-deck carriers are important, but it is unlikely that the U.S. Navy will be able to afford the planned 12 ships or even maintain the current 11 carriers. Alternatives must be considered.

The Navy should get the money. At least it knows how to entertain Americans, assist diplomacy, and not pour dollars and blood into the sand.

Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held – Boston and New York, for example – major news outlets treated this «National Day of Action» as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston's rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event's national context.

As a former newspaper editor, I was most taken aback by the silence beforehand. Surely any march of widespread interest warrants a brief news item to let people know that the event is taking place and that they can participate. It's called «advancing the news,» and it has a time-honored place in American newsrooms.

With prescient irony, Frank Rich wrote in his Oct. 14 Times column, «We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq.… But we must also examine our own responsibility.» And, he goes on to suggest, we must examine our own silence.

So why would Mr. Rich's news colleagues deprive people of information needed to take exactly that responsibility?

I'm not suggesting here that the Times or any news organization should be in collusion with a movement – pro-war or antiwar, pro-choice or pro-life, pro-government or pro-privatization.

I am suggesting that news organizations cover the news – that they inform the public about any widespread effort to give voice to those who share a widely held view about any major national issue.

If it had been a pro-war group that had organized a series of support marches this weekend, I'd have felt the same way. Like the National Day of Action, their efforts would have been news – news of how people can participate in a democracy overrun with campaign platitudes and big-plate fundraisers, news that keeps democracy vibrant, news that keeps it healthy.

If no one reports the news, did it really happen?

Myanmar's junta-controlled press has taken pages from the Iraqi and North Korean styles of editorializing, and given the world tears of joy to go along with the blood.

«Recent protests in the country were created by the loudmouthed bully, using the exiled dissidents and traitors together with communists, internal and external anti-government destructionists,» said a commentary Sunday in the Myanmar Ahlin daily.

(...)

The author, who called himself Maung Pwint Lin - roughly meaning Mr. Frankly Speaking - said that the United States had tried to revive the mass uprisings of 1988 in Myanmar in connivance with «exiled dissidents and internal ax-handles» in order to install a puppet government. Ax-handle is jargon used by the junta to mean traitors or puppets.

The newspaper commentary said that the majority of people in Myanmar had opposed the recent demonstrations.

Don't mistake laughter for support, Yangon!

When I read what the UNDP's presidential candidate as to say about the ROK-US alliance, I can find one bit of good news in Chung Dong-young's «pro-US» rhetoric. Comrade Chung might be a flip-flopper, but then it's election time in the ROK. But, to what purpose is he flopping?

Finding the center in South Korean politics requires more international relations than opinion polls. The bulls-eye is located somewhere between Beijing, Pyongyang, Tokyo, and Washington. If the progressives in the old Uri Party managed to shift the line on the DPRK leftward, towards aid and reconciliation, the conservatives have kept one foot in the ROK-US alliance. Progressives pay lip service, minus whatever Washington does outside the Korean peninsula, because the US has to sign a peace treaty with Pyongyang. It's galling, but the DPRK is not about to give Seoul diplomatic recognition by sitting down at Panmunjom alone with South Koreans. South Korean progressives need America to do what they can't; conservatives need Washington to defray the costs of what the progressives sow.

When I look at Comrade Chung, I just see a desperate fish.

While in its dealings with North Korea the government is sticking firmly to the basic diplomatic stance of «dialogue and pressure» that was crafted by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and maintained by the Abe administration, the fact that Komura mentioned a possible definition of «progress,» and suggested that North Korea might receive «rewards» even if not all of the abductees are returned, are signs of a foreign policy shift.

(...)

As North Korea is expected to soon declare its nuclear weapons programs, Japanese government officials have stepped up their calls for warmer ties with North Korea, pointing out that when Pyongyang completes its declaration of its nuclear programs, Washington likely will remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and that under such a scenario, Japan would be isolated in the six-party talks on North Korea's denuclearization.

It seems on the DPRK, the Fûkûdá administration can take care of itself, and doesn't need the American ambassador's help.

«I want to tell him try living in the prison camp for just an hour.»

Shin Dong-hyuk taunts the Dear Leader just by telling his life's story to reporters in Seoul.

His narrative reads like a dystopian novel.

Senator John McCain's foreign policy gravitas gets lighter when he talks about creating yet one more international organization. Not to focus on a neglected niche issue, that is, just to exclude states that are giving the US a headache right now. I believe what James Joyner is looking for is an «alliance», not more bureaucracy. There's no way to dress up exclusion, especially when it's directed at China.

The current alphabet soup of acronyms is annoying enough without another one. Reform, or abolish (like the SCO), an existing one, but let's not create a bad one.

Could this be a portent, or a godsend: the DPRK following its bigger cousin's lead in Southeast Asia?

Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung formally welcomed Premier Kim Yong-il before senior officials of the two communist-run countries signed memorandums of understanding to share agriculture technology and promote cultural exchanges.

«We are convinced that our current visit will bear out good results,» said a statement by the North Korean delegation, which includes several cabinet ministers.

Kim, who is in charge of economic policy, arrived in Hanoi on Friday and will visit a coal mine, a port, an agricultural institute and an industrial zone until Tuesday before going to Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos.

(...)

Vietnam, opening its economy and the newest World Trade Organisation member, says it has done almost no trade with North Korea since 1996.

In contrast, Vietnam's business ties with South Korea are booming. South Korea is the biggest investor in Vietnam and two-way trade is about $4 billion.

Is Kim Yong-il the face of the new DPRK? Cambodia and Laos are entirely forgettable, but Malaysia could make a serious dent in Pyongyang's isolation.

One question, though: that Vietnamese rice might be fairly exotic to North Korean palates. How will Pyongyang spin that?