America and Myanmar: Be Realist, but Be Liberal, Too

President Obama just got finished with a trip to Myanmar. This trip is of massive significance, because Myanmar has been a pariah state since the 1990s. The trip is a sort of reward to Myanmar for making positive changes. This is a situation in which sanctions seem to have worked: Myanmar did not like its pariah status, in part because strict Western sanctions meant that it had to rely heavily on China. Myanmar is now looking to diversify its options. This also comes at an opportune time for American policy: America is in the middle of a strategic “pivot” towards Asia. Sanctions have thus been in place for liberal reasons like promoting democracy and human rights and encouraging the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Removing some of those sanctions is also a way to encourage Myanmar to continue improving. At the same time, however, they also serve a strategic, realist purpose. Has the shift towards good relations with Myanmar been too fast? In other words: Is America getting overly concerned with balancing against China and leaving liberal causes by the wayside?

Myanmar has made some very positive changes towards more openness and democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi has also approved of these changes and the loosening of sanctions against Myanmar in order to support continued change. Myanmar's legislature now includes mostly elected politicians and it seems to have some real influence on governing, which is a welcome change to full-on dictatorship. However, these changes are still limited and, perhaps more importantly, imminently reversible. There are still problems with the repression and mistreatment of ethnic minorities and there are still conservative factions within the army that are opposed to further opening. Myanmar is thus not there yet. Some sanctions, however, are also still in place. They should not be fully removed until the country has arrived at liberal democracy. Are we moving too fast? It seems the most onerous sanctions are already gone. There is also a further danger: Myanmar may see the US “pivot” towards Asia as a reason the United States will want to embrace Myanmar no matter what it does. What's more, the country's leaders would have reason to think this.

In the autumn of last year, the Obama Administration announced a "pivot" towards Asia. The main reason for this strategic shift is that the Administration rightly sees Asia is the future. Specifically, though, it has seen that US allies in the region are increasingly nervous about the rising power of China. Since 1945, with a few glaring exceptions such as the Korean and Vietnam wars (which are not necessarily considered exceptions, but let's leave that for now), the Asia-Pacific region has experienced what is known as the “Pax Americana.” The US presence in the region, including important security guarantees to allies like Japan and South Korea, has meant that countries there have been free to concentrate on economic development and have not needed to worry about the military prowess of their neighbors. Japan has a military that, according to its own constitution, is purely for defensive purposes. It also has no nuclear weapons, though it certainly has the capability to develop them. This stability will be at risk if countries in the region feel that the United States can no longer maintain the status quo there and that they themselves must be able to defend themselves against a rising China.

It does not matter whether or not China or its neighbors actually seek war. What matters is that little bit of fear in the back of leaders' minds that makes them think they had better be prepared – just in case. The result could be a buildup of arms in the region, possibly including Japanese and South Korean nukes. Each build-up would then serve to make each country's immediate neighbors more nervous, encouraging them to build up as well. This conundrum is known as the "security dilemma.” The US presence in East Asia has so far prevented this outcome, and the Obama Administration seems to wish to continue doing so for as long as possible.

This focus on broader strategic goals is good. Over time, of course, the US may not be able to maintain the Pax Americana. But in the short to medium term, it makes sense to try (I won't discuss the pitfalls here). The risk in the case of Myanmar, however, is that the US places realist strategic goals ahead of liberal ones. Generally, if the choice comes down to those two, then I support realism. We do not yet have to choose, however. America can still pivot towards Asia and it doesn't necessarily need Myanmar to do so. What's more, balancing is occurring anyway. China's neighbors are uncomfortable with its power and with its maritime claims in the South China Sea. These countries have been cultivating better relations with each other and with America already. The region's other superpower, India, has also grown much closer to America. America's pivot towards Asia is therefore in many Asian countries' own self interest. America doesn't need to bribe them much (though it should cultivate good relations with them). There is thus no need yet to sacrifice liberal causes on the altar of strategic realism.

America can thus both stick to its principles of support for democracy and human rights while keeping an eye on important strategic goals like stability, security, and, in the end, peace. Hopefully, the Obama Administration and future American Administrations recognize this and will continue to keep the pressure on Myanmar whenever needed in order to keep rewarding it for moving in the right direction. Hopefully, too, both the leaders of the United States and Myanmar realize that the loosening of sanctions is every bit as reversible as Myanmar's own move towards democracy and its promotion of human rights.

Israel V Hamas: Why Is the Violence Picking Up?

Hamas and Israel are currently duking it out against each other in the Middle East. The number of rockets launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip has risen sharply recently. Rockets so far this year total at least 1,197, with 396 having fallen on Israel since November 14th! What is going on? What explains this sudden uptick in violence?

Hamas seems to have been deterred after the 2008-09 Gaza war. The number of rocket attacks increased throughout the years 2007 and 2008 and then fell off a cliff in early 2009. Things were then quiet through 2010, and even in 2011 during the upheaval of the Arab spring, things still remained relatively quiet. In the past few months, however, this has changed. Why?

The simplest answer is that Hamas perceives its circumstances to have changed. These changes include a great improvement in its own capabilities – it now possesses rockets in greater numbers, including some that are much more advanced, capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, there are political changes in the world around the Gaza Strip and Israel. The most obvious of these is the changed situation in neighboring Egypt. The Egyptian government is now headed by Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother. At first, this didn't seem to have made much of a difference. But if anyone thought that things would continue as they were before, they were mistaken. One big sign of this change was the visit to Gaza of Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. This was a huge show of support for Hamas, but it pales in significance when compared with the visit earlier this week by Egypt's Prime Minister Hesham Qandil.

To understand why, picture this: The Egyptian Prime Minister visits Gaza. During this time, Hamas launches rockets at Israel and Israel retaliates. (So far so good: All this happened.) Imagine that, during Israel's retaliation, the Egyptian Prime Minister was injured or killed. The political consequences for Israel would be dire. Egypt would have the pretext to turn wholly against Israel and, perhaps more importantly, Israel's allies might find it more difficult to provide Israel with solid backing. Under the circumstances, Egypt might not care about losing the vast aid that it receives from the United States. If it turned down this aid, that would remove substantial leverage that the United States has on Egypt that it has so far been able to use to moderate Egypt's position regarding Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Of course, none of this happened. Egypt's Prime Minister was in Gaza for only a very short time, no doubt because he had no intention of risking his life for the conflict. Nevertheless, all of this is symbolic of massive changes on the political front in the Middle East. Specifically, it shows Egypt is increasingly willing to throw its weight into the conflict on the side of Hamas. In my view, it is this, combined with the domestic pressures that Hamas faces, that have emboldened it to these unprecedented attacks on Israel, including never-before-seen attacks on Tel Aviv, Israel's main city. The chaos in Syria may also be playing a role: Bashar al-Assad's regime supported Hamas, and Hamas's external leadership long called Damascus its home. Hamas may thus be using a fight with a hated neighbor in order to distract from its involvement with a bloody regime in Syria and rising dissension at home within the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is this now testing the new limits it now perceives. How much can it get away with? How deep is its support within the Arab world? How much influence does the United States continue to have there? Overall: How much have things shifted in its favor? In essence, Hamas is attempting to change the "rules of the game" that were set in 2009 to gain itself more leverage. None of this bodes well for Israel, not only now, but also over the medium to long term.

If Iran Goes Nuclear: Missile Defense vs. Deterrence

There has been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. I won't dive into the debate about whether or not Israel or the United States should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Instead, I would like to write about the choices Israel will face if Iran does go nuclear.

Some have argued that the defenses required if Iran goes nuclear would bankrupt Israel's economy. Presumably, this defense refers to missile defenses and things like detectors at ports and border checkpoints. Such measures could indeed put a heavy strain on Israel's economy if implemented. But do they make sense?

Missile defense may be of limited use in a non-nuclear situation, but it is pointless in a nuclear one. Currently, Israel has to deal with regular rockets being launched from the Gaza Strip. Israel's deterrence of the militants launching these rockets is not absolute: They do not launch all the rockets they have or rarely launch full-on assaults of Israel; but there is a steady, low-level stream of rockets. Israel's current missile-defense system makes sense for protecting Israeli citizens against these every day non-nuclear rocket launches. Because Israel's deterrent strategy does not rely on launching rockets for rockets, there is minimal risk of escalation. This does not mean no risk at all: Militants could launch rockets directly at Sderot with a domestic (i.e. Palestinian) audience in mind with the expectation that the rockets will be stopped anyway. Perhaps the goal would be just to cost Israel money by forcing it to launch expensive interceptor rockets. If any Gazan rockets get through, however, an Israeli counterstrike could be imminent. However, this is not really all that different from the situation without the missile-defense shield, as rockets do sometimes hit civilians obliging Israel to hit back. On balance, the shield therefore seems to make sense.

At the same time, however, such a shield could never be expected to provide any real defense against a heavy onslaught. The number of interceptor rockets is limited, interception is not 100% assured, and Israel's interceptor rockets are vastly more expensive than the rockets militant groups launch from the Gaza Strip. A launch of hundreds of rockets from the Gaza Strip could therefore easily overwhelm the system. Such a system is no good at providing 100% security.

This is also the reason why a missile shield against nuclear missiles makes no sense. In a nuclear situation, prevention must be absolute. One nuclear-tipped missile getting through is too many. There are two reasons given why missile defenses don't make sense. The first is that they do not work, the second is that they can lead to instability, undermining deterrence. Both of these propositions cannot be true at the same time. If missile defenses don't work, then there is no reason that they should cause instability. If they cause instability, then they must work somehow or other. Even so, it is possible that both these propositions could be true at different times. This is the reason why it's plausible that politicians might build an expensive and ultimately ineffective missile-defense system.

During an initial phase, Iran might not have very many nuclear missiles. It might therefore seem feasible to stop two, three, or four missiles using a high-tech missile defense shield. It would be expensive, but it would almost seem to make sense. If this shield is seen as solid enough by Iran, it could very well lead to instability via an arms race. Iran would recognize that the way around the missile shield is to build enough nuclear missiles to overwhelm it. If Israel tries to keep up, this would be very expensive indeed. All of this could only occur, however, if both sides focused blindly on missiles. There is always the possibility of smuggling a nuclear bomb into a country by other means and this seems even harder to rule out altogether.

During the second stage, a missile defense system is less likely to cause instability or a further arms race because it will become increasingly clear that it cannot be effective. It would always be possible to overwhelm the system and, because such a system could never be 100% reliable, it would always be possible to make sure that one missile (and that is all that is required) would get through. The level of control required to seal off all of Israel's borders and to provide an ultimately incredible degree of reliability from the missile-defense system would turn Israel into a police state and be staggeringly expensive.

All of this suggests that the best move is to rely on deterrence and not bother with missile-defense for nuclear missiles. To do this, Israel may need to make its presumed nuclear capability explicit and more transparent. Deterrence may also not be 100% safe, but as I have illustrated, missile-defense would not increase that security in the slightest. Given (at best) equal levels of security, it seems obvious to me that leaders should choose deterrence due to its lower cost and the smaller number of restrictions that would have to be placed on Israelis' civil liberties. Neither of these situations may be desirable, and leaders might like to look like they're doing something (whereas deterrence might look like doing nothing). When that something is surely ineffective, expensive, and heavily restricts civil liberties, however, there is not really much of a choice at all.