What next, Mr. President?

The President waves to the crowd before his 2012 acceptance speech.

    On Nov. 6, Barack Obama secured a second term as President of the United States of America. While I congratulate Obama on his victory, I must ask: what exactly, Mr. President, will you do in the next four years?
    The focus of Obama’s reelection campaign was the economy, so it is reasonable to assume that he will make strengthening the economy his top priority. The centerpiece of the President’s first-term economic policy was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus), which made long-term investments in infrastructure, green energy, education and manufacturing. Obama plans to enact another, smaller stimulus in his second term, named the American Jobs Act, which will cut income and payroll taxes and increase infrastructure and education spending. The rest of his economic plan consists of an overhaul of the tax code and investments in energy. Obama promises to raise the capital gains tax (a tax on investments and stocks held for more than one year that primarily affects the wealthy) from 15 to 20 percent and to raise taxes on the top two tax brackets from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively. His tax plan also includes promises to eliminate loopholes and to streamline the tax code for businesses and individuals. The plan specifies to phase out loopholes for those with incomes over $200,000 and to eliminate several loopholes for large companies, although how it plans to streamline the tax code remains unclear. He also aims to create or extend numerous tax credits for individuals and businesses, such as a $3,000 credit per each worker hired for businesses, cut the corporate tax rate, eliminate the current tax credit for outsourcing and extend the Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts and credits for individuals making less than $200,000 per year.

The President’s energy policy in his next term will be similar to his first term’s energy policy. Obama plans to focus primarily on funding alternative energy while also expanding access to cheap hydrocarbons. He aims to raise fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles, set a requirement that all utilities must produce 80 percent of their electricity by 2035, continue funding and supporting the alternative energy industry and increase gas, oil and coal production by opening up some public lands to drilling and encouraging hydraulic fracking (a new, controversial type of natural gas extraction) while insisting on higher environmental safeguards for drilling and fracking.

    For the President, economic policy and fiscal policy dovetail, which is why he has proposed a plan for cutting the deficit. His plan for reducing the deficit centers around an 80-page deficit reduction plan that he drafted in 2011. Obama calls for raising taxes on the wealthy by eliminating the capital gains tax, raising marginal income tax rates and eliminating loopholes for the wealthy. The plan also incorporates spending cuts. Obama plans to cut $257 billion from discretionary spending, primary by cutting subsidies to agriculture and the oil industry. He will also cut $450 billion from the defense budget, try to cut Medicare’s budget by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices and to levy an additional Social Security tax of 2-4 percent on those with incomes over $200,000 to try to make Social Security solvent, among other things. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this budget will cut the debt by $2 trillion and increase GDP growth by 0.6 percent, although the President’s opponents point out that his budget adds $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to the CBO’s baseline budget, which includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration (an imminent series of spending cuts). Despite his willingness to cut the deficit, Obama has stated that he will try to prevent the impending “fiscal cliff” (i.e. the impending combination of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration), which is projected by the CBO to put the economy back into recession. Like much of Obama’s economic policy, however, his deficit plan is unlikely to pass through the Republican-controlled House.

Indeed, because the Democrats do not control Congress, the only thing that Obama can be guaranteed to do in his second term is to cement the achievements of his first term. Two of his main accomplishments, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), a banking and financial sector reform law and the Affordable Care Act, still have major provisions that need to be implemented. The main achievement of Dodd-Frank was to require regulatory agencies and new committees set up by the law to draft and enact certain regulations of the financial sector. Only one-half of these rules have been drafted however, so Obama will have to fight to get the rest of the regulations drafted. Similarly, most of the important provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate and the ban on gender discrimination by insurance companies, will be enacted in 2014. Since several states are already trying to fight these provisions through both legislation and governor decree, Obama will have to fight, using the courts, personal influence over state governments and possibly legislation, to ensure that the main provisions of healthcare reform get enacted.

On social policy, Obama supports gay rights, gender equality and immigration reform. The most important social policy for Obama is women’s rights, judging by the amount of focus he placed on it in his first term. The President aims to expand free contraceptive access to women, pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims to make it easier for victims of wage discrimination to discover if they are being discriminated against and to seek justice and to try to pass other bills that combat sexual violence and wage discrimination. The President believes that women should be allowed to get abortions, so he will likely oppose potential legislation that restricts access to abortions, both in Congress and at the state level. In terms of gay rights issues, Obama supports legalization of same-sex marriage, although how he plans to achieve this is unclear, as it can only be accomplished by amending the Constitution. He also plans to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which bans hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity) and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for federal purposes. On the issue of immigration, the President’s platform notes his support for reforming and streamlining the immigration process, although his platform lists no explicit reforms. He is a noted supporter of the DREAM Act, which would provide illegal immigrants who are students or soldiers in America with permanent residency status, and he would probably make trying to pass the DREAM Act his biggest goal as far as immigration is concerned. Since he has described his failure to pass the the DREAM Act as the biggest failure of his first term, it is reasonable to expect that he will make pushing for the DREAM Act one of his top priorities in his second term.

Although Obama fought for all of these issues in his first term, the extent to which he would be able to achieve them in his second term is limited due to both the limited Constitutional role of the President and the fact that the House is controlled by Republicans. The most important way that Obama can influence social policy is through whom he appoints to the Supreme Court. Four justices are in their late 70s and are thus likely to retire. The Court, which is split 5-4, is set to rule on cases concerning the constitutionality of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, the constitutionality of affirmative action and California’s Proposition 8, among other important social issues, so who Obama appoints to the Court will have long-lasting effects on social issues.

The foreign policy of Obama’s second term, like his first term, will be centered on slowly ending the War on Terror while preparing to face other, more long-term threats. Obama’s primary foreign policy challenge in his next term will be to ensure that the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan goes well. The success of the withdrawal will be contingent on whether Afghan security forces are able to fight terrorism on their own in 2014 and whether the Afghan government will be able to become functioning, strong and non-corrupt, so the President will likely focus on making these things happen in his second term. Even after the Afghanistan withdrawal, Obama will have to continue to fight terrorism. He will probably continue his policy of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and will have to manage the backlash and opposition that they generate, although he has offered no specifics.

The President’s primary foreign policy plan is to shift American power away from the Middle East and towards Asia. The centerpiece of this effort will be to continue the “pivot” to Asia, which is the rebalancing of American power (especially military power) towards East Asia and especially China. The President promises to shift 60 percent of our military strength to Asia by 2020, an effort that is already underway, and to attack China’s allegedly unfair trade policies, although he probably will not do so due to the risk of starting a trade war. He also will likely reach out to American allies in East Asia, especially India, and continue to invest in military hardware for South Korea and Japan. Unfortunately, he has offered few specifics on other major foreign policy issues, including Iran, the rise of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the economic crisis in Europe. Judging from his first-term’s record, Obama will likely try to reach out to Brazil and India, increase sanctions on Iran while continuing both covert military actions against Iran and create efforts to find a diplomatic way to remove Iran’s nuclear weapons and ignore the crisis in Europe.

Barack Obama has a difficult four years ahead of him. He will have to fix the economy, prevent the deficit from spiraling further out of control, protect the rights of minorities and refocus our foreign policy towards long-term threats, all while having to battle strong Republican opposition in Congress. I wish him good luck. He’ll need it.

U.S. Navy and small craft: Part I

Every few years, the naval brass fret about a new supposedly unbeatable threat to U.S. naval supremacy. In the late '90s, it was diesel-electric submarines. In the last decade, it was Chinese anti-shipping missiles. And right now, the fear of the moment is Iranian small craft. Much of this fear was sparked by a highly-publicized 2002 war game that predicted that the Navy would lose catastrophically in a battle with Iranian small craft. While the methodology of said war game is dubious (see my earlier post on Iran), something still needs to be done to improve the capabilities of the Navy in combating small craft.

It is always prudent to consult history, particularly here. Small warships are as old as naval combat itself, but until recently, small vessels were unable to challenge larger ships because they lacked sufficient stability and freeboard to sail in the ocean, as well as sufficient firepower to even dent the armor of larger vessels, they posed no threat to large surface combatants. This changed in 1866 by the invention of the torpedo, which allowed small boats to successfully defeat much larger battleships. The subsequent introduction of the torpedo boat in 1877 created a panic in naval circles since it was believed that swarms of torpedo boats would allow tiny nations to lay waste to huge, expensive fleets, forever upsetting the balance of power. However, as Mahan observed, these boats were akin to fire-ships in that they were effective at striking fear into the enemy but not very effective at sinking ships. Torpedo boats suffered from the same fates as earlier small craft, plus some new ones: they were dangerous in open waters, had short ranges, could only engage enemy ships effectively at short ranges (at which point they would be ripped up by low-caliber guns), and were too small to carry advanced aiming devices or range finders, a fault that doomed them to inaccuracy. Indeed, early torpedo boats were almost total failures: torpedoes boats in the Russo-Japanese war only sunk one ship that had already been rendered crippled and immobile by battleship fire, and improved torpedo boats in WWI still only sunk one cruiser in the entire war. The destroyer, originally built to defend fleets against the torpedo boat, had largely replaced the torpedo boat by WWI since destroyers were more seaworthy, had a longer range, carried better detection equipment and, most importantly, had guns and depth charges to provide adequate defenses against submarines, aircraft, and surface ships. This trend continued through WWII, where torpedo boats were hampered by increased fleet speeds (which denied torpedo boats the speed and agility advantage they had long relied on) and long-range patrol aircraft, which could detect and defeat torpedo boats before they even came close to an enemy fleet.

Postwar, small vessels again underwent a renaissance. The invention of the guided missile, coupling with the shrinking of electronics, particularly radar, gave rise to the missile boat, a type of fast, short range boat designed to sink larger ships with swarm tactics and then escape speedily. Some larger missile boats could even carry close in weapons systems (CIWS) to defend against enemy missiles and SAMs to protect against aircraft, which ought to have taken away the main liability of torpedo boats: their extreme vulnerability. Initially, it looked as if missile boats were the huge threats that torpedo boats were supposed to be. This is illustrated by several events, especially the famous sinking of the Israeli frigate Eilat by an Egyptian Osa-class missile boat in 1967; the destruction of four Pakistani ships, including a destroyer and two large merchantmen, by Indian missile boats in 1971; and the sinking of five Syrian missile boats by six Israeli missile boats at the Battle of Latakia (the first battle between two fleets of missile boats) in 1973. However, it must be borne in mind that in all three of these engagements, the losers were primarily obsolete ships that lacked defensive countermeasures. The effectiveness of countermeasures, particularly CIWS guns and missiles, has been well demonstrated: the successful use of electronic countermeasures and chaff by the Israelis at Latakia and the effective use of CIWS missiles to defeat anti-ship missiles by the Royal Navy in the Falklands War provide two good examples. Finally, missile boats are still extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks from aircraft and surface ships. To wit, NATO helicopters made short work of the Iraqi Navy's missile craft in the Gulf War, and the U.S. Navy destroyed three Iranian speedboats and one Iranian gunship with aircraft and ship launched missiles in Operation Praying Mantis while taking no casualties.

So the threat posed by Iranian speedboats may not be so dire after all. However, the fact that Iranian speedboats could potentially pose a threat means that the U.S. Navy must create a means by which to defeat this threat. A strategy for defeating Iranian missile boats must be both offensive and defensive: that is, the Navy must be able to both sink Iranian boats and defend itself against attacks by them.

The offensive aspect of fighting Iranian boats is mostly already taken care of. Combat air patrol can be expected to detect incoming Iranian craft and fire on them. However, because Iranian missile boats are small and fairly stealthy, they may be difficult to detect from high altitudes. Thus, it would be prudent to devote a small portion of a carrier's combat air patrol to low-altitude searches for Iranian boats. As the success of helicopter operations against Iraqi missile boats in the Gulf War demonstrates, helicopters can provide a valuable defense against missile boats. However, a helicopter is useless if it is not armed, so the Navy must have its anti-submarine and patrol helicopters carry some kind of light anti-ship missile such as the AGM-65 Maverick (I choose the Maverick because it is currently in U.S. Navy inventory and since its effectiveness against small craft was already demonstrated in the Gulf War) while in the Persian Gulf. Further, surface ships can effectively defeat missile boats using their light guns and anti-aircraft missiles. However, surface ships are useless if they do not detect Iranian craft, so it must be ensured that all Navy ships are equipped with the very latest sensors, and that these sensors are always on.

The main area of concern regarding Iranian missile boats is defense. U.S. Navy vessels are equipped with highly advanced CIWS and electronic countermeasures, which ought to provide adequate defenses against Iranian boats. All Navy ships ought to be equipped with these CIWS guns and electronic countermeasures (ECM). Some ships that currently carry CIWS and ECM ought to carry more of it, particularly the Arleigh Burke flight IIa destroyers (which only carry 1 Phalanx CIWS gun, and ought to carry 2 to give them protection fore and aft) and the Nimitz, Enterprise and Gerald R. Ford class carriers, which all could benefit from more CIWS guns and missiles located in more locations on the ships, to give the carriers 360 degree defensive coverage and redundancy in defenses so that if one CIWS system fails, another can take its place. Also, the U.S. Navy needs to avoid the fate of the INS Hanit (an Israeli corvette hit by a missile because she forgot to activate her countermeasures) and keep ECM and CIWS ready to use at all times, in addition to keeping sensors running at all times to ensure long-range detection of enemy combatants. Finally, to prevent "swarm" attacks, in which vast numbers of small boats overwhelm larger ships by forcing the latter to expend all of their defensive weapons on endless waves of boats, the Navy needs to upgrade all ships to carry AESA radar, which can track more targets than current radars can. Further, U.S. warships ought to carry more ammunition for all of their weapons in order to not get overwhelmed by large numbers of enemies.

Thus, the supposedly lethal threat of Iranian speedboats may not be so scary after all. History has shown that small craft never live up to expectations. The Navy currently has the means to defend itself against any number of small craft attacks, and it can be expected to do so in the event of a conflict. It is probably now time for the naval brass to start looking for the next unbeatable threat to naval supremacy.

Thoughts on Iran

Iran's been in the news a lot recently, so I will share my humble opinion on Iran. Note: I am a Jewish Zionist, so this will be more than a bit biased.

Before anyone can have a reasonable discussion about foreign policy, it's necessary to know what we (the U.S.) wants. In the case of Iran, we want four things: oil, democracy in Iran, a market for U.S. goods, and no Iranian nuclear weapons. The first three make sense on their face, but we need to analyze the third one a bit more. After all, we didn't slap sanctions on France when it got its nuclear weapons.

We're scared of Iranian nuclear weapons for three reasons: First, they could obliterate Israel. Second, they could give their weapons to terrorists. Third, they could use their nuclear weapons to gain leverage and influence, both in the Middle East and abroad.

The first outcome is highly unlikely. Although most pundits consider Iran to be an undeterrable "rogue state" led by maniacs with one goal, that could easily describe Mao's China or the Soviet Union, and yet neither ever initiated nuclear holocaust upon getting their weapons. The Soviet Union, which existed for the sole purpose of spreading Marxism-Leninism at any cost to its own people, never initiated nuclear war. Neither did Mao Zedong, who famously stated "When 900 million are left out of 2.9 billion, several five-year plans can be developed for the total elimination of capitalism and for permanent peace. It is not a bad thing," in other words, that nuclear holocaust is a good thing. Iran's leadership is very rational and self interested, and they will continue to behave as such in the future.

With that in mind, the probability that Iran gives nuclear weapons to a terrorist group is very low. Even the most loyal terrorist organizations can often turn against the nation that sponsors them, as in the case of the U.S. funded Mujaheddin turning into Al-Qaeda. Further, the uranium in a nuclear weapon can be traced back to its source using modern nuclear forensics techniques, so any attack using an Iranian supplied bomb would be immediately identified as an attack by Iran, leading to a swift and deadly retaliation by the west. No self interested state would allow that to happen.
The main concern with a nuclear Iran, then, would be Iran becoming a major regional power and using its influence to spread terrorism, cause instability, and promote undemocratic and unfriendly regimes throughout the region through the use of coups and revolutions. Iran has been trying to do this for a long time, evidenced by its support for Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, Iraqi anti-government militias, and the 2011 attempted Shiite uprising in Bahrain. American military might has a record of providing credible deterrence against potentially harmful regimes, and it can continue to do so in the future. Thus, more troop deployments to the Middle East, coupled with more exercises, can help to credibly deter a rising Iran. Further, more financial and diplomatic aid to U.S. allies (and neutral countries) in the Middle East can strengthen U.S. allies in the region and bring neutral countries over to our side. Thus, in the event that Iran attempts to overthrow a friendly regime, the friendly regime will be stronger and better equipped to defeat an undemocratic uprising. To stop terrorism, small groups of U.S. special operations troops can be deployed to terrorist hotspots to train local forces and root out terrorist cells, in a fashion similar to the highly successful Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines.

However, recent events, such as Iran's ultimatum warning the USS John C. Stennis not to return to the Persian Gulf, or this New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/middleeast/us-warns-top-iran-leader-not-to-shut-strait-of-hormuz.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2), which claimed that the U.S. Navy would lose against the Iranian Navy, make the deployment of troops to the region look like a dangerous option. These fears are misguided. Although Iran has been making a lot of noise about how it won't tolerate any U.S. forces in the Gulf, the USS Abraham Lincoln and her carrier strike group entered the Gulf this morning without incident. Further, the day after Iran issued its ultimatum to the Stennis, her crew reported that the Iranian warships and aircraft in the Gulf were not stepping up their patrols (as would be expected if the Iranians actually planned to take action against the Stennis. The crew of the Stennis reported that the Iranian warships were returning to port, exactly the opposite of what would be expected. The 2002 Navy computer wargame cited by the New York Times as evidence that the Iranian navy would win in a fight over the Straight of Hormuz was highly flawed: the simulation glitched, allowing the Iranian patrol boats to both teleport and regenerate.

Note that I'm not advocating war with Iran. I advocate increased military exercises and deployments to the Persian Gulf region. War with Iran would be a disaster because it would cost an unreasonable amount of money, hurt our image abroad (which would erase our soft power and fuel terrorism), and probably not even work.

Further, sanctions have failed. Economic sanctions have mostly hurt the Iranian people, and have allowed the regime to skillfully paint a picture of unwarranted U.S. aggression that increases support for the regime, the exact thing we don't want. Besides, sanctions hurt the economies of Europe and our East-Asian allies by denying them the oil their economy relies on.

So what would work? The only policy that has seemed to work so far is covert attacks on Iran's nuclear program, such as Stuxnet or the "accidental" explosion of Iran's nuclear facilities earlier this year. However, a better solution would be to persuade Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. This cannot be done with the overtly hostile current regime, regime change is thus needed. The problem of encouraging regime change in Iran is the high probability of a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution (U.S. funded!) which put Khomeini and the current regime in power. To avoid this, we need to covertly fund an opposition group in Iran that aligns itself with U.S. interests. From what I hear from Iranian people, such groups exist. If we can cause such a group to become powerful enough, they could overthrow the government, giving us an ally in the region.

Thus, we could achieve all four of our objectives in Iran fairly easily: lifting sanctions secures our oil, a revolution would spread democracy and give American businesses a market to export to, and increased troop deployments would stop Iranian regional hegemony in its tracks.

Citations:
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Quotes/maoterror.htm
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/23/the_martyr_state_myth
Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, and Program Needs; Joint Working Group of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Counterstrike: The untold story of America's secret campaign against Al Qaeda, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker. Times Books, 16 August 2011.
http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/category/wordpress_tag/iran_sanctions