Don’t Worry Be Gruntled

These are tetchy times in the China relations and journalism biz.  Instead of being disgruntled and contribute to the acrid fug of rancor, I have resolved to be gruntled.

The OED is not particularly helpful on the issue of “gruntled”.  “Gruntled” is identified as a back-formation i.e. a recent modification to a long-standing term, “disgruntled” i.e. "chagrined", which dates back to at least the 17^th century.  Unsurprisingly, the first usage of “gruntled” the OED records is by the playful English wordsmith P.G. Wodehouse.

Leafing through the OED, the China Matters gloss is this:

The root word is “grunt”, an onomatopoeic representation of the sound coming out of the snout of a snuffling hog.

“Gruntle” is the “grunt-thing” a pig’s snout.

By extension the facial area of the pig.

Applied rather colloquially and impertinently to a person’s face.  Contemporary American equivalent “mug”.

First such usage in 1508 with the magnificent The gallowis gapeis efter thy graceless gruntill i.e. You have a mug suited to the gallows.

I infer that “disgruntled” should be understood as an earthy observation that “an unsatisfactory situation has caused an unpleasant expression to distort one’s features” or, as they used to say in polite circles, someone has been put “out of countenance”.

Since most of the human race comes with facial features pre-installed i.e. “gruntled”, there is no “gruntling” going on except in the womb and all one can do after birth is “disgruntle” one’s natural endowment of “gruntle”.

To characterize myself as “gruntled” i.e. having a face, would be somewhat ironic, because I eschew using a personal photo in my on-line profiles.

But since there is a lot of disgruntlement going on, for the time being I’ll try being gruntled.  It's worth a shot.

What if Mandela Were Lincoln?

One of the funniest moments of the Civil War, a conflict admittedly deficient in genuine rib-ticklers, must have been when Union politicians sat down to consider the consequences of the Emancipation Proclamation…

…and realized that the census would convert 3/5 slaves into 5/5 freedmen…

…translating into 12 additional votes for the southern states in Congress and the Electoral College…

…without any compensating provision giving freedmen the vote.

Ohshitohshitohshit…Thanks, Abe.

The 1866 Congress was the inevitable denouement, with the South sending a clutch of CSA political and military veterans to Congress to carry on the tradition of southern obstructionism that had hobbled the Republic pretty much since its inception.

This shall not stand! Thundered the North, and the stage was set for a grinding cycle of Federal Reconstruction designed in large part to enable and bring black votes to bear to dilute white power in the south, including an episode of military rule intended to achieve black political participation at the point of the bayonet.

The North’s successes were partial and equivocal.  Nation-building is tough, even when it’s your own nation.  It took one hundred years (one hundred years!) and the Voting Rights Act for the effective imposition of genuine black suffrage, a key political objective of Reconstruction.  Even today the black vote conundrum lives on in the southern states’ commitment to voter suppression, and a clutch of gerrymandered white districts in the south are able to exert their baleful sway over the House of Representatives.  

The South-free Civil War Congress had been a paradise of progressiveness, pushing through legislation like the Homestead Act and the Transcontinental Railroad that had been blocked by the South.  It’s easy to imagine that if we hadn’t been wrangling with white-dominated southern delegations for the last 150 years, no question we’d have equal rights for all, single payer health care, generous Social Security, our flying cars, our anti-gravity belts…

Reflecting on the great Nelson Mandela, I thought some more about what would have happened if we had let the South go.  

As I opined in a previous post, in the short and medium term, the South might have done rather well.  Cotton was a strategic global resource in the 19^th century, like petroleum is today, and the South had a lot of it.  It also could have expanded its cotton-ready empire by annexing Cuba, Nicaragua, and pieces of Mexico, conquests that had been blocked during the ante-bellum period by Northerners fearful of the increased slaveocracy clout that new states carved out of these territories would have brought to Washington.

But long term, I think the South would have choked on slavery.  In the real after-the-war world, cotton lost its world-conquering magic.  The creaky Southern economy lumbered on only thanks to northern capital, and by leeching off infusions of Federal money, including enormous defense infrastructure spending in the southern states.

What if that money were gone?  And what if the South, instead of exporting to places like Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles the surplus black labor its inefficient economy could not employ, saw its slave population trapped behind the borders of the CSA and become a growing moral, social, economic, and security problem?

You see where this is headed.  In other words, at some point in its history, the CSA would have started looking like the RSA (Republic of South Africa).

And somewhere from the ranks of the black population, a liberator would have risen.

I’m not presuming to make any judgments about whether the road to black equality would have smoother if freedom had been seized at the outset by a black leader and a black movement instead of bestowed by a white politician.  The US struggle produced magnificent black leaders, and South Africa today is no garden spot despite Mandela’s masterful personal and political will.

But it’s interesting to imagine what North America would have been like if the Union didn’t have a Lincoln…and the South had a Mandela.

Del Rosario Eagerly Throws Gasoline on ADIZ Fire...

...But Should Be Worried About the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences

A commenter took issue with this piece in its original form.  I thought his comments about the tone were well-taken, and I've revised the text accordingly.  As an admonition to myself, the chinahand Twitter feed will be updated to "Less heat more light".  Also, he got me to thinking about the ADIZ friction we can expect over the South China Sea and I'm lifting my reply from the comments and placing it here. CH 12/7/13

First of all, I want to apologize for use of the word "stupid". It was inaccurate and inflammatory. I will revise the post accordingly.

Come to think of it, I consider Del Rosario's characterization of the ADIZ as well as the Coast Guard regs inaccurate and inflammatory, and very much part of his strategy to heighten the confrontation between the Philippines and the PRC. I don't see him playing good cop/bad cop with President Aquino; I believe he sees polarization as a mechanism to attract stronger, more overt US and Japanese backing for the Philippines. And, since I don't see the US and Japan providing firm military backing for the Philippines in its dispute with the PRC, I don't see a viable endgame for Del Rosario's strategy--unless he sees benefits for the Philippines in being lined up against the PRC in an economic cold war.

As for the ADIZ, it is as its name indicates an "Identification Zone". It has nothing to do with claiming "domestic air space". The Philippines would be well within its rights (and justified for air defense concerns) to declare its own ADIZ in the South China Sea, overlapping with the Chinese one if need be. I think it would have been good if everybody filed flight plans with everybody else for their aircraft, military and civilian.

Trouble is, the United States and Japan have already defied the Chinese ADIZ on military flights. So the PRC can easily point to the East China Sea precedent if they decide to fly military planes into Philippine and South Vietnam ADIZs without filing flight plans. In other words, the PRC, as a peer power, will always try to achieve parity with whatever measures the United States and, especially, Japan introduce into the regional security equation. When we push on China, remember that China will push back in the same way.

Moral is, I guess, be careful what you wish for.

Original text below

An article in Asia Times Online quoted Philippine Foreign Minister Albert Del Rosario as saying:

"There's this threat that China will control the air space [in the South China Sea] ... It transforms an entire air zone into China's domestic air space," Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario said in response to China's ADIZ announcement. "That is an infringement and compromises the safety of civil aviation ... it also compromises the national security of affected states." 

A couple observations:

1)  This is unmitigated horseshit flapdoodle.
2)  Nobody called him on it.

Remember that Rosario's office also went off half cocked about the PRC Hainan coast guard regulations a year ago:

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said over the weekend that China's reported plan to interdict ships that enter what it considers its territory in the South China Sea is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Because of these reports, coming mostly from the media, the DFA said it would like China "to immediately clarify its reported plans to interdict ships that enter what it considers its territory in the South China Sea".

...

"[It is also] a direct threat to the entire international community, as it violates not only the maritime domain of coastal states established under Unclos, but also impedes the fundamental freedom of navigation and lawful commerce."

The DFA said this planned action by China is illegal and will validate the continuous and repeated pronouncements by the Philippines that China's claim of indisputable sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea is not only an excessive claim but a threat to all countries. 

Anybody remember that?  Anybody remember that the Chinese coast guard regs had nothing to do with freedom of navigation, lawful commerce, or sovereignty over the South China Sea?  Anybody?  Anybody?  Bueller?  Bueller?

The ADIZ hysterics remind me of the Hainan coast guard regs nothingburger controversy, both for the Del Rosario's inflammatory blathering inaccurate characterization and the clueless strutting somewhat superficial approach of the some Western news outlets in reporting the situation.

As I wrote in my piece for Asia Times:

Reuters for some reason continued to beat the Hainan coast guard regulations dead horse with an analysis posted on December 9 that begins: 

Imagine if the U.S. state of Hawaii passed a law allowing harbor police to board and seize foreign boats operating up to 1,000 km (600 miles) from Honolulu.

That, in effect, is what happened in China about a week ago. 

It’s not what happened in China a week ago, either actually or "in effect", as I think can be concluded by reading my ATOl piece.  Even if ATOl is not on Reuters’ radar, Dr. Fravel of MIT (and his commentary at The Diplomat, which is quoted and footnoted below) should be.  ..

And it is a dismal fail as a piece of snark.   The jurisdiction of the state of Hawaii extends 1380 miles from Honolulu to the outermost Northwestern Hawaiian Island, the Kure Atoll. 

For the mathematically challenged Reuters scribe, that’s more than twice as far as 600 miles that supposedly symbolizes the irresponsible overreach of the Hainan provincial government.

We live in interesting times, at least as far as the PRC is concerned.  Entire articles are spun out of threat perceptions, assumptions, inferences, assertions, and indignation.

The stirring call to arms is  the "threat" that "raised concerns".  There is "alarm". 

Facts don't matter.  To quote the song, It's feelings...nothing more than feelings..."

That, by the way, is why my current twitter handle is "Facts are stupid things". 

Facts might be confirmed or rebutted by the focus of scrutiny and concern.  But feelings are a subjective matter for the observer.


The only suitable recourse is "confidence-building"; and in some situations that oppressive sense of threat in the Western bosom is never relieved, no matter what the anxiety-provoking other does.

People with long memories (only me I guess) remember the run-up to the Iraq War, when everything that Saddam Hussein did or didn't do in his efforts to forestall the invasion were insufficient to allay the dreaded concerns.  Until recently, the same tactic was used to declare that Iran was unable to allay the concerns of the international community about its nuclear program.  Now the U.S. is reassured...but Israel isn't.  What's a mullah to do?

The media variation is to blame the victim, i.e. blame the PRC for its disinterest or clumsiness in getting its message across to "allay the concerns" and "build confidence".


The whole concern/confidence-building dynamic is fundamentally flawed.  Make that "logically unsound".  Maybe "intellectually dishonest".

And I think it's deployed when the "concerned party" is unwilling to say what is genuinely on its mind.

For China, the ultimate confidence-building gesture for the West would be "Could the Chinese Communist Party please collapse under a wave of popular democratic unrest, the Chinese economy undergo a painful free market restructuring, and the PLA footprint get shrunk by a combination of budget reductions, mission modification, demoralization, and conciliation by a new pro-Western liberal democratic government?"

Don't be afraid.  Ask for it!

And if you can't get it, start wondering if you're asking for the wrong thing.

We're probably headed in the opposite direction.  Instead of less anxiety/confidence rhetoric, we'll get more of it.

From the same article:

Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are drafting a joint statement to express concern over any "threat" to international civilian aviation. The draft statement, which reaffirms the common positions of Southeast Asian nations and Japan on "maritime security" and "freedom of navigation" in international waters, will be presented at the upcoming Japan-ASEAN summit in Tokyo. 

I don't mind government officials playing the "feelings" card.  It's a negotiating ploy, a way to deflect demands or decline offers that don't pass muster.  (Having said that, I really don't know what endgame Del Rosario has in mind, now that he's taken another step to up the confrontation with the PRC.  I get a feeling the rest of ASEAN doesn't really know, either.)

I really do wonder why the media plays along.   Maybe anxiety genuinely overcomes analytics.  Maybe resentment over the PRC's churlish treatment of Western journalists means that the Chinese position is doomed to short shrift until conditions improve.  Maybe overall loyalty to Western values elicits support for empty Western rhetoric.  Probably, it's realized that the PRC is doing a careful and responsible job of slicing the diplomatic and security salami, but we don't like them and don't want to give them the credit.

That's my feeling, anyway.
 

More Fun With China’s ADIZ

I am unwilling to join the rest of China pundits on the fainting couch, overcome with dismay and disapproval at the PRC’s unilateral declaration of an ADIZ.

All the big kids have an ADIZ.  The PRC has an ADIZ.  I don’t think it’s going anywhere and we should get used to it.

To me, the important story is that Japan is using the ADIZ uproar to claim regional military flight rights that only the United States claims—and civilian flight rights that nobody, including the United States enjoys.

This, to me, is part of Prime Minister Abe’s ambitions to make Japan an independent security peer—and not a tractable ally—of the United States in East Asia.

And I doubt that the United States is particularly overjoyed with that, despite the spate of news analyses along the lines of “America happy that PRC is acting like assertive jerk and provoking security backlash by Asian democracies.”

That’s a point I make in my most recent Asia Times Online piece, Has Abe Overreached on China’s ADIZ? and it’s a point I don’t see anybody else making.

Maybe it’s because I’m a clueless dingbat.  But maybe it’s because the whole “rising Japan” i.e. the threat to US preeminence from an ambitious ally provokes cognitive dissonance for Western journos and pundits fixated on “rising China” a.k.a. the everreliable and easy to conceptualize alien menace.

Anyway, the ATOl piece has some good info on the US ADIZ from an FAA presentation, pointing out that cooperation with the ADIZ regs is an absolute requirement reinforced by a lengthy set of procedures and measures up to and including the scrambling of fighter jets.  

PM Abe’s call on Japanese military aircraft and civilian carriers to ignore the PRC ADIZ is simply irresponsible and, dare I say, “heightens tensions”.

The US-Canada ADIZ dates back to the Cold War, when the ADIZ was a core component of U.S. defense against some Soviet bomber lumbering in and dropping one or more of those gigantic nukes on us.  The ADIZ over North America was supplemented by a series of ADIZ zones covering Soviet access to Atlantic airspace (just as we maintained a picket line against Soviet submarines in order to bottle them up in contiguous Russian waters).

 Until 2006, the Iceland ADIZ was policed by the 85^th Group (the “Guardians of the North” as their motto stated) of the USAF 48^th Fighter Wing based in the UK.

 

Nowadays NATO members patrol the airspace of Iceland, the Baltic republics, and the Balkan states to protect Russia from surprise attack (just kidding!).

Airspace over Greenland is pretty much in the hands of the American airbase at Thule. 

Further down, the ELK Area (the area off the coast of Newfoundland between Iceland and the US East Coast) is under the control of the Canadian Maritime Command (CONMARCOM).  Nobody flies into that zone without filing a flight plan. (pg. 24).

4. In the interest of flight safety it is essential that CANMARCOM be informed in advance of all flights or proposed flight in or through Area ELK. Aircraft flight level(s), track and approximate times of ELK penetration and exit are required. Military aircraft are encouraged to communicate directly with CANMARCOM. On prior request,frequencies will be assigned on which to report position and obtain ELK clearance. ASW aircraft will be routedclear of all known military and civil traffic.

And, in a heads-up for an overly enthusiastic critic on ATOl comments, the ELK region covers the southerly flightpath between the North American mainland and Iceland, which could be employed by planes entering the ADIZ but flying PARALLEL to the US coast (There has been a lot of misleading chaff about how the Chinese should not be allowed to hassle planes that are flying parallel to their coastline but not on a heading to penetrate PRC airspace.  Before you enter the US ADIZ on any heading, you are required to file a flight plan.  Inside the ADIZ you are required to turn on your identification and altitude transponders, respond to radio calls, and obey instructions from fighter jets if they scramble to intercept.  No exceptions for parallel flight.  Especially since my sophisticated aeronautical friends tell me that planes have the ability to turn left and right or, as they say, “port and starboard”.  It wouldn’t make much sense to declare an ADIZ to achieve early warning, then let somebody around inside it to fly really close but PARALLEL to the coast without filing a flight plan and hope the guy doesn’t turn right at the last minute and launch a missile.)  

To me, the whole parallel flight thing is a canard; more specifically, an attempt by the United States to avoid the completely untenable position of denying the PRC’s right to declare an ADIZ, but at the same time find a way to give some aid and comfort to Japan by trying to carve out an exclusion for Japanese flights along the Chinese coastline and headed to the Senkakus.

With the rise of the ballistic missile, the strategic bomber justification for the US/Canada ADIZ has evaporated.  But the U.S. is pretty serious about the ADIZ in order to interdict drug smuggling and deal with terrorism.

Since 9/11, the ADIZ has been supplemented by TFRs--Temporary Flight Restrictions—within the United States, usually in relation to presidential travel.  US fighter jets also provide security patrols for matters of tremendous national importance—like the Super Bowl!  (Unless, as the FAA illustration implies, we are trying to deter our enemies with the inexpensive alternative of unconvincing Photoshopped images).

In discussing the last component of the US ADIZ,  Alaska, a website that is apparently equally devoted to Sarah Palin and opposed to President Obama provided this nugget from 2012:

It is being reported that two Russian Bear bombers were intercepted while flying near the west coast of the United States on the 4th of July, an obvious taunt from the Russians on our nation’s most important day.

This is the second incident in the past two weeks, where Russian nuclear capable bombers have entered, or come near U.S. air space. 

This is nothing new, as the Russians are known to violate American air space often. On Sarah Palin’s watch, as Governor of Alaska, and Commander-in-Chief, the Alaska Air National Guard’s 176th Wing routinely escorted the Russians out of Alaskan air space. In fact, the 176th received the Air Force’s Outstanding Unit Award for its service to the nation . Part of the citation noted:

The 176th Air Control Squadron maintained North American air sovereignty by detecting, monitoring and escorting 22 Russian bombers from within its area of operations.

As you can see, the 176^th Air Control Squadron is an Air National Guard outfit, not a USAF operation.  About 90% of US air defense is handled by ANG units.  And, yes, on the occasions that George W. Bush flew for the Texas Air National Guard as part of the 147^th Reconnaissance Wing , we can assume he was patrolling the US ADIZ.