I always read the Pentagon's flag officer announcements, mainly to see if someone I know has gotten an interesting job. (It is nice to see people I knew as majors are now making three and four stars. Unfortunately, it also reminds me that people who joined the military when I started covering the Pentagon are retiring.)

In this case, I don't know Rear Adm. Metts, but I sure found the move of this information warfare specialist interesting. Maybe the U.S. government is going to respond more actively to the stream of Chinese intrusions into American government and business computers:

Rear Adm. (lower half) Willie L. Metts will be assigned as director for intelligence, J2, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.  Metts is currently serving as deputy chief, tailored access operations, S32, National Security Agency, Fort Mead, Md. 

And yes, that is the way the press release spelled Fort Meade.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Amidst the more comical propaganda intended to intimidate coming out of North Korea this week was this video of the country's military dogs.

Unless these dogs are high on methamphetamines, the footage has clearly been manipulated, sped up as they launch over walls and through half-lit rings of fire moving at herculean speeds. As the handlers shout and make angry gestures, the dogs pounce on paper likenesses of South Korea's defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin (NoKo's "Enemy No. 1"). Tactically speaking, these dogs -- of which there appear to be only five or six -- have all the precision and training of a rabid mob. I suppose that might be frightening in its own right, but it would be a mistake to assume a military dog is a super threat just because he/she is savage. The really "dangerous" dogs are the ones who are impeccably controlled by their handlers.

So, who should be afraid of North Korea's war dogs? Probably no one.

I sent the clip over to a career dog handler over at the USAF Academy, Kennel Master Chris Jakubin, who after viewing the footage of NoKo's dogs attacking stuffed mannequins said it had the intimidating power of a Benny Hill skit. All it needs, he said, is the music.

By Lt. Gen. John H. Cushman, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Best Defense guest columnist

This is what the president should say:

Organs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have recently made announcements of that nation's readiness to attack with long range weapons targets of the United States.

It is time for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to cease such behavior and to join the community of nations.

The United States has no intention to attack the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

If under any pretext the Democratic People's Republic of Korea attacks the United States, we will respond with devastating might. Their nation will be a wasteland.

Leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have built military weaponry that can serve no useful purpose.

I repeat, it is time for them to cease such behavior and to join the community of nations.

End of conference

General Cushman commanded the 101st Airborne Division, the Army Combined Arms Center, and the ROK/US field army defending Korea's Western Sector. He served three tours in Vietnam. He also is author of Command and Control of Theater Forces: The Korea Command and Other Cases (1986).

By Alexander Sullivan

Best Defense department of psynology

Contrary to some of the more sensationalist appraisals of China's rise in world rankings, David Shambaugh argues in his new book, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, that despite China's undeniable achievements, it has succeeded in becoming a global actor but not a global power. Hence the word "partial."

Shambaugh, a George Washington University political scientist, introduced his book last week in a February 13 talk at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He focused less on China's "vertical" rise -- its skyrocketing GDP and increasing military sophistication -- than on the extent of its "horizontal" expansion of its influence to the rest of the planet. He analyzed China's current global presence along five vectors: diplomacy, global governance, economics, culture, and security.

China has expanded its reach in most of these areas: It is the world's second largest economy and possibly the largest trading nation; it has relations with over 170 countries; it sits at the main table in most global multilateral fora; its official media outlets are opening new bureaus abroad; and it just launched its first aircraft carrier to lead its navy ever farther out in the Western Pacific. But according to Shambaugh, all the government's efforts along these lines have yielded precious little in the way of real power, as understood by people like Joe Nye -- that is, influence exerted to make actor A do thing X.

On the face of it, Shambaugh's conclusions are not unwarranted. China remains a "lonely power" with few genuine friends in the world. Increasing assertiveness in the East and South China Seas has helped roll back diplomatic gains made in its neighborhood since the Asian financial crisis, and even in African and Latin American countries where Chinese investment dollars (untrammeled by governance guarantees) had gained fast new friends, the picture is becoming less rosy.

One of Shambaugh's most interesting arguments is that while China's economic statistics are worthy of admiration, its "multinational" corporations have abysmal international brand recognition and an overall poor track record of breaking into overseas markets, calling into question whether China's corporate sector is really as much of a global business player as it is assumed to be.

He acknowledged that China has tremendous latent potential as a true global power and that its capacities will likely increase. What provoked by far the most interest during the Q&A session was one of his explanations for why China has so far failed to convert its potential into power, namely that Chinese elites are divided over China's identity in the world and the values it should represent. The lack of coherence among decision-makers in China, he said, has been one of the biggest impediments to their effective exercise of power. Absent consensus, the one thread that runs through it all (yi yi guan zhi) is poorly disguised, narrowly defined self-interest, which inevitably provokes counterbalancing by other international actors.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on June 7, 2010.

Interesting comment on U.S.-China relations from Defense Secretary Gates in Singapore over the weekend:

Last fall, President Obama and President Hu made a commitment to advance sustained and reliable military-to-military relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. The key words here are "sustained" and "reliable" -- not a relationship repeatedly interrupted by and subject to the vagaries of political weather.

Regrettably, we have not been able to make progress on this relationship in recent months. Chinese officials have broken off interactions between our militaries, citing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as the rationale. For a variety of reasons, this makes little sense:

First, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are nothing new. They have been a reality for decades and spanned multiple American administrations.

Second, the United States has for years demonstrated in a very public way that we do not support independence for Taiwan. Nothing -- I repeat, nothing -- has changed in that stance.

Finally, because China's accelerating military buildup is largely focused on Taiwan, U.S. arms sales are an important component of maintaining peace and stability in cross-strait relations and throughout the region."

Zakaria has more on Beijing's new arrogance.

(HT to AD)

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 20, 2009.

In the year 2000, the PLA [People's Liberation Army] had more students in America's graduate schools than the U.S. military, giving the Chinese a growing understanding of America and its military."

(p. 27, 2008 Joint Operating Environment, a study by the U.S. Joint Forces Command)

(Hat tip to my very smart CNAS colleague Nirav Patel on this)

By Stacy Bare
Best Defense bureau of veterans' affairs

There is no easy way to discuss the issue of veteran entitlement in America. It is a sensitive topic and that there are those veterans among us who have an issue with what entitlement is, perhaps a natural reaction. It is also a reaction that our strategic leadership should have foreseen. When you are part of the 1 percent who serves repeatedly and you come home to a country where most people are absorbed with  Jersey Shore, the Karadashians, or Michael Vick's dog trial but can't find Afghanistan on a map nor pick out the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a lineup, it is easy to feel like society owes you something. That is, however, not why we choose to serve and is antithetical to the nature of service and duty.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, America was encouraged by our president to go back to the lives we were used to living. We were not asked to gird ourselves for sacrifice, for war, for men and women who would come home disconnected and misunderstood by their communities; at worst, broken and bruised emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Since then, the men and women who served our nation have come home to a country that had little understanding of the war or what the war had done to our minds and bodies. Since Korea, our veterans have deserved better, but America was not ready then, nor were they now, for the wars of the last 11 years.

America panicked, and rightly so; we did not want a repeat of what happened during and after Vietnam. America did something and a lot of it. Something, however, does not always equate to the right thing. In our attempt to heal, to be generous, and to be thankful to those who volunteered to serve, America inadvertently created a cadre of veterans for whom nothing would ever be good enough and at times dis-incentivized reintegration back home. Our country was good enough to go fight for, why isn't it good enough to come home to?

We've got a lot of work to do in this country: It isn't just veteran issues that need fixing, and veterans can and should take an active leadership role. For example, roughly 1,000 service members have lost an arm since we started the war in Afghanistan. An estimated 30,000 Americans will lose an arm this year alone. Here is our opportunity to be a hero, to be a real warrior even without our uniform, to be  leaders in our communities. To embrace that challenge is a decision we as veterans have to make.

Our generation is easily the best supported generation of veterans since those of World War II. A lot of the something America has done is necessary, needed, and deeply appreciated. However, we have been nervous to say out loud that service alone should not guarantee free admission and the front of the line every time for every service member.

So what do we do?

We need to follow the examples of those veterans who have politely said "No ,thank tou" to the handouts and asked instead for a hand up, an opportunity to excel, a level playing field -- not free admission. We as veterans need to create a return on investment for the sacrifices and resources we're being given by a grateful nation and we need to stand beside America in the long hard work of creating a better future for younger generations, not just wait for free tickets to the next baseball game.

I personally think we should ignore North Korea to the degree possible, and respond only indirectly, at times and places of our choosing. Like just freezing the regime's personal accounts whenever they are detected. Or quietly messing up luxury goods being shipped to North Korea.

Here's a take of one of my CNAS colleagues.

By Bailey Culp
Best Defense East Asian provocations deputy bureau chief

Things are certainly heating up on the Korean peninsula. Just yesterday, it was reported that North Korea had killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded three civilians after firing artillery rounds onto Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea. This provocation comes a few days after the revelation of a modern nuclear enrichment facility and only a few months after the sinking of the Cheonan, when North Korea is reliably reported to have torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel and killed 46 sailors.

As it happens, on Monday I strolled over to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to see what the illuminati were thinking about NoKo. The discussion began with an analysis regarding North Korea's recent nuclear development, publicized in a report by scientist and Stanford professor Siegfried S. Hecker, who visited Yongbyon Nuclear Complex earlier this month. According to one panelist, this news "confirms our worst suspicions." Nevertheless, while it comes as a surprise that the facilities are much more sophisticated than we expected, it is no surprise the North Koreans were seeking to advance their nuclear capabilities and have improved upon existing infrastructure.

Bottom line is that North Korea seeks survival as its core interest, but we don't know quite what the regime is willing to do to achieve survival. Recent provocations help gauge the levels of vulnerability felt by the North Korean regime and are indicative of how far the regime will go.

Ultimately, the United States is going to have to accept North Korea for what it is, a small, troublesome possessor of nuclear weapons, rather than what we want it to be -- a denuclearized, internationally compliant nation. This does not mean the recent actions of North Korea will be excused or that neighboring countries will acquiesce to its continued provocations. It is difficult to take the offensive with a regime so shrouded and unpredictable, and that has nothing to lose and everything to gain, so it is likely the international community will remain on the defensive, seeking to contain this mess until it eventually, sooner or probably later, somehow collapses.

Here is a conversation with my officemate, Robert Kaplan, who has written a lot of interesting books, and has a new one out today, titled Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, about the growing political importance of the Indian Ocean basin.

If after reading this you want more, come on down the evening of Nov. 9 to his CNAS book rollout, hear him talk, buy a book, and get it signed. And if you mention "Best Defense" Bob might give you a free beer. Register here.

Best Defense: What made you turn to the Indian Ocean as a book subject?

Robert Kaplan: In 2006, I saw a few references to the Indian Ocean in military journals. So I did what I always do when hunting for a new project, I consulted an atlas. As I stared at the map, the book began to emerge in my mind: Here was the entire arc of Islam from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago. Here was the global energy interstate, through whose waters pass the hydrocarbons from the Middle East to the middle class cities of East Asia. Here was a vehicle to get beyond Islam as strictly a phenomenon of Middle Eastern deserts and take in its green, tropical allure in the Far Eastern seas as well. Here was a way to connect the issues of Islam and China in one book. Another influence upon me was the teaching post I had at the time at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where I met colleagues who had experience on warships in these waters, and they told me their stories.

BD: What do you think will be the biggest surprise in the book for readers of this blog?

RK: This blog has tended to concentrate, as it should, on the wars of the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, messy land wars where counterinsurgency is a doctrine that the U.S. military is pursuing. This book takes military issues beyond those of the day, and suggests a future where our challenges may be primarily maritime. China and its naval rise, and the possible threat it poses to the Indian Ocean and adjacent South China Sea, figure prominently in this book, while Iraq and Afghanistan figure barely at all. Central Asia figures, though, because it will one day be linked by roads and energy pipelines to the Indian Ocean. Pakistan figures heavily, but here, too, I concentrate on what the media has generally ignored: the restive provinces of Baluchistan and Sindh on the Indian Ocean. The surprise of this book is that future wars and conflicts may be vastly different than the ones of the moment. Instead of fighting neighborhood by neighborhood in Baghdad or Kandahar, we may in the future have to influence vast spaces on the map through naval maneuvers.

BD: Some of your previous books have had dark scenarios and descriptions. Is this book also pessimistic?

RK: No. This is my most optimistic and -- hopefully, that is -- nuanced work. Of course, the reader will be the judge of that! The interweaving of civilizations in the Indian Ocean is incredibly complex, and it was a real struggle for me to adequately communicate it. It was certainly the hardest book I ever wrote -- the book where I did more reading and research than any previously. As I get older, writing just gets more difficult and complicated. I did not set out to be an optimist. But my conclusion is that the Greater Indian Ocean is evolving into a vibrant, multipolar trading system reminiscent of the Muslim and Chinese trading systems that preceded Vasco da Gama in these waters. And for the United States to maintain its power it will have to listen more to the yearnings of hundreds of millions, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who are not concerned with al-Qaeda, but with attaining a middle class standard of living. If you want to hear the authentic voice of the emerging, former third world, watch Al Jazeera, and maybe dip into my book.

BD: What do you think you will write about next, and why?

RK: I have started writing a book about geography, about the great geographers of the past and how to incorporate their sensibilities in order to approach places like Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey in hopefully a new and original light. Whereas, Monsoon involved enormous traveling, this next book involves endless reading. I don't believe we have overcome geography, despite the jet and information age. The Hindu Kush, the Tibetan and Iranian plateaus, and the riverine wastes of Siberia, to name a few examples, still matter to international politics, as they deeply affect the behavior of nations. As Napoleon said, if you want to know a nation's foreign policy, inspect its geography. That's what I am now trying to do.

Armed Forces Journal has a good piece on "10 American myths about the Chinese navy." One of the authors just got back from a gig as assistant naval attache in Beijing. This is a sentence that gets my attention: "The PLAN understands the U.S. Navy far better than the U.S. Navy understands the PLAN."

Naval War College Review does its job and parses out the bubbling issue of the long-range MIRV'd Chinese anti-ship missiles. Here's the Chinese Communist Party's take: "China will never abuse its anti-ship missile capacity and launch strikes against foreign carriers without a justified reason." Feel better now? More on the People's Liberation Army Navy here. 

Bottom line: It is time to invest less in manned aircraft for aircraft carriers, and more in stealthy, long-range UCAVs. (For the non-illuminati, that's "unmanned combat aerial vehicles" -- in other words, the wave of the future.) And if you can figure out a way to short sell the current generation of aircraft carriers, you can get rich.   

Meanwhile, the new issue of Parameters, which used to be an interesting magazine, wraps up the Google vs. China situation. Bottom line: The Chinese offensives are great for people looking for nice fat infowar contracts from the Pentagon.

And AEI, the think tank that never saw a war it didn't like, approves of the Obama administration's emerging China policy. Hmmm -- who thinks that is a good sign?  

Finally, Paul Krugman discusses the clear and present problem China presents. Hint: It is financial, not military.

Yesterday I was reading the transcript of comments Gen. J. Lawton Collins made at Fort Leavenworth in 1983. "Lighning Joe" Collins was one of the few generals to fight in both the Pacific and the European theaters in World War II, and to my knowledge, the only one successful in both. (Generals Eugene Landrum and Charles Corlett, not so much.) So I was interested to see Collins conclude that the Germans were better fighters:

They were radically different. The German was far more skilled than the Japanese. Most of the Japanese that we fought were not skilled men. Not skilled leaders. The German had a professional army. . . . The Japanese army was very much like ours in a sense. They had a small corps of officers who were professionals. But the bulk of their people were not professionals in the sense of knowing their business and so on. They didn't have the equipment that we had. They didn't know how to handle combined arms-the artillery and the support of the infantry-to the same extent we did. They were gallant soldiers, though. They fought to the end and you had to knock them off-that was all there was to it. And we had to do that right on Guadalcanal. . . . The Japanese were very gallant men. They fought very, very hard, but they were not nearly as skillful as the Germans. But the German didn't have the tenacity of the Japanese."

Tom again: Still, I think the Pacific war, conducted on remote islands where the enemy would fight to the death, probably was the tougher fight, even if the foe wasn't as skillful or as well-equipped.

For a long time I have been content to let North Korea slowly implode on its own timetable. But if they are going to get all hostile and sink other nation's ships, maybe it is time to put them on 24-hour lockdown. Or maybe the French could just start greenpeacing NoKo ships in random world ports, especially ones carrying luxury goods for the Korean monarchy.

Update: It looks like my theory will be tested somewhat, as North Korea just announced that it severing all ties to South Korea, and the SoKos are saying NoKo ships can't transit their waters. If the NoKos are really frisky, they may even lob something at a U.S. warship. 

Ethan Guttman has a fascinating piece in World Affairs Journal about China's efforts to track and quash dissidents through computer surveillance. The centerpiece of the article is an interview with Hao Fengjun, a former Chinese government surveillance expert from the secret "6-10 Office" who defected and now lives in Australia.

When he joined that security office in 2000, Hao was surprised to find extensive files on Falun Gong members. "Every person's specific details -- including family member information, everything of everything, how many practitioners in each district, how many coordinators, et cetera... These things are not something that can be done and collected in just one or two years."

Following the 1999 official crackdown on Falun Gong, Guttman writes, its members

were isolated, fragmented, and searching for a way to organize and change government policy, they jumped online, employing code words, avoiding specifics, communicating in short bursts. But like a cat listening to mice squeak in a pitch-black house, the ‘Internet Spying' section of the 6-10 Office could find their exact location, having developed the ability to search and spy as a result of what Hao describes as a joint venture between the Shandong Province public security bureau and Cisco Systems.

The defector also tells Guttman that the "6-10 Office" also sent out false refugees to track overseas activity and undermine dissident organizations. These phonies were

young, trained to mimic Falun Gong behavior, and holding paperwork confirming time spent in laogai, China's penal system. ‘No matter how clever the Australian or the American government is,' Hao told me, ‘they have no way to distinguish the real [Falun Gong refugees] and the police officers.'

If you are going to read one magazine article today, let it be this one.

Meanwhile, the State Department is giving $1.5 million to an internet freedom group with ties to Falun Gong.