SPEAKING
FREELY Europe is the missing
link By Emanuele Scimia
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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Pyongyang is
thousands kilometers away from Jerusalem and
Damascus, but the transition of power occurring in
North Korea in the aftermath of the death of Kim
Jong-il (the "Dear Leader" who had been running
the secretive North Korean regime over the last 17
years after succeeding his father Kim Il-sung),
will also have fallouts on the whole Middle East
and North Africa.
Starring actors in the
Asian-Pacific region and beyond (United States,
China, South Korea, Japan and Russia) must take
into account that Kim Jong-il's demise could even
unleash a power struggle within the old-communist
regime of Pyongyang. This
infighting is likely to break
out in the event that Jong-il's third son and
anointed heir, Kim Jong-eun, is unable to
consolidate his grip on power in the foreseeable
future.
The reality is that North Korea's
potential descent into political chaos could speed
up the much-trumpeted comeback of the United
States in Asia. Such a geopolitical shift - first
laid out by United States President Barack Obama
during his last November tour in Australia and
Southeast Asia - would inevitably take shape to
the detriment of other regional flashpoints.
According to the new US Strategic Defense
Guidance - which Obama unveiled on January 5 - the
American military Joint Force will primarily focus
both on Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Yet, it
is hard to think that Washington could face a
conflict in the Korean Peninsula and, at the same
time, deal with the rash of intertwined challenges
looming across the Middle East and North Africa,
not least of all the Arab Spring's effects from
Maghreb to the Arabian Peninsula (with the civil
unrest in Syria in the spotlight), the escalation
of the nuclear threat from Iran, Hezbollah's
increasing clout in Lebanon, the resumption of
sectarian strife in Iraq upon Washington's
withdrawal from this country and the unresolved
issue of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In
addition, the drawdown of US-led International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan
risks to deepen further the instability in this
country as well as in Pakistan.
Faced with
a steady economical and financial crisis that will
result in more than $450 billion in defense cuts
over the next 10 years, the crucial question is
whether the US Joint Force will be able “to do
more than one thing at a time” and not limit
itself to two, as declared by the US Joint Chiefs
Chairman Army General Martin E Dempsey after the
military strategic review's announcement.
The start over the next few weeks of
"Austere Challenge 12", the largest joint
US-Israeli war game ever held, would appear to
confirm Dempsey's words about the US persistent
engagement in more than one strategic theater.
Another yet validation in this regards, for
instance, is the increase of military-to-military
ties between Washington and Djibouti.
United States Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta just visited this Horn of Africa's tiny
country in mid-December 2011, where the one and
only US military base in Sub-Saharan Africa is
home to about 3.000 American soldiers. The outpost
of Djibouti is essential to launch armed
operations against al-Qaeda-related groups in
Somalia and Yemen.
In this broad picture
of volatility in the Near and Middle East, North
Africa and South Asia, President Obama's “Look
Asia-Pacific” policy - which aims eventually at
the containment of China's rise in East Asia -
would need at least a deputy in the Mediterranean
basin to ease the US geostrategic exposure.
Yet, the obvious candidate, the European
Union (EU), is still unable to wield a coherent
common foreign policy, and this even towards its
nearby neighbors. Notwithstanding the EU military
budget is worth $255 billion per year
(second-ranked all over the world after the US and
more than the spending of China and Russia
combined), Europe as a whole finds it hard to act
as a regional security-provider.
The US
attempt to outsource to Europe a leading military
role in what it considers as minor battlegrounds
just failed on the eve of the military
intervention in Libya. In the effort to overthrow
the Muammar Gaddafi's regime, the EU should have
played a major role, with Washington behind the
scenes. But EU members split on the decision
whether supporting the rebellion of the Benghazi's
National Transitional Council against the now late
Libyan dictator and a coalition of willing - under
the umbrella of North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) and the United Nations' mandate - took the
lead in the armed operation.
In light of
what happened for the Libyan crisis, if the
situation in Syria were to collapse, the US should
eventually take the helm of the intervention.
Besides, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can
display a more significant military apparatus than
could be done by Gaddafi and it is not sure that
repeating the formula adopted for the military
action in Libya (dividing the country in two, with
one portion controlled by anti-regime rebels under
Western armed protection) also works in Syria.
Some European countries could at most
participate in another yet coalition under the US
leadership and with a critical position of France
and Turkey. The problem in this perspective is the
spat between Paris and Ankara after last December
22 the French National Assembly passed a law that
punished the genocide of Armenians' denial (before
it comes into force the law needs the French
Senate's go-ahead).
Whether or not Europe
has room to exert an assertive foreign policy on
the Mediterranean chessboard, it will be actually
circumscribed to the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
From this point of view can be seen the “5-plus-5”
summit of Nouakchott (Mauritania's capital), when
last December 11 the ministries of Defense of five
European countries (France, Italy, Malta, Spain
and Portugal) met with their counterparts from
Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia to
devise strategies to tackle the across-the-border
terrorism, not least of all the network of
kidnappers of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM). It is easier to imagine for Europe a
prominent role in handling a potential “Bread
Revolution” in Algeria rather than a multiform
conflict in the Fertile Crescent.
At this
juncture, the string of challenges that is
mounting in the Middle East and North Africa risks
to thwart Washington's rapid fly toward the
Asia-Pacific. Linked by a subtle red line
concerning nuclear proliferation, embattled Syria
and North Korea might push (by accident) the US
into a strategic overstretching, which will be
unsustainable without a proactive support by
Europe along the Koran Belt from Morocco to the
Strait of Hormuz.
Emanuele
Scimia is a journalist and geopolitical
analyst based in Rome.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
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