Courcy's Intelligence Brief - 6 February 2013

Items

• US strategic objectives in Europe under threat

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  In last week’s issue we looked in depth at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s suggestion that Turkey might be ready to give up on its 50-year quest for European Union membership and instead seek membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).  Speaking on 25 January, Erdogan had said: “If we get into the SCO, we will say goodbye to the European Union.  The SCO is better – much more powerful…”  Since then, Erdogan has backtracked slightly, but during his visit this week to the Czech Republic he reiterated his frustrations with the EU’s delaying tactics – and our sources in Ankara say that his public musings on SCO membership need to be taken seriously.  For observers of the European Union, there are also some interesting parallels between Turkey’s growing disillusion and – at the other end of the EU periphery – Britain’s.  Washington is worried about both.

  The European view on Turkey, expressed this week by the secretary-general to the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, is that Erdogan is just trying to prod Brussels into action.  Speaking during a visit to Turkey on 4 February, Jagland said: “I may be mistaken, but Prime Minister Erdogan’s remarks actually represent a call to Europeans to assume a more constructive and positive attitude towards Turkey.”

  Insiders in Ankara say this isn’t quite right.  They say that while Erdogan is not yet withdrawing Turkey’s application, he is saying that the European Union needs to make up its mind one way or another – and that he doesn’t particularly mind if the answer is negative, Turkey just needs to know.  The word in Ankara is that Turkey’s commitment, as has been said recently of Britain, is “wafer thin”.

  This moment has been coming for quite a while, certainly since the Greek half of Cyprus was allowed into the EU in 2004 before reunification with the breakaway Turkish portion, and as representative of the whole island.  Since then, Turkish popular support for membership of the EU has dropped from 70% to 30%.

  A number of commentators have pointed out, and we believe with good reason, the interesting coincidence of both Turkey and the United Kingdom apparently losing interest in EU membership at the same time.  Britain, of course, is a full member, and its disillusion would have more far-reaching consequences for the EU than Turkey’s – which is why the Obama administration has been so open in arguing that it wants Britain inside a strong Europe.

  That is certainly how the US sees its own interests.  And no doubt Washington is equally alarmed by the idea of Turkey moving away from Europe and towards the SCO, particularly if that were eventually to lead to a loosening of Turkey’s Nato membership.  But the problem for the US is twofold.

  Firstly, the disillusion now being displayed by both Turkey and Britain has been gestating for a long time.  It is not a flash in the pan.  Secondly, the core European states, most particularly France, do not share the US’s (or Britain’s or Turkey’s) vision of what the European Union should be – which is precisely why the US is so keen for Britain to stay fully engaged.

  Only this week, France’s President Francois Hollande told the European Parliament that there could be no “a la carte” approach to EU membership.  In comments clearly intended for London, he warned about national interests taking precedence over the interests of the Union.

  There is a growing feeling, not necessarily fully justified, that the EU’s single currency has survived its existential crisis, but (even if that is correct) the parallel disillusion of Britain and Turkey are consequences of the battle for its survival.

  Turkey now understands that the EU is far too preoccupied and inward looking to take the huge decisions necessary to advance Turkey’s membership.  Blocking tactics by Cyprus and Greece will be allowed to persist indefinitely.  In Britain, on the other hand, there is a growing body of opinion which believes that the type of union required to sustain a single currency is very much not the sort of union of which Britain wishes to be a part.

  The US is no doubt right in its assessment of where its own best interests lie, namely with a strong European Union helping to anchor Turkey to the West and with an influential – pro-US - Britain enthusiastically on the inside.  However, there is now a real danger (from Washington’s perspective) that both these strategic objectives will be casualties of the struggle to save the European single currency.  JdeC.

  NOTE: One of Erdogan’s frustrations with the EU, which he expressed forcefully during his visit to Prague, is the EU’s “lack of support” on matters of terrorism.  Erdogan pointed out that the perpetrator of the 1 February terrorist attack on the US embassy in Ankara, Erdem Sanli, had been living in Germany - and he complained: “We cannot seem to receive the necessary support from Europe.  Even when we alert the authorities on suspects and provide evidence of their terrorist acts, we don’t receive attention.  They tell us that they are following those suspects…The European Union needs to distance itself from terrorist organizations.”

• China’s policy a tussle between hawks and lesser hawks

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  Subscribers will have received an ‘Intelligence Update’ during the week, highlighting the growing tensions in the East China Sea between China and Japan.  Since then, in what is the most serious incident to date, it has been revealed that last week a Chinese naval vessel locked its radar on to a Japanese naval ship.  Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called this an “unnecessary escalation”.  He noted, as we had done in recent weeks, that there had been “signs of improvement” in China’s attitude towards the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and that, therefore, “having this one-sided provocative action taken by the Chinese is extremely regrettable”.  This week, we have further insights on the difficulties China is having formulating a coherent policy.

  One of the “signs of improvement” referred to by Abe was, as we reported in our 30 January issue, the speech made by incoming president Xi Jinping at a study session of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Politburo on 28 January.  The emphasis of the speech by the CPC’s new general secretary (who will become China’s president in March) was very much on China’s peaceful rise, with Xi saying that “getting rid of wars and realizing peace is the most pressing and ardent wish of the Chinese people in modern times”.

  There was much more of this, including Xi’s concluding remarks that “China's development should absolutely not be at the expense of sacrificing other countries' interests”.  China’s incoming president said: “We will definitely not do things that hurt others while benefiting us, and shift our troubles onto others.”

  The trouble is that Xi also warned that while China will “persist in taking the path of peaceful development…we will absolutely not give up our legitimate rights and interests and will definitely not sacrifice the state’s core interests”.  In theory it is possible to view this as rhetoric that had to be inserted for domestic audiences and to conclude that the key element of his speech was the seeming return to the emphasis on “peaceful rise”.  Against that, however, is the evidence of actions on the ground, including the incident with the radar last week.

  Nor is it possible, certainly not for a Japan in the firing line, to ignore the hawkish views publicly expressed by a number of Chinese military men.  As we reminded subscribers in our 23 January issue, there is a group of about 20 officers who regularly appear in the media arguing for a hawkish response to Japan, including a military solution.  One, Air Force Colonel Dai Xu, has even argued for a short decisive war.

  Dai’s view, expressed in the CPC’s Global Times last August, is that “the US is bluffing in the East China Sea” and that China “should take this opportunity to respond to these empty provocations with something real”.  He went on to refer to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan as “the three running dogs” of the US in Asia, and he said: “We only need to kill one and it will immediately bring the others to heel.”  Also last August, Rear Admiral Zhang Zhozhong told a state television programme that the US would “run like a rabbit” if China attacked Japan over the Diaoyu Islands.

  On the other hand, only this week reports have emerged of comments made by a top People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general on the importance of avoiding an “accidental war”.

  On 4 February, the Global Times quoted Liu Yuan, political commissar of the PLA’s General Logistics Department, as arguing in an essay on the November party congress that going to war would be falling into the trap set by the US and Japan.

  Liu’s argument is that China is on the last lap of a nearly two century long quest for national revival and that this quest “should not be interrupted by accidental [warfare] again”.  He said: “What the Americans and Japanese fear is that we will catch up with them, which is why they exhaust every possible means to suppress China’s development.  We should not fall into their trap.”

  But Liu’s comments are only marginally comforting.  They may not be hawkish in the sense of Dai Xu and Zhang Zhozhong, but they openly display the deep-seated belief that China is engaged in an elemental struggle for power with the US and its allies.  This is the antithesis of “win-win”.

  Liu argued for the adoption, once again, of Deng Xiaoping’s famous instruction to “keep a low profile, never take the lead and bide your time”.  He quoted Gou Jian, King of Yue kingdom, who slept on firewood and “tasted the gall bladder” to remind himself of “the bitter taste of defeat and to reaffirm his desire for revenge” [our emphasis added].

  The point is this: there are hawks in China arguing for decisive early action, and there are lesser hawks arguing that China should continue to bide its time.  What there are not – at least not in any great numbers or positions of influence or prepared to stick their necks out – are genuine doves.

  NOTE: A key moment in China-Japan relations will be 15 August, and whether or not Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, will visit the Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II.  This remains an open question, but on 5 February Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Abe "thinks that it is a matter of course that a national leader visits Yasukuni for the spirits of those who sacrificed their lives for our country and express respect for them”.

  Abe visited the controversial shrine to Japan’s war dead last year before he became prime minister for the second time in December.  He is on record as saying that it was “extremely regrettable” that he felt unable to visit the shrine when he was prime minister for a year from September 2006.

• Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood maintains the upper hand

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  The decision by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to keep its activists away from the demonstrations centred around the second anniversary of the 25 January revolution looks as if it might have paid off for the MB.

  As a result of this decision, the MB avoided being involved in violent clashes with the opposition, as its supporters were in December in the confrontations over a controversial constitutional decree issued by President Muhammad Mursi in November.  Instead, the MB has concentrated on highlighting the social and medical services it has been offering around the country in a campaign called “Together we build Egypt”.

  The MB’s restraint is likely to pay dividends in the new elections to the People’s Assembly, due in the next three months.  In the public’s mind, the violence around the 25 January anniversary is seen as the fault of the opposition National Salvation Front (NSF).  This is important as the NSF has brought together the hitherto divided forces of the liberal opposition.  The NSF was formed after Mursi’s controversial decree by former presidential candidates Hamdin Sabbahi and Amr Moussa and by the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Muhammad al-Baradei.

  The NSF has also demonstrated a lack of willingness to compromise with an administration that was, after all, elected in a free election.  On 2 February, Sabbahi declared that Mursi’s administration represented only “arrogance, the use of force, and more bloodshed”.  For this reason, he told CBC TV: “We have sided with the street and call for the bringing down of the dictatorship regime and the trial of its figures”.

  The quintessentially Western establishment organization the International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a statement on 4 February bemoaning the opposition’s “clinging to the hope of some extraneous event (demonstrations, foreign pressure, judicial rulings, or military intervention) allowing it to gain power while bypassing arduous compromise and politics”.  The problem as the ICG sees it is that one side – the Muslim Brotherhood - adheres to “a narrow conception of majority rule” while the other holds “to a counter-productive notion of street politics”.

  The ICG could also have added that there seem to be elements within the opposition that would welcome a return of the military to active politics despite the fact that the military was the principal opponent of the revolution.  This perception, too, could work to the Muslim Brotherhood’s advantage in the forthcoming elections.

• Risk pointers

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  *** German and Greek far-right forging links.  According to Bavarian intelligence sources, the extreme right-wing Greek party known as the Golden Dawn has been developing close ties with neo-Nazi groups in Germany’s Bavaria.

  Golden Dawn, led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, calls for an “ethnically pure” Greece.  Its supporters wear military uniforms and swastika-style insignia.  Golden Dawn is showing 12% support in Greek opinion polls and has won seats in parliament for the first time on the back of the eurozone crisis.

  The Bavarian branch of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution says: “Golden Dawn has an international network of contacts and also has contacts with Bavarian neo-Nazis.  These contacts are nurtured through mutual visits and at meetings at right-wing extremist events in Europe.”

  ***China’s hold over North Korea.  As the international community tries to find a way to stop North Korea conducting another nuclear test, the latest figures show the extent to which China now dominates North Korea’s external trade.  Two-way trade in 2012 was up 7% at a record $6bn.  Chinese exports were up 11.6% at $3.5bn while imports were up 1% at $2.5bn.

  Around 60% of China’s imports from North Korea is accounted for by natural resources such as iron ore and anthracite.  In turn, North Korea imported $748m of oil from China in the first 11 months of 2012.

  *** Political repression in Russia.  A Russian website called ovdinfo.org claims that between 4 December 2011 and 31 December 2012 some 5,169 people were detained in Moscow for political reasons.

  A spokesman for the website, Daniil Beylinson, explained what the site considers to be a political detention.  He said: “We consider detentions which occur at events which have this or that political colour, this includes social and ecological issues, to be political detentions.”

  Beylinson says that his group tries to keep “provokers” out of the figures but this is not always possible.  However, he adds: “Even if our figures contain provokers, this is a completely insignificant number compared to the total number.”