Today's Reading Assignments

From OpinionJournal.com:

"The Challenge From China," by Mark Helprin, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and adapted from his recent speech at the Hoover Institution. A brief excerpt:

As we content ourselves with the fallacy that never again shall we have to fight large, technological opponents, China is transforming its forces into a full-spectrum military capable of major operations and remote power projection. Eventually the twain shall meet. By the same token, our sharp nuclear reductions and China's acquisitions of ballistic-missile submarines and multiple-warhead mobile missiles will eventually come level. The China that has threatened to turn Los Angeles to cinder is arguably more cavalier about nuclear weapons than are we, and may find parity a stimulus to brinkmanship. Who will blink first, a Barack Obama (who even now blinks like Betty Boop) or a Hu Jintao?

Also recommended is Bret Stephens' latest Global View column, "From Lebanon to Hezbollahstan." As he writes:

Future historians will look for the precise moment the Lebanese Republic began to transmogrify into Hezbollahstan. Was it the June 2005 murder of anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir – the earliest sign that Syria, whose 29-year military occupation of its neighbor had ended just two months before, intended to reinsert itself by stealth and terror (and with the connivance of Hezbollah)? Was it the role played by the Maronite Gen. Michel Aoun, a hero of the last Lebanese civil war, who returned from exile in 2005 intending to play the part of de Gaulle only to become, after striking a bargain with Hezbollah, another Pétain?

Was it the summer war of 2006, when Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah militarily and, in so failing, gave Hezbollah an aura of invincibility? Was it the unwillingness of international peacekeepers to patrol the Lebanese-Syrian border, thereby allowing Hezbollah to rearm itself after the war? Was it the absence of an effective, or even intelligible, American policy toward Lebanon, epitomized by Condoleezza Rice's decision to rehabilitate Damascus by inviting it to November's Annapolis Middle East conference?

The answer is all of the above: An accumulation of policy mistakes, political dodges and moral atrocities that have nearly killed the "new" Lebanon in its crib.

Festering problems, in opposite corners of the world, waiting for the next administration. And sadly, there are grave doubts about the ability of any of the presidential candidates to address these challenges.

Shot of the Day

A hat tip to Noah Shachtman at the Danger Room, for linking to one of the strangest North Korean photos we’ve ever seen--or, perhaps we should say purported DPRK photos (more on that in a bit). Originally posted at TheFirearmBlog, the photograph shows AK-47 assault rifles mounted on the barrels of S-60 anti-aircraft artillery guns.

Obviously, you don’t need to be an air defense analyst to understand that AKs bolted onto AAA weapons don’t have much value, at least from a tactical standpoint. And in a training role, their utility is only slightly better. The range of an assault rifle is far shorter (300 meters) than the S-60 (12,000 meters), and the ballistics of their rounds are vastly different as well.

Beyond basic proficiency skills (point, aim shoot), a AAA crew wouldn’t gain much training from firing a barrel-mounted AK, instead of the anti-aircraft gun. Besides, how would the gun crews fire the AK-47 as a training device? There’s no sign of a remote trigger device (i.e., a long string) in the photo. And a slow-moving or stationary target on the ground is no substitute for the towed aerial "sleeves" or drones that are often used to train AAA gunners. So much for the idea that the barrel-mounted AKs provide meaningful training.

If the photo is legit (and some folks have their doubts), it would raise additional questions about the training of North Korean AAA crews, and the viability of their air defense system. The radar-guided S-60 is one of the most widely deployed air defense weapons in the DPRK; it forms the background of North Korea’s AAA network. There are literally thousands of S-60s in Pyongyang’s inventory, and despite their age, North Korea remains committed to fielding and sustaining the AD system.

So, if DPRK anti-aircraft crews are using AK-47s as training devices, it could mean that Pyongyang is having difficulty in producing (and maintaining) sufficient quantities of 57 mm ammunition. If confirmed, that would be something of a revelation, since manufacturing 57 mm high explosive shells is a relatively inexpensive and low-tech process.

Put another way: if Kim Jong-il can’t produce enough 57 mm shells for realistic air defense training, things must really be bad in military units that use larger quantities of ammunition, or more expensive rounds (say, artillery and tank units).

Still, we’ll take the photo with a large grain of salt. A PhotoShop prank can’t be ruled out, and some have suggested that the photo isn’t from North Korea, citing the Chinese characters that appear in the background. But that would make the photo even more bizarre.

With China’s huge trade surplus, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is positively awash in cash, and (presumably), they can afford sufficient quantities of 57 mm AAA shells for training—not to mention the more expensive air defense systems that Beijing has acquired in recent years, including the state-of-the-art, Russian-built, SA-20 SAM system.

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ADDENDUM: A former colleague who looked at the photo is convinced it’s from China, not North Korea. To his knowledge, the DPRK never used whitewall tires on military equipment displayed in parades. On the other hand, those 1950s-style tires are often seen on wheeled military vehicles and trailers paraded by the PLA.

Today's Reading Assignment

Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, on "The Power China is Building," in today's Washington Post. You'll find that many of Mr. Schmitt's points dovetail with our thoughts on the looming Chinese threat, found