Namhae Front
 | |
| Abbreviation | NF |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2 October 2015 |
| Founded at | Sunju, Menghe |
| Type | Military alliance |
| Headquarters | Sunju, Menghe |
Membership | |
| Nguyen Sam Sulaiman | |
| Jŏng Do-hyŏn | |
The Namhae Front (Menghean: 남해 전선 / 南海戰線, Namhae Jŏnsŏn), officially the United Front for the Defense of South Sea States, is a collective security organization in Septentrion. It consists of Menghe and its minor allies in Hemithea and North Meridia, and was founded in 2015 after the Innominadan Crisis, consolidating a number of separate bilateral security agreements into a single framework. Its stated mission is to prevent foreign powers, especially members of the Entente Cordiale, from engaging in acts of aggression in the region around the South Menghe Sea. Member states agree to come to the aid of any member which is attacked, and a unified command structure allows greater coordination between member states' militaries.
Critics of the Namhae Front regard it as a legitimating veil for Menghean influence over its satellite states. The Namhae Front's internal decision-making structure gives disproportionate influence to Menghe, its largest military spender, and all of its theater commanders are Menghean nationals or graduates of the Menghean National Defense Academy.
History
Prior to 2015, Menghe mainly engaged in security diplomacy through a series of bilateral agreements. It signed mutual defense treaties with Polvokia in 2003, following the Polvokian Civil War; with Ummayah in 2005, following the Ummayan Civil War; and with Azbekistan in 2011, following a conflict with Khalistan and Anglia and Lechernt. These treaties, however, had no multilateral collective security linkage, and did not provide any institutional conduits for joint command and cooperation.
This resulted in disjointed military cooperation during the Innominadan Crisis, when Menghe launched an invasion of Innominada under the guise of forestalling an EC intervention. Polvokia contributed troops and warships to the operation, but these forces did not coordinate well with the Menghean Army and Navy and saw limited action. Ummayah and Azbekistan increased their military readiness against EC allies bordering them (Naseristan and Khalistan, respectively), raising the specter of uncontrolled escalation and provoking Menghean diplomats to pressure their forces to stand down. With Innominada's partition, the Special Liaison to Innominada secured Menghean oversight of Innominadan forces in the southwest zone, but only on a provisional basis.
Menghean diplomats responded by pushing for a more institutionalized organization which would consolidate Menghe's fragmented diplomatic ties into a single alliance system. Representatives of the six founding member states met in Sunju on October 1st-2nd, 2015 to sign a treaty formally establishing the Namhae Front. The 2015 Sunju Summit also produced a joint declaration affirming the principles of sovereignty, cooperation, and mutual friendship, which provided the normative backdrop for the new organization.
Role and functions
Collective security
The stated mission of the Namhae Front is to protect member states against imperialist aggression by foreign states, particularly members of the Entente Cordiale. Full members agree to the "two-point program for collective defense" spelled out in Article 12 of the organization's founding charter:
- If any member state is attacked by a foreign power, it may call on the Namhae Front Central Office to issue a joint declaration of war against the aggressor.
- If the Namhae Front Central Office issues a joint declaration of war, all member states agree to enter the conflict if called upon to do so.
Two features of this two-point program are worth highlighting. First, the Central Office, which is heavily influenced by Menghe, exercises some discretion over whether to invoke Article 12 and call other Namhae Front members to war. This serves as a potential brake on escalation, allowing Menghe to limit Namhae Front involvement in minor border skirmishes and restrain aggressive member states.
Second, while Clause 2 of Article 12 implies that a joint declaration of war would follow a member's defensive call for aid, it can be interpreted as allowing the Namhae Front to order a first strike in the absence of a foreign attack under Clause 1. Menghean military doctrine has historically emphasized the ability to exercise a pre-emptive strike against enemy forces under the guise of "counter-offensive defense." Thus, while the Central Office has the power to obstruct the calling of allies in a defensive war, it can also call allies to engage in an offensive war.
Training and advising
Article 23 of the Namhae Front charter provides for the exchange of officer cadets between member states, as a means to improve the quality of military training and share insights in military doctrine. In practice, this mainly involves the training of foreign officer cadets at the Menghean National Defense Academy, the Songsu-do Naval Command College, and the Anchŏn Naval Officers' Academy. Overseas officer training was particularly important to Ummayah, Argentstan, and the Republic of Innominada, whose previous officer staffs were purged after regime change, as well as Azbekistan, whose military performed poorly in its 2010 conflict with Khalistan.
Article 24 allows the Central Office to attach Namhae Front military advisors to the armed forces of the Namhae Front states. In addition to providing continued training in doctrine and operational art, these advisors can provide direction to national militaries during periods of conflict.
In practice, the flow of training expertise predominantly flows from Menghe outwards; the Menghean Army and Menghean Navy have seen steady improvements in professionalism since the 2005 Menghean military reforms, and Menghe is the originator of Fluid Battle Doctrine, an influential school of maneuver warfare. The successful opening stages of the Menghean invasion of Innominada had a particularly strong impact in establishing the competence of the Menghean officer corps. In other areas, however, Menghe has drawn on local knowledge from other Namhae Front members, particularly in the conduct of counter-insurgency operations.
Intelligence sharing
Namhae Front members and observers are encouraged to share intelligence information with one another through the Intelligence Bureau of the Central Office. The intelligence agencies of certain member states are also believed to operate back-channel pathways for sharing particularly sensitive or urgent information. In addition to information on external threats, Namhae Front intelligence sharing is believed to include information on internal threats, such as the movement of dissidents across borders.
Non-interference
The norm of non-interference, laid out in Article 8 of the Charter, affirms that all member states will refrain from interfering in one another's internal affairs and will exercise respect for each other's political, cultural, and economic systems. This clause echoes the organization's stated goal of opposing imperialism and forced regime change.
An exception clause in Article 13 states that domestic interference is permitted if a legitimate authority of any member state calls upon other member states to assist the suppression of an internal security threat. This clause ostensibly exists to allow cooperation in counter-terrorism and counter-espionage missions, but it also provides the justification for Menghe to send troops to put down anti-regime protests or insurrections in member states.
During the Innominadan Uprising, Innominadan Foreign Minister Mateo Moya issued an Article 13 communique requesting an intervention to restore order in the country. This provided the official justification for Menghe to launch Operation Mallet, in which the 5th Army under General Bang Su-gŭn deposed Prime Minister Hernan Martínez and replaced him with an interim military council under General Thanasak Chaychna. Because Moya acted without approval from the Martínez government, and because the authenticity of the Moya communique is disputed, critics regard this as a violation of the non-interference norm in the Namhae Front's internal relations.
Hub-and-spoke structure
While it is ostensibly a multilateral organization, in many ways the Namhae Front functions like a web of bilateral ties. Scholars have referred to it as a "hub-and-spoke system," in that it places more importance on Menghe-satellite ties than satellite-satellite ties. Most important decisions, such as the calling of members to war, lie with the Central Office in Sunju, and the weighted voting structure gives Menghe veto power in all decisions. The higher officers in the joint command structure are almost exclusively Menghean nationals, and all of the joint command theaters mainly consist of a mix of Menghean and local forces, with few overseas units from other member states. There is relatively little room for other member states to negotiate collectively with Menghe or set the security agenda.
One benefit of this structure is that it limits the room for unpredictable behavior by smaller member states. Ummayah is controlled by a Shahidic fundamentalist government, and both ex-Innominadan states are led by radical nationalist parties with large territorial claims against out-of-alliance states. The prospect of Menghe blocking Namhae Front support provides a check on any effort by nationalist leaders to launch an offensive war without prior approval.
Organization
Central Office
The Namhae Front Central Office, located in the Menghean city of Sunju, is the administrative headquarters of the Namhae Front. It controls routine peacetime duties such as the planning of international exercises, the exchange of personnel between militaries, and the sharing of intelligence. It is also responsible for issuing joint declarations of war under Article 12 of the Namhae Front Charter.
Each state's voting power in the Central Office Executive Council is weighted proportionately to its military budget. As Menghe is the largest military spender in the organization by a large margin, this effectively grants Menghe the power to make decisions on a unilateral basis. Even so, most routine decisions are approved on a unanimous basis, to present an appearance of unanimity.
Joint command structure
The Joint Command Structure consists of five theater commands, each headed by a Namhae Front affiliated officer of OF-10 rank. In some cases sub-theater commands are also held by a Namhae Front affiliated officer, and in all other cases Army- and Corps-level commands have a Namhae Front liaison officer for advisory and supervision work. Nearly all Namhae Front affiliated officers are Menghean nationals, and nearly all theater commands consist mainly of Menghean and local forces with little cooperation between other minor members.
- Ummayan Theater Command
- Azbekistan Theater Command
- Innominadan Theater Command
- Menghean Southwest Theater Command
- Dzhungestan Theater Command
The official language of the Namhae Front's joint command structure is Menghean. The Menghean language is also used in communication between lower-level Namhae Front units operating in close concert, particularly air and naval forces. Apart from Menghe and Polvokia, where Menghean is the official language, all other member militaries use their native official language for issuing commands below the divisional level when other Namhae Front forces are not involved in the operation. Since 2017, non-Menghean-speaking countries in the Namhae Front have added basic Menghean language skills to their commissioned officer training programs.
Observer states
Observer states in the Namhae Front are not integrated into the joint command structure, and are not covered by mutual defense obligations, but they are permitted to take part in intelligence-sharing agreements, international military exercises, and training exchanges. Some observer states also have bilateral military agreements with other Namhae Front members, including military basing agreements.
Membership
The founding members of the Namhae Front were Azbekistan, Dzhungestan, the Republic of Innominada, Menghe, Polvokia, and Ummayah. Argentstan joined on June 6th, 2018, under a grandfather clause where it inherited membership from the Republic of Innominada.
Qusayn joined in 2015 as an observer state, but its leaders did not commit to full membership, out of a lingering concern for growing too close to Menghe which emerged after the Ummayan Civil War.
Full members
Argentstan- Template:Country data Azbekistan
Dzhungestan
Republic of Innominada
Menghe
Polvokia- Template:Country data Ummayah
Observer states
Criticism
Many international defense analysts regard the Namhae Front as little more than a thin veil intended to legitimize Menghe's influence over its satellite states. The organization's decision-making and command structures force smaller members to engage with Menghe on a bilateral basis, where the balance of voice greatly favors the larger power. Some have gone as far as to argue that the Namhae Front's promotion of a common command language and a shared officer training structure at the MNDA represent a form of cultural imperialism.
Other critics have pointed to the Namhae Front's lack of respect for human rights as evidence that it stands to erode liberal values. Ummayah, Argentstan, and the Republic of Innominada have engaged in particularly extensive human rights violations, including the forced relocation of ethnic minorities and the promotion of Shahidic religious law, yet Menghe and the other Namhae Front members have remained steadfastly silent on these issues. Member states have also collaborated to track the movement of dissidents and shared counter-protest tactics, under the guise of combating terrorism and separatist activity.