WAR 01-09-2016-to-01-15-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-nuclear-warning-shots-idUSKCN0UR0LP20160113

World | Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:36am EST
Related: World

South Korea fires warning shots at suspected drone near border: media

SEOUL

South Korea fired warning shots on Wednesday near an "unidentified flying object" over its border with North Korea, a military official told Reuters, while a news agency said it was a suspected North Korean drone.

The object returned to the northern side of the border following the warning shots, the official at South Korea's joint chiefs of staff told Reuters.

The South's Yonhap News Agency reported that South Korean forces fired about 20 machinegun rounds at the suspected North Korean drone.

The official declined to say how many shots were fired.


(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Tony Munroe, Robert Birsel)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-blast-battle-idUSKCN0UR0HU20160113

World | Wed Jan 13, 2016 2:15am EST
Related: World, Afghanistan

Afghan forces battle gunmen after blast near Pakistani consulate

JALALABAD, Afghanistan | By Rafiq Shirzad


Afghan security forces exchanged fire with gunmen barricaded in a house near the Pakistan consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday after a suicide bomber blew himself up, officials said.

At least six people were killed and 11 wounded in the suicide attack and subsequent fighting, they said.

The attack on the consulate, which comes amid efforts to restart the stalled peace process with the Taliban and ease diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan, resembled an attack on the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif last week.

Witnesses in Jalalabad, the main trade gateway to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan, said heavy gunfire and a series of explosions could be heard and residents and children from a nearby school had been evacuated.

Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said a suicide bomber had tried to join a queue of people seeking visas to Pakistan and blew himself up after being prevented from entering the building.

Two policemen were killed in the blast, the interior ministry said in a statement. Two other attackers took refuge in an empty government guest house nearby, it said.

The area had been sealed off and security forces were engaged in "eliminating" the attackers, it said.

There was no claim of responsibility.

Last week, a group of attackers barricaded themselves in a house and resisted security forces for about 24 hours after a suicide attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The group responsible for that attack has not been identified but the incident fueled suspicion in India about militants sponsored from Pakistan and it cast a shadow over the latest effort to improve relations.

Tension between India and Pakistan has risen since the attack on its consulate and on an Indian air base that killed seven Indian military personnel near their border. India has blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based militants.

A rare meeting between the foreign secretaries of both countries had been tentatively scheduled for later this week, but it is unclear if it would still happen after the attacks.

Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States also met this week to try to resurrect efforts to end nearly 15 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan, even as fighting with the Taliban intensifies.

Pakistan says many Pakistani Taliban militants, who are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, and are fighting to bring down the Pakistani state, have sought refuge in Afghanistan from a Pakistani army offensive.

In Pakistan on Wednesday, at least 14 people were killed in a blast near a polio vaccination center in the southwestern city of Quetta..


(Additional reporting by Ahmad Sultan and Mirwais Harooni in Kabul; Editing by Robert Birsel)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-blast-idUSKCN0UR0ID20160113

World | Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:25am EST
Related: World

Suspected suicide blast kills at least 14, injures 20 near Pakistan polio center

KARACHI

A suspected suicide bomb blast on Wednesday killed at least 14 people close to a polio eradication center in Pakistan's western city of Quetta, police said, with most of those killed policemen detailed to guard vaccination workers.

At least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and one civilian were among the dead, with 20 others injured, officials said, after the explosion ripped through a police van that had just arrived at the center.

"It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene," Ahsan Mehboob, police chief of Pakistan's province of Balochistan, told Reuters. "The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign."

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization says.

Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing vaccines designed to sterilize children.

The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down last year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort.


(Reporting by Syed Raza Hassan; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.bloombergview.com/articl...gement-in-afghanistan-limit-u-s-effectiveness

Declassified

U.S. Forces Tied by Old Rules in Afghanistan

Comments 12
Jan 12, 2016 11:12 AM EST
By Eli Lake

As the Afghanistan war grinds into its 15th year, many U.S. military officers are telling Congress their hands are tied to go after the enemy, particularly the Islamic State, which is building up its presence in the country despite fierce opposition from the Taliban.

Current and former U.S. military officials tell me that the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan is almost entirely focused on the re-emergence of al Qaeda and that strikes against Islamic State leaders are scarce.

Afghan news media reported one such strike over the weekend in the province of Nangarhar. In July U.S. airstrikes reportedly killed Hafez Saeed, an Islamic State leader in what the group has called its Khoresan Province. But U.S. officials tell me the rules of engagement in Afghanistan are highly restrictive.

"There are real restrictions about what they can do against the ISIS presence in Afghanistan," Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told me about the rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Quicktake The Afghanistan War

Thornberry said that the rules of engagement, combined with what he called micro-management from the White House, have led military officers to tell him they have to go through several unnecessary and burdensome hoops before firing at the enemy.

"My understanding is it's a very confused, elaborate set of requirements," Thornberry said. "I think the effect of going through all of that makes it harder for our people to conduct their missions."

He would not get into specifics about the rules, saying, "If the public were able to know all the restrictions placed on our troops, they would be unhappy about it, and if the enemy knew this they would have more of a leg up than they do now."

Col. Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for U.S. Forces, Afghanistan, declined to comment on the rules of engagement for this column.

Congress is focusing on the rules in Afghanistan after Green Beret Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock was killed last week in an operation to assist Afghan national security forces in a battle against the Taliban in Marjah, in Helmand Province. A news site run by special operations veterans called Sofrep reported last week that the restrictive rules were one reason it took so long for a Quick Reaction Force to come to the aid of McClintock's Green Berets when they were pinned down in Marjah.

A Pentagon spokesman last week disputed an element of that report, saying that an AC-130 gunship was never waived off in the rescue mission and that it fired at Taliban positions in the fight.

Nonetheless, some lawmakers are asking more questions. Representative Ryan Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL and Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote Defense Secretary Ash Carter to ask whether the current rules "restrict the immediate use of assets on hand" in the Marjah rescue operation. Eight other Republican House members also signed the letter.

Thornberry told me Pentagon officials have briefed him about the battle, but he still has questions. "I want to know what happened and why and what the other options were," he told me. "Whether it was formal rules of engagement or having to call back somewhere and ask 'Mother, may I.'"

President Barack Obama intended for this fighting to be over by now. He signed off on a plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. At the end of that year, Obama reluctantly agreed to leave a little less than 10,000 U.S. forces in the country. But those forces were no longer technically engaged in a combat mission. They were there to "advise and assist," to use the military's favored phrase.

In the last year, however, U.S. forces and the Afghan soldiers they advise and assist have been very much involved in combat as the Taliban increases its territory, al Qaeda expands and the Islamic State begins to establish its own foothold there.

This newly complex war, and the importance of rules of engagement, became obvious in October, after U.S. combat aircraft bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, killing 30 civilians.

U.S. military officials have said the special operations forces operating the AC-130 gunship that attacked did not follow rules of engagement; they fired even though there was no video feed of the target on the ground. That failure has placed U.S. forces in Afghanistan under greater scrutiny.

David Sedney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia between 2009 and 2013, said the rules in Afghanistan were worrisome because they limited how U.S. forces can support their Afghan allies. "The rules of engagement appear to be confused, contradictory and contrary to our national interest," he told me. "Our inability to use air power to directly to support Afghan forces is leading to a deterioration of the security situation that is dangerous to the future of Afghanistan and dangerous to our national security."

The Obama administration still hopes there won't be much more fighting to do. On Monday, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the U.S. announced meetings aimed at restarting the stalled peace process with the Taliban to finally end the war in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, the rules of engagement are written as though that war had already ended. But U.S. forces in Afghanistan are still fighting it, as best they can.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.net

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...ts-call-greater-action-against-isis/78699918/

US Security Experts Call for Greater Action Against ISIS

By Joe Gould 6:16 p.m. EST January 12, 2016

WASHINGTON — A trio of former heavyweight Obama administration officials Tuesday told lawmakers that the Islamic State group has metastasized and the US must intensify its efforts to fight it militarily and politically.

Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell warned the House Armed Services Committee that the Islamic State’s influence has grown into the United States — where the FBI is said to have more than 900 open investigations into homegrown extremists. The radical group's influence has also grown in Afghanistan and Libya, he said.

"I would not be surprised if we woke up one morning and ISIS had grabbed a large part of Libyan territory, the same kind of blitzkrieg, on a smaller scale that we saw in Iraq,” Morrell said.

While there have been several military victories in recent weeks, including the liberation of Ramadi by Iraqi troops with help from the US-led coalition, Morrell, Michael Vickers, former under secretary of Defense for intelligence, and former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, warned that the group was more dangerous than ever because of its evolution into a quasi-state and revolutionary political movement.

The message was not lost on House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.

“There are people inside the Obama administration who are saying they’re not doing enough,” Thornberry said.

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing last month in which Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the Joint Chiefs vice chairman, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, painted a picture of steady progress in the effort to degrade and defeat the Islamic State.

According to Morrell, the Islamic State group’s geographic territory acts not only as a propaganda tool, but a base from which it can launch indirect lone-wolf attacks and direct attacks like the Paris attacks in November. He said those kinds of attacks fueled his view, that the group, "poses a significant and lethal threat to the United States of America."

Within the territory the group controls, Ford argued that it is “more than the sum of its fighters,” because “it builds support, it recruits, it replaces fighters who are killed. It even trains little children.” As such, the US must focus on reconciliation between sectarian groups in Iraq and their interests — to develop a viable alternative.

“In order to mobilize Sunni Arabs to contain the Islamic State, there must be efforts at national reconciliation,” Ford said. “This is important because we don't want the Islamic State to be put down militarily and then revive, as happened between 2011 and 2013. I really don't want to see an Islamic State, version 2.0.”

In Syria, the former officials agreed that President Bashar al-Assad would have to be removed from power. Both Ford and Vickers said brokering Assad’s ouster and the creation of a new national unity government would be necessary to mobilize enough Syrians to fight and destroy the Islamic State.

However, Ford’s hopes were dim for the United Nations-backed peace process, where he said various nations were “goofing around” in an effort have their own allies represent the Syrian opposition.

“Syrians are not in control of this. That, to me, spells disaster, especially if the really serious, armed opposition guys who accept a political solution, are excluded from the negotiation, I can't imagine they'll sustain their support for a political deal,” Ford warned.

Militarily, Vickers said the air campaign against the Islamic State group’s fighters and infrastructure must intensify, on par with the US air campaign in Afghanistan in 2001, aimed and a possible means of denying the Islamic State its sanctuaries. He called he current campaign, “a fraction of what it should be.”

Vickers also argued for a shift in emphasis from Iraq to Syria, where the US should reinvigorate efforts to remove Assad, and increase strike sorties and the weight of strikes, along with coalition support for the moderate Syrian opposition.

Vickers said the size of the US fleet of Predator drones is “our most effective weapon in our campaign against global jihadists” and “a limiting factor in the conduct of our campaign.”

Asked by Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., about unintended civilian deaths that might result and the potential for it to fuel greater radicalization, Vickers acknowledged the concern and expressed confidence in precision weapons.

Vickers also echoed the White House’s approach, which has been for US advisers to work through allies and that the US must seek a long-term solution that restores a favorable balance of power and greater stability across the Middle East.

“We have to have an indigenous ground force to exploit the effects [of air power], and certainly, if you want to deny a sanctuary sooner rather than later, just like in 2001, having some ground force that can exploit the effects that are in power makes a big difference,” Vickers said. “And there, US advisers matter.”

Email: jgould@defensenews.com

Twitter: @reporterjoe

 

[Housecarl]

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https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-making-military-promises-it-may-not-want-to-keep

Defense & Security

The US Is Making Military Promises It May Not Want to Keep

By Ryan Faith
January 12, 2016 | 11:20 am
Comments 28

Last week, North Korea lit off a nuke and put the global community into full-on denunciation mode. As part of the global response, the US sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber to saunter through the neighborhood, signaling that, indeed, two can play at that game, and North Korea better have a long, hard think about whether it wants to get into a nuclear slap fight with the United States.

Along with the fly-by, there's been an uptick in discussion about sending more US military stuff to the region, both to back up the US's buddies in South Korea and to give the guys in North Korea some pause should they have any bright ideas about crossing the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. In other words, classic deterrence.

The US military already has a ton of military presence in South Korea. There are about 28,500 American troops there, alongside nearly 650,000 South Korean soldiers. But is 28,500 a lot of troops? Compared to what? What's an extra squadron of jets supposed to do? Is Kim Jong-un sitting in front of a giant spreadsheet, running the numbers? Once he heard the news reports, did he decide to pick up the phone to tell his top generals, "Nope, guys, it's all off. The US says they might send another dozen jets, and I just can't take that risk, so I'm going to nix the invasion of South Korea. Anyone up for some bowling instead?"

Related: Kim Jong-un Basically Told the US to 'Come at Me, Bro' During a Huge Military Parade¤w

If it all got real in Korea, you can bet that those 28,500 guys wouldn't be lacking for company. The whole of the US military would get spooled up to help out their South Korean buddies against the 1.2 million men of the North Korean army.

That is to say that the current US military force in South Korea isn't intended to really stop the whole of the North Korean military all by their lonesome, but rather to function as a tripwire of sorts.

There's a little bit of ambiguity when it comes to the precise definition of "tripwire." In some tellings, a tripwire literally means troops right up on the DMZ in little outposts scattered along its length, the theory being that any attack on the DMZ would mean killing US soldiers, thereby precipitating an American reaction. But in this case, I'm using the term tripwire a bit more broadly to mean US troops that would be caught up in the fighting, even if they aren't necessarily physically located right on the DMZ itself. Either way, if the bad guy comes in with enough force to completely dislodge the deployed troops, then that would be a sign for the rest of the US military to show up ASAP and get to the business of fighting a great big war. In essence, the purpose of the relatively tiny tripwire force is to die gloriously and call for their brethren to come and avenge their deaths.

In practice, tripwires are thought to be an antidote to the sort of invasion-by-inches thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled off with the onslaught of Little Green Men during the Great Crimean Heist of 2014. Essentially, having tripwire forces in place bullies your opponents into more obvious tactics, giving you the edge and allowing you to stop them in their easy-to-see tracks.

Related: Cyber Attack on South Korean Subway System Could Be a Sign of Nastier Things to Come¤w

Getting back to Korea, even if there was a real, full-blown throwdown, it's unlikely the US would send over all of everybody. Even at the height of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US didn't scour the cupboards and send everyone. Some of those forces were being returned from the war so they could take a breather, get replenished, be retrained, and so on. Moreover, the US has other military commitments around the globe that require troop presence.

Think of it like your bank account. Let's say it's payday and, with some luck and discipline, you've finally got yourself a thousand bucks to play with. Hooray! Now, you've got most of your bills taken care of, but you also know that you've got a lot more stuff that you need to get done sooner or later (preferably before it goes from bad to worse), like that thing with your tooth. You might be able to cover a couple of those major expenses, or maybe three of the smaller ones, but if you had to fork out enough cash for three big bills at the same time, you'd be hosed. And heaven forbid an emergency crops up ¡ª then it's all over.

Force planners are in a roughly similar situation. Let's say Russia gets grabby in Europe, and all of a sudden the US needs to scramble a few hundred thousand guys, then North Korea gets some clever ideas about hosting their very own #OccupySeoul event and the US needs to send everyone else to go fight. Now, what happens if China gets all stroppy about Taiwan? Or if Iran gets up to something? The US would be flat tapped out of forces and unable to deter anyone else from redrawing their local borders to their liking.

Watch VICE News' On The Line: Keegan Hamilton Discusses North Korea

When you think about it, the first and second would-be attackers may be dissuaded from picking a fight. But if the US already has its hands full with two big fights, it would pretty much be a field day for contestants three, four, and five. At that point, we might get all too clear an understanding of what wars and conflicts have been simmering under the surface for the last several decades.

In the most nightmarish (but probably pretty unlikely) of scenarios, the breakdown of international order devolves into some sort of appalling cross between World War III and full-on rioting: All the first responders are tied up and it all turns into smash-and-grab window shopping on an international scale.

There are already some historical analogies for this in other sectors. This scenario is basically like a run on the banks. Depositors go to the US-backed bank of security guarantees, and want to make a withdrawal of US military support. But once enough folks get nervous and start to demand their chunk of protection, it kicks off a feedback cycle. Soon, everyone is panicking, there's a run on US military forces, and disaster looms just around the corner.

Now, the Pentagon doesn't spend a lot of time talking about what they plan to do if everything goes straight to hell and multiple crises erupt, but let's make a few educated guesses.

One option (supposedly) available to the US is a whole raft of reliable and faithful allies who will step in and contribute when and where needed. But don't forget the fact that a number of countries have let their military atrophy while hanging out under the umbrella of US security guarantees, and may not be up to the task when things really hit the fan. The takeaway is that the US should be very supportive of increased military spending by its allies.

A second possibility is that the US could just try to drag out however many different wars across the globe and grind through them one at a time. But the history of the last decade has given a pretty clear indicator of what the US tolerance is for extended engagement. Now imagine that it was a decade of fighting that produced a few thousand casualties per month instead of that many over a decade, and maybe the idea of trying to outlast the chaos is a bit less appealing.

Or, there's always the nuclear option. If push came to shove, the US could fight and win a dozen medium-sized wars at the same time ¡ª provided that 11 of those were fought with nuclear weapons. The downsides to this option go without saying.

Related: In Photos: South Korea's Dress Rehearsal for War¤w

Sure, this all might simply be anxiety about imaginary boogeymen. Maybe the bad guys are a lot nicer and more easygoing than the Pentagon fears and they'll just leave everyone alone even when no one is looking. But then again, maybe not, and what happens if you're wrong?

Which brings us back to the B-52 flyby. It's a near certainty that the message that the US wanted to send was one telling North Korea that they shouldn't even think about nuking anybody, and if they do, they're playing with fire. However, the more subtle point that goes with the threat of nuclear war is that the US has guaranteed the security of way more countries than it can plausibly defend at the same time. And in the (admittedly unlikely) event that all those outstanding bills came due, the world's lone superpower might find it doesn't have super powers after all.

Follow Ryan Faith on Twitter: @Operation_Ryan

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/13/sex-assaults-sweden-stockholm-music-festival

Sweden
Opinion

This cover-up of sex assaults in Sweden is a gift for xenophobes

Police failure to report widespread assaults by immigrant gangs at a Stockholm music festival will be immensely damaging for the country’s race relations

Wednesday 13 January 2016 07.47 EST
Andrew Brown

The news that the Swedish authorities covered up widespread sexual assaults by immigrant gangs on teenage girls at a Stockholm music festival, and possibly other incidents too, is immensely damaging for race relations in Sweden because it conforms so precisely to two stereotypes.

The first, widely believed in nationalist circles, is that immigrants to Sweden are responsible for the huge rise in reported rapes in recent years. The second, more true, and much more widely believed, is that you cannot trust respectable Swedish opinion to be honest about the bad effects of immigration.

It has been quite clearly established that there has been an increase in violent crime, and in reported rape, over the last 40 years in Sweden. In 1995, the first year for which statistics are easily available on the Crime Agency’s website, there were 179 murders in Sweden, of which 29 involved guns; in 2014 there were 317, of which 74 involved guns.

Some of the violence is closely linked to the appearance of gangs of Balkan and Middle Eastern origin among refugee groupings who fight for control of the drugs trade, among other things. There were around 40 unsolved gang murders on police files at the end of last year.

Rape statistics are harder to judge. The raw figures suggest a huge rise in reports, from 1,707 in 1995 to 6,697 in 2014. But, as the Julian Assange case showed, there is perhaps less stigma about reporting the crime than elsewhere, and the Swedish legal definition of rape is wider than in other countries. In any case, the police do not record the ethnicity of either criminals or victims, and the press is extremely constrained over reporting identifying details about either the victims or the perpetrators of crimes.

So it is impossible either to prove or to disprove, from official statistics, the nationalist claim that the rapists are disproportionately young male migrants. Yet that claim is repeated as a fact in racist and xenophobic parts of the internet. What is certain is that you would hardly ever find it mentioned, even to refute, in the reputable Swedish media – until last week.

This is the really damaging effect of the Stockholm scandal – and it is worth noting that only one of the reported assaults at the festival was classed as rape: most were mob gropings, which are still terrifying and criminal violations.

The Swedish political and media establishment decided to deal with the threat of a nationalist and xenophobic party, the Sweden Democrats, by ignoring them and hoping they would go away. This policy was fuelled partly by wishful thinking, partly by principle and partly by self-righteousness. It ended disastrously.

The Sweden Democrats broke into parliament in 2010 and now hold the balance of power there, although all of the other parties have combined to vote so as to neutralise them. The result of that, again predictably, has been that their support has risen to unprecedented levels – 20% in the last poll I saw. The recent clampdown on immigration can only strengthen them further.

The Social Democrats, and their newspaper, Aftonbladet, appear to have been particularly keen on the posture of suppression and denial, because the great majority of the Sweden Democrats’ voters had been Social Democrats, rather than traditional rightwingers.

It is absolutely clear – with the publication of internal memos by the newspaper Dagens Nyheter – that the Stockholm police failed to report the sex assaults at the festival for fear of worsening ethnic tensions. And it was understood by all parties that this would lead to an electoral advantage for the Sweden Democrats.

The organisers, who also allegedly knew what was going on, were concerned for the success of the festival and did not want to frighten away the teenagers who were its target audience.

So teenage girls were systematically assaulted and robbed by gangs of young foreign men because too many powerful people found their suffering was inconvenient. The result of this cover-up will be far more damaging than the truth could have been.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/01/12/the_fault_lines_at_europes_core_111653.html

January 12, 2016

The Fault Lines at Europe's Core

By Joel Weickgenant

As we move well into 2016, let's take a quick look back to a column I wrote in December 2015, describing the experience of rolling through an anonymous border crossing in the integrated core of the European Union:

"From one hub to the other in the Benelux nations (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and Germany -- Frankfurt, Utrecht, Antwerp, and away -- the idea of a real border, one where passports are checked and luggage inspected, seems absurd. This, the economic heartland of Europe, is a rare space on the continent, bereft of physical obstruction, traversed by rivers deep and navigable, and now crisscrossed by the most developed and interconnected of rail networks. A fully operational border reinstated there, say as an artifact of a broader breakdown in the Schengen system of open European borders, would show the blatant futility of small-scale national sovereignty reasserted in an age where going bigger is the only way to answer the questions posed by geopolitics."


Transition one month forward, and moving from a featureless Lowlands landscape to an iconic bridge in Scandinavia, one headline in early January showed how quickly the seemingly absurd can become an uncomfortable reality. The Economist:

"It is easy to find a Swede in central Copenhagen nowadays. About 9,000 Swedish workers commute every day to jobs in the bustling Danish capital, crossing the narrow strait that separates the two countries. Since the opening of the 8km (5-mile) Oresund Bridge in 2000, indeed, their cross-border journey to work has been quicker than the daily commute of many workers in London or New York. But that is changing.

[...]

"The new Swedish border checks, Madeleine and Sandra say, will add 30 minutes each way to their commutes. ‘It takes one hour door-to-door, and that's about the limit for me,' says Madeleine. Sandra nods in agreement. ‘I might have to look for work in Sweden instead,' she says."

Swedish border checks on the Oresund Bridge are a powerful symbol of how much has changed in a year. The measures are the first of their kind seen among Nordic countries in 60 years. If at the beginning of 2015, the European Union was muddling through chronic crises localized at its periphery, the beginning of 2016 sees the Union's very core challenged to hold together. The dynamics of local and national politics, ever less self-contained, are forcing frustrated supranational responses. Conflict exists at every level.

The question then is whether Europe is approaching a point of no return. To take a look at the core crisis, let's turn an eye to three countries at Europe's geographical center: Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands.

Germany

The initial optimism seen as Germany opened its doors to refugees in the middle of last year was always destined to subside and turn. The shock of what took place in Cologne on New Year's Eve simply brought that about quicker. Chancellor Angela Merkel has seen approval ratings decline significantly since the onset of the crisis, and her party's regional ally in Bavaria was already taking a stand against her open-door policies before Cologne. The days since have been characterised by protests of every sort.

Beneath the weight of dealing with the immigrants arriving to Europe now, countries such as Germany are left to address a heavier reality: The wreckage of decades of immigration and assimilation norms defined under the oft-misunderstood moniker of multiculturalism. George Friedman, one of the most astute American observers of Europe, gives a nice summary in this article. An excerpt:

"The Europeans pretended that multiculturalism was a form of tolerance. It may have been intended that way. What it was in practice was a ghetto without walls. Behind the willingness to accept perpetual distinctions was the unwillingness to allow the stranger to become one of them. At the heart of the European nation-state is not a set of moral precepts, but a shared history, language and culture. A German is a German because he was born to the German people, as with the French or the Armenians. Citizenship, or the right to legal protections can be granted. Allowing the foreigner to become a citizen was not a challenge. Allowing him to be a German was not a matter of choice. A German was someone born to Germany."

Merkel, long before she welcomed refugees, was a staunch critic of multiculturalism, so her position now must seem jarring. What is sure is that if her political strength within her own country is being undermined, it portends nothing good for a Europe growing accustomed to forward German leadership.

Poland

The political turn in Warsaw, with October elections bringing to power the conservative Law and Justice party, or PiS, is the most radioactive instance of how national politics are laying siege to formerly aloof Brussels. PiS moved fast, making dramatic changes to its highest court and announcing plans to overhaul the staff and operations of the country's public broadcaster. In response to condemnations by EU officials and the implication of possible legal action, Polish officials minced no words. One minister, directing his invective in particular at a German EU commissioner, referenced Nazi-era war crimes.

Poland before October was considered one of the Continent's most enthusiastic proponents of the European Union, and certainly one of its prime beneficiaries. As the most important EU member in Central and Eastern Europe, and a rising regional power in its own right, Warsaw with its wayward ways poses a staunch challenge to European cohesion.

The Netherlands

The Dutch take the helm of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU for the first half of 2016. Though a small country, this trading nation has long played an outsized role in the functioning of the Union and in the Continent's further integration. But as we have pointed out at RealClearWorld in the past, the Netherlands also serves as a barometer for political changes in broader Europe, and euroskeptics such as Geert Wilders were strutting through the halls of the Hague before they became a force elsewhere.

And now is no different. Even as their own turn to lead the presidency unfolds, Dutch voters will be asked at a referendum whether they approve of a trade treaty with Ukraine. European Commissioner Jean Claude Juncker, in an interview with a leading Dutch newspaper, urged voters to ‘think strategically' and support Ukraine -- likely to little avail. But a poll conducted by the TV program EenVandaag showed the Dutch have probably made up their mind already, and are set to disapprove of the deal by a wide margin.

Looking Forward

So is 2016 the year it all begins to unravel? That's a question of form. The worst is certainly possible, but it's not black-and-white. The Dutch referendum won't sink the association agreement with Ukraine, but it does give voters a chance to vent their displeasure. This Polish government has charged out of the gates, but my bet is that it understands that Warsaw's long-term interests still lie squarely with the European Union and NATO. Indeed, in the middle of the maelstrom, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has sought to scale down the tone of confrontation, inviting his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to visit Poland see that the "shape of Poland's democracy is not as bad as may seem from far away," according to an Associated Press report. PiS will also find itself accountable to its electorate, with one survey showing a sharp drop in approval of the party, down to 27 percent, according to Politico EU. Germany's core interest as an economic power, meanwhile, remains with a strong European Union.

In the medium term, we may be seeing a regionalization of integration: Poland wants to play a leading role in regional groupings such as the Visegrad Group, and wants to enhance its cooperation with Romania. Some in the Netherlands have suggested a pared-down Schengen as a means to control immigration while leaving the door open for business. Scandinavian countries emphasize military cooperation. This is undoubtedly a year where the pace and scale of European integration will come under attack. Even if the immigration crisis is answered, we may be looking at a future where there is no single form of European integration, but rather multiple European integrations. It may be the year where politicians and eurocrats learn that Europe is not Jacques Delors' bicycle after all: It cannot simply be peddled forward against all resistance.


Around the Continent

There are a few things we will be watching this week.

Greek Road Trip: First, we'll be keeping an eye on the Greek government as it makes the rounds of European capitals to sell its plans for economic reforms. Politico EU has the story:

"The Greek government plans a radical shake-up of the country's pension system in a bid to impress the markets and press the reset button on its relationship with its EU partners.

"However, instead of seeking approval for the reforms from EU institutions and the International Monetary Fund, the Greeks are mounting a public-relations effort to pitch the new ideas to national governments and journalists. They believe that eurozone finance ministers, who will meet Thursday to discuss the Greek bailout situation, have too narrow a focus and fail to see the big political picture."

Balkan Noise: In the weeks and months ahead, geopolitical competition will pick up in the Balkans between the European Union and Russia. At year's end, NATO was busy working to bring tiny Montenegro into the fold. Serbia is set to be a country of focus this year. The country is looking to push forward its process of accession to the European Union. At the same time, though, Serbia does not aspire to join NATO, and this gives Russia an opportunity to play a spoiler role. B92 has this report on the possible Serbian acquisition of Russia's S-300 air defense system:

"'We will provide direct support to the ally in the Balkans. We will consider your request in the shortest amount of time,' the Russian deputy prime minister said during a joint news conference in Belgrade with Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.

"Asked ‘if Russia will help Serbia with the acquisition of the S-300s' -- which Vucic said were ‘too expensive for our country' -- neither official wished to reveal any details of the ongoing talks, which, according to the Serbian prime minister, are set to continue ‘for many more months.'

"Rogozin said Russia was not interfering in Serbia's security issues, noting that the country ‘has the right to acquire highly efficient non-offensive armaments.'"

The Poland Concern: Finally, on Jan. 13, the European Union will open a high-level debate on Poland. As reported by the Associated Press' Monika Scislowska:

"The concern in Brussels is so high that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker set the issue on the Jan. 13 agenda of his executive commission. The country, which joined the EU in 2004, could potentially lose its EU voting rights on matters that concern the entire 28-nation bloc.

"The situation reached a crescendo last week when Poland's parliament approved legislation by the Law and Justice party that ends the terms of the current heads of state-run radio and television, who were appointed by the previous, pro-EU establishment.

"The new law also gives the government the authority to make new appointments and cuts down the number of members in the supervisory bodies of state broadcasters. Before the change, a special council appointed the heads of state broadcasters, just as is the case in some other countries in the region, including the Czech Republic.

"It is expected that President Andrzej Duda, who is aligned with the ruling party, will sign the new law soon."

 

[Housecarl]

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https://geopoliticalfutures.com/letter-from-amsterdam/



Letter from Amsterdam

Jan. 13, 2016

The immigration crisis highlights the European Union’s growing irrelevance in Europe.

reality check-headerbar

By George Friedman

I am in Amsterdam, and yesterday I spoke to a group of senior business executives and a few diplomats about the state of the world, or at least my view of it. I made three arguments. First, Eurasia is in increasing turmoil, and since Eurasia is home to 5 billion of the 7 billion people on Earth, this is an extremely disruptive reality. Second, these regional instabilities are starting to interact: Europe and the Middle East, Russia and the Middle East, and Russia and Europe. In addition, the current crisis in China is likely to intersect with each of these areas. I described it as a storm gathering.

The third point I made was that the future of the European Union is untenable. The European Union is based on a treaty—it is not a federation. It is torn between member states on any question. Germany demonizes Greece and Greece demonizes Germany—a cycle that repeats itself over and over again. It is not just that there are disagreements within the EU, but that the disagreements are bitter. The EU faces problems that it can only solve if its member states stay together—a situation that has become impossible. In my talk, I used the example of Muslim migration, which, even if it eventually totals 3 million people still would equal only half of one percent of Europe’s population. Surely there are solutions to be had, ranging from blocking the migrants to fully integrating them into society. The problem is not insoluble, but no one can can agree on a solution, and lacking a consensus, nothing can be done.

What was remarkable in this meeting was that most of the audience took no exception, save a few mild souls who said there was some hope of a solution to Europe’s problem. This contrasted dramatically with previous such presentations to similar audiences. The people to whom I spoke were not a gathering of some radical anti-European party, but rather represented the center of gravity of the European establishment. A couple of years ago I made a similar presentation in Mexico, and the European Commissioner there (the equivalent of an ambassador) called my remarks scandalous. In Poland, a similar speech caused an EU staffer from Brussels to loudly condemn me for implying the EU was failing. He said that Europe had many solutions to its problems, and he personally was working on solutions right at that very moment. I urged him to hurry up, as the problems had needed solving for years, and it was time to see the solution.

None of that happened in this bastion of the European elite. There was no question that the majority there wanted the EU to survive, but part of the group seemed to agree that it could only survive with major adjustments, while another part seemed to feel that it was untenable. They accepted my argument that Europe can be divided into Mediterranean Europe, Eastern Europe (the eastern frontier of the EU), Germanic Europe and Maritime Europe (the United Kingdom and Scandinavia). And when I said these regions have few common interests and many oppose the others’ interests, there was no disagreement.

I was asked how I thought this would end—my questioner said he couldn’t imagine the EU abolishing itself. My answer was that it would simply become more irrelevant over time. Member states will pay less and less attention to EU edicts on problems. Regulations will simply be ignored, except when it suits the nation in question. States will construct barriers, from their borders to their banking systems. In Europe, old institutions are not abolished. They are stored in a museum. There used to be an entity called the European Free Trade Association, a British led alternative to the European Community in the late 1950s and 1960s. You don’t hear much about it now because it has little impact on reality. Nevertheless, it still has offices and staff in Switzerland.

The lack of animus toward these views is in my mind a tremendous indicator of the state of Europe. German and other European politicians recently hurled insults at Poland when its new government replaced the leadership of the government-owned media and enacted reforms of the Constitutional Court. The politicians essentially accused the Polish government of fascism. This is similar to concerns regarding the Hungarian government, which has been criticized in the past for adopting measures to take control of the media, judiciary and other independent institutions, and most recently for building a fence to keep out immigrants.

The political rage against Hungary and Poland has been little reflected in the business community, and it was even less so today. The politicians in the EU can sling rhetorical barbs, but as was seen in the case of Hungary, the Hungarians didn’t back down, and there were no consequences. The Poles will not back down either. One of the reasons was apparent at my meeting. This group had many issues to discuss. Polish internal politics was not among them. When I said to a group that charges of fascism were overwrought—that if the gold standards of fascism are Hitler and Mussolini, Hungary and Poland aren’t even close—no one jumped at the bait. Instead, one member of the audience said that I had pointed out the difference between Eastern and Central Europe, so why not expect differences?

It seems to me that the political elite are isolated. They are fighting their battles in a vacuum without consequences. Consider the immigration crisis. Various countries have condemned various other countries. These condemnations were without consequence. My audience was adamant that it is a crisis that threatens Europe. But like businessmen everywhere, they did not expect a solution from the politicians, knowing full well that Europe’s politicians aren’t capable of one. The businessmen seemed comfortable with that.

The politicians remain resolute, and the marginal parties become stronger and less marginal. The broader society is torn between supporting the EU or scrapping it, but no one really knows how to make it work anymore and no one will go to the trouble of scrapping it. As with Poland, Hungary and immigration, oratory thunderbolts will be thrown, without any real expectation of success.

The people I spoke to represent one of the core constituencies of the EU. My sense is that they are conducting their business now without any real expectation that the EU will be able to serve the purposes for which it was created and without a real sense of a definitive end to the EU. It will go on and on, and matter less and less. It will impose friction and inefficiencies on Europe and hamper Mediterranean Europe’s ability to recover. It will be unable to address the fear of the Russians in Eastern Europe and generally helpless to deal with the crucial issue—Germany’s acute dependence on exports.

That said, the EU will survive, and one day you will be able to visit a dusty office in Brussels, much like the European Free Trade Association’s offices in Switzerland, where it still exists. I am sure the staff will be doing something, writing directives that no one will follow, or even care to object to. I once expected Götterdämmerung, the Twilight of the Gods, to move the EU. Today I became convinced, not that the EU couldn’t continue this way, but that it really isn’t continuing in any significant way. The immigration crisis turned out to be important. It was something that Europe could have solved, but didn’t, and no one was surprised by its failure. My audience moved on to issues they could deal with: their businesses.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/philippines-offer-eight-bases-us-forces-official-163110880.html

Philippines to offer eight bases to US forces: official

AFP
1 hour ago

The Philippines is set to offer the US military use of eight bases, a military spokesman said Wednesday, after the country's supreme court upheld a security agreement with Washington forged in the face of rising tensions with China.


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Philippine court OKs pact allowing US troops in local camps Associated Press


The facilities include the former US Clark airbase and air and naval facilities on the southwestern island of Palawan which faces the South China Sea, the focus of territorial disputes with China.

Military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla said the facilities would be used to store equipment and supplies.

He added that the offer had still to be finalised after the Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a 10-year security accord.

The decision allows for the full implementation of the Enhanced Defense Co-operation Agreement (EDCA), signed in 2014 but not implemented due to legal challenges from groups opposed to US military involvement in the Philippines, a US colony from 1898 to 1946.

It will see more US troops rotate through the Philippines for war games and help Manila build military facilities.


.. View gallery
Student activists burn a US flag during a protest near …
Student activists burn a US flag during a protest near the US embassy in Manila on January 13, 2016 …


"We have resumed talks now that there is a go-signal that EDCA is constitutional," Padilla said.

"We are continuing talks and we will finalise the agreement on the locations," he said without giving a timetable when the decision would be reached.

The Philippines hosted two of the largest overseas US military bases until 1992, when the senate voted to end their leases, a decision influenced by anti-US sentiment.

The new pact does not authorise a return of US bases.

China and the Philippines -- as well as Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan -- have conflicting claims to the South China Sea which is a major shipping lane, rich fishing ground and potential source of mineral resources.

The Philippines has been seeking closer defence ties with the United States, accusing China of increased aggressiveness in the South China Sea.

In April 2012, after a tense stand-off with Philippine ships, Chinese vessels took control of a shoal just 220 kilometres (135 miles) off the main Philippine island of Luzon.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino negotiated the EDCA to help the Philippines improve its military capabilities and draw the United States closer, partly to counter China's increasing presence.


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[Housecarl]

Hummm.........

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http://news.yahoo.com/serbian-official-russian-mind-own-business-over-eu-155803492.html

Serbian official to Russian: Mind own business over EU bid

Associated Press
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC
18 minutes ago

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's deputy prime minister denounced her Russian counterpart on Wednesday for suggesting Serbia should be careful about its EU membership bid — a rare spat between the two traditional Slavic allies.

Russian deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin said during his visit to Serbia this week that if Serbia harmonizes its foreign policy with the European Union "you will have another Cologne here." He was referring to New Year's assaults against women in the German city that have been blamed largely on foreigners, some of whom are recently arrived asylum-seekers.

"You should be careful with this harmonization, not to find yourselves in a situation when newcomers behave as though they have a free hand, while your women are afraid to go outside," Rogozin said.

Serbian deputy premier Zorana Mihajlovic retorted Wednesday: "Regarding the scenario Rogozin is predicting, I think he should take care of his own country and we will take care of ours."

During his three-day visit, Rogozin said Russia is ready to arm Serbia with sophisticated weapons, which could be at odds with Belgrade's desire to join the EU. He also tried to discourage Serbia from membership in the 28-nation bloc.

"There is nothing more terrifying than the European bureaucracy," Rogozin said. "Soviet-era bureaucrats are just kids compared with Europe's. And the rules of the game are such that they erode your national identity."

Serbia, a traditional Russian ally, has officially sought EU membership, but has been struggling to overcome strong opposition from Kremlin-backed nationalists.

The pro-Russian opposition Democratic Party of Serbia was quick to denounce Mihajlovic's comments, saying she should retract her statement because it could "jeopardize relations with Russia and undermine joint programs."

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[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/germany-charges-4-forming-far-terror-group-144026462.html

Germany charges 4 with forming far-right terror group

Associated Press
By FRANK JORDANS
2 hours ago

BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors have charged three men and one woman with forming a far-right terror group and planning a bombing on a refugee shelter, officials said Wednesday.

The four are alleged to have created a group two years ago that went by the name Oldschool Society, using social media to recruit new members and promote far-right ideas, federal prosecutors said.

Internally, the group became increasingly radical and, in mid-November 2014, members discussed how to manufacture explosives and the possibility of attacking Islamic extremists and asylum-seekers in Germany.

The four — identified only as Andreas H., 57; Markus W. ,40; Denise Vanessa G. 23; and Olaf O., 47, in line with German privacy rules — are accused of forming and being members of a "terrorist organization" and planning an explosion, prosecutors said. Andreas H. and Markus W. were described as the group's president and vice president.

"There was a concrete plan to carry out an explosives attack on an inhabited refugee shelter near Borna in connection with their second meeting from May 8-10, 2015," prosecutors said. The town is southeast of Leipzig in the eastern state of Saxony, which has been a hotbed of anti-foreigner sentiment over the past year.

Markus W. and Denise Vanessa G. allegedly traveled to the Czech Republic in May 2015 to purchase fireworks and the group discussed how to make them more dangerous by wrapping nails around them.

They were arrested May 6 as part of nationwide raids, before the attack could take place. All four are in prison pending trial.

Separately, Hannover prosecutors said Wednesday they charged two men, aged 25 and 31, and a 24-year-old woman with attempted murder and attempted arson on allegations they threw a gasoline bomb through a window at an asylum-seekers' home in northwestern Germany.

The three are alleged in August to have thrown the improvised device through a ground-floor window in a school building in Salzhemmendorf that had been converted to house about 30 asylum seekers, setting fire to a mattress and a rug in an unoccupied room. The trio fled in a car from the scene, prosecutors said.

The early-morning blaze was quickly extinguished and authorities said no harm came to a woman who had been sleeping in a neighboring room with her three young children.

Prosecutors said the three have admitted to the attack, but not to their motivation.

German authorities have recorded a rise in attacks against refugees over the past year amid an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers to the country. While most of the attacks are believed to have been carried out by people with no previous affiliation to far-right groups, authorities are sensitive to the possibility that neo-Nazi groups might stage violent attacks ever since the existence of the self-styled National Socialist Underground came to light four years ago.

The NSU allegedly killed eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007, and is believed to be behind two bombings and 15 bank robberies.

The group's sole survivor, Beate Zschaepe, and four alleged supporters are currently on trial in Munich.

___

David Rising contributed to this report.

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[Housecarl]

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/south-k...ons-over-north-koreas-nuclear-test-1452664661

World | Asia

Seoul Tests Its Closer Ties to China Over North Korea’s Nuclear Blast

South Korean President Park calls on Beijing to take strong punitive actions against Pyongyang after latest nuclear bomb test

By Alastair Gale and Kwanwoo Jun
Updated Jan. 13, 2016 6:19 a.m. ET

3 COMMENTS

SEOUL—Soon after North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb last week, South Korea’s defense minister sought an emergency call with his Chinese counterpart.

A hotline had recently been created as part of an array of new agreements by Seoul and Beijing to increase their links. But the call request received no response, a South Korean official said.

On Wednesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye gave another indication that her gambit of forging closer links with China to rein in Pyongyang continues to face tests, calling publicly for Beijing to take strong punitive action against its volatile neighbor. “The best partners are those who will hold your hand in difficult times,” Ms. Park said in a speech.

Her appeal to China came on a day of low-level confrontation between the two Koreas.Seoul’s military said a small flying object, likely a drone, traveled a few meters over the border from North Korea Wednesday afternoon but turned back after warning shots were fired at it. The two sides continued to blast propaganda messages at each other through speaker systems at their border.

South Korea, like many other countries, sees China as a pivotal figure in blunting North Korea’s military adventurism. Beijing supplies almost all of Pyongyang’s oil and has close trade and military links with the impoverished state. (China’s foreign and defense ministries didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the hotline call.)

Eyeing that leverage, Ms. Park made a strategic bet soon after taking office in 2013 to foster close ties with Beijing. She has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping six times, most recently as the only leader of a U.S. ally to attend a Chinese military parade in September. The two nations have pledged wide-ranging cooperation in areas from economic deals to cultural exchanges.

That approach is now under scrutiny as Ms. Park seeks strong penalties against North Korea.

“Ms. Park’s focus on bolstering diplomatic ties with China ended up making her other allies suspicious of Seoul’s intentions. Now, Seoul suddenly finds itself in a position where it must change its entire diplomatic approach,” South Korea’s biggest circulation newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, wrote in an editorial.

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North Korea's Nuclear Program

Key stages in Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons development.

1 of 14

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In her televised speech on Wednesday, Ms. Park said China should prove its resolve not to tolerate nuclear proliferation. Inaction would lead to further nuclear tests by North Korea, undermining peace and stability in the region, she said.

“I do believe China will play a necessary role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council,” Ms. Park said.

Seoul is seeking new U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, a move that must win the support of Beijing since it holds a veto in the council.

China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday reiterated Beijing’s opposition to the North Korean nuclear-weapons program and said its foreign minister has spoken to his South Korean counterpart on the matter.

“We will work together with all members of the six-party talks, including [South Korea], to press ahead with denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, referring to the nations that have tried collectively in the past to talk North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons: the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber flew over Osan Air Base in South Korea on Sunday, as a challenge to North Korea after it tested a high-power explosive last Wednesday. The base is about 45 miles south of the inter-Korean border. Photo: AP
.

China's World: Beijing opposes Pyongyang's nuclear tests. But the young dictator Kim Jong Un knows that for Xi Jinping, North Korea is an indispensable buffer between China and U.S. forces in South Korea.
.

North Korean state media announced that the country carried out a successful test of a thermonuclear weapon on Wednesday. A few hours earlier, an earthquake was recorded near the site of previous North Korean nuclear tests. Photo: AP
.
Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said it is likely China would support any new U.N. sanctions against North Korea, but added it was hard to say if it would take any further unilateral action against Pyongyang. Beijing’s priority is avoiding destabilizing North Korea, which it treats as a buffer to stop U.S. and Japanese influence in the region, many analysts say.

“It is obvious China hasn’t shifted its position,” said Bong Young-shik, a senior research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank. “North Korea is China’s great security asset,” he said.

As Ms. Park sought to pressure China, South Korea’s foreign ministry said senior diplomats from the U.S., South Korea and Japan were gathering in Seoul on Wednesday to help prepare a “powerful and comprehensive” set of U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

The nuclear test has provided momentum for a rapprochement between South Korea and Japan, U.S. allies whose relations have become strained in recent years over disputes related to history. Late in December, Seoul and Tokyo announced a deal to settle their central quarrel over reparations for Korean women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial military.

One of the first leaders Ms. Park spoke to after the North Korean test was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. She has yet to speak to Mr. Xi, South Korean officials say.

—Chun Han Wong and Te-Ping Chen in Beijing contributed to this article.


Write to Alastair Gale at alastair.gale@wsj.com and Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com

 

[Housecarl]

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http://observer.com/2016/01/obamas-persian-debacle-saber-rattling-in-the-gulf/

Obama’s Persian Debacle: Saber Rattling in the Gulf

Dusting off the nuclear 'Sunni bomb' amid Iran's navy maneuvers

By John R. Schindler • 01/13/16 1:20pm

Yesterday, only hours before President Barack Obama was to deliver his final State of the Union address to the nation, over in the Persian Gulf, Iran seized two small boats belonging to the U.S. Navy. Ten of our sailors spent the night in Iranian custody. They have been released already, as Tehran promised, but the sting of international humiliation will take longer to dissipate.

The timing of Iran’s seizure is difficult to miss. Not only did this cast a distinct pall over Mr. Obama’s address – particularly since the president, who never tires of touting his nuclear deal with the revolutionary regime in Iran, failed to mention the ten American sailors in Iranian hands last night – but it happened only days before onerous international sanctions are set to be lifted off the mullahs in Tehran.

That, of course, is the prize Iran needs to rebuild its damaged economy, which has suffered badly at the hands of UN sanctions placed on the country for its longstanding rogue conduct, particularly regarding its nuclear program. While the Obama administration has insisted that Tehran is keeping its side of the nuclear deal, there are many doubters, especially in Western intelligence circles.

Skeptics have been bolstered by repeated Iranian actions since the deal was signed in Geneva last summer following years of negotiations, egged on by repeated secret pleadings by Mr. Obama to the mullahs. However, recent ballistic missile tests by the regime are believed by many inside the Beltway to be a violation of our agreement, while some in the know assess that there really is no deal at all.

“Obama thinks there’s a deal with Tehran,” explained a senior U.S. intelligence official to me recently, “but it’s more accurate to say we have a deal to someday maybe have an actual deal.” Few American intelligence officers who are acquainted with Iranian deception programs regarding their nuclear program are optimistic about the deal having the stated effect of seriously deterring Iran’s atomic ambitions for very long.

Moreover, if Mr. Obama expected lifting sanctions on Tehran would encourage more conciliatory behavior from the mullahs, he was sadly mistaken. Iranian relations with Saudi Arabia have taken a dramatic turn for the worse in recent weeks. The Islamic Cold War that has dragged on between Riyadh and Tehran since 1979, when the revolutionary regime took power, is melting down and may get hot, based on current indications. The breaking of diplomatic relations between them is an unmistakably bad sign. A major regional war is a distinct possibility, given rising tensions on many fronts: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and across the Gulf, where Saudis, Iranians, and their various proxies wage war increasingly openly.

Just how bad things have gotten in the Gulf is made plain by Pakistan’s recent statement that it would back the Saudis militarily if things get out of hand with Iran, their mutual foe. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both majority-Sunni, have their disagreements but are united in their fear of Iranian – that is, Shia – dominance in the Gulf region. Particularly worrying is the view of many in the spy business that Pakistan would quickly send a nuclear weapon to Riyadh if needed to deter Tehran.

It’s a poorly guarded secret that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, which came to fruition in 1998 with a successful nuclear bomb test, was partly funded by the Saudis, who wanted a Sunni Bomb. In exchange, Islamabad will come to Riyadh’s aid, even nuclear aid, in an hour of crisis. “If Tehran announces on a Monday that it has a nuke, the Saudis will ‘suddenly’ have one by Wednesday,” explained a Pentagon nuclear expert.

Just as worrisome is the reality of nuclear ties between Tehran and Pyongyang, which just conducted another major atomic weapons test to showcase its power. Iranian scientists have observed previous North Korean nuclear tests and a big question now facing the U.S. Intelligence Community is: Did any Iranians participate in the test last week? It’s an alarming fact that Iran can get a nuclear weapon at any time from a single IL-76 cargo flight from North Korea – which may, or may not, be detected by Western intelligence.

Into this unraveling mess stumbled two U.S. Navy small craft yesterday. Such missions take place nearly every day, where Iranian and Western – often American – warships play cat and mouse games in the waterways of what Tehran ceaselessly reminds the world is the Persian Gulf. According to press reports, the boats experienced mechanical trouble and wound up on Farsi Island, in the middle of the Gulf. That island just happens to have a base operated by the naval force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the notorious Pasdaran.

The Pasdaran are infamous for their support for terrorism across the Middle East and beyond and have played a large role in Iraq and Syria of late, but they also possess naval forces that compensate for their lack of major vessels with impressive acumen with small boats that are fast and well-armed. They employ them aggressively, and Pasdaran craft regularly confront Western naval vessels they believe are getting close to their turf.

How exactly our boats wound up in Iranian hands remains something of a mystery so far. Reports of navigational errors need investigation and the possibility of Iran spoofing our GPS cannot be ruled out. Regrettably, the notion that both boats suffered mechanical breakdowns is only too plausible.

They are called Riverine Command Boats by the Navy, which has used them for operations in shallow waters for nearly a decade. They are actually Swedish in origin and, while they are very fast, able to achieve 40 knots, and are well armed for their size, they function poorly in the Persian Gulf. Designed for the chilly Baltic Sea, the RCB frequently overheats in the hot climate and its high-performance engines shut down with alarming frequency. Not for nothing do pairs of RCBs go out on missions in the Persian Gulf with tow lines – to bring the other boat back home if, perhaps when, it breaks down.

It’s therefore a good question why the Fifth Fleet, our Navy outfit in the Gulf, headquartered in Bahrain, sent such unreliable vessels into dangerous waters yesterday. This needs to be answered, particularly in light of previous cases of Pasdaran ambushes against Western naval vessels, namely an incident with the British frigate Cornwall in 2007 plus an incident with the Australian frigate Adelaide in 2004. Vigilance ought to have been in order yesterday but apparently was not.

The good news is that our ten sailors have been returned unharmed – Tehran naturally insisted the sole female sailor in the group be covered in hijab for the cameras, for political effect — and we’ve gotten our RCBs back too. However, it should be expected that not everything has been returned by Iran, such as the sophisticated electronics gear such boats carry. That will be of high interest to the Pasdaran and their friends abroad.

The White House has been at pains to play down the incident, which is singularly off-message with how Mr. Obama paints his relations with his partners in Tehran. Secretary of State John Kerry actually thanked the Iranians for their “help” in returning the sailors without further incident, which does nothing to diminish fears that Mr. Obama will tolerate Iranian misdeeds of any kind, so desperate is he to preserve his showpiece nuclear deal with the mullahs.

Regrettably, the regime’s military and security policy is dictated not by the relatively polite diplomats of the Iranian foreign ministry, rather by the revolutionary hotheads of the Pasdaran, many of whom actively seek confrontation with “the Great Satan.” Hence deals cut with Tehran will apply only as far as the Revolutionary Guard deems them to be in Iran’s interest. In the case of nuclear matters, that isn’t very far at all.

For years, Obama has insisted that Tehran can be a good-faith partner in diplomacy. Indeed, the president has staked his whole foreign policy legacy on this assumption. His grand bargain with the revolutionary regime, which will begin its reintegration into decent global society, is so important to Mr. Obama that he has wrecked our relations with close allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel to achieve it.

The president is so eager to accommodate Iran that he more or less overlooked Tehran’s efforts to blow up the Saudi Ambassador to the United States in public in downtown Washington, DC, back in 2011, an outrageous act of war that ought to have forced this White House to rethink its Middle East strategy, yet did not. Compared to that incident, the brief arrest of ten American sailors seems like a minor annoyance that can be overlooked for the greater good. As Mr. Obama begins his last year in office, we can only hope the Pasdaran feels the same.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm..........

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-india-attacks-idUSKCN0UR12320160113

Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:44pm EST

Pakistan arrests head of JeM militant group over Pathankot air base attack

ISLAMABAD | By Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Tommy Wilkes


Pakistan has arrested the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group on suspicion his outfit masterminded an attack this month on an air base in Pathankot, two officials said on Wednesday.

Maulana Masood Azhar, an Islamist hardliner who was blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was detained two days ago along with his brother and brother-in-law and will remain in protective custody for at least 30 days, a senior intelligence official told Reuters.

Pakistan said earlier in the day that it had arrested several members of Azhar's group and sealed off its offices as it investigates Indian assertions that the Jan. 2 attack, in which seven military personnel were killed, was the work of the Pakistan-based militants.

The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan - longtime, nuclear-armed arch-rivals on the Indian subcontinent - are set to hold a rare, previously scheduled meeting on Friday, part of a budding diplomatic thaw after decades of hostility. But India has demanded Pakistan take "prompt and decisive" action over the Jan. 2 air base attack before the meeting goes ahead.

"We will keep them (Azhar and brothers) for as long as we need to carry out our investigation over India's claims about the attack. We are resolved to take this investigation to its conclusion," the senior intelligence official said.

A senior government official close to the investigation said that Azhar, who has been placed under house arrest in the past but never prosecuted, would be prosecuted this time if evidence connected him to the attack on the Pathankot air base.

On Wednesday, Pakistan took the unusual step of announcing a high-level team to investigate the incident, naming some of the country's top counter-terrorism officers and officials from both military and civilian intelligence.

India's foreign ministry had no immediate comment, but said earlier it would decide late on Wednesday whether Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar would travel to Islamabad on Friday for the meeting.

Islamabad, which India has long accused of backing Islamist militant attacks, promised to get to the bottom of who was behind the assault on the air base after India handed evidence to Pakistan that it said implicated Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The Pakistani prime minister's office said the government had made "considerable progress" in investigating the attack, and it wanted to send a team of special investigators to the Pathankot air base.

"Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad, have been apprehended," the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said. "The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are under way."

Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad) has long fought Indian forces in India's part of the disputed region of Kashmir. It is blamed for the 2001 assault on India's parliament that brought the two countries to the brink of war.

India also holds Pakistan-based militants responsible for the 2008 Mumbai shooting attacks that left 166 dead.

But a surprise Dec. 25 visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to meet Sharif raised hope that stop-and-start talks between the bitter rivals might finally yield progress.


(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi and Douglas Busvine in New Delhi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[China Connection]

We are at the doorstop of World War Three and the door is about to swing open.

 

[Housecarl]

We are at the doorstop of World War Three and the door is about to swing open.

And like the first one we're going to wonder how the heck we blundered into it.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/new-era-brinkmanship-the-middle-east-14888

A New Era of Brinkmanship in the Middle East

Iranian and Saudi hardliners are playing a dangerous game.

Payam Mohseni
January 13, 2016
Comments 38

Even before the news of ten U.S. sailors being detained by Iranian forces on Tuesday, tensions were flaring in the region. Consider the events of just the last two weeks. Stoked by the Saudi execution of Shia icon Ayatollah Nimr al-Nimr on January 2, the war of words between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shia-majority Iran rapidly took a turn for the worse. On Friday, Tehran accused Riyadh of intentionally striking the Iranian embassy in Yemen, a claim that Saudi officials reject.

Of course, the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is not new. It has been the defining fault line of the Middle East for years. But the Iran nuclear deal raised the regional stakes of this bitter rivalry considerably. After the deal, Saudi Arabia feared that Iran, behind the facade of moderation, would receive all the benefits of normal relations with the West without facing consequences for its revolutionary behavior. And now, with feelings raw over perceived sectarian persecution, both sides stand to benefit from increased escalation. Though neither Riyadh nor Tehran wants full war, an economic climate of low oil prices and a political climate favoring hardline rhetoric are raising both the tolerance for risk in each capital—and the probability of outright conflict.

Though they share incentives for bellicosity, Saudi and Iranian leaders bring vastly different calculations to their decision-making process. Understanding these differences is vital for Washington and its allies to help cool tempers in the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia’s high-risk maneuvering in recent weeks aims to reverse a series of perceived critical setbacks, due in large part to Iran’s steady rise and the Kingdom’s own inability to shape fundamental developments in the region. These failings include:

(a) the conclusion of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the future lifting of sanctions and the resulting threat of a more integrated and economically powerful Iran that could gravitate closer to the United States;

(b) Iranian gains in Syria and Russia’s newfound presence there, as well as Iran’s acceptance by world powers at the Geneva talks that aim to end the crisis in Syria; and

(c) Iran’s increasingly institutionalized military-security presence and reach in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and to a lesser extent in Yemen.

Paradoxically, Iran’s regional gains are largely consequences of factors outside its own control, but which it has been able to exploit adeptly nonetheless. The Iranians have filled the vacuums of power resulting from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the structural decline and dissolution of the Arab state system ushered in by the Arab Spring. Fragmentation in the Arab world, exacerbated by Saudi Arabia’s conservative and counterrevolutionary regional policies in response to the Arab Spring, naturally provides greater opportunities for Iranian influence.

Domestically, Saudi Arabia is faced with a range of serious challenges, such as monarchical succession and generational shifts in royal leadership, Salafi radicalism, issues of social stability, economic shortcomings (including the expenditure of billions in foreign reserves) and questions regarding the status of the Shia minority. The Saudis see escalation with Iran, in parts, as a way to overcome these daunting challenges.

What makes the Iran-Saudi cold war particularly fraught is that the Saudis do not recognize that the Iranians are actually in a better position to pursue serious brinkmanship. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is better suited to exploit the vulnerabilities of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, with its ideological appeal and propensity to effectively collaborate with sympathetic local groups as partners and not just as proxies. Iran has more experience and operational capability in these efforts and, unlike Saudi Arabia, is more pressure-resistant due to decades of weathering strenuous foreign, economic and domestic political crises since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Indeed, despite a perennial sanctions regime, Iran has managed to flourish domestically and regionally, thwarting Saudi (and U.S.) policies to isolate and contain it. Saudi society, on the other hand, has not faced anywhere near the same level of pressure and threat and has been fully supported by the international community and integrated into the global economy. Confrontation with Saudi Arabia may thus open unprecedented vulnerabilities within the country, threatening Saudi political order altogether.

That Iran is not afraid of confrontation is quite evident in the remarks of the Iranian supreme leader. A few months ago, following the Hajj-related Mina incident that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Iranians, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that Iran would discard restraint and inflict tough and fierce reprisals against Saudi Arabia if necessary. Now, following Saudi Arabia’s execution of al-Nimr, Khamenei declared that “divine revenge” will be in short order.

Crisis may even prove conducive for Iranian hardline political objectives domestically. Further escalation in the days and weeks ahead would embolden hardliner and revolutionary forces. especially as the supreme leader and the IRGC look to cement Iran’s revolutionary credentials following the nuclear agreement. Escalation could bestow a prominence that diminishes the efforts of moderate factions in changing Iran’s ideological and political course.

While moderates within Iran have prudently highlighted the damaging effect of the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, this mainly represents a public relations tactic to manage perceptions and channel anger at Saudi Arabia into problems of domestic radicalism. From a broader perspective, however, the moderates will be weakened since the Saudis have closed the door to diplomacy. Iranian President Rouhani’s emphasis on diplomacy will thus be rendered futile and unpersuasive, while growing regional insecurity will play into the arguments of Iran’s revolutionary faction. Hardliners have also decried the attack on the embassy, but lay the blame with “suspicious hands” and “nefarious plots”—thereby exonerating themselves from the attack and reinforcing the existing security paradigm.

Ironically, neither Saudi nor Iranian hardliners wish to see Iran normalizing or moving closer to the United States. For both, the revolutionary image of Iran should take precedence over its more moderate, diplomatic one as represented by the Rouhani government. Fundamentally, the Saudis would rather see a revolutionary and hardline Iran at odds with the United States than a moderate Iran with closer relations with America, as this could endanger Saudi’s special relationship with the U.S.

Sinking oil prices (crude dipped below $32 this week) further diminish the costs for risky behavior and mute international repercussions. Iran, for one, would be relieved to see Gulf tensions raise oil prices as it tries to reenter the global energy market.

Saudi leaders are determined to forge political order within and outside its borders. Its actions and rhetoric this week show that they cannot do so without resorting to sectarianism and bellicosity. As Saudi Arabia’s marginal returns of confrontational policy diminish due to unfavorable circumstances in the Middle East and inside the Kingdom, it must increasingly ratchet up the stakes to retain the same level of return and benefit. However, violent sectarianism is not a manageable policy, and can empower forces—such as ISIS—that will be further detrimental to regional order and to the stability of Saudi Arabia itself.

Payam Mohseni is Inaugural Director of the Belfer Center’s Iran Project and Fellow for Iran Studies at the Center. He is also a Lecturer on Government in the Department of Government at Harvard University and co-chair of the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe Study Group at Harvard’s Center for European Studies.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/vietnams-plan-deter-china-western-jets-14893

The Buzz

Vietnam's Plan to Deter China With Western Jets

Dave Majumdar
January 13, 2016
Comments 130

Vietnam is negotiating with American and European manufacturers to purchase new warplanes—including fighters, maritime patrol aircraft and unmanned aircraft. The move comes as part of Hanoi’s strategy to lessen its dependence on Russian hardware and to counter China’s growing power.

According to Reuter’s Siva Govindasamy, Vietnam has been in talks with contractors who build the Saab JAS-39E/F Gripen NG, Eurofighter Typhoon, Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. It’s also taken a hard look at Korea’s F/A-50 lightweight fighter—which was developed in cooperation with Lockheed.

Assuming Hanoi can reach a deal, Vietnam could buy up to a hundred combat aircraft to replace its antiquated fleet of 144 Mikoyan MiG-21 Fishbeds and thirty-eight Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter strike aircraft. The new aircraft would supplement Vietnam’s existing fleet of Russian-made Flanker air superiority fighters. Hanoi operates about a dozen original model Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers and thirty-two more modern Su-30MK2 Flankers with four more on order.

While Washington and Hanoi have been on better terms in recent years, with the U.S. defense secretary visiting the nation as recently as last June, buying an American combat aircraft might still be a bridge too far for Vietnam. The memories of the Vietnam War—which was much more devastating for Vietnam than for the United States—might mean that Hanoi will have reservations about dealing with American contractors. As such, a European warplane might have an edge. Indeed, Vietnam is known to have held fairly advanced discussions to buy the Typhoon, according to Reuters.

But Hanoi needs more than just fighters. Given its maritime disputes with Beijing, Vietnam needs maritime patrol aircraft and surveillance capabilities. The country has been talking to the Swedes about maritime patrol and airborne early warning variants of the Saab 340 or 2000 twin-engine turboprops, according to Reuters.

Vietnam has also discussed purchasing a maritime patrol version of the Airbus C-295, Lockheed’s Sea Hercules variant of the C-130 transport and a Boeing offering of a business jet fitted with much of the surveillance suite from the P-8 Poseidon. The Boeing offering would not include anti-submarine warfare capabilities however.

Hanoi is also looking for unmanned surveillance aircraft to help patrol its vast shoreline. However, no details are available on exactly what aircraft the country wants to buy. But as tensions with China look to continue unabated, Hanoi is almost certain to explore is options and, in doing so, start moving closer to Washington.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for the National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.

 

[Housecarl]

Terror attack in Jakarta, Indonesia
Started by mzkittyý, Yesterday 08:26 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?482396-Terror-attack-in-Jakarta-Indonesia


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/indonesia-blast-idUSKCN0US0BW20160114

Thu Jan 14, 2016 3:48am EST

Suicide bombers, gunmen kill at least 6 in Indonesian capital

JAKARTA | By Kanupriya Kapoor and Darren Whiteside


Militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the centre of the Indonesian capital on Thursday, killing at least six people, police said, in an attack on a country that Islamic State had threatened to put in its "spotlight".

While suspicion is likely to fall on Islamic State or its allies, police said they did not know who was responsible and President Joko Widodo urged the public not to speculate on who was behind the attack.

Police said there were at least six explosions and they had shot dead three of the attackers and captured four. Three suicide bombers were suspected to have been involved while three policemen and three civilians were also killed, they said.

The main thrust of the attack was on an office block and it began with a blast outside a Starbucks cafe on its ground floor.

"The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him," said a Reuters photographer.

Indonesia has been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants and counter-terrorism police have launched a crackdown on people with suspected links to Islamic State.

"We have previously received a threat from Islamic State that Indonesia will be the spotlight," police spokesman Anton Charliyan told reporters.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

Media reported that a Dutch person and another foreigner were among the casualties on Thursday but it was unclear if they were dead or wounded.

Police snipers were deployed among hundreds of other security officers, some in armoured vehicles.

A bomb disposal unit was seen entering the building where the Starbucks is located, which also houses a cinema where at one stage, police exchanged fire with gunmen.

An office worker the building, who declined to be identified, said he and fellow workers had been ordered to stay put after the first blast.


Related Coverage
› No indication Islamic State behind Indonesia attack - intelligence chief

"That's when I heard the second explosion. It was loud and powerful," he said.

Several hours after the attacks began, the witness heard more gunfire and at least one more explosion. A couple of hours later police said they were combing the building and they later declared the area secure.

Outside, a body still lay on the street and a shoe lay nearby. The city centre's notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.


'NO FEAR'

President Widodo was outside Jakarta when the attack unfolded but was cutting short his trip to return to the sprawling capital of more than 10 million people by helicopter.

He urged the public not to be cowed.

"We must not be afraid, we must not be defeated by an act of terror like this," he said in televised comments.

The national intelligence agency chief said there was no indication that Islamic State militants had carried out the attack.

Several embassies are also in the vicinity of the attack. Indonesia's central bank, located in the same area, went ahead with a policy meeting as the violence unfolded, cutting its policy rate by 25 basis points to 7.25 percent.

Economists said Southeast Asia's biggest economy could be hurt by the violence.

Early in the attack, one explosion went off in front of the Sarinah shopping centre. Media said a police post outside the mall was blown up.

A nearby U.N. building was in lock-down with no one allowed in or out, a witness said. Some other high-rise buildings in the area were evacuated.

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of the religion.

The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.

Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State rocketed after the Paris attacks in November and the killing of 14 people in California in December.

On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State.

Among those arrested in Indonesia's crackdown late last year was a member of China's Uighur Muslim minority with a suicide-bomb vest. Media said two other Uighur suspects were on the run.

Indonesian security forces have also intensified a manhunt for a militant leader called Santoso, regarded as Indonesia's most high-profile backer of Islamic State, in the jungles of Sulawesi island.

Santoso had threatened to unleash attacks in Jakarta.


(Aditional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Gayatri Suroyo, Nilufar Rizki, Eveline Danubrata, Randy Fabi and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/islamic-state-eyes-asia-base-in-2016-in-philippines-indonesia-expert/

Islamic State Eyes Asia Base in 2016 in Philippines, Indonesia: Expert

Group looking to declare at least one foothold in the region this year.

By Prashanth Parameswaran
January 14, 2016

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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is looking to declare at least one foothold in Asia in 2016, with the Philippines and Indonesia being the most likely targets, a terrorism expert said Tuesday.

Southeast Asia has already emerged as a key recruitment center for ISIS, with more than 500 Indonesians and dozens of Malaysians joining the group and forming their own unit, the Katibah Nusantara (Malay Archipelago Combat Unit). Earlier this week, reports surfaced that two Malaysian suicide bombers from that unit had blown themselves up in Syria and Iraq in the last two weeks, killing more than 30 others (See: “Malaysian Islamic State Suicide Bombers Kill More Than 30 in Middle East”).

But leaders and experts have also been warning that ISIS could gain a territorial foothold or at least establish a satellite presence in Southeast Asia. At last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore’s premier Lee Hsien Loong warned that ISIS could “establish a base somewhere in the region,” a geographical area under its physical control like in Syria or Iraq (See: “Singapore Warns of Islamic State Base in Southeast Asia”). On Tuesday, in an opinion piece in The Straits Times, terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna argued that ISIS is likely to create at least one branch in Southeast Asia this year – most likely in either the Philippines or Indonesia – with alarming consequences for the region.

“ISIS is determined to declare at least one province in Asia in 2016,” Gunaratna, a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University wrote in the Singapore-based newspaper. “An ISIS foothold will present far-reaching security implications for the stability and prosperity for a rising Asia,” he added.

The main candidate for an ISIS branch, Gunaratna argued, is the Philippines. That is not surprising. The country has served as a training ground for terrorists before, including Al-Qaeda’s so-called Southeast Asian offshoot Jemaah Islamiyah. A number of local groups have pledged allegiance to ISIS self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with the Ahlus Shura (council) appointing Isnilon Hapilon – the leader of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan – as the overall leader of the so-called Islamic State in the Philippines.

“Shortly, ISIS will declare a satellite of the caliphate in the Sulu archipelago,” Gunaratna wrote.

The consequences, Gunaratna argues, would be dire. If ISIS succeeds in creating a safe haven in Basilan and mounts operations from the Sulu archipelago, training camps will lure recruits from neighboring Asian states who cannot reach Syria, including Malaysia, Australia and even China. In addition, he argues that it is “very likely” that ISIS will dispatch explosive experts, combat tacticians and other operatives. As ISIS enforces its brand of Islam, beheadings, mass killings and other attacks are also likely to occur. To preempt all this, Gunaratna urged the Philippine military to deploy in strength in Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi as well as focus on winning Muslim hearts and minds to reduce ISIS support.

“If the armed forces can dominate the Sulu archipelago, ISIS cannot successfully declare, operate and expand its satellite in the Philippines, with implications for Malaysia, the region and beyond,” he argued.

The other candidate for an ISIS branch, Gunaratna wrote, is Indonesia. His case is much less developed here, though he is not alone in worrying about this. Just last month, Australian attorney-general George Brandis warned that ISIS had identified Indonesia as a location for a “distant caliphate”.

Thus far, to their credit, Gunaratna acknowledges that the Indonesian military has “pre-empted” ISIS plans to declare a satellite state of the so-called caliphate in eastern Indonesia. This week, Indonesian police said that a more aggressive campaign is being launched focused on Poso and surrounding areas to find Abu Wardah – better known as Santoso – Indonesia’s most high-profile backer of ISIS. Elsewhere, Indonesian security forces have also made key arrests to stop planned attacks, including of several militants across Java in December with the help of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Australian Federal Police and Singaporean authorities.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-finland-idUSKCN0UR20G20160113

World | Wed Jan 13, 2016 12:02pm EST
Related: World, Migrant Crisis

Anti-immigrant 'Soldiers of Odin' raise concern in Finland

HELSINKI | By Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell


Wearing black jackets adorned with a symbol of a Viking and the Finnish flag, the "Soldiers of Odin" have surfaced as self-proclaimed patriots patrolling the streets to protect native Finns from immigrants, worrying the government and police.

On the northern fringes of Europe, Finland has little history of welcoming large numbers of refugees, unlike neighbouring Sweden. But as with other European countries, it is now struggling with a huge increase in asylum seekers and the authorities are wary of any anti-immigrant vigilantism.

A group of young men founded Soldiers of Odin, named after a Norse god, late last year in the northern town of Kemi. This lies near the border community of Tornio, which has become an entry point for migrants arriving from Sweden.

Since then the group has expanded to other towns, with members stating they want to serve as eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfil their duties.

Members blame "Islamist intruders" for what they believe is an increase in crime and they have carried placards at demonstrations with slogans such as "Migrants not welcome".

While most Finns disapprove of the group, its growth signals disquiet in a country strained by the cost of receiving the asylum seekers while mired in a three-year-old recession that has forced state spending and welfare cuts.

Finnish police have also reported harassment of women by "men with a foreign background" at New Year celebrations in Helsinki, as well as at some public events last autumn.

This followed complaints of hundreds of sexual assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities - with investigations focused on illegal migrants and asylum seekers - and allegations that Swedish police covered up accusations of similar assaults by mostly migrant youths in Stockholm.

Police files show reported cases of sexual harassment in Finland almost doubled to 147 in the last four months of 2015 from 75 in the same period a year earlier. The figures give no ethnic breakdown of the alleged perpetrators.


NO PLACE FOR VIGILANTES

The government has made clear there can be no place for vigilantes. "As a matter of principle, police are responsible for law and order in the country," Prime Minister Juha Sipila told public broadcaster YLE on Tuesday, responding to concerns about the group. "Civilian patrols cannot assume the authority of the police."

Finland received about 32,000 asylum seekers last year, a leap from 3,600 in 2014. Yet it has a relatively small immigrant community, with only around 6 percent of the population foreign-born in 2014 compared with a European Union average of 10 percent.

In Kemi, the Soldiers of Odin patrol the streets daily despite the temperatures sinking to -30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit). The group has stated it operates in 23 towns, but police says the network operates in five. Its Facebook page has 7,600 "likes".

"In our opinion, Islamist intruders cause insecurity and increase crime," the group says on its website. One self-proclaimed member, aiming to recruit new members in the eastern town of Joensuu, said on Facebook the group is "a patriotic organisation that fights for a white Finland".

In the eastern German city of Leipzig, more than 200 masked right-wing supporters, carrying placards with racist overtones, went on a rampage this week.

Last October, a masked swordsman in Sweden killed two people with immigrant backgrounds in a school attack that fuelled fears that the refugee influx is polarising public opinion.

In Finland, no clashes have been reported between the Soldiers of Odin patrols and immigrants but police said they are keeping a close eye on the group. The Security Intelligence Service has said "some patrol groups" seem to have links to extremist movements.


LET THE POLICE DO THEIR JOB

Police acknowledge patrolling alone is not a crime. "As long as the patrols only report possible incidents to police, they have the right to do so," said Kemi police Chief Inspector Eero Vanska. However, he added: "They should let the police do their job."

Some Soldiers of Odin members play down the group's motives, saying it aims to help people regardless of their skin colour. The group has closed its website following reports on some members' criminal background. Members contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

But one of the group's founders in Kemi, Mika Ranta, made clear immigration was the focus.

"We woke up to a situation where different cultures met. It caused fear and concern in the community," he told a local newspaper in October. "The biggest issue was when we learned from Facebook that new asylum seekers were hanging around primary schools, taking pictures of young girls."

Vanska said some asylum seekers had been seen near schools with phones. But he added that these reports could be simple misunderstandings and there was no concrete evidence to support the accusations.

The coalition government - which includes The Finns, an anti-immigration party - has criticised the patrols.

"These kinds of patrol clearly have anti-immigration and racist attributes and their action does not improve security," interior minister Petteri Orpo told Reuters. "Now the police must commit its scarce resources to (monitoring) their action."

But the government faces pressure to clamp down more on asylum seekers. Support for The Finns party, which joined the coalition in May, has plummeted partly because voters are frustrated with the government's handling of migrants.

The government has tightened immigration policies, requiring working-age asylum seekers to do some unpaid jobs and acknowledge a "national curriculum" on Finnish culture and society.

The patrols have also prompted a counter-movement, with Facebook communities hoping to avert confrontations on the streets. One such is the Sisters of Kyllikki, named after a character in the national epic poem Kalevala.

"Our aim is to help people and to build up dialogue with all Finns as well as with immigrants," said Niina Ruuska, a founder of the group which has about 1,500 Facebook members.


(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and David Stamp)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-arak-idUSKCN0US1CU20160114

World | Thu Jan 14, 2016 6:41am EST
Related: World

Iran says has removed core from Arak reactor in key nuclear deal step

ANKARA


Iran has removed the sensitive core of its Arak nuclear reactor and U.N. inspectors will visit the site on Thursday to verify the move crucial to the implementation of Tehran's atomic agreement with major powers, state television said on Thursday.

"The core vessel of the Arak reactor has been removed ... and IAEA inspectors will visit the site to verify it and report it to the IAEA ... We are ready for the implementation day of the deal," Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said.


(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://in.reuters.com/article/india-pakistan-talks-idINKCN0US18520160114

Thu Jan 14, 2016 5:39pm IST
Related: Top News, South Asia

India, Pakistan talks deferred after Pathankot air base attack

NEW DELHI | By Rajesh Kumar Singh


India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries, the Indian foreign ministry said on Thursday, while an investigation into a deadly attack on a military base in Pathankot is carried out.

India has demanded action against the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad that it suspects of carrying out the attack on the Pathankot air base. Islamabad has held Jaish leader Maulana Masood Azhar and other members, sources say.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said New Delhi welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan against the militant group, which was also blamed for a 2001 parliament attack that nearly led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals.

He said the foreign secretaries of the neighbours spoke on the telephone and decided to defer the talks that had been tentatively scheduled for Friday in Islamabad.

The two diplomats agreed to hold the talks aimed at achieving a thaw in ties in the very near future but no date was announced.

The Pakistani foreign office said a new date had not yet been decided.

"We welcome the statement issued by the government of Pakistan yesterday on the investigations into the Pathankot terrorist attack," Swarup told reporters.

"The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident."

Seven Indian military personnel were killed in the Jan. 2 attack on the base in the northern state of Punjab, which was followed by a raid on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that has also been linked to Jaish-e-Mohammad, or the Army of Mohammad.

Pakistan, which India has long accused of backing Islamist militants, promised to investigate who was behind the assault on the air base after India handed over evidence that it said implicated Jaish-e-Mohammad.


(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in New Delhi and Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Clarence Fernandez)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-japan-islands-idUSKCN0UR12G20160113

World | Wed Jan 13, 2016 4:39am EST
Related: World, China, Japan, East China Sea

China warns Japan against 'provocation' around disputed islets

BEIJING


China's Foreign Ministry warned Japan on Wednesday not to take "provocative" action around a group of disputed islets in the East China Sea, saying Tokyo would have to accept the consequences.

On Tuesday, Japan said it had told China that any foreign naval vessel entering Japanese waters for reasons other than "innocent passage" will be told to leave by a Japanese naval patrol, signaling a potential escalation in a long-running dispute.

Last year, Chinese navy ships sailed near the disputed isles, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, the Japanese government said.

Asked about the Japanese announcement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had the right to carry out "normal navigation and patrol activities" around the islands.

"We advise Japan against taking provocative acts or doing anything to raise tensions, otherwise it will have to accept responsibility for everything that happens," he told a daily news briefing, without elaborating.

In an editorial on Wednesday, the influential Chinese tabloid the Global Times said if Japan sent its navy in, China would have to send in its warships too.

"China can send as many warships to the Diaoyu Islands as Japan does," said the newspaper, which is run by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily.

The dispute over the uninhabited islands, which are under Japanese control, has been a major sticking point in Japan and China's often contentious relations in recent years.

Late last year, a Chinese coastguard vessel with what appeared to be gun turrets entered territorial waters claimed by Japan near the islands, Japan's coastguard said, adding that it was the first such incursion by an armed Chinese vessel in the area.


(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

 

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http://www.realclearworld.com/artic..._intrigue_at_a_time_of_transition_111656.html

January 14, 2016

Saudi Arabia: Palace Intrigue at a Time of Transition

By Reva Bhalla

In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia sparked a wave of outrage with the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and sent investors into a frenzy over the possible sale of shares in the world's largest oil company, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Many observers attribute the country's behavior to the dominant royal personalities of the day. Western media have described Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old favored son of King Salman, as arrogant, naive and impulsive, and they have credited him with steering the Saudi kingdom into somewhat unpredictable territory.

The young prince recently revealed himself further with a lengthy interview he granted The Economist - a stark departure from the Saudi royal tradition of delivering terse public statements to tightly controlled state-owned media. He spoke relatively freely about his desire to liberalize the economy and defended his country's policies toward Iran. However, the prince downplayed his role in building a more aggressive Saudi policy, stressing that the kingdom is "a country of institutions," where relevant ministries provide information to a king who makes the final decisions.

This is perhaps too generous a description for Saudi politics. After all, Saudi Arabia is better known for its emphasis on family and tribal politics than for its institutional maturity. However, there is certainly more driving the kingdom's actions than a novice prince with an appetite for risk.

An Uneven Playing Field

When you look at a map of the Middle East, three geographic features stand out: the Anatolian land bridge, the Iranian plateau and the Arabian Peninsula. Not coincidentally, these formations constitute the three most active powers in the Middle East today: Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia doesn't have the historical prestige Turkey and Iran do. The Turks and Persians were able to create unique civilizations and vast empires from their well-defined and buffered cores. Access to resources, popular trade routes and heavy migratory traffic gave rise to large populations and a working class. Institutions were created and refined over time to manage its citizens, its national defense and its commercial interests.

The Arabian Peninsula's story is quite different. Until oil was discovered in the 1930s, the harsh and barren landscape forming the core of the peninsula was home to only a small number of desert nomads who would survive off the camel caravan trade and raids on small oasis towns controlled and fought over by competing tribes. It was a simple, independent and rather unambitious life in this forbidding interior.

As T.E. Lawrence described in the early 20th century:

The Bedouin of the desert had been born and had grown up in it, and had embraced this nakedness too harsh for volunteers with all his soul, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free ... in his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and great emptiness. There was no human effort, no fecundity in nature: just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath. There unconsciously he came near to God ... the Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God. He alone was great, and yet there was a homeliness, an everydayness of this climactic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their commonest resource and companion. ... They felt no incongruity in bringing God into their weaknesses and appetites, and invoked his name in the least creditable causes. He was the commonest of their words: and indeed we lost much eloquence by making him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.

Lawrence, arguably the ultimate romanticist when it came to Bedouin life, elegantly articulates the deep religiosity in Arabia that so deeply unnerves observers in the West. It was in the upland region of the Najd - in the center of the arid peninsula, with the inhospitable al Nafud desert to the north, the Rub al Khali (or "Empty Quarter") to the south and the Hijaz Mountains to the west - where the austere Sunni sect of Wahhabism took root. This sect created a religious platform for the House of Saud to eventually carve out a state through conquest. The Najd-rooted state would include the more cosmopolitan Hijaz region - an area vital to trade and containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina - and the fertile oasis area of Qatif and al Ahsa in eastern Arabia, where a Shiite-majority population stretches into Bahrain.

Internalizing the Iranian Threat

This historical backdrop informs much of Saudi Arabia's current behavior. The 84-year-old kingdom has been resilient in the face of jihadist rebellion, oil crashes and invasions of Kuwait and Iraq in decades past, but it is also very uneasy. Oil is the House of Saud's primary means of taming unrest at home and buying influence - and security - abroad. The majority of that oil lies in Eastern Province, where the demographic balance shifts in favor of the Shiites. The problem for Saudi Arabia is that it cannot be reasonably confident in its own military capabilities to defend those oil assets from interested parties in Tehran.

http://www.realclearworld.com/images/wysiwyg_images/saudi-arabia-oil-unrest.jpg

The Saudi royals remember well the last time Washington tried to work with Iran and Saudi Arabia simultaneously to manage the Middle East. During U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration, this was known as the "Twin Pillars" policy, but the Saudi royals knew that they were second-class allies to the White House compared to the Shah's Iran. In fact, Iran used its close relationship with the U.S. administration to present itself as the defender and U.S. military partner for all Gulf oil interests. From the Saudi perspective, this created the possibility that Washington would turn a blind eye and give Tehran implicit support to take control of the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf. Today, Saudi Arabia can take comfort in the knowledge that the mullahs' Iran will not have nearly as close a relationship with the White House as the Shah's Iran. However, especially in light of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Saudis also have to think longer term about the potential for politics to evolve in Tehran and for a deeper rapprochement to develop between Riyadh's primary security guarantor and its primary adversary. Moreover, Iran's covert arm will pose a more serious threat to Saudi interests - particularly in sensitive sectarian zones - once Tehran is no longer bound by sanctions.

Therefore, Saudi Arabia's policy is designed to take no chances with Iran. As soon as Shiite protest activity emerged in Bahrain in 2011, Saudi Arabia swiftly sent troops to occupy the island in defense of the sheikdom's Sunni rulers. When al-Nimr condemned the Saudi royals in 2012 and called on fellow Shiites in Eastern Province to rise up in protest against Saudi repression, Saudi authorities threw him and other activists in jail for "foreign meddling." Al-Nimr's execution on Jan. 2 was a calculated risk by the Saudi leadership to demonstrate the heavy hand Riyadh is willing to use in silencing dissent and denying Iran the chance to use the Saudi Shiite population to destabilize the kingdom.

Stress Testing the Coalition


Countering Iran on a regional level is not a mission for the Saudis alone. The kingdom's leaders understand that they are operating in an old and uncomfortable relationship in which Riyadh's interests and Washington's interests might not align neatly. What Saudi Arabia needs is a coalition that it can rely on to defend its interests and compensate for its own weaknesses. Even a cold war with Iran fought across the region requires ample resources. And with Saudi foreign policy getting more expensive amid low oil prices and more competition with Iran, Riyadh will be looking to share this burden. Saudi Arabia has been very active under King Salman in courting countries like Egypt and Pakistan for manpower in Yemen and Syria. Saudi Arabia also has been willing to work closely with the other big Sunni heavyweight in the region, Turkey, in trying to tilt the regional balance back toward Sunni interests. Saudi Arabia's financial largesse has been used to purchase alliances among smaller exploitable players such as Sudan and Eritrea. The more allies Saudi Arabia can claim, the more it can preserve its own resources and the more attention it will demand from Washington.

In the wake of the al-Nimr execution and the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Iran, Saudi Arabia was able to see who among its allies would cut or limit diplomatic ties with Iran in solidarity with Riyadh. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Sudan passed that test, while others mustered diplomatic condemnations. Yet Saudi Arabia will need more than diplomatic backup to prove that its coalition has substance. Proxy battles fought across the region, from Yemen to the Levant, will require countries to sacrifice blood and treasure in these battlefields - a hard sell for many who would prefer to maintain more plausible deniability and can afford more balance in their foreign relationships.

There is also an ideological obstacle in Saudi Arabia's coalition-building efforts. Working with a country as vital as Turkey, led by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party - or a maverick Gulf sheikhdom like Qatar, which (like Turkey) promotes a number of Islamist groups in the region - or luring a militant group like Hamas away from Iran requires a certain tolerance for democratic Islamist movements. This is a bitter pill to swallow for the Saudi royals, who largely have seen Muslim Brotherhood-type movements as an existential threat to the state.

The kingdom has fostered deep religiosity through a Wahhabist doctrine that pervades everyday life, but the al Saud family also drew a clear line between the religious establishment and the political establishment to prevent challenges from religious leaders. The Muslim Brotherhood's approach of blending Western-style democracy with Islamic governance simply does not comport with the model designed by the House of Saud. At the same time, the Saudi leadership, particularly under King Salman, has realized the limits of a zero-tolerance policy toward Muslim Brotherhood factions. In fact, King Salman's Saudi Arabia has engaged openly with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, including the al-Islah party in Yemen, Hamas and the Ennahda party in Tunisia.

Saudi Arabia's willingness to deal with such groups has helped heal some of the wounds in its coalition while aggravating others. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia can work more effectively with Turkey and Qatar in crucial battle zones like Syria. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia runs the risk of sowing more distrust with the current Egyptian government and the United Arab Emirates, both of which believe the Muslim Brotherhood is best dealt with through force alone. For Saudi Arabia to build a viable coalition for operations in Syria, it will need Turkey and Egypt to get along. This is why, with Turkey's urging, Saudi officials have been quietly leaning on the Egyptian government to soften its stance on the Muslim Brotherhood and mend ties with Ankara. Egypt will do just enough to secure Saudi financial assistance and could re-engage with Turkey, but resetting Cairo's virulent disposition toward the Brotherhood will take a lot more than Saudi money.

Revising the Social Contract?

The more interesting question may be whether Saudi Arabia's willingness to work with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates abroad will translate to any political opening at home. The Saudi leaders can see that the Saudi social contract - bartering material comfort from oil wealth for unquestioned support to an absolute monarchy - has its limits. This is particularly true when the price of oil is in danger of sinking to the $20s and structural weaknesses in the global economy indicate that prices will stay low for an extended period of time. Saudi Arabia has room to cut production and shave off excess supply in the oil markets, but any space it cedes would be filled by Iran, which is eager to sell its oil after years of sanctions, and by agile U.S. shale producers seeking a more viable price environment.

Rather than try to control the market, Saudi Arabia is preparing to endure a long period of painfully low oil prices, taking on more debt, reducing subsidies, drawing down reserves, selectively introducing taxes and loosening the reins on the economy to allow more private investment. As Mohammed bin Salman claimed in his interview - and as Saudi Aramco confirmed in a subsequent statement - the state-owned oil giant is considering selling shares to raise money. Although this is a radical shift for Saudi Arabia, it probably will occur in small steps. The potential for foreign participation likely will be limited to the downstream sector, such as petrochemicals and refining. Still, Aramco is the crown jewel of the House of Saud, and the change in overall policy direction will undoubtedly be a controversial one for the kingdom. Bin Salman's talk of liberalizing the economy is reminiscent of Gamal Mubarak, the son of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, before the military moved against him, and of a freshly inaugurated Syrian President Bashar al Assad before the old guard pushed back against his neo-liberal policies. Saudi Arabia has pragmatic reasons for restructuring its economy in such depressed conditions - especially as the state must find some way to employ its burgeoning youth population - but vested interests and royal competition could stymie some of these efforts.

Reducing subsidies and trying to introduce taxes in a depressed job climate without substantially revising the social contract poses an obvious dilemma for Saudi leaders. The kingdom is already close to completing a transition from the second generation of leaders dominated by the "Sudeiri Seven" (the seven sons of Ibn Saud's favorite wife, Hass bint Ahmad al-Sudeiri) to the much larger, more diffuse and more competitive third generation. Introducing changes to the system to allow some degree of political representation outside the family probably will become more difficult the further Saudi Arabia goes down the succession line.

At the same time, young leaders like bin Salman potentially have many decades ahead of them to steer the Saudi state. A leader who comes into power at an early age has the advantage of a longer planning horizon. Bin Salman must be contemplating a future in which declining production and technology breakthroughs could mean that the Saudi state eventually will not be able to rely on oil to underpin the state. Notably, King Salman appears in tune enough with his son's ideas right now to give him considerable room in defense as well as economic policy. In early 2015, bin Salman's lengthy list of appointments included chair of a 10-member Supreme Council for Saudi Aramco and chair of the government Council for Economic and Development. Breaking a tradition of limiting Saudi royal reach into the state oil company, Saudi Aramco was split off from the Ministry of Petroleum and bin Salman was given direct oversight of the company. Next in line for the throne is Crown Prince and Minister of Interior Mohammed bin Nayef, the nephew of King Salman and cousin of Mohammed bin Salman. The 56-year-old crown prince has no heirs, leaving the succession path clear for bin Salman as long as he stays on good terms with his cousin.

Although there is plenty of reason to be more concerned about Saudi Arabia these days, there is little reason to be alarmist about Saudi Arabia's future. The kingdom has some $627 billion in foreign reserves to fund a growing deficit, and the state still has considerable room to raise its debt. As expenses rise along with security challenges from jihadists and Shiite activists, Saudi Arabia will prioritize its internal security and defense budget to safeguard critical oil infrastructure. A Saudi-Iranian covert proxy war will escalate, but Riyadh has been quite effective so far in constricting Iranian supply lines on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia also will be more compromising when it comes to ideology and forging strategic relationships abroad in order to manage an increasingly volatile neighborhood. This will include working with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and working multiple, contradictory sides of the fractured Yemeni state.

Political and economic flexibility at home is still a matter of an intense behind-the-scenes royal debate. As we try to decipher that debate from outside the palace walls, there will be a natural tendency to link Saudi actions to the proclivities of a political personality like bin Salman, who appears to be the emblem of change in the kingdom. However, the forces underlying Saudi Arabia's changing behavior have been developing for some time, and a prince's policy preferences can shake the very foundation of the state they are intended to protect.


Reprinted with permission from Stratfor

 

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http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/will-south-korea-rethink-its-nuke-policy

Around Asia
Gordon G. Chang

Will South Korea Rethink Its Nuke Policy?

12 January 2016
Comments 4

On Monday, a “US official” speaking anonymously to Reuters, said the Pentagon was not thinking of reintroducing nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula.

Earlier in the day, Seoul had suggested Washington was considering the possibility. “The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets,” South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.

By “strategic assets” the unnamed US official said the Defense Department was referring to nuclear-capable bombers. South Korean media had been reporting that Washington and Seoul were discussing the deployment of American B-2 bombers, F-22 fighters, and nuclear submarines to the Korean peninsula.

President George H. W. Bush in 1991 announced the unilateral withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea and other foreign countries, and today there is virtually no apparent support in the Pentagon for redeploying them.

As a matter of actual warfighting, basing nukes in South Korea makes little sense. Van Jackson of the Center for a New American Security points out the US does not need them in Asia because of its conventional military superiority over every other nation. Nukes also tend to exacerbate disputes, make American look aggressive, risk encouraging others to deploy them, eat up resources better devoted elsewhere, and legitimize a class of weaponry that gives weak countries a battlefield equalizer.

Moreover, no one should want to put these destructive instruments anywhere close to where the North Koreans can grab or destroy them.

And with long-range, strategic platforms—like Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines that silently prowl the oceans, B-52s based in nearby Guam, or the stealthy US-based B-2s that can hit a target anywhere on earth—there is no need to actually bring a nuke onto South Korean soil.

Yet, despite everything, South Koreans continue to talk about the US adding nukes to its arsenals on the peninsula.

Why? North Korea’s nuclear weapon program, which is advancing at a steady pace, is unnerving South Koreans, and as a result has eroded confidence in the US’s ability to defend them.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the South Korean government has been caught conducting experiments with fissile material, such as enriching uranium and trying to reprocess plutonium, in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The South has tried to hide its illicit activities from inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, and without justification refused access to IAEA inspectors. The US thought it had convinced Seoul to give up its program, but South Korean technicians covertly kept up the effort nonetheless.

It is generally believed Seoul can develop a bomb in about a year’s time. South Korean military officials say that they can do that in six months.

And someday they just might. “Suppose you have a dangerous neighbor with a gun,” said Chung Mong-joon, a member of South Korea’s National Assembly, in 2013 at a Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington. “You have to take measures to protect yourself. And being a gun control advocate isn’t going to help you.” As Chung said, “Telling us not to consider any nuclear weapons option is tantamount to telling us to simply surrender.”

The US way of calming down the South Koreans is to fly B-52s over their country at times of stress. A lone B-52 on Sunday made a low pass over Osan Air Base, about 40 miles from Seoul, a message to a North Korea that had detonated a small-yield weapon on Wednesday. The US Air Force also sent a B-52 over South Korea after the North’s previous detonation of an atomic device, in 2013.

A fly-by with a single strategic bomber is better than nothing, but it is no substitute for an effective North Korea policy, which Washington has yet to develop.

The official talking to Reuters said reintroducing nukes might “escalate into an arms race, a very dangerous arms race, in the region,” but the South Koreans know that comment ignores reality. The North Koreans are racing to build nukes as fast as they can, and Washington is stopping Seoul from doing the same. That American policy may not be sustainable for long.

 

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http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-hits-islamic-state-targets-syria-iraq-istanbul-123418091.html

Turkey attacks Islamic State targets in Syria, Iraq in response to Istanbul bombing

Reuters
By Ercan Gurses
1 hour ago

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish tanks and artillery have bombarded Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq over the past 48 hours, killing almost 200 of its fighters in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday.

An Islamic State suicide bomber, who entered Turkey as a Syrian refugee, blew himself up among groups of tourists in the historic center of Istanbul on Tuesday, killing 10 Germans and seriously wounding several other foreigners.

Turkey, a NATO member and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, would also carry out air strikes against the radical Sunni militants if necessary and would not yield until they were flushed from its borders, Davutoglu said.

"After the incident on Tuesday … close to 500 artillery and tank shells were fired on Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq," he told a conference of Turkish ambassadors in the capital Ankara, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.

"Close to 200 Daesh members including so-called regional leaders were neutralized in the last 48 hours. After this, every threat directed at Turkey will be punished in kind."

Davutoglu said the Turkish strikes had targeted Islamic State positions around Bashiqa in northern Iraq, where Ankara recently deployed a force protection unit to defend Turkish soldiers who are training an Iraqi militia in the fight against the Sunni radicals.

Cross-border strikes into Syria targeted an area around the rebel-held town of Marea, 20 km (12 miles) from the Turkish border and near the edge of a "safe zone" Turkey wants to establish in northern Syria to keep Islamic State at bay.

"Our ground strikes on these positions are continuing and if necessary our air force will come into play," Davutoglu told the conference.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala said earlier seven people had been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing. Turkey has rounded up hundreds of suspected Islamic State members in its efforts to crack down on the group's domestic networks.

Russia's foreign ministry said one of three Russian men among those arrested after the Istanbul bombing was suspected of having links to Islamic State and that such extremists "feel comfortable" in Turkey. It named him as Aidar Suleimanov, born in 1984.

Russian news agencies said he was suspected of helping send new recruits from Russia to the militant group. It was not clear if he was thought to have been directly involved in the Istanbul bombing.

WAR ON TWO FRONTS

Turkey was long a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, refusing a frontline military role and arguing that only the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad - not just bombing the jihadists - could bring peace in Syria, an argument it maintains.

But it has faced a series of deadly attacks by the radical Sunni militant group over the past six months, including a suicide bombing in the border town of Suruc last July and a double bombing in Ankara in October which killed 100 people, the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil.

Ankara launched what it called a "synchronized war on terror" in July which has mostly involved air strikes and a ground campaign against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in its southeast, but also included allowing its Incirlik air base to be used by coalition countries to bomb Islamic State.

Its armed forces have been stretched as they fight on two fronts, with the violence in the largely Kurdish southeast, where the PKK has fought a three-decade insurgency for greater Kurdish autonomy, at its worst since the 1990s.

Kurdish militants attacked a police station in the southeast with a truck bomb overnight, killing six people including a baby and two toddlers in one of the biggest strikes since a two-year ceasefire collapsed in July, security officials said.

Although Turkey initially carried out a limited number of air strikes against Islamic State in Syria as part of the U.S.-led effort, its warplanes have not flown in Syrian air space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering a diplomatic row with Moscow.

Davutoglu on Wednesday again accused Russia of protecting Islamic State in Syria by bombing opposition forces fighting the group rather than Islamic State itself and said Russia's entry into the Syrian war was obstructing Turkish air strikes.

"They should either destroy Daesh themselves or allow us to do it," he told a news conference on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Ayla Jean Yackley and Melih Aslan in Istanbul, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall, editing by Peter Millership)

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http://www.economist.com/news/china...forcesto-his-own-advantage-xis-new-model-army

Military reform

Xi’s new model army

Xi Jinping reforms China’s armed forces—to his own advantage

Jan 16th 2016 | BEIJING | From the print edition

CHINA’S biggest military shake-up in a generation began with a deliberate echo of Mao Zedong. Late in 2014 President Xi Jinping went to Gutian, a small town in the south where, 85 years before, Mao had first laid down the doctrine that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the armed force not of the government or the country but of the Communist Party. Mr Xi stressed the same law to the assembled brass: the PLA is still the party’s army; it must uphold its “revolutionary traditions” and maintain absolute loyalty to its political masters. His words were a prelude to sweeping reforms in the PLA that have unfolded in the past month, touching almost every military institution.

The aim of these changes is twofold—to strengthen Mr Xi’s grip on the 2.3m-strong armed forces, which are embarrassingly corrupt at the highest level, and to make the PLA a more effective fighting force, with a leadership structure capable of breaking down the barriers between rival commands that have long hampered its modernisation efforts. It has taken a long time since the meeting in Gutian for these reforms to unfold; but that reflects both their importance and their difficulty.

The PLA itself has long admitted that it is lagging behind. It may have plenty of new weapons—it has just started to build a second aircraft-carrier, for instance—but it is failing to make effective use of them because of outdated systems of command and control. Before any substantial change in this area, however, Mr Xi felt it necessary to strengthen the party’s control over the PLA, lest it resist his reforms and sink back into a morass of money-grubbing.

The reforms therefore begin with the main instrument of party control, the Central Military Commission (CMC), which is chaired by Mr Xi. On January 11th the CMC announced that the PLA’s four headquarters—the organisations responsible for recruiting troops, procuring weapons, providing logistics and ensuring political supervision—had been split up, slimmed down and absorbed into the commission. Once these were among the most powerful organisations in the PLA, operating almost as separate fiefs. Now they have become CMC departments.

Power to the party

The political headquarters was the body through which the party kept an eye on the ranks and ensured they were up to speed on Maoist texts and the party’s latest demands. The loss of its autonomous status may suggest that the party’s role is being downgraded. Far from it. Now the party’s CMC (there is also a state one, which exists only in name) will be better able to keep watch. The body’s 15 new departments will include not only departments for politics but also for logistics, personnel management and fighting corruption. Mr Xi has already turned his guns on graft, imprisoning dozens of generals.

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sit...s/2016/01/articles/body/20160116_CNM959_0.png

The second reform has been to put the various services on a more equal footing. The land forces have hitherto reigned supreme. That may have been fine when the PLA’s main job was to defend the country against an invasion across its land borders (until the 1980s the Soviet Union was considered the biggest threat). But now China has military ambitions in the South China Sea and beyond, and wants the ability to challenge American naval and air power in the western Pacific. A recent editorial in the Liberation Army Daily, a PLA mouthpiece, berated the armed forces for their “army-centric mindset”.

In addition to those for the navy and air force, a separate command has now been created for the army, which had previously run everything. On December 31st the CMC also announced the formation of a command responsible for space and cyberwarfare, as well as one for ballistic and cruise missiles (previously known as the Second Artillery Force, part of the army). There is also a new joint command with overall control of the various services, a little like America’s joint chiefs of staff.

Big changes are also afoot in regional command structures. China used to be divided into seven military regions. These were powerful and relatively self-contained; sharing or swapping troops and equipment was rare. Now, according to reports in the South China Morning Post, a newspaper in Hong Kong, the number will be reduced to five. Troops will be recruited and trained by the various services before regional deployment. This will ensure greater central control over the regions.

China has been talking about military reform for decades, but change has been glacial. Opposition within the armed forces has been intense. “If [reform] is not done properly,” wrote Sun Kejia and Han Xiao of the PLA National Defence University last month, “it could affect the stability of the armed forces or even all of society.” (The article was promptly removed from the Liberation Army Daily website.) Demobbed soldiers could make trouble—Mr Xi wants the number of troops to be cut by 300,000. State firms have been ordered to reserve 5% of jobs for laid-off veterans.

The recent reforms are more extensive than most Western observers had expected after the Gutian conference. But even so, they are incomplete. The army still holds sway over some appointments (all five chiefs of the new regional commands are army generals, for instance). The PLA has traditionally given higher status to combat units than to those providing communications, logistics, transport and the like, a misplaced emphasis in an age when information and communications are crucial in warfare. The reforms do little to correct that bias. Moreover, many details about them remain unclear. No one knows, for example, where the troop cuts will come from or what units will go into the new space and cyberwarfare command.

The first result of the reforms is likely to be confusion in the ranks, until the new system settles down. Dennis Blasko, an American observer of the PLA, says no one can be sure of the results until they are tested in battle. Amid the murk, only one man clearly seems to have got his way: Mr Xi.

 

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http://www.economist.com/news/china...-hong-kong-ringing-hollow-two-systems-failure

Banyan

Two-systems failure

China’s promise of autonomy for Hong Kong is ringing hollow

Jan 16th 2016 | From the print edition

THE lugubrious Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong’s chief executive, was never the man to cheer you up. This was a handicap as he made his fourth annual policy address to the Legislative Council (Legco) this week. The mood in the chamber and the territory as a whole was sour. Business frets about the slowdown in China. Political life remains scarred by the failure of the pro-democracy “umbrella” movement of 2014. To protests, Mr Leung plodded through a speech on economic issues, with a special emphasis on China’s regional plans. He did not even try to allay rekindled fears that Hong Kong’s freedoms are in jeopardy.

Looked at in a certain light, such fears can seem overblown. Hong Kong still debates politics with no holds barred. Groups banned elsewhere in China freely proselytise. And any perceived encroachment on the territory’s freedoms provokes loud protests. Yet the alleged abduction since October of five Hong Kong residents by the Chinese authorities has cast a dark shadow. Three vanished in mainland China and one in Thailand. The disappearance on December 30th of the fifth man, Lee Bo, has caused particular alarm. He appears to have been snatched from Hong Kong itself and spirited across the border to the mainland, without his travel documents or any record of his leaving. His fate remains unknown. Like the other four, he was associated with a publisher and bookshop specialising in one of Hong Kong’s more esoteric niche businesses: scurrilous tales of intrigue, infighting, corruption and sex among China’s Communist leaders. A forthcoming title purports to uncover the love life of President Xi Jinping. Many have assumed that the Communist Party’s displeasure with the firm’s output explains the mysterious disappearances. China has not denied it.

The implications would be grim. Under the Joint Declaration of 1984 with Britain over Hong Kong’s future, China promised that “one country, two systems” would apply after China resumed sovereignty over the territory: ie, that Hong Kong would enjoy autonomy in all but its defence and foreign relations. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, guarantees among other things freedom of speech and judicial independence. The suggestion that Hong Kong’s people, should they displease the sovereign master, might simply be kidnapped makes a nonsense of this.

A torrent of outrage has gushed from China’s usual critics in Hong Kong: Martin Lee, a veteran barrister, legislator and pro-democracy campaigner, called the apparent kidnapping “the most worrying thing” to have happened in Hong Kong since British rule ended in 1997. Even the Communist Party’s loyalists in Hong Kong are at a loss. The local government usually sees its role as justifying the central authorities’ ways to Hong Kong, rather than the other way round. Yet this week the justice secretary, Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung, called the fears the incident had evoked “totally understandable”. Legco’s president, Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, founding chairman of the biggest pro-Communist party, insisted that China should reassure Hong Kong about its autonomy. And many businessmen, even those who usually advocate placating the central government in the interests of political stability, think that extrajudicial rendition would cross a red line.

China also faces international scrutiny. Britain, hoping to position itself as China’s best friend in Europe, did little to show support for the pro-democracy protesters in 2014. But the missing Mr Lee holds a British passport, and Philip Hammond, Britain’s foreign secretary, has said that his abduction to the mainland would be an “egregious breach” of the Joint Declaration. Gui Minhai, who vanished in Thailand, is a Swedish citizen; the European Union has called the events “extremely worrying”. They were also widely watched in Taiwan. China hopes that island will also eventually accept Chinese sovereignty under the promise of “one country, two systems”, but Taiwan is likely on January 16th to elect an independence-leaning president.

Since the disappearances look disastrous for China’s image, many in Hong Kong believe that they cannot have been a deliberate policy by the central leadership. They speculate that lower-level officials overstepped the mark, or even that Communist Party factions hostile to Mr Xi are trying to embarrass him. China is left with a headache. It will have to cook up some plausible-sounding explanation for the mystery and coax, cajole or coerce the missing men into playing along. That, the theory goes, explains the prolonged silence.

For pessimists, however, the snatching of Mr Lee is just the most outrageous instance of the mainland’s increasing interference in Hong Kong. They see other examples, including the purchase of the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s main English-language newspaper, by Alibaba, China’s e-commerce goliath; and the decision by Mr Leung to appoint a pro-government ally to chair Hong Kong University’s governing council, rather than the university’s own nominee.

Notes from the underground

Pessimists also point out that China has wielded enormous influence in Hong Kong since long before 1997. Bizarrely, though, the Communist Party is even now an underground organisation there. The secrecy may encourage subterfuge, rumour-mongering and even lawlessness. Some officials may well sanction illegal snatch-squads, to show that Hong Kong’s autonomy does not extend to anti-party activity. That this also proves the emptiness of the “one country, two systems” promise would be a small price to pay. Presumably having nothing useful to say on the issue, Mr Leung ignored it in his speech. A legislator from the pro-democracy camp, Lee Cheuk-yan, was expelled from the chamber for interrupting him to demand information about the Lee Bo case. Later he accused the chief executive of trying “to turn Hong Kong into the mainland”. Nearly two decades after its reversion to China, few in Hong Kong want that.

 

[Housecarl]

Big DOT!

Makes you wonder about the announced planned RIF of 300,000 from the PLA......


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/13/inside-ring-china-may-join-russia-war-against-isla/

China may enter war against ISIS

By Bill Gertz - - Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Comments 18

China's military may send troops to join the global conflict against Islamic State terrorists, according to defense officials.

Beijing is said to be concerned about the growing number of Chinese-origin terrorists who have joined the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS.

"The real question is whose side will they be on," said one defense official familiar with internal discussion of the Chinese military role.

Rather than cooperating with the U.S.-led military coalition now operating against the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and other locations, the Chinese military is more likely to join forces with Russia's military, currently engaged in a large-scale bombing campaign in Syria.

Russian airstrikes in recent months have targeted Islamic State targets but also have included other rebels in Syria opposing the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad.

China is said to be concerned that the Islamic State is moving into western China, specifically Xinjiang province, where Muslim Uighurs in the past have joined Islamist terrorist groups like Islamic State rival al Qaeda.

Islamic State militants issued a video from Syria in July calling on China's Uighurs to take up arms and join the Islamic State in territory the group controls in Syria and Iraq. It was the first time the Islamic State publicly appealed to Uighurs.

China has used its counterterrorism rules to crush not only Islamist terrorists but also dissident Uighurs and others who are seeking independence from Beijing.

China's communist government announced new counterterrorism regulations in December that permit overseas activities. On Wednesday, Beijing released a government paper calling for closer defense and military cooperation in the Arab world against terrorism.

PENTAGON EYES COLORADO FOR GITMO DETAINEES

President Obama, in his last State of the Union speech Tuesday, again called for closing the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, terrorist prison.

According to U.S. defense officials, the Pentagon wants to build a new prison near the federal high-security prison outside Colorado Springs under a controversial plan to bring more than 50 Islamic terrorists from Cuba to the United States.

The Pentagon has begun emptying the military prison as part of a White House push to close the Guantanamo Bay facility before Mr. Obama's term ends. But Mr. Obama is facing several serious legal, political and financial hurdles.

First, federal law prohibits closing the facility and building a new one on the U.S. mainland under provisions added by Congress to both the defense authorization and appropriations acts signed by the president last year. Mr. Obama has said the Gitmo provisions of the law don't apply to him since they infringe his powers as commander in chief.

However, analysts in government say the legal barriers to ignoring the congressional provisions are too high.

Financially, the costs of setting up a new facility are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Closing Guantanamo and building a new U.S. military prison would cost about $600 million, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. The president reportedly ordered the Pentagon to explore cheaper options.

A defense official said a new prison in Florence, Colorado, is a favored option because of its remote location and because it could draw on resources from the nearby Supermax facility. As military detainees, the Guantanamo prisoners cannot be placed directly within the population at the high-security federal prison.

Three sets of Guantanamo terrorists have been released by the Pentagon since last week. Two were sent Ghana on Jan. 6; two others were sent to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on Friday and Monday. Officials familiar with detainee plans said the goal is to release 44 of the remaining 103 detainees and send the remainder, 59 terrorists considered hard-core extremists, to a new wing of Florence.

The detainee group the Pentagon wants to bring to the United States would include Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Two other locations studied by the Pentagon are the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina.

Those sent to Colorado would join notorious terrorists now housed in Florence, including mail bomber Ted Kaczynski; Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols;Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up an airliner with explosive underpants in 2009; Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb in 2001; Zacarias Moussaoui, considered the 20th hijacker in the 2001 terrorist attacks; and Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

CHINA-PAKISTAN JF-17 FIGHTER PROBLEMS

China's program of jointly building jet fighters with Pakistan is running into design and other technical problems, according to Asian military sources. Islamabad turned to China for jets after the United States blocked the sale of additional F-16 jet fighters to Pakistan in 1989. They are now co-producing a third-generation fighter called the JF-17.

Pakistan has been flying JF-17s since 2007 and now has a fleet of around 60 jets, the first of an expected 250 fighters that will replace obsolete Mirage and F-7 Russian-design jets. According to the sources, the JF-17 is troubled with a number of design, operational and maintenance problems and limitations.

They include a weak wing design that resulted in the sudden in-flight breakup in November 2011 of the wing of a JF-17. An investigation concluded that the wing design was bad since it could support the weight of wing-mounted missiles and launchers. The wing problem was fixed, but current loads are limited to 1,000 pounds.

Also, based on the wing design problem, the jet's maneuverability was downgraded, limiting flight characteristics.

Other problems include faulty computer software that freezes pilot command systems. The software has resulted in pilots being unable to launch missiles and bombs.

The jet also suffers from multiple engine problems because of its Russian RD-93 engine. The engine's frequent breakdowns have resulted in lengthy delays for repairs.

Also, JF-17s are unable to conduct air-to-air refueling, severely limiting range. A retrofit of aerial refueling gear is being installed with the first two jets capable of in-flight refueling to be ready by the end of the year.

JF-17s also lack targeting pods, crucial for precision-strike capabilities for air-to-ground bombs and missiles. China and Turkey are currently studying adding the pods.

Also, JF-17s are unable to fly at night and can operate only in daylight or dusk operations, another severe limitation. The JF-17 also lacks airborne self-defense jammers, making the aircraft vulnerable to electronic warfare aircraft, and its radar lacks range in its look-down, shoot-down mode.

Cockpit displays also are outdated. They lack the helmet "heads up" display, and the friend-or-foe identification system has not met promised specifications.

According to one military source, "the current status of the JF-17 aircraft being jointly marketed by China and Pakistan does not in any way qualify to be a state-of-the-art aircraft and, more so, China has not inducted a single JF-17 in its inventory."

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, agreed that the jet has problems.

"Nobody will contest that the Chengdu JF-17/FC-1 is a work in progress and that it will evolve significantly over its service life," said Mr. Fisher, a China military expert.

Among potential customers for the JF-17 are Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, Argentina, Azerbaijan and Zambia.

Mr. Fisher said the Asian military assessment is interesting, but in the current global fighter market, the jet "offers the best performing fighter aircraft for the price" — around $25 million to $35 million per jet, or up to 33 percent less expensive than a new U.S. F-16.

"But its Chinese air-to-air and ground-attack weapons make it almost as capable as much more expensive Western and Russian aircraft," he said.

NORTH KOREAN GENERAL CLAIMS SMALL WARHEAD

Following Pyongyang's surprise underground nuclear test last week, a senior North Korean general bragged that the Kim Jong-un regime is now armed with an arsenal of missiles capable of carrying small nuclear warheads.

Gen. No Kwang-chol, the vice defense minister, disclosed the capability in a speech celebrating Pyongyang's test of what state-run media asserted was a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb.

"As we have clearly shown before the world this time around, at present, we are equipped with even hydrogen bombs for loading miniaturized and standardized ballistic rockets that have been flawlessly perfected and fully equipped with ultra-cutting-edge strike means capable of carrying various nuclear warheads on the ground and sea and in the air without limit," Gen. No said.

The general said the bomb test was "a thrilling victory" for supreme leader Kim Jong-un, also hailing "the underwater test fire of strategic submarine-launched ballistic missiles" that U.S. officials say was conducted Dec. 21 from a submerged submarine.

Gen. No went on to call for destroying the United States. "The U.S. imperialists, puppet gang of traitors and ragtag imperialists are petrified at the vibration of the hydrogen bomb of [self-reliance] Korea, which shook the entire earth," he said. "Let us completely remove the American empire, which is the most flagrant strangler of justice and peace, and the biggest source of danger of nuclear war, from this earth."

Adm. Cecil Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, told reporters in March that North Korean statements about having small nuclear warheads are difficult to assess.

"I don't see any tests yet that associated with this miniaturized claim," he said. "But as a combatant commander, as commander of your Strategic Command, it's a threat that we cannot ignore as a country."

• Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter via @BillGertz.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...ry_reforms_reveal_chinas_ambition_108902.html

January 14, 2016

New Military Reforms Reveal China's Ambition

By Stratfor

Summary

China is modernizing its military one step at a time, and the focus of the new year appears to be organizational reform and restructuring. An announcement from the Chinese military on Jan. 11 heralded the new configuration of its general staff system. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has created a joint staff directly attached to the Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest leadership organization in the military. Chinese President Xi Jinping said the changes are "basically completed" and took a group photo with the 15 senior officers who will lead the new staff departments under the CMC. This suggests that while it may not be entirely functional yet, there has been considerable progress toward getting the revised structure in place. The new arrangement of the military's general staff helps to address Beijing's requirement to consolidate Party control over the country and develop a military capable of performing modern joint operations.

Analysis

Previously, the Central Military Commission, with the assistance of a small staff called the Central Military Commission General Office, set policies for the armed forces and exercised supreme command. The task of executing the commission's edicts fell to the Four General Departments — four separate headquarters that served collectively as the PLA's joint staff and de facto ground force headquarters. The system was cumbersome and completely dominated by the army. Even more concerning for Beijing, this command structure was resistant to Party leadership and prone to developing political fiefdoms (according to recent state media editorials in favor of military reforms).

The new joint staff directly attached to the Central Military Commission replaces the Four General Departments. The new general staff has 15 functional departments instead — a significant expansion from the domain of the General Office, which is now a single department within the Central Military Commission staff. The original Four General Departments have been assimilated into the framework, and though their portfolios are virtually the same, they most likely will not have the considerable autonomy they once enjoyed.

https://www.stratfor.com/sites/defa...hina-military-reform-jan-13.jpg?itok=Sg_YKg7L


Included among the 15 departments are three commissions. The CMC Discipline Inspection Commission is charged with rooting out corruption, a task previously delegated to a commission that was subordinate to the General Political Department. This change puts the discipline commission and the General Political Department on the same organizational level. Then there is the new CMC Politics and Law Commission in charge of judicial and security affairs. Finally, the CMC Science and Technology Commission assumes the duties of a prior commission that had been subordinate to the General Armaments Department.

The Chinese Defense Ministry held a news conference to shed light on the reform, stressing that the commissions are distinct from the other Central Military Commission staff departments. While the immediate differences are unclear, the commission names suggest they could function as branches of higher-level Party organizations, such as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Central Politics and Law Commission. Furthermore, a Defense Ministry spokesman said the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission would be subject to "dual leadership."

This somewhat unwieldy principle means that the grouping in question has responsibilities to the body to which it is attached as well as the organization's counterparts at higher government levels. This particular arrangement might well be appropriate for the other two commissions as well. In effect, there are three powerful organizations working directly under the Central Military Commission that could also report to the central government, which suggests that the Communist Party is reinforcing its control over the military, even as it carries out reforms that give the People's Liberation Army more operational flexibility and, potentially, the means to streamline its decision-making process.

The key division of labor Beijing wants for the military is a joint staff under the Central Military Commission that sets overall policies and does the strategic planning. This then feeds into service headquarters that focus on force development — similar to what the U.S. military calls the "organize, train, equip" mission — instead of direct command. And then there are the joint military regions, which will be fully empowered to conduct integrated, synchronized operations. The military has already undergone service-level reform with the creation of a ground force headquarters and an upgraded PLA Rocket Force. The creation of the new Central Military Commission general staff is Beijing's second major reform. The evolution of China's military regions into effective joint commands is the next logical step in Beijing's plan to fashion its military into a credible 21st-century force. The focus of the last decade was operational-level modernization, and China now seeks to build on this solid platform.


This article originally appeared at Stratfor.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...eas_ballistic_missiles_be_stopped_108905.html

January 14, 2016

Can North Korea's Ballistic Missiles be Stopped?

By Rebeccah Heinrichs


North Korea’s recent nuclear test is the 4th underground nuclear test since 2006. In a classic show of force meant to deter North Korea and assure the Republic of Korea (ROK) the U.S. responded by flying a B-52 nuclear-capable bomber over the ROK. Putting aside an important discussion about what more could and should be done to deter North Korea, it is a good time to take stock of what we know about North Korea’s ability to deliver a nuclear weapon, and how good U.S. defenses actually are, should deterrence fail.

The regime in North Korea is committed to achieving the capability to target the United States with a nuclear armed ballistic missile. It has stated this, and dedicated scarce resources, while its people literally starve to make good on its threats. But North Korea is still considered a rogue state, without the technical sophistication and know-how like that of the United States, Russia, and China. Delivering a nuclear weapon across the Pacific, several thousand miles, to the United States requires advanced missile technology.

U.S. officials have repeatedly stated they believe North Korea has the capability to reach the United States with a ballistic missile. Short of North Korea proving this capability by fully testing an intercontinental-ballistic missile (ICBM), it has demonstrated the requisite technical expertise, such as with the space launch program. In 2009 it unsuccessfully attempted to place an object in orbit, but in conducting the launch, it demonstrated the same staging and separation technologies required to launch a two-stage Taepo-Dong 2 ICBM. This kind of missile is capable of reaching the shores of the United States.

The next, and far more challenging, technical hurdle to clear is to miniaturize a nuclear warhead for missile delivery. This is also quite difficult and many skeptics of North Korea’s capabilities have insisted it is years away. But to the dismay and shock of many, in 2011, Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-5) revealed an unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency Report conclusion that said North Korea does have the capability. It says, “DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however, the reliability will be low.”

But Pyongyang is not satisfied with merely having the ability to reach the United States. It also understands that the U.S. military could spot its preparation of a launch and preempt it. This is precisely what now Secretary of Defense Ash Carter argued the United States should do, if needed, in 2006.

It should have come as no surprise when in 2012 North Korea paraded what looked like what is called the KN-08 ICBM, a road-mobile missile that could strike much deeper targets than merely the West Coast of the U.S. The launcher could remain hidden from U.S. surveillance, rolled out, and more quickly launched, significantly decreasing U.S. decision time to preempt an attack. The NK-08 transporter/launcher also appeared to be of Chinese origin. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed in a Congressional hearing that China was helping to some degree on the Nork Korean missile program. Delivering missile parts to North Korea is a clear violation of United Nation Security Council Resolutions. Still, it remained unconfirmed whether the KN-08 in the parade was a mock-up or the real thing. In April of 2015 Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, clarified that the United States did, in fact, understand the KN-08 to be operational.

In addition to help from the Chinese on its missile program, the North Korean’s also receive help from the Iranians. Indeed, the Iranians have been one of North Korea’s biggest missile clients and Iranian scientists have been spotted at the missile tests. The Obama administration has failed to see (or find sufficiently problematic) that the windfall of sanctions relief from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran could serve as a boon for the North Korean nuclear missile program. As Omri Ceren, warned: “… [T]he nuclear deal with Iran will become a multi-billion dollar jobs program for North Korean nuclear engineers, who will use the money to create and miniaturize more nuclear warheads, which they will then give back to Tehran. The deal doesn’t stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It finances the program.”

Thankfully, the last several heads of Northern Command and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have expressed confidence that the current homeland missile defense system would be able to successfully intercept the kinds of threats possessed by North Korea and Iran. This missile defense system is called the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. There will be a total of 44 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) in place by the end of next year. Skeptics of missile defense, and there remain a few, insist the GMD program “doesn’t work.” Nevertheless, it has successfully intercepted a target 9 of 17 times. When President George Bush called for the initial deployment of the system, however, it was always the plan to improve it as the technology developed and as the threats continued to evolve.

Before the United States deployed GMD, there was nothing in place to protect American cities from potential missile attack. Each intercept test-- regardless of successful intercept-- and each flight test has helped engineers learn how to improve the system’s reliability. For example, it was determined after several failed intercepts that the cause was due to the kill vehicle design. Since then, MDA has set out to develop what it is calling the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV). With sufficient political support and prioritization, this should significantly improve the reliability of the system. Another way to improve reliability is to increase the quantity of deployed interceptors.

The Obama administration, hesitant to fully invest in the system, showed that it understood the threat simply required an improvement to GMD. In March of 2013, then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, announced that the administration would be deploying 14 more interceptors (bringing the total to the planned 44) in response to the increased North Korean ballistic missile threat. While this announcement was welcome, it should be noted that the only reason these interceptors were not already deployed is because the Obama administration cancelled the Bush administration plan to do just that. In the same announcement Secretary Hagel also said the administration would look at the possibility of expanding the system beyond the 44 by emplacing a third interceptor site in the continental United States. Nearly three years later, and with the missile threats from Iran and North Korea growing, it has failed to move forward with deployments.

It comes as no surprise that all of this requires great political will to ensure the system can provide optimal protection of the American people given the current and most likely ICBM threats posed especially by North Korea. The Obama administration has funded regional missile defense systems abroad at the expense of GMD, and found itself underprepared when North Korea showed it had an operational road-mobile ICBM. North Korea and Iran will continue to improve their missile programs and U.S. ballistic missile defense must outpace the threat. Moreover, Russia and China’s missile and nuclear programs, combined with their provocative activities over the last several years, underscore the need for the United States reconsider its unofficial policy of only defending against the most limited kinds of missile threats.

The next President must do more than say homeland missile defense is a priority. He must invest in new technologies, deploy additional GBIs, support a rigorous testing program to improve it, and should not hesitate to deploy additional radar as needed. But given the foreign policy blunders that have plagued the United States over the last several years, the diversity of the missile threat, and the unpredictable nature of regimes like North Korea, a robust missile defense system is simply non-optional.


Rebeccah Heinrichs is a fellow at the Hudson Institute.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-marines-desert-operations-point-long-range-ambitions-231225126.html

Chinese marines' desert operations point to long-range ambitions

Reuters
By Michael Martina and Greg Torode
14 hours ago


BEIJING (Reuters) - Days after China passed a new law that for the first time permits its military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations, its marines began exercises in the western deserts of Xinjiang, more than 2,000 kilometers from the nearest ocean.

The continuing drills are an indication, analysts say, that the marines, who have traditionally trained for amphibious assault missions, are being honed into an elite force capable of deploying on land far from mainland China.

China's limited means to respond to threats abroad were highlighted by two incidents in November: when Islamic State executed a Chinese hostage, and the killing of three executives by Islamist militants who attacked a hotel in Mali.

China's new counter-terrorism law, passed in late December, is aimed at protecting its expanding global commercial and diplomatic interests. But China's military commanders are also trying to create a military in the likeness of the world's most dominant power projection force, analysts say.

"They study what the Americans have done very carefully and it's the mirror image effect," said Leszek Buszynski, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

The cold weather training will improve the marines' ability to conduct "long-distance mobilization in unfamiliar regions", the deputy chief of staff of the Navy's South Sea fleet Li Xiaoyan said in a Ministry of Defense statement earlier this month.

During the drills, the marines will travel 5,900 kilometers via air, truck and rail beginning in the southern province of Guangdong, the longest range maneuvers ever conducted by the force, state media said.

EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

The exercises are the latest in recent years that show the efforts China is making to boost its expeditionary force capabilities.


.. View gallery
Soldiers of the PLA Marine Corps are seen in training …
Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Marine Corps are seen in training at a military t …


In 2014, the marines conducted their first training in the grasslands of the northern landlocked Inner Mongolia region. At the time, the exercise was seen as unusual for the south China-based force more proficient in beach landings.

Since those drills, the roughly 15,000-strong marine corps, which operates under the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's South Sea fleet, appears to be settling into a new niche.

"They never really had a major strategic role, as force projection wasn't something the PLA was willing, or able, to think about even ten years ago," said Gary Li, an independent security analyst in Beijing.

With amphibious divisions in the PLA Army also capable of extending China's reach into the South China Sea and Taiwan, Li said the marines are a good fit for a budding Chinese expeditionary force.

"The main advantage of playing around with the marines is that they have a higher concentration of specialists, act well as light infantry, have good esprit de corps, and are nimble enough to be deployed over long distances if needed," he said.

RISING GLOBAL PROFILE

Along with President Xi Jinping's vows to build a more modern military, the global profile of China's armed forces is on the rise.

Already, the South Sea fleet, which is based on the mainland coast near the island of Hainan, has been used on operations far from the South China Sea.

The fleet's vessels have ventured to the Middle East and Mediterranean after deployments on international anti-piracy patrols around the Horn of Africa.

Chinese officials announced in November they were in talks with Djibouti to build permanent "support facilities" to further boost Chinese naval operations, in what would be China's first such off-shore military base.

The African port, sitting on the edge of the Red and Arabian seas, is home to several foreign military bases, including U.S., French and Japanese naval facilities.

China is also expanding its peacekeeping role, with Xi pledging in September to contribute 8,000 troops for a U.N. stand-by force that could provide logistical and operational experience the PLA would need to operate farther abroad.

While China has been getting more involved diplomatically in trouble spots like the Middle East, it is adamant that it does not interfere in the affairs of other countries, and is the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council which has not taken military action in Syria.

The Defense Ministry said in a fax that the drills were part of "annual planned" exercises.

For now, China's marines are advancing only through the snow fields of Xinjiang, as depicted in state media photographs, still wearing their speckled blue fatigues designed for operations at sea. But that could shift in time.

"China's global security posture is becoming more active," said Zhang Baohui, a mainland security expert at Hong Kong's Lingnan University. "And this seems to fit that policy."

(Reporting by Michael Martina and Greg Torode. Additional reporting by Matt Siegel in SYDNEY. Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/russia-syria-agreed-open-ended-military-presence-moscow-095030573.html

Russia, Syria agreed 'open-ended' military presence for Moscow

AFP
3 hours ago


Moscow (AFP) - Russia and Syria in August signed an agreement giving Moscow the go-ahead for an open-ended military presence in the war-torn country, Moscow has revealed.


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The agreement was signed in Damascus on August 26, 2015, more than a month before Russia launched a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group and other "terrorists" at the request of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

The Russian government on Thursday released the text of the agreement, which said that it had been "concluded for an open-ended period of time."

Under the terms of the agreement, Russia deployed warplanes and personnel at the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia in Syrian government-held territory.

The deal was made to defend the "sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the Russian Federation and the Syrian Arab Republic," according to the document.

President Vladimir Putin justified the campaign launched in September -- Russia's first major foreign intervention since the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 -- by saying that Moscow needed to target Islamic State fighters before they crossed into Russia.

Military analyst Alexander Golts said the agreement with Syria suited Russia's interests.

"Russia can halt its operation at any time so it does not have any responsibilities before Syria," he told AFP.

"At the same time it can stay there for as long as it wishes. It's totally up to the Russian authorities."

The West has criticised Russia's foray into the already convoluted, multi-front conflict, accusing Moscow of targeting not only the IS group but also moderate rebels fighting the Assad regime.

Moscow has denied the accusations, claiming it has been supporting anti-Assad armed rebels in the fight against IS.


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[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-supreme-court-suspends-opposition-164328644.html

Venezuela’s Supreme Court Suspends the Opposition-Dominated Parliament

Foreign Policy Magazine
By Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez
January 13, 2016 11:43 AM

Roughly a quarter of the way into a multi-hour speech last week, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro recalled a conversation he claimed to have had nine years ago with Hugo Chávez, his deceased predecessor. In Maduro’s telling, despite his electoral success, el Comandate had long harbored a secret desire to “break definitively” with the “old bourgeoisie structures of representation” that he felt distanced the government from the people. “This is a task we have still to carry out,” Maduro announced. Five days later, his government made good on that promise.

Over the past few days, tensions between the chavista government and the new opposition-dominated National Assembly, which was inaugurated last week after December’s landslide election, reached a fever pitch. On Monday, the constitutional chamber of Venezuela’s supreme court — which in over 45,000 decisions over the last dozen years has never ruled against the presidency — suspended the assembly and declared its leadership to be “in contempt” of the court’s authority.

It’s unclear what this determination means, since there is no constitutional basis for any of this. The supreme court claims that its ruling nullifies in advance any legislation the assembly might try to pass — unless the opposition acquiesces to the suspension of three of its legislators, whom the government accuses of buying votes in the remote state of Amazonas. The stakes are high, since the loss of even a single legislator could neutralize the opposition’s two-thirds supermajority, threatening its ability to reform the constitution or initiate a recall referendum against Maduro.

The road to Venezuela’s constitutional quagmire has been paved with brinksmanship from both sides of the country’s widening political chasm. Soon after the opposition’s electoral landslide, Maduro stripped the unicameral legislature of its oversight over the Central Bank and the national finances, while the outgoing assembly rushed to pack the supreme court with loyalists through an expedited, ad hoc process that had no constitutional grounding. Concurrently, Maduro called for the creation of a novel “communal parliament,” to be set up in parallel to the one he had lost. Meanwhile, the court dutifully pushed forth the suspension of the Amazonas delegates: three from the opposition and one from the ruling socialists for good measure.

The opposition, too, has upped the ante. In electing the assembly’s leadership, the smaller parties within the opposition coalition joined forces to sideline its largest member, the moderate Primero Justicia party, denying them its highest offices. The assembly’s new president, Henry Ramos Allup, is a wily and colorful holdover from the pre-Chávez era. With his trademark folksy bombast, Ramos Allup soon announced that Maduro would step down within six months, while quickly and unceremoniously disposing of the Chávez portraits and other chavista symbols that had become ubiquitous in the assembly building. Ignoring the supreme court, he swore in the suspended Amazonas delegates anyway. Such aggressive measures, while providing much-needed catharsis to many within the long-suffering opposition, risk alienating Venezuelans who dislike Maduro but haven’t quite given up on Chávez, while enraging the government and its more strident supporters.

In the immediate aftermath to Monday’s ruling the opposition waxed defiant, its leaders disputing both the court’s legitimacy and its jurisdiction over the National Assembly. But with every other branch and institution of government arrayed squarely against it, the embattled legislature stands alone, save for its overwhelming popular mandate. Behind closed doors, the standoff has exacerbated pre-existing divisions within the opposition, putting those who would force a crisis, even at the risk of being permanently sidelined should the government fail to blink, against others more disposed towards tactical retreat.

On Tuesday morning, the assembly’s scheduled session failed to take place, ostensibly due to the lack of a quorum. Later that evening, following much internal debate and backchannel communications with the executive branch, Ramos Allup announced that — by their own request — the Amazonas Three would resign from the legislature in the coming days. In backing down, the opposition has diffused a crisis that might have escalated into civil strife. But it has also set a dangerous precedent: that it’s open to being bullied. Time will tell if caution was indeed the better part of valor. (According to an opposition source who declined to be identified, the government has agreed to hold new elections to replace the three Amazonas delegates. The timing of the elections is unknown.)

Constitutional order, like oxygen, is often taken for granted until it is in short supply. Now that Venezuela’s supreme court and its legislature publicly deny each other’s legitimacy while the president touts an unelected parliament he likes better, everyone in the country seems to have become a constitutional analyst. In conversations around Caracas last week, I heard taxi drivers, retirees, and legislators alike intricately parsing the finer points of Venezuela’s constitution, one of the longest and most complicated in the world. The result is yet another layer of uncertainty to a people already burdened by soaring homicide rates, shortages of basic goods, unbridled inflation, and other revolutionary delights.

A few months ago, when an opposition victory in the December elections seemed imminent, I sat down for a chat with Luis Miquilena — the ancient Marxist who personally presided over the creation of the constitution in 1999 — to try to understand what might happen. Having long since broken with the revolution, Miquilena was downplaying the role the constitution’s design might play in what was to come. He seemed surprised I had bothered to ask.

“It doesn’t really matter what the constitution says, they’ll do whatever they want,” he told me. “My constitution has already been the most violated in Venezuela’s history. There’s no salvaging it.” In the end, he assured me, it will come down to the people rising, at which point Venezuela’s famously opaque armed forces would be forced to pick a side. “Sooner or later,” as Miquilena put it, “that’s what always happens.”

In the photo, the president of the National Assembly, Henry Ramos Allup, attends a session in Caracas on January 12, 2016.

Photo credit: FEDERICO PARRA/AFP/Getty Images

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[Housecarl]

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/14...jakarta-dont-look-to-paris-look-to-indonesia/

To Understand Why the Islamic State Just Hit Jakarta, Don’t Look to Paris — Look to Indonesia

By Benjamin Soloway
January 14, 2016 - 5:31 pm
@bsoloway

When Islamic State militants used handguns and grenades to carry out a deadly attack in Jakarta on Thursday, a top Indonesian police official immediately compared it to the brutal assaults in Paris late last year that killed 130 people.

There were definite similarities. Both attacks took place in the heart of crowded capitals, both involved militants using guns and explosives, and both were claimed by ISIS. They also both claimed lives: at least two civilians were killed in the Jakarta strike, which injured 23 others, including five police officers. Five assailants died in the onslaught — some by their own hand — and police arrested four others.

But the Jakarta attack also differed significantly from the Paris ones. Despite the ISIS connection, the Jakarta assault showed evidence of motivations and patterns particular to Indonesia, was likely carried out in response to specific conditions in Indonesia, and cannot be understood outside the context of Indonesia’s history of homegrown extremism — as well as the government’s violent campaign against it.

“This was a brazen attack in Central Jakarta during lunch hours, but the casualty figures remain astounding low,” Judith Jacob, a Singapore-based terrorism and security analyst, told Foreign Policy. “It didn’t have the same level of indiscriminate of firing that we saw in Istanbul or Paris.”

It wasn’t even clear that civilians were the main targets. The attackers appear to have focussed on the area around a tiny police station in the middle of Jalan Thamrin, a thoroughfare connecting the Hotel Indonesia roundabout, where the well-known Selamat Datang (“Welcome”) monument overlooks dizzying snarls of traffic, to Merdeka Square, an area equivalent to the National Mall in Washington. When President Barack Obama visited Jakarta in 2010, he drove down Jalan Thamrin as part of a sentimental trip through a city he had lived in as a child.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack — its first in Southeast Asia. Indonesian police identified Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian citizen thought now to be in or near the Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, as the principle organizer. Naim is a leader of Katibah Nusantara, an extremist group that has served as a link between ISIS and Islamist militants in Indonesia and Malaysia. Katibah Nusantara had around 100 members in 2014, but “indications are that it had grown considerably and was being deployed in different areas,” Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, told Foreign Policy last September.

Naim, the accused organizer, has called for Indonesian Islamist radicals to “emulate the Paris attacks in Jakarta,” Jacob said. “But it still begs the question: How much has this been an Indonesian jihadist capitalizing on events that have happened recently in Paris to further the ambitions of an inward looking jihadist movement within Indonesia?”

Police in Indonesia have long grappled with homegrown extremism. They have also been its target. “The predominate targeting choice has been security services,” Jacob said, although Thursday’s attack represented “a slight departure from that norm” because of the apparent inclusion of a Starbucks in Sarinah — the city’s oldest mall, and a landmark in its own right — located alongside the police post.

“At this moment we are still conducting a thorough investigation and have not come to any specific conclusion yet,” Budi Bowoleksono, the Indonesian ambassador to the United States, said by email, in response to a question from Foreign Policy about whether police officers were the intended victims.

Militant group Jemaah Islamiah carried out bombings in Bali in 2002 that left more than 200 people dead. At the time, the group had ties to al Qaeda. Santoso, a terrorist leader once part of Jemaah Islamiah, has since pledged to back ISIS. His supporters, based in the area around the town of Poso, in Sulawesi, have carried out a number of assaults on police.

“The targeted attacks on police just escalated after… police forces started to chase the radicals in Poso, which has been their hiding place for some time, since 2011 or 2012,” Fitriyan Zamzami, the national affairs editor of Republika, a prominent Jakarta newspaper, told Foreign Policy. “The police and the radicals have been in a tit-for-tat game in Poso ever since.”

Zamzami said the police may have sparked the attack by launching a crackdown on domestic terror suspects shortly before Christmas. Some 16 were taken into custody in the past month.

“Almost no week passed without the police arresting somebody somewhere that they claimed to be a suspected IS sympathizer,” he said. “The arrests by Indonesian police maybe pushed those attackers.”

Thursday’s attacks continued a pattern of targeted attacks on police by Indonesian Islamist militants, but it also showed a new boldness and willingness to kill civilians, unseen in recent years.

“Maybe this was just retribution against the police, but I also look at the fact that it was in a public setting, and I see the homegrown threat beginning to overlap with ISIL such that they are indistinguishable,” Ryan Greer, a fellow with the Truman National Security Project, said in an email, using an alternate acronym for the terror group.

And as some of the hundreds of Indonesians fighting for the group in Iraq and Syria try to return, the Islamic State’s influence in the country — and its capacity to carry out attacks there — will only increase.

“More and more Indonesians are getting killed in Syria… and revenge is a powerful motive,” Jones, of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, wrote in a farsighted article last November. “If Indonesian police have been the main victims of homegrown terrorism since 2010, we could now see a shift back toward Westerners and soft targets.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-xi-visit-saudi-arabia-egypt-iran-next-102653591.html

China's Xi to visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran

AFP
26 minutes ago

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran next week, Beijing's foreign ministry said Friday, as the world's second-largest economy seeks greater diplomatic heft in a crucial and tense region.

Spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement that Xi would visit the three Middle Eastern countries over five days from Tuesday.

The trip, Xi's first to the region as president, comes amid mounting tensions over the war in Syria and after protesters ransacked and burned the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution of a Shiite cleric.

China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies but has long taken a back seat in the region's diplomatic and other disputes, only recently beginning to expand its role, especially in the Syrian crisis.

"China is the biggest importer of Middle Eastern oil," Zhu Feng, professor at Peking University's School of International Studies, told AFP. "So stability in the Middle East is what China would most like to see."

As China's economy has grown, its dependence on imported oil and natural gas has increased, making the Middle East a crucial part of Beijing's strategy as it seeks to expand its influence through Xi's signature foreign policy initiative, known as "One Belt One Road".

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Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to the Middle …
Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to the Middle East comes amid mounting tensions over the war …

The massive investment scheme aims to increase China's footprint from central Asia to Europe through the use of loans to build infrastructure and transport networks.

Touted as a revival of ancient Silk Road trade routes, the initiative underscores China's ambition to wield geopolitical power to match its economic might.

"Xi Jinping is very committed to projecting China’s image overseas, to boosting China’s international footprint to a level which is commensurate with its fast-growing economic and military power," Willy Lam, professor of politics at Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.

Beijing was trying to project power and influence in the Middle East, seeing an opening in the troubled region as US policy "hasn’t been very successful under (US President Barack) Obama", he said.

China was presenting itself as "a mediator with no strings attached", added Lam, in contrast to Washington, which has "vested interests in that part of the world going back four, five decades".


.. View gallery
China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies …
China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies but has long taken a back seat in the region&# …

- 'Rare opportunity' -

This week a Chinese diplomat urged "calm and restraint" between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but Xi's trip was most probably organised before the discord erupted between Riyadh and Tehran, Zhu said.

"Clearly now there are tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, so he will be going there in the role of persuader" seeking cooperation against in the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group, Zhu said.

"China will try and do what it can, but it still won't play a main role."

In a commentary, the official Xinhua news agency said: "Although China never takes sides, it will be a rare opportunity for China to call for calm and restraint from both sides."

In the past month, Beijing has hosted high-level members from both the Syrian regime and its opposition.

It has consistently urged a "political solution" to the Syrian crisis, despite being seen as having long protected President Bashar al-Assad, and four times vetoed UN Security Council measures aimed at addressing the conflict.

Last year, China helped broker a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which has begun to emerge following years of international isolation.

Days after the signing of the historic framework agreement, Iran was approved as a founding member of the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is expected to provide funding for One Belt One Road.

On Wednesday, China published its first official Arab Policy Paper, claiming a "broad consensus on safeguarding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, defending national dignity, seeking political resolution to hotspot issues, and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East".

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[Housecarl]

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/0...akarta-attack-new-sign-its-massive-reach.html

isis

ISIS in Syria paid for Jakarta attack, new sign of its massive reach

Published January 15, 2016
· Associated Press

An audacious attack in the heart of Indonesia's capital by suicide bombers was funded by the Islamic State group, police said Friday, as they arrested three men on suspicion of links to the plot and seized an IS flag from one of the bombers.

National police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti told reporters that Thursday's attack was funded by IS through Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian who spent one year in jail for illegal possession of weapons in 2011, and is now in Syria fighting for the Islamic State.

Supporters of the Islamic State group also circulated a claim of responsibility for the attack on Twitter late Thursday. The radical group controls territory in Syria and Iraq, and its ambition to create an Islamic caliphate has attracted some 30,000 foreign fighters from around the world, including a few hundred Indonesians and Malaysians.

The IS link, if proved, poses a grave challenge to Indonesian security forces. Until now, the group was known only to have sympathizers with no active cells capable of planning and carrying out a plan such as Thursday's in which five men attacked a Starbucks cafe and a traffic police booth with hand-made bombs, guns and suicide belts. They killed two people -- a Canadian and an Indonesian -- and injured 20. The attackers were killed subsequently, either by their suicide vests or by police.

The attack "was funded by ISIS in Syria through Bahrun Naim," Haiti told reporters after Friday prayers, using an acronym for the Islamic State. He did not elaborate.

He also identified one of the five attackers as Sunakim, who was once sentenced to seven years in jail for his involvement in military-style terrorist training in Aceh, but was released early.

Also Friday, police arrested three men at dawn in their homes in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta, and more raids were being conducted in Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi provinces based on evidence found at the scene, national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan said.

"Now we can be sure that it was the action of ISIS because ISIS' flag was found in the house of one of the suspects," he said. "Hopefully, the group's (other) members will be captured soon."

In recent years, Indonesian anti-terror forces had successfully stamped out another extremist group known as Jemaah Islamiyah. It was responsible for several attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 bombings of bars in Bali, which left 202 people dead, as well as two hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009 that killed seven people.

Terrorism experts say IS supporters in Indonesia are drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah.

Jakarta residents were shaken by Thursday's events but refused to be cowed.

The area near the Starbucks cafe remained cordoned off with a highly visible police presence. Onlookers and journalists lingered, with some people leaving flowers and messages of support.

A large screen atop the building containing the Starbucks displayed messages that said "(hash)prayforjakarta" and "Indonesia Unite."

Newspapers carried bold front-page headlines declaring the country was united in condemnation of the attack, which was the first in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, since the hotel bombings in 2009.

Risti Amelia, an accountant at a company near the Starbucks said she was "still shaking and weak" when she returned to her office Friday. Because staff remained emotional, the company decided to send workers home, she said.

Supporters of the Islamic State group circulated a claim of responsibility on Twitter late Thursday. The message said attackers carried out the Jakarta assault and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four.

The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group.

Taufik Andri, a terrorist analyst, said although the attack ended swiftly and badly for the attackers, their aim was to show their presence and ability.

"Their main aim was just to give impression that ISIS' supporters here are able to do what was done in Paris. It was just a Paris-inspired attack without being well-prepared," he told The Associated Press. Those attacks in November killed 130 people.

 

[vestige]

It's cooking ..... everywhere.... hard to tell where it will blow first:

Anti-immigrant 'Soldiers of Odin' raise concern in Finland

NO PLACE FOR VIGILANTES

LET THE POLICE DO THEIR JOB

China may enter war against ISIS

By Bill Gertz - - Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Comments 18

China's military may send troops to join the global conflict against Islamic State terrorists, according to defense officials.

Beijing is said to be concerned about the growing number of Chinese-origin terrorists who have joined the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS.

"The real question is whose side will they be on," said one defense official familiar with internal discussion of the Chinese military role.

Rather than cooperating with the U.S.-led military coalition now operating against the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and other locations, the Chinese military is more likely to join forces with Russia's military, currently engaged in a large-scale bombing campaign in Syria.

cacophony bump