WAR 01-20-2017-to-01-26-2018___THEWINDSofWAR

danielboon · Jan 24, 2018

U.S. Sticks to ICBM Test-Flight Plan Despite North Korea Tensions

The U.S. Air Force is going ahead with two long-planned flight tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles next month despite efforts to damp tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and encourage fragile talks with South Korea.

Test launches of American missiles -- without the nuclear warheads they can deliver -- would be unlikely to cause much of a stir under regular circumstances. But they may prove sensitive coming the same month as the Winter Olympics, which are to be hosted by South Korea beginning Feb. 9. North Korea has agreed to send its athletes, and the U.S. has postponed joint military exercises with South Korea that normally would begin next month.

“There are two launches currently scheduled for February that have been scheduled for three to five years” to test the reliability and accuracy of the Minuteman III missiles, according to Captain Anastasia Schmidt, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Global Strike Command, which manages ICBMs and long-range bombers.

Schmidt said the potential range of dates for tests “are typically not released this far in advance.” She referred more specific questions to Air Force Space Command, but a spokesman didn’t provide a comment.

‘An Irritant’
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has vowed to develop nuclear-armed ICBMS that can hit the U.S. mainland, began the new year boasting that he has a “nuclear button” on his desk. U.S. President Donald Trump countered on Twitter that his nuclear button was “much bigger and more powerful.” Trump has since encouraged the limited talks between the two Koreas, calling them a “big start” and saying it would be “great for humanity” if something beyond cooperation in the winter games resulted.

“U.S. ICBM tests would be an irritant and a propaganda opportunity for North Korea, but by themselves they should not derail talks or the prospects for reducing tensions,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of the San Francisco-based Ploughshares Fund, which seeks to reduce nuclear weapon stockpiles. “The North Koreans care much more about the conventional military exercises on their border than ICBM tests.”

Last year, the U.S. conducted four reliability tests of the Minuteman III. In the most recent one, on Aug. 2, a missile carrying a telemetry package used for operational testing traveled about 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometers) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the Air Force Space Command said in a statement.

As many as four test launches are scheduled each fiscal year “to determine and verify accuracy and reliability of the ICBM weapon system,” the Strike Command said in a statement.

B-2 Bombers
The Air Force confirmed Thursday that it has deployed three B-2 stealth bombers to Guam. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie Jr., staff director for the Joint Chiefs, told reporters at the Pentagon that “you would be wrong to view the bomber deployment within the single lens of what it means to the Korean Peninsula. It affects allies across the Pacific.”

Still, the Pentagon’s moves send a signal that, even amid efforts to dial back tensions, the U.S. remains “ready to fight tonight” if necessary, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Thursday, invoking a slogan of American forces in South Korea.

Although the U.S. “should not provoke a crisis with North Korea, nor should it shut down its routine military activity for fear of offending North Korea,” said Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior CIA analyst on Korean issues. “It’s hard to imagine any connection between these fully lawful, routine tests and the current crisis over North Korea.”https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...bm-test-flight-plan-amid-north-korea-tensions

danielboon · Jan 24, 2018

China Reveals It Has Two Underwater Listening Devices Within Range of Guam

danielboon said:
Strategic Sentinel@StratSentinel 9 hHá 9 horas
#China has revealed they have two underwater sensors near #Guam and the #SouthChinaSea. The undersea listening devices are likely monitoring the movements of American and other foreign submarines and potentially intercepting their communications.

The Chinese government has revealed the existence of two underwater sensors situated between the United States island of Guam and the South China Sea. Though officially for scientific research, the undersea listening devices are likely doing double duty, monitoring the movements of American and other foreign submarines and potentially intercepting their communications.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences only disclosed the pair of acoustic sensors earlier in January 2018, but had been operating them since 2016, according to a report from the South China Morning Post. One of them is in the Challenger Deep, located at the southern end of the Marianas Trench and the deepest known point on earth, and the other is situated further west near the island of Yap, part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Both reportedly can pick up acoustic signatures more than 620 miles away, putting them within range of Guam and the major strategic U.S. naval base at Apra Harbor.The two devices are “a breakthrough for China,” the head of the deep-sea surveillance and communication programs at the Academy of Sciences, identified only by the surname Zhu, told the South China Morning Post. “The deeper under the surface, the quieter the world becomes, and it allows us to concentrate on the signal we most want to hear.”

At least officially, those signals are the sounds produced as a result of undersea earthquakes, typhoons and other extreme weather patterns above, and marine animals, such as whales. Underwater quakes in particular can trigger devastating tsunamis giving the sensors a legitimate role in improving early warning of potential natural disasters. In February 2017, the Academy of Science’s Institute of Geology and Geophysics conducted a number of controlled detonations in the Marianas Trench that would have produced important data in this regard.At the same time, those same sensors cannot help but offer a way to listen for submarine traffic. Their strategic locations near Guam, a major staging base for U.S. submarines and surface warships, as well as long-range bombers, only reinforces the likelihood that the devices have secondary military early warning and intelligence gathering roles.

Just being able to monitor underwater movements to and from Guam, and elsewhere in the general vicinity, is an important capability. Capable of operating for protracted periods below the surface, submarines have inherent deterrent qualities and are well suited to avoiding detection in order to get close to a particular area to launch a no-notice strike or to discreetly gather intelligence.On top of that, the Chinese listening devices may be able to pick up underwater communications transmissions. The South China Morning Post reported that there might be networks of undersea hydrophones in and around Guam that allow submarines to communicate with U.S. Navy command centers without having to get to periscope depth or surface completely and reveal their position.

It would also be able to pick up any other acoustic communications, as well. In 2008, reports emerged that the U.S. Navy had hired Raytheon to work on a system called Deep Siren, which would use a small buoy to convert satellite signals into sound waves, allowing a submerged submarine to use long-range communication networks without having to expose itself.

It is likely that any such transmissions containing sensitive information would be encrypted or otherwise coded in some fashion, but they could still provide a wealth of information for Chinese analysts, such as possible details about standard operating procedures based on how many messages go out in a certain time frame or when and where the exchanges occur. It could also expose potential vulnerabilities in those communication methods.This is not a new concept, of course. During the Cold War, the United States built and maintained an extensive undersea surveillance network to help monitor the movement of Soviet submarines, known as the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS. Spies subsequently comprised that system, leading to a multi-faceted combination of underwater sensors and ship-based towed sonar arrays, all cued to processing stations ashore, known as the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), parts of which remain in operation to this day.

But for China, developing its own such capability is important, especially as it increasingly tries to restrict the movement of foreign military forces through its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea. Though international tribunals have continually rejected the Chinese government’s positions, authorities in Beijing have pushed establish de facto control, primarily through the establishment of numerous military outposts on man-made outcroppings in previously uninhabited reefs and shoals.In turn, the United States in particular sends aircraft and warships into those areas on Freedom of Navigation Operations, or FONOPS, asserting its right to operate freely in international waters. Earlier in January 2018, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Hopper conducted one of these missions near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, prompting a Chinese warning that the country would do everything to defend its sovereign territory.

Though China’s steadily growing integrated air and coastal defenses on its South China Sea outposts do present an increasing anti-access/area denial challenge, there has been little the country could do to limit submarines moving through the area. The Chinese are intent on expanding the size and capabilities of their own submarine force, including the development of advanced diesel-electric types using air-independent propulsion systems and other technologies to reduce their acoustic sigature,

So far, though, the results of those modernization efforts have been less impressive than parallel work with regards to the country's surface fleet, including new modern destroyers and an expanding aircraft carrier fleet. At present, the People's Liberation Army Navy's (PLAN) submarine component remains a relatively small portion of its overall naval force and relies heavily shorter range coastal types less well suited to long duration patrols to help enforce its maritime claims.As such, the Chinese have turned to other means to try and limit the ability of foreign submarines to maneuver freely through areas it claims. In February 2017, China announced planned changes to its maritime safety regulations that would require submarines to surface and display a national flag while transiting through the areas of the South China Sea that the country claims as its own territory and report their activities and movements to civil authorities. Beyond just being of dubious legality under international maritime law, there was no obvious way Chinese authorities could enforce these rules.

The new acoustic sensors could easily be part of an effort to change this balance of power. All of this would be in line with previous reports of the country working toward that goal. In 2016, the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation publicly presented a concept for what it called an “Underwater Great Wall Project” to support the PLAN in the South China Sea.

Then, in May 2017, other Chinese research institutions announced they would begin placing underwater sensor nets in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea, the latter of which is central to a territorial dispute with Japan. Again, the ostensible objective was to gather scientific data, but authorities acknowledged that they also had an innate “national defense” capability, as well.From all accounts, this will be a major undertaking. The aforementioned research network alone has an estimated price tag of $2 billion Yuan – more than $300 million at the present official rate of exchange, which the Chinese government reportedly deliberately undervalues.

Other parts of the “Underwater Great Wall” will likely not come cheap, either. These costs are immediately offset by the potential of having a game-changing undersea surveillance net that could change the strategic calculus both in disputed regions of the Pacific specifically, as well as the region as a whole.

The new reports of new sensors near Guam only underscore that China is determined to project power further into the Western Pacific and challenge the ability of foreign military forces, especially those of the United States, to operate with impunity in and around regions it considers to be integral to its national territory.http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...rwater-listening-devices-within-range-of-guam

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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https://breakingdefense.com/2018/01/big-fears-of-small-nukes-overblown/

Big Fears Of Small Nukes Overblown

By Matthew Costlow
on January 23, 2018 at 4:34 PM
15 Comments

“Insane.” “Deeply dangerous.” Raises the risk of “nuclear exchange” and a “new arms race.” These are some of the serious accusations leveled against the recently leaked Nuclear Posture Review. Each presidential administration since Clinton has written an NPR, primarily to guide U.S. nuclear policy and priorities, but the 2018 NPR is shaping up to be one of the most contentious and important.

Bipartisan consensus, though increasingly rare in other policy areas, has generally been the norm on nuclear policy as the degree of continuity between policies in previous NPRs demonstrates. The Trump NPR, when it is released, will likely be more of the same with a few tweaks to U.S. capabilities in response to the worsening international threat environment.

One of the proposed changes, previously reported to have been under consideration by the Trump administration, is modifying a small number of U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads to lower their yield (the energy released in the detonation of a nuclear weapon). Proponents believe this would be a relatively minor change in U.S. nuclear capabilities that still would send an important deterrent signal to adversaries that they cannot expect to escalate their way out of a failed conventional conflict using limited strikes of their own low-yield nuclear weapons.

Critics of the proposal, however, argue that the lower a nuclear weapon’s yield is, the less destructive it is, therefore making it “more usable” and general nuclear war more likely. This is a grave accusation that requires a factual rebuttal.

If low-yield nuclear weapons are more “more usable,” we would expect to see a rash of international nuclear crises during the 1970s when the U.S. low-yield tactical nuclear weapon stockpile was at its height. But there was only one such crisis then, the Arab-Israeli War, which was certainly not caused by low-yield nuclear weapons. Despite having reportedly nearly 7,000 low-yield nuclear weapons at their disposal, U.S. Presidents did not seem very tempted to use them.

In fact, the United States eliminated over 90% of its tactical nuclear weapons post-Cold War, so pro-disarmament theory holds that the likelihood of nuclear war should have also receded to a matching degree. Yet the same individuals now say we are closer to war despite these reductions. Critics cannot have it both ways, either the reductions of tactical nuclear weapons have decreased the chances of war or political factors outside the weapons themselves in isolation determine the likelihood of war. Clearly the evidence favors the latter.

In reality, the United States has reportedly retained low-yield nuclear weapons in its stockpile for over five decades. Republican and Democratic presidents have historically sought less-destructive nuclear options to make nuclear use less likely by better deterring nuclear aggression.

It’s clear the nuclear order is not so fragile as to be shaken by the modification of a few warheads by a responsible nuclear power such as the United States. In fact, there is evidence it could reduce the chances of nuclear war by making aggressive nuclear states like Russia and North Korea think more than twice about escalating a failing conflict.

As STRATCOM Commander Gen. John Hyten has testified, Russia has a “broader range of nuclear employment scenarios” than the United States, based in part on their flawed belief that deliberate nuclear escalation, possibly with a limited number of low-yield nuclear weapons, would weaken or destroy U.S. and NATO resolve in a war.

In order to dissuade such Russian attitudes, the United States should send an unambiguous message, part of which may be lower-yield nuclear warheads. The chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, Gen. Petr Pavel, offered useful insight into the Russian mind when he stated that: “Russia respects power… as Russia keeps this attitude we have to show our determination. We have to show strength. We have to show our resolve to act whenever necessary.”

President Reagan said “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” but that prudent message appears to have been lost on President Putin. Moscow has long been concerned about the balance of forces between itself and the United States. The apparent proposed changes to the U.S. nuclear force structure will send a clear signal of resolve which adversaries can ignore at their own peril.

When the NPR is officially rolled out in coming weeks, the audience will not be just policy wonks inside the Beltway, but determined adversaries hoping to find weakness in U.S. capabilities and resolve. The NPR and the force structure it promotes will go a long way in assuring adversaries and allies alike that America’s resolve is unshakeable in the face of growing nuclear threats.

Matthew Costlow is a defense analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy and a PhD student at George Mason University.

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

Hummm.....

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https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/two-concepts-nuclear-sharing/

Two concepts of nuclear sharing

24 Jan 2018|Rod Lyon

Suddenly and unexpectedly, a small but intense debate has ignited in Australia over an unlikely topic—the wisdom of acquiring an indigenous nuclear weapons arsenal. (Some of the contributions to that debate can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.) One of the more novel contributions was made in a recent post on the Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter. The author, Peter Layton, suggested that Australia ought to consider the merits of ‘nuclear sharing’, either by deliberately strengthening its extended nuclear deterrence arrangements with the US or—more audaciously—by buying its way into a share of the British nuclear arsenal.

While his post examines both alternatives, it’s clear Peter favours ‘going British’. But at first glance there’d seem to be some serious hurdles in the way. For one thing, Australia still wouldn’t have full control over its own nuclear arsenal. Indeed, we’d be paying more—a lot more—to mimic an arrangement that the US already has with some of its key allies, but with a partner possessing a much smaller nuclear arsenal that’s typically deployed in the north Atlantic. Further, we wouldn’t be bringing anything to the table in terms of actual nuclear sharing; the Brits would be doing that, since it’s their arsenal. All we’d be sharing is money.

So I’d like to use this post to unpack two concepts of nuclear sharing: the kind we already enjoy as a US ally, and the kind we might be more interested in pursuing if we really were intending to proliferate.

Let’s start with the first. US allies around the world that benefit from US extended nuclear assurance participate in a range of supportive activities intended to strengthen the credibility of that assurance and to share the risks associated with nuclear deterrence. Some allies host US nuclear warheads. Some host the aircraft that would deliver those warheads. Some support nuclear operations by providing aerial refuelling or air defence for nuclear-armed aircraft. And some contribute less directly: Australia, for example, has long been a contributor to US strategic command and control, rather than to the weapons systems themselves.

This form of nuclear sharing makes the benefits of nuclear deterrence more widely available to US allies—and aims to forestall proliferation among a group of advanced Western countries that could, if they chose, cross the nuclear threshold with relative ease.

The second form of nuclear sharing—the form currently practised by North Korea and Iran—covers a set of activities intended to lift both parties over the nuclear threshold. Cooperation is typically built on the basis of a shared strategic agenda—as when China helped Pakistan with nuclear weapons design to frustrate India, for example.

This second form of sharing is anathema to many—because it smacks of proliferation rings, nuclear smuggling and illicit technology transfers. And, let’s be honest, sometimes the ‘sharing’ is involuntary; several nuclear weapons programs have depended on stolen information and technology. Still, as Jack Boureston and James Russell observe dryly, ‘None of today’s nine nuclear weapons states achieved their status without the assistance from people, information, equipment and/or sensitive technology that came from somewhere else.’ Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman, in their book The nuclear express, argue that all current nuclear programs have, over time, turned upon a shared pool of knowledge that can be traced back to the Manhattan Project—a research effort in which ‘less than a quarter of the senior technical staff at wartime Los Alamos, New Mexico, were native-born American citizens’.

In short, when the need to proliferate is strong, nuclear sharing (of this second kind) makes sense. Proliferating is hard work. Sharing the burden with others typically hastens the process by broadening both the human capital and the technological skill set upon which the potential proliferator can draw.

What might sharing arrangements involve? Well, in principle, they might occur across the full range of activities necessary to build, deploy and sustain a nuclear arsenal. There are opportunities for cooperation in acquiring fissile materials, designing and fabricating nuclear devices, testing nuclear weapons, constructing delivery vehicles, supporting each other’s nuclear operations, and so on. Parties to a sharing agreement might feasibly devise a cooperative venture at any point along that spectrum. They might cooperate on uranium enrichment, for example, but not on anything else. Similarly, they might cooperate on bomb design, or on nuclear testing, but not on delivery vehicles. Or they might cooperate only on delivery vehicles, steering clear of the more sensitive areas of cooperation.

Why is it worth thinking about this second form of nuclear sharing? For the simple reason that it might be about to enjoy a seminal revival. The first form of nuclear sharing is a core part of the global order forged by the US since the early days of the Cold War. While US alliances continue and extended nuclear deterrence endures, US allies have less incentive to proliferate. The second form gives us a picture of what a post-alliance world might look like.

In that world the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty might not hold. For a number of states, a program of technical cooperation with a friend or partner would then offer the fastest route to successful proliferation. Some of those might see Australia, which has a record of close nuclear cooperation with both the UK and the US, as a potential partner for their own endeavours—despite the relatively underdeveloped nature of our nuclear sector.

Moreover, the shoe might well be on the other foot: in a darker Asian strategic environment, we might be the ones soliciting closer nuclear-sharing arrangements. If we were keen to proliferate quickly, where might we look for assistance?

Author
Rod Lyon is a senior fellow at ASPI. Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial.

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1204687/agonizing-over-the-agni/

Agonizing over the Agni
by ACW Podcast | January 24, 2018 | No Comments

Podcast

India launched the Agni-V intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Launch a missile, get a pod.

Aaron is skiing in Vail, so The Diplomat‘s Ankit Panda joins Jeffrey to discuss India’s nuclear and missile programs from rail mobile missiles to the guy who flooded India’s only ballistic missile submarine.

Links of Note:
Ankit’s Twitter thread on Agni test imagery.
Ankit and Prashanth Parameswaran did an excellent pod over at The Diplomat covering the Arihant and the Agni V.

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-accuses-us-trying-derail-syria-peace-initiative-084949835.html

Turkey vows to widen offensive against Syrian Kurds

SUZAN FRASER and NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press • January 24, 2018

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's president on Wednesday vowed to expand its operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria toward the town of Manbij, which would bring Turkish troops and their Syrian allies closer to U.S. forces supporting the Kurds against the Islamic State group.

A senior U.S. official said Washington is concerned that Turkey's military offensive against the Afrin enclave could distract from the fight against IS and be exploited by extremists to re-supply or create safe havens.

The official told a handful of reporters in Ankara on Wednesday that the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Afrin are not part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which drove IS from much of northeastern Syria with the help of the U.S.-led coalition.

Regarding threats to expand the offensive to Manbij, the official said Washington's "number one concern is the safety and security of troops in the vicinity." U.S. forces are based in Kurdish-held parts of northeastern Syria, including near Manbij, but not in or near Afrin.

Turkey launched an incursion Saturday against Afrin, which is controlled by a Kurdish militia known as the People's Defense Units, or YPG. Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. The YPG forms the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Any move toward Manbij would bring NATO member Turkey and its Syrian allies closer to U.S. forces, threatening friction. The U.S. has urged Turkey to exercise restraint.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday vowed to "foil games along our borders starting from Manbij."

"We will clean our region from this trouble completely," he told officials at a meeting in Ankara. "This operation will continue until the last member of the terror organization is neutralized."

Kurdish forces captured Manbij, which is west of the Euphrates River, from IS in 2016 with the help of the U.S.-led coalition. Turkey has long demanded that the Kurdish fighters withdraw to the eastern bank of the river, and U.S. forces have patrolled the area to reduce tensions.

The head of the Kurdish-controlled Manbij military council, Shervan Darwish, said his forces are prepared for a potential Turkish advance. He said the U.S. helped Kurdish fighters to liberate Manbij and has promised to keep defending it.

"Their presence has been to ensure the stability in Manbij," he said of U.S. troops. "Their patrols are continuing and also air patrols. They are present with us on the front lines."

The advancing Turkish troops are facing stiff resistance in Afrin. Activists and Kurdish officials say airstrikes are still raining down on several parts of the district, which borders Turkey. On Wednesday, Kurdish officials said airstrikes hit in the vicinity of the Nissan 17 Dam, which provides power and water to the area, without damaging it.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the civil war, reported airstrikes in nearly 20 villages. The YPG said it infiltrated behind Turkish lines east of Afrin and targeted their bases.

The United Nations says an estimated 5,000 people have been displaced inside the encircled enclave, and that Kurdish forces are not allowing civilians to leave.

Erdogan said Turkish troops and allied fighters have killed at least 268 Syrian Kurdish fighters since the operation began. He said Turkish troops have suffered seven or eight losses.

Turkey says it wants to create a 30 kilometer (20-mile) deep "secure zone" in Afrin. Erdogan said the operation would allow Syrian refugees to return home. Turkey is home to more than 3.4 million Syrian refugees.

At least 27 civilians have been killed in the fighting in Afrin, mainly in Turkish airstrikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the civil war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the fighting "disrupts what was a relatively stable area of Syria" and "distracts from the international efforts to ensure the defeat of ISIS," using another acronym for the extremist group.

Addressing Turkish complaints that the United States has not kept to its promises to take back weapons supplied to the Syrian Kurdish fighters, the U.S. official in Ankara said Washington intended to "fulfil the commitment," without providing a time frame.

A second U.S. official denied Turkish government claims the U.S. had delivered thousands of trucks of weapons to the Syrian Kurdish forces, saying the bulk of the supplies went to U.S. forces and also included ammunition, food and humanitarian supplies.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

IS has been driven from nearly all the territory it once controlled in Syria and neighboring Iraq, but the extremist group has proven resilient after past defeats, and is still launching insurgent-style attacks.

Russia meanwhile accused the United States of promoting unverified reports about chemical weapons attacks in Syria in order to cloud Moscow's latest peace initiative, while the Syrian government dismissed the reports as "lies."

The United States and 28 other countries are launching a new plan to better identify and punish anyone who uses chemical weapons, amid reports of a suspected gas attack in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus earlier this week.

In an interview with the Interfax news agency, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused the U.S. of promoting "rigged, unverified reports" to hamper Russian peace efforts.

Russia is hosting peace talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi next week that some Syrian opposition figures said will run counter to U.N. peace initiatives.

The U.S. and Russia reached an agreement in 2013 to remove all chemical weapons from Syria, but there have been several reported chemical attacks since then, including one last year that led President Donald Trump to order a retaliatory missile attack on a Syrian air base.
__

Vasilyeva reported from Moscow. Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
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Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/save-children-headquarters-attacked-jalalabad-slideshow-wp-135832612.html

Save the Children headquarters attacked in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Yahoo News Photo Staff • January 24, 2018

Militants stormed a non-governmental organization for children in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday, killing two security guards and a civilian, and triggering hours-long clashes with the police, provincial officials said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The assault started with a suicide bomber who detonated his explosives at the provincial offices of Save the Children in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar.

The standoff ended after eight hours, with police killing two other attackers, according to Attahullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor.

At least 26 people, including six police officers, were wounded during the attack, he added.

IS said it was behind the attack in a statement on its Aamaq media arm. It said a suicide bomber attacked with an explosive-laden vehicle and a subsequent raid targeted “British and Swedish foundations and Afghan government institutes.” (AP)

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Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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http://www.france24.com/en/20180124-haqqani-militant-killed-drone-strike-pakistan-officials

24 January 2018 - 14H00

Haqqani militant killed by drone strike in Pakistan: officials

PESHAWAR (PAKISTAN) (AFP) - A suspected US drone attack in northwest Pakistan killed a militant from the Haqqani network allied to Afghanistan's Taliban on Wednesday, officials said, days after Afghan authorities accused the group of attacking a Kabul hotel.

The pre-dawn strike took place more than 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the Afghan border, in the village of Mamuzai in Kurram tribal district.

Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned the strike, which it said was carried out by NATO's US-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. The US embassy in Islamabad declined to comment and there was no immediate comment from NATO forces in Kabul.

A senior government official in Kurram told AFP that the drone fired one missile at a two-room compound, killing the militant and destroying the building.

He named the dead man as Nasir Mehmood, alias Ihsanullah Khurya, and described him as an Afghan national and a "mid-level commander of the Haqqani network".

"The US drone remained in the air even after the strike and was flying there for almost 15 minutes," the official said.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials in the area also said the US had carried out a drone strike, but according to their information the drone fired two missiles and killed two militants of the Haqqani network in the compound.

A source close to the Haqqani group confirmed that at least one mid-level Afghan commander had been killed.

Pakistan's foreign ministry slammed the "unilateral action" as "detrimental" to cooperation between the uneasy allies, and claimed it targeted an Afghan refugee camp.

"Pakistan has continued to emphasize to the US the importance of sharing actionable intelligence so that appropriate action is taken against terrorists by our forces within our territory," it said.

- Aid freeze -
The US and Afghanistan have long accused Pakistan of ignoring or even collaborating with groups that attack Afghanistan from havens inside Pakistan, a claim Islamabad denies.

This month Washington froze aid to Pakistan worth almost two billion dollars in a move designed to force its military and intelligence apparatus to cut support for Islamist groups.

The Haqqani network -- whose head Sirajuddin Haqqani is a deputy chief of the Afghan Taliban -- was once described by US Admiral Mike Mullen as a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

On Sunday the Afghan interior ministry blamed the group for an hours-long attack on Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel in which at least 22 people were killed, including US, Ukrainian, Kazakh and German citizens.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. Authorities are still investigating how the militants breached security at the hotel.

The aid suspension sparked speculation that the US could resume drone strikes or launch operations along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where militant groups once operated with impunity.

Following the aid freeze, the Pakistani military released a statement citing US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel as assuring them that Washington "is not contemplating any unilateral action" inside Pakistan.

The freeze has cooled the relationship between the ostensible allies and prompted indignation in Pakistan, which insists the US does not recognise the thousands of lives it has lost and billions it has spent battling extremism.

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

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http://www.france24.com/en/20180124...lut-cavusoglu-syria-operation-afrin-kurds-ypg

Latest update : 2018-01-24

Turkish FM: 'We might start an operation in Syria's Manbij'

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said that Turkey's ongoing military operation against Kurds in northern Syria could be expanded to the neighbouring Manbij region and even east of the Euphrates river. "This operation is targeting Afrin region. But the threat is also coming from Manbij", Cavusoglu told FRANCE 24. "For now, Afrin is the target. But in the future, we might also start an operation in Manbij and also in the eastern part of the Euphrates."

Speaking to FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman in Paris, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu also discussed Ankara's ties with the United States. Cavusoglu said he had conveyed to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Ankara's concerns about Washington's plan to form a border force largely made up of Syrian Kurds.

https://youtu.be/x8LR31A6hXg

>> On France24.com: Erdogan's new front: Turkey takes on Syria's Kurds
However, the Turkish foreign minister warned that the US had repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises to stop supporting and arming the Kurdish YPG group, which Turkey considers a terrorist organisation. "The US made a lot of promises and they haven’t delivered," he told FRANCE 24.

By Marc PERELMAN

danielboon · Jan 24, 2018

US sanctions people, firms, ships for aiding North Korean arms industry

WASHINGTON - The United States tightened its economic crackdown on North Korea over its nuclear arms program on Wednesday, imposing sanctions on nine entities, 16 people and six ships it accused of helping Pyongyang develop weapons of mass destruction.

The US Treasury said it imposed sanctions on two China-based trading firms involved in exporting millions of dollars worth of metals and other goods used in North Korea’s weapons industry.

The US Treasury also imposed sanctions on officials belonging to the Workers Party of Korea who are operating in China, Russia and Georgia’s Abkhazia region and urged those countries to expel the individuals.

“Treasury continues to systematically target individuals and entities financing the Kim regime and its weapons programs, including officials complicit in North Korean sanctions evasion schemes,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

Mnuchin said the United States was targeting individuals in China, Russia and elsewhere and “calling for their expulsion from the territories where they reside.”

“We are sanctioning additional oil, shipping, and trading companies that continue to provide a lifeline to North Korea to fuel this regime’s nuclear ambitions and destabilizing activities,” Mnuchin added.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added 16 people to its list of specially designated nationals. It also listed nine entities, including the North Korean Ministry of Crude Oil Industry, and six North Korean-flagged ships.

The action enables the United States to block any assets held by the individuals or firms in the United States and prohibits US citizens from dealing with any of the listed companies or individuals, the Treasury said. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5075761,00.html

danielboon · Jan 24, 2018

SYRIAN FORCE READY TO RESPOND TO ANY TURKISH ATTACK ON MANBIJ

BEIRUT - US-backed Syrian fighters in the Manbij area of northern Syria have deployed to frontlines to confront a threatened Turkish assault and are in contact with the US-led coalition over protecting the city, their spokesman said on Wednesday.

Turkey has launched an air and ground operation in Afrin in northwest Syria targeting the US-backed Kurdish YPG militia - seen by Ankara as a threat to its security - and has threatened to extend its operation some 100 km (60 miles) eastwards to Manbij.

Unlike Afrin, Manbij is an area where the United States has military personnel stationed, raising the risk of possible confrontation between the NATO allies amid Turkish fury over US support for the YPG militia.

Manbij is bordered to the west by a stretch of territory controlled by Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army groups.

"Of course we in the Manbij Military Council have taken the necessary measures and deployed our forces to the front lines," said Sharfan Darwish of the Manbij Military Council.

"We are in full readiness to respond to any attack (by Turkey and its allies)."

"Of course our coordination with the international coalition continues with regards to the protection of Manbij," he added.

Darwish said the US-led coalition had stepped up patrols in the Manbij area in apparent response to the Turkish threats, though a coalition spokesman said there was no indication that this was the case.

"I don't have any indications to say there has been any frequency changes in the amount and how often we do patrols," coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said. "We have been conducting patrols in that area for more than a year now, and overtly. Those have continued and they continue today."

He added: "Clearly we are very alert to what is happening, specifically in the area of Manbij because that is where our ... coalition forces are."

"The coalition forces that are in that area, have an inherent right to defend themselves and will do so if necessary," he said.http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/...espond-to-any-Turkish-attack-on-Manbij-539681

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.military.com/daily-news...-1st-mission-defend-us-military-aircraft.html

Japan PM Reveals Country's 1st Mission to Defend US Military Aircraft

Stars and Stripes 24 Jan 2018 By Matthew M. Burke and Hana Kusumoto

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa -- For the first time, Japan has defended U.S. military aircraft under security legislation passed in 2016 allowing its Self-Defense Forces to aid American military units.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe confirmed the mission this week during a policy speech before the Diet, but did not provide further details.

"With tensions growing over North Korea, the Self-Defense Forces carried out a mission to protect U.S. vessels and aircraft for the first time," Abe said Monday. "An alliance gets stronger if the partners can help each other. The Japan-U.S. alliance has without a doubt become stronger than ever."

The comments were the first confirmation of a cooperative U.S.-Japan air mission. Last spring, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter carrier JS Izumo escorted the USNS Richard E. Byrd off Chiba Prefecture to resupply an unnamed warship that was helping defend against North Korean missiles.

Japanese officials remained tight-lipped about the air operation. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura would not provide details while speaking to reporters on Monday.

Spokesmen for the Defense Ministry and Japan Air Self-Defense Force also declined to provide details.

U.S. Forces Japan did not reply to requests seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

Japan's national Diet passed the controversial security laws in September 2015 allowing Japanese forces to defend close allies if under attack. The legislation went into effect in March 2016 despite opposition from most Japanese citizens.

Prior to that, Japanese forces could not step in and defend U.S. troops unless Japan was also being attacked. The laws also make it easier for Japanese forces to deploy globally.

danielboon · Jan 24, 2018

Trump warns Erdogan to avoid clash between US, Turkish forces

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5075916,00.html

Housecarl · Jan 24, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...currently-unavailable/?utm_term=.3991b61e456e

WorldViews

Afraid of a major conflict? The German military is currently unavailable.

By Rick Noack January 24 at 10:07 AM
Comments 48

BERLIN — Three years ago, Germany's military made headlines when it used broomsticks instead of machine guns during a NATO exercise because of a shortage of equipment. The lack of real weapons in the European Union’s most populous nation was seen as symptomatic of how underfunded its military has long been.

One Russian annexation later, if anything, the state of affairs has only gotten worse, according to the parliamentary commissioner for the country’s armed forces.

He has now reached the conclusion that the German military is virtually “not deployable for collective defense.” Independent commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels also indicated in an interview that Germany was unprepared for the possibility of a larger conflict even though smaller operations abroad may still be possible.

In October, reports emerged that not a single German military submarine was operational — at a time when Russian submarine operations in the Baltic Sea were raising new concerns. Bundeswehr pilots are using choppers owned by a private automobile club to practice because so many of their own helicopters are in need of repair. And about half of all Leopard 2s — the tank which is most common in the Bundeswehr — were out of order as recently as November, which left the country with only 95 tanks of that type. By comparison, Russia is believed to have over 20,000 combat tanks, even though it is not known how many of them are operational.

Defense experts caution that Germany has much higher standards than other countries and may declare a tank nonoperational over minor defects such as a broken blinker. In case of war, they believe, Germany would still be able to mobilize much of its equipment within a short time frame. But Germany's parliamentary military commissioner, who acts as a political advocate for the armed forces, said that measurements of defense capability should not be based on wishful thinking.

“The hard currency, which should be used to measure the success of the minister, is the Bundeswehr’s readiness for action,” said Bartels, a Social Democrat. “And this readiness has not improved over the last four years but has only gotten worse.”

Bartels was referring to the performance of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a Christian Democrat. Even though von der Leyen has backed increases in military spending and expansion during her term, the repercussions of decades of funding shortages are only fully becoming apparent now as much-needed repairs are mounting, and the purchase of additional equipment is proving difficult.

In 2011, Germany decided to reduce its equipment to save costs and focus on vehicles and weapons needed for the asymmetrical warfare it has encountered in countries like Afghanistan, rather than on more Cold War-reminiscent submarines and tanks. But within four years, German officials had to revise their decision amid concerns over Russian military operations in Ukraine and elsewhere and new fears of a more conventional war in Europe. "By that time, however, a lot of the equipment was already sold. Now, it has to be bought back,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Germany is also still in the process of transitioning from a conscription-based model to a more professional military that relies exclusively on volunteers. Conscription was only abolished here about seven years ago, at a time when other E.U. countries were considering reintroducing it. But the Bundeswehr has so far been unable to fully fill its ranks with volunteers, and critics fear that equipment shortages could deter even more from joining.

In a history-burdened nation that has been among the most war-weary since reunification in 1990, the military is still viewed with more skepticism than elsewhere. Britain and France have filled the void as Europe's strongest military forces, even though cost-cutting has led to consolidation and layoffs in both countries, as well.

Elsewhere, however, there is a rising awareness that decades of cost-cutting and relying on the U.S. military have damaged Europe’s own defense mechanisms. Sweden, for instance, has reversed its passive military approach and redeployed soldiers to strategically important bases.

Low military spending in Europe has long raised concerns in the White House, with President Trump taking to Twitter in March to publicly accuse Germany of owing the United States “vast sums of money” for NATO. At the time, Berlin rejected his claim while also questioning his understanding of NATO finances. Germany has long demanded that other investments, such as development aid, should also be included in defense expenditure calculations because they may help to make the world safer, too.

“What we want is a fair burden-sharing, and in order to achieve that, we need a modern understanding of security,” von der Leyen said in March. But her critics fear that such calculations mostly hide the extent to which Germany’s military is, literally, out of service.

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-threatens-sanctions-over-faltering-peace-deal-mali-193808701.html

UN threatens sanctions over faltering peace deal in Mali

AFP • January 24, 2018

United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Wednesday gave parties to a peace deal in Mali until the end of March to show progress or face sanctions for obstructing the 2015 agreement.

The council unanimously adopted a French-drafted statement that "expressed a shared sense of impatience regarding the persistent delays" in making the agreement a reality on the ground.

Council members "expressed their intention to follow the situation closely and to respond with appropriate steps should the parties not implement the commitments" by the end of March, the statement warned.

Islamic extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the desert north of Mali in early 2012, but were largely driven out in a French-led military operation launched in January 2013.

Mali's government signed a peace agreement with coalitions of armed groups in June 2015 to end the fighting, but insurgents remain active, including in central Mali.

Last week, the government and two other armed groups, the Plateforme and Coordination, agreed to appoint the Carter Center as an independent observer to push for more progress.

The council said there was a "pressing need to deliver tangible and visible peace dividends to the population in the North and other parts of Mali" ahead of elections scheduled for this year.

The statement listed decentralization of authority, disarmament and demobilization, setting up better cooperation mechanisms in the northern towns of Kidal and Timbuktu and ensuring women's participation as key areas of focus.

- Pivotal moment -
During a meeting in New York, US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday told Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly that Mali had reached "a pivotal moment."

Implementing the 2015 peace deal and holding successful elections are "critical to further Mali's political transition," said a statement from the US mission.

The council in September set up a sanctions regime for Mali as fears grew that the peace deal for the West African country was collapsing.

Large tracts of the country remain lawless as UN peacekeepers continue to come under attack.

During a council meeting on Tuesday, French Ambassador Francois Delattre said any side that fails to live up to its commitments under the peace deal should face targeted sanctions.

Under the sanctions regime, the council has the power to slap a global visa ban and assets freeze on any Malian national seen as a hindrance to peace.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday announced that he was setting up an international commission of inquiry to investigate serious violations of human rights committed in Mali since January 2012.

A three-person panel led by Lena Sundh of Sweden will submit a report to Guterres within a year.

danielboon · Jan 25, 2018

The Associated Press @AP 8 hod.
BREAKING: State Department says 4 Americans were killed, 2 injured in weekend attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Conflict News- @Conflicts · 28 min.
BREAKING: At least 40 people were killed in the attack on Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel at the weekend, almost double the earlier toll: official figures - AFP

Barzan Sadiq-@BarzanSadiq · 11 min.
#BREAKING #Turkey refuse to discuss the idea of establishing ‘safe zone’ in northern #Syria with #US - #Turkish FM

danielboon · Jan 25, 2018

On Mideast visit, US house speaker vows to confront Iran
AP, 15:26 , 01.25.18
Turkey's Erdogan told Trump US should withdraw from Syria's Manbij -minister
Reuters, 15:26 , 01.25.18
Syrian peace talks start in Vienna as Russian meeting looms
Reuters, 15:25 , 01.25.18
Monitoring group reports IS attack in east Syria
AP, 15:24 , 01.25.18 https://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3089,00.html

danielboon · Jan 25, 2018

China’s new missiles likely to threaten all of Taiwan

Asia Times:

The People’s Liberation Army has taken delivery of the first batch of equipment for an advanced Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, probably bringing the entire island of Taiwan within range of Chinese forces for the first time.

Russia’s TASS news agency reported that a control station, radars, fuel and other auxiliary equipment for the missile system were en route to China. It said Chinese troops, believed to be from the PLA’s Rocket Force, had undergone training on the system in Russia last year.

Described as “one of the best air-defence systems currently made” by The Economist, the S-400 system can fire four missiles simultaneously at multiple aircraft and at different altitudes over a maximum range of 400 kilometers and withstand powerful electronic jamming defenses. http://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/threat-news/chinas-new-missiles-likely-to-threaten-all-of-taiwan/

danielboon · Jan 25, 2018

Jeff Seldin‏Verified account@jseldin 19h19 hours agoUS hits #DPRK #NorthKorea w/more sanctions - targeting 9 entities, 16 individuals & 6 vessels for ongoing development of #WMD & violations of @UN sanctions, per @USTreasury

Anthony Ruggiero‏@_ARuggiero 19h19 hours ago
Quoted by @j_berlingerCNN on Japan catching NK ship-to-ship transfer: "All of this suggests that the US is going to have to go to the next level, which is declaring all North Korean vessels as suspect and reasonable grounds for inspection."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/asia/...ntl/index.html

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/turkey-erdogan-education/

With more Islamic schooling, Erdogan aims to reshape Turkey

Turkey’s president has said he wants to create a “pious generation” to change the nation. So the government is pouring money into schools that teach Islamic values.

By DAREN BUTLER Filed Jan. 25, 2018, 11 a.m. GMT

On a hill overlooking Istanbul is a religious school where, 50 years ago, a boy from a working class district attended classes in Islam. The boy was Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s future president. The school was one of the first Imam Hatip schools, founded by the state to educate young men to be imams and preachers.

At the start of the 2017-2018 academic year in September, Erdogan returned to his old school, now renamed the Recep Tayyip Erdogan Anatolian Imam Hatip upper school after an $11 million redevelopment. He recalled the “tough days” of his childhood and the spirit in the school that drove its students to success.

“The joint goal of all education and our teaching system is to bring up good people with respect for their history, culture and values,” Erdogan told flag-waving children at a ceremony to mark the reopening of the school.

Erdogan has said one of his goals is to forge a “pious generation” in predominantly Muslim Turkey “that will work for the construction of a new civilisation.” His recent speeches have emphasised Turkey’s Ottoman history and domestic achievements over Western ideas and influences. Reviving Imam Hatip, or Imam and Preacher, schools is part of Erdogan’s drive to put religion at the heart of national life after decades of secular dominance, and his old school is just one beneficiary of a government programme to pump billions of dollars into religious education.

A Reuters review of government budget and investment plans shows that spending on Imam Hatip upper schools for boys and girls aged 14 to 18 will double to 6.57 billion lira ($1.68 billion) in 2018 - nearly a quarter of the total upper schools budget. Although the 645,000 Imam Hatip students make up only 11 percent of the total upper school population, they receive 23 percent of funding - double the spend per pupil at mainstream schools.

Since 2012, when Imam Hatip education was extended to middle schools for pupils aged 10 to 14, total pupil numbers have risen fivefold to 1.3 million students in over 4,000 schools. The government intends to complete construction of 128 Imam Hatip upper schools in 2018 and has plans to build a further 50, the budget and investment plans show. Turkey has also increased religious education teaching at regular state schools, some of which have been converted into Imam Hatip schools. The government declined to say how many.

But for all the extra cash they receive, the Islamic schools are underperforming the regular ones, key metrics show.

The education ministry didn’t respond to questions about the expansion of Imam Hatip schools. Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz has said previously that the government is responding to popular demand by opening new Imam Hatip schools. “We are doing whatever our citizens say,” he said at a ground-breaking ceremony for a school mosque in December.

An official in the president’s office referred Reuters to Erdogan’s public remarks on Imam Hatip schools and declined to comment further. A government adviser said, “Islam is not being forced on people. It is not a matter of saying everyone should go to Imam Hatips. We are just providing an opportunity to those families who want to send their children to Imam Hatips.”

The expansion of religious education is unsettling some Turks. Interviews with two dozen parents, teachers and education officials point to deep divisions over the role of Islam in education. Some secularist parents say the Islamist school movement is robbing their children of resources and opportunity. Those differences are part of a wider disagreement between liberal and secular sections of society and Erdogan’s support base of conservative, pious Turks.

It was that support base that swept Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, the AK Party, to power in 2002. Since then, critics have accused Erdogan of rolling back the secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 and weakening its pillars - the army, judiciary and media. Relations between NATO-member Turkey and its U.S. and European partners have become strained. Ankara’s bid to join the European Union has stalled and Western countries have criticised Turkey over mass arrests that followed a failed military coup in July 2016.

PRAISE AND PROTEST
The new Recep Tayyip Erdogan Anatolian Imam Hatip school complex, its Islamic-style architecture rising in a historic district on the European side of Istanbul, is a source of pride for the parents of the 800 children who fill its classrooms and playground.

“God willing, all our schools will reach this standard and quality,” said Kamber Cal, 45, a chemist. His 16-year-old son is delighted to attend the school, he said. “My daughter is now dreaming about going to Imam Hatip, the time when she will cover up and she will learn about the Koran and the Prophet’s life.”

In a mosque on the roof, boys listened to a preacher before Friday prayers when a Reuters reporter visited the school in October, while in the playground below, other boys played football. Some students perused books on shelves in the corridors. The school’s website vaunts its success in pursuits including karate, biology, chemistry, Arabic, music and Koran recitation. Religious education lessons account for around a quarter to a third of the curriculum in Imam Hatip schools.

Cal and other advocates of Imam Hatip schools say parents want a strong moral education for their children. “If there is demand, it must be met. How high will this go? To 20, 25, 40 percent” of pupils? “Demand and society will decide,” Cal said.

Such a prospect is anathema to secularists, people on the political left and members of the minority Alevi faith, which draws upon Shi’ite, Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions and rituals that differ sharply from those of the country’s Sunni majority. Feray Aytekin Aydogan, chairwoman of the Egitim-Sen teachers’ trade union and a critic of the expansion of Imam Hatip schools, said: “There is no need to give people religious education in order for them to get a profession.”

Erdogan’s redeveloped school stands as a paragon among religious schools. On the Asian side of the city, the crowded 60th Year Sarigazi middle school, established six decades after the founding of Turkey’s secular republic, illustrates some challenges that the spread of Imam Hatip schools has presented. Sarigazi is a non-religious school, in an area with a strong Alevi and secular community, but a large part of the premises has been converted into an Imam Hatip school.

A group of parents has petitioned education authorities to stop the conversion, collecting hundreds of signatures. Those parents say the change began several years ago with a few Imam Hatip “guest” classes but has since expanded to 1,300 pupils, encroaching on the building where some 3,000 students study in a regular middle school. The mother of a 10-year-old girl at the regular school said she and other parents would continue their fight against the school’s conversion. She said it was wrong to force Islam on people. Like several other secularist parents interviewed, the woman declined to give her name.

Parents complained that non-religious students at the 60th Year Sarigazi middle school get less support than Imam Hatip students and that their classes are more crowded, with an average 40 pupils in a classroom, compared with 30 on the Imam Hatip side. They say they have lost laboratory and art space. The mother of a boy at the school said her son asked, “Why is the Imam Hatip part of the school better?”

Reuters could not independently verify the parents’ claims and the education ministry declined to comment. But in response to the parents’ petition, education authorities said there were plans to build a new school in the area. It was unclear which students would move there.

Parents at the Sarigazi middle school claim success for another petition they filed in October to halt construction of a wall at one end of a playground. They saw the wall as an attempt to divide the school permanently. The local education authority said it had halted construction, without giving a reason.

A group of parents at another school - the Mahmut Kemal Inal middle school on the Asian side of Istanbul - failed in a campaign to prevent it being converted into an Imam Hatip. They picketed at the gates and organised protests and a petition signed by hundreds. It was to no avail. The only intake for the 2017-2018 academic year was of Imam Hatip students. “I am sad that we were ignored,” said Fulya Yilmaz, whose 11-year-old daughter attends the school.

Education authorities said the local community wanted the school to become an Imam Hatip school. But Yilmaz said only 125 students had enrolled in September, a low intake. On average around 230 pupils normally study in each of the school’s four year groups. The education authority declined to comment on enrolment details.

“SCHOOLS FOR MORALITY”
Successive AK Party governments have given a high priority to education, ramping up the education ministry’s spending to some 12.3 percent of the entire budget this year from 6.9 percent in 2003, the AK Party’s first full year in power.

Despite all the money allocated to the schools, figures on 2017 university placements show graduates of religious schools lag their peers in regular schools. Only 18 percent of applicants from religious schools earned places on full degree courses at university last year, compared with 35 percent from regular state upper schools and 45 percent from private upper schools.

A survey of academic performance published in December 2016 for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed the success of Imam Hatip upper school students was below the national average.

More broadly, Turkey slipped an average of eight places in the survey’s rankings for science, mathematics and reading, compared with the previous study three years earlier, to 50th among 72 countries. That marked a reversal of the progress Turkey made in the previous two terms of AK Party government. It was also a setback for Erdogan, who hopes that driving up education standards will help achieve his target of making Turkey one of the world’s 10 largest economies by 2023, the centenary of the founding of Ataturk’s secular republic. Turkey is currently a member of the Group of 20 top global economies.

Reuters could not determine whether socioeconomic factors were contributing to the performance gap between Imam Hatip and regular schools because there is no data available on pupils’ family backgrounds, their income and education. However, religious schools are found in towns and cities across Turkey, in poor and affluent districts.

While the number of Imam Hatip schools has surged in recent years, the number of students in Imam Hatip upper schools dipped slightly last year. Opposition lawmaker Engin Altay said the slide was “directly correlated with the low success rate of Imam Hatip upper schools in an academic sense.” Education Ministry Undersecretary Yusuf Tekin said Imam Hatip upper schools had filled 84 percent of their quota for 2017-2018. Standard curriculum upper schools had exceeded theirs.

Advocates of Imam Hatip schools say the current expansion should be seen in the context of the previous suppression of these schools. They point to a crackdown in 1997 when Turkey’s then powerful military pressured the first Islamist-led government out of power and forced the closure of most Imam Hatip establishments.

Muslims went out into the squares to defend their rights in protests. Businessman Hanefi Gundogan, 49, said he was unable to send his eldest son to an Imam Hatip school because of the crackdown, but now his youngest attends such a school.

“Muslims have now reached a point where they can breathe more easily in their own country,” he said. “In the last 15 years this government has shown respect to Muslims.”

Halit Bekiroglu, chairman of an association of Imam Hatip members and graduates, said secularist fears about the schools were exaggerated. Their revival, he said, reflected the conservative religious character of most of Turkish society and a desire for a change in an education system that previously imported Western ideas.

“Modernisation and Westernisation were not implemented healthily. They were implemented in a superficial, formalistic, harsh, copy-paste way. This was not in harmony with this country’s sociology,” he told Reuters in the association’s offices, overlooking the huge dome of the 6th century Hagia Sophia.

Parents who send their children to Imam Hatip schools speak of their desire for them to have a strong moral education. It’s a theme Erdogan stressed during his visit to his old school. “The school brought up children with such morality that they would not even pick fruit which hung from the apple tree hanging over the school walls,” he said.

Whatever the origins of the Islamist education revival, critics are worried by it. Batuhan Aydagul, director of Education Reform Initiative, an independent think tank in Istanbul, said: “What we see now is a ‘national and native’ identity being constructed in education.”

The most recent national curriculum, announced in July, excluded Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution from science lessons. The government has also doubled religious teaching in regular schools to two hours per week. This compulsory teaching is a bone of contention for many secular Turks. Some have launched legal action to secure exemptions for their children.

One parent who did so successfully was mathematical engineer Ozlem Koc, 42, who lives on the Asian side of Istanbul. She won a court case in June after a year-long battle with education authorities to exempt her 10-year-old son from religious education, arguing that it was contrary to human rights to force it on children.

“This is not just my personal case,” she said. “I want my child to be exempt from religious lessons, but I am also fighting for compulsory religious education to be removed from the curriculum.”

Additional reporting by Birsen Altayli and Can Sezer in Istanbul; Orhan Coskun, Gulsen Solaker and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

Hummm....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.economist.com/news/lead...eopolitics-are-renewing-threat-growing-danger

The next war

The growing danger of great-power conflict
How shifts in technology and geopolitics are renewing the threat

Jan 25th 2018

IN THE past 25 years war has claimed too many lives. Yet even as civil and religious strife have raged in Syria, central Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, a devastating clash between the world’s great powers has remained almost unimaginable.

No longer. Last week the Pentagon issued a new national defence strategy that put China and Russia above jihadism as the main threat to America. This week the chief of Britain’s general staff warned of a Russian attack. Even now America and North Korea are perilously close to a conflict that risks dragging in China or escalating into nuclear catastrophe.

As our special report this week on the future of war argues, powerful, long-term shifts in geopolitics and the proliferation of new technologies are eroding the extraordinary military dominance that America and its allies have enjoyed. Conflict on a scale and intensity not seen since the second world war is once again plausible. The world is not prepared.

The pity of war

The pressing danger is of war on the Korean peninsula, perhaps this year. Donald Trump has vowed to prevent Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, from being able to strike America with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, a capability that recent tests suggest he may have within months, if not already. Among many contingency plans, the Pentagon is considering a disabling pre-emptive strike against the North’s nuclear sites. Despite low confidence in the success of such a strike, it must be prepared to carry out the president’s order should he give it.

Even a limited attack could trigger all-out war. Analysts reckon that North Korean artillery can bombard Seoul, the South Korean capital, with 10,000 rounds a minute. Drones, midget submarines and tunnelling commandos could deploy biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons. Tens of thousands of people would perish; many more if nukes were used.

This newspaper has argued that the prospect of such horror means that, if diplomacy fails, North Korea should be contained and deterred instead. Although we stand by our argument, war is a real possibility (see article). Mr Trump and his advisers may conclude that a nuclear North would be so reckless, and so likely to cause nuclear proliferation, that it is better to risk war on the Korean peninsula today than a nuclear strike on an American city tomorrow.

Even if China stays out of a second Korean war, both it and Russia are entering into a renewal of great-power competition with the West. Their ambitions will be even harder to deal with than North Korea’s. Three decades of unprecedented economic growth have provided China with the wealth to transform its armed forces, and given its leaders the sense that their moment has come. Russia, paradoxically, needs to assert itself now because it is in long-term decline. Its leaders have spent heavily to restore Russia’s hard power, and they are willing to take risks to prove they deserve respect and a seat at the table.

Both countries have benefited from the international order that America did most to establish and guarantee. But they see its pillars—universal human rights, democracy and the rule of law—as an imposition that excuses foreign meddling and undermines their own legitimacy. They are now revisionist states that want to challenge the status quo and look at their regions as spheres of influence to be dominated. For China, that means East Asia; for Russia, eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Neither China nor Russia wants a direct military confrontation with America that they would surely lose. But they are using their growing hard power in other ways, in particular by exploiting a “grey zone” where aggression and coercion work just below the level that would risk military confrontation with the West. In Ukraine Russia has blended force, misinformation, infiltration, cyberwar and economic blackmail in ways that democratic societies cannot copy and find hard to rebuff. China is more cautious, but it has claimed, occupied and garrisoned reefs and shoals in disputed waters.

China and Russia have harnessed military technologies invented by America, such as long-range precision-strike and electromagnetic-spectrum warfare, to raise the cost of intervention against them dramatically. Both have used asymmetric-warfare strategies to create “anti-access/area denial” networks. China aims to push American naval forces far out into the Pacific where they can no longer safely project power into the East and South China Seas. Russia wants the world to know that, from the Arctic to the Black Sea, it can call on greater firepower than its foes—and that it will not hesitate to do so.

If America allows China and Russia to establish regional hegemonies, either consciously or because its politics are too dysfunctional to muster a response, it will have given them a green light to pursue their interests by brute force. When that was last tried, the result was the first world war.

Nuclear weapons, largely a source of stability since 1945, may add to the danger. Their command-and-control systems are becoming vulnerable to hacking by new cyber-weapons or “blinding” of the satellites they depend on. A country under such an attack could find itself under pressure to choose between losing control of its nuclear weapons or using them.

Vain citadels

What should America do? Almost 20 years of strategic drift has played into the hands of Russia and China. George W. Bush’s unsuccessful wars were a distraction and sapped support at home for America’s global role. Barack Obama pursued a foreign policy of retrenchment, and was openly sceptical about the value of hard power. Today, Mr Trump says he wants to make America great again, but is going about it in exactly the wrong way. He shuns multilateral organisations, treats alliances as unwanted baggage and openly admires the authoritarian leaders of America’s adversaries. It is as if Mr Trump wants America to give up defending the system it created and to join Russia and China as just another truculent revisionist power instead.

America needs to accept that it is a prime beneficiary of the international system and that it is the only power with the ability and the resources to protect it from sustained attack. The soft power of patient and consistent diplomacy is vital, but must be backed by the hard power that China and Russia respect. America retains plenty of that hard power, but it is fast losing the edge in military technology that inspired confidence in its allies and fear in its foes.

To match its diplomacy, America needs to invest in new systems based on robotics, artificial intelligence, big data and directed-energy weapons. Belatedly, Mr Obama realised that America required a concerted effort to regain its technological lead, yet there is no guarantee that it will be the first to innovate. Mr Trump and his successors need to redouble the effort.

The best guarantor of world peace is a strong America. Fortunately, it still enjoys advantages. It has rich and capable allies, still by far the world’s most powerful armed forces, unrivalled war-fighting experience, the best systems engineers and the world’s leading tech firms. Yet those advantages could all too easily be squandered. Without America’s commitment to the international order and the hard power to defend it against determined and able challengers, the dangers will grow. If they do, the future of war could be closer than you think.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The next war"

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/asia-escalating-missile-race

ASIA | ASIA PACIFIC SECURITY | CHINA

Asia’s escalating missile race

BY Brendan Thomas-Noone
@BrendanTN_
25 January 2018
11:47 AEDT

If the Cold War was one long arms race, the modern era could be accurately described as an arms jog. Countries are defined less by how many nuclear warheads they have, and more by what they can do with them. This is particularly the case in Australia’s immediate region, where a significant missile competition is underway.

Last year saw a step up in the pace of missile testing and the operationalisation and deployment of capabilities that have been in development for some time. North Korea’s missile program and the responses of South Korea and Japan, as well as the successful testing of several long-in-development systems from Pakistan, India, and China are examples of this. The leaked draft of the US government’s Nuclear Posture Review only adds to the pile.

Last week, India chalked up another successful test of its Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with a range of more than 5000 kilometres. In a concerning sign of escalation, during the Doklam standoff with China last year, India’s political leadership reportedly inquired about the deployment of the INS Arihant, one of New Delhi’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

Pakistan is also quietly developing its own ballistic missile capability. The ‘Ababeel’, with a reported range of 2200 kilometres, was successfully tested early last year. Pakistan claims it has been equipped with multiple independent re-entry vehicle technology (MIRV), and another medium-range missile, the Shaheen-III, is also in development.

China’s long-range missile programs are fairly well-documented, but there are some notable new developments. The first is the recent adoption of MIRV technology by the People's Liberation Army on its DF-5 ICBMs, which in effect equips each missile with multiple warheads. Another is the likely deployment in 2018 of China’s new road-mobile ICBM system, the DF-41, which has a reported range of 12,000 kilometres.

In December China tested the first ballistic missile system to incorporate a hypersonic element. The D-17, expected to enter full operational service by 2020, can reach Mach 5 and has a range of several thousand kilometres.

The second new development is the revelation that China is working on an air-launched version of the DF-21D, an anti-ship ballistic missile. Last May the head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency testified that China is upgrading its aircraft (likely a new version of the H-6 bomber) to carry ballistic missiles, some of which may be nuclear-capable.

North Korea’s race to develop nuclear delivery capabilities, such as intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as a submarine-based system, are well known. The successful testing of the Hwasong-14 in July and the Hwasong-15 in November marked North Korea's entry into the global ICBM club. By most estimates, Pyongyang has up to 11 types of ballistic missile either deployed or under development.

Since the early 1970s, South Korea has been developing its own short-range ballistic missiles based on an early US design. The missile program – the Hyunmoo-2 being the latest version – is controlled through a treaty with the US that allows Washington to set the missiles' range and payload. Seoul last year began lobbying the Trump administration to loosen the payload restrictions beyond 500 kilograms.

These are the region’s ballistic missile developments over the past 18 months only. Keeping pace is the advancement and proliferation of both conventional and nuclear-capable cruise missiles (unlike ballistic missiles, cruise missiles are self-navigated and maintain a flatter flight trajectory).

The nuclear-capable BrahMos supersonic cruise missile jointly developed by Russia and India was successfully tested from an Indian Su-30 MKI fighter in November, presaging a significant "deep strike" capability for the Indian Air Force. New Delhi’s induction into the Missile Technology Control Regime in 2016 has allowed Indian engineers to reportedly double the missile’s range to 800 kilometres. A hypersonic version, the BrahMos-II, is also in development.

Pakistan has invested heavily in nuclear-capable cruise missile systems in recent years. The most well known is the Babur family of systems, medium-range cruise missiles in service since 2010. Last year the Babur 3 was successfully tested from an ‘underwater mobile platform’, more or less completing Pakistan’s nuclear triad.

With the completion of its satellite network, Beijing now has the capability to integrate high-precision cruise missiles into its regional defence strategy. China fields an array of cruise missiles, some of which are reportedly nuclear-capable. China is also racing to incorporate advances in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies into a new generation of missiles able to compete with similar efforts in the US.

Driven by the rapid advance of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, US allies are exploring land-attack cruise missile capabilities. Japan has announced its intention to add the air-launched, Norwegian-made Joint Strike Missile (JSM) to its inventory, giving it a stand-off strike capability. Considering the Japan Self-Defence Force has traditionally been limited to munitions with 300-kilometre ranges, the 500 kilometre-range JSM is a significant departure.

There were also rumours that Japan was considering purchasing US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. It now appears that the Japanese Ministry of Defense has added a land-attack capability to an existing missile development program, dubbing it the ‘Japanese Tomahawk’.

In 2013 Seoul agreed to purchase 180 German-made Taurus air-to-surface cruise missiles. With a range of 500 kilometres, the Taurus is a critical piece of South Korea’s ‘kill-chain’ strategy in the event of a conflict with North Korea. The Taurus would be carried by South Korean F-15K Slam Eagles and targeted at North Korea’s leadership and command and control nodes in an effort to "decapitate" Pyongyang’s military command. South Korea last year released a YouTube video demonstrating the missiles as well as the full operationalisation of the system, and in October South Korea decided to purchase an additional 90 missiles. Seoul also has an indigenous cruise missile program, the Hyunmoo-3.

The US is a significant player, and is working on several new nuclear-capable and conventional ballistic and cruise missile systems. The leaked Nuclear Posture Review forecasts an intention to install low-yield warheads on its sea-based ballistic missiles and start a new program for a sea-launched nuclear-capable cruise missile.

Missile proliferation is a clear sign of an ongoing arms race. Last year saw a surge in testing and deployment of both ballistic and cruise missile technology throughout the Indo-Pacific. In all likelihood, maintaining strategic stability in 2018 will only become more difficult.

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...visit-vietnam-in-post-war-first-idUSKBN1FE0XI

#WORLD NEWS JANUARY 25, 2018 / 1:06 AM / UPDATED 11 HOURS AGO

U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam in post-war first

Phil Stewart, James Pearson
5 MIN READ

HANOI (Reuters) - In a post-war first, the United States is poised to send an aircraft carrier to Vietnam in March, officials of both sides said on Thursday, dramatic evidence of deepening military ties between them, more than four decades after the Vietnam War.

The announcement came during a two-day visit to Hanoi by U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that had been expected to focus on shared concerns about China.

The proposed visit is set for March at the central port of Danang, Vietnam’s defence ministry said in a statement. Such a visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier could bring the most U.S. forces to Vietnam since the conflict ended in 1975.

Mattis cheered the planned port visit during talks with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

“Thank you for the increasing partnership, with our aircraft carrier coming into Danang here in March,” Mattis said.

Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed the carrier visit was discussed by Mattis and Defence Minister Ngo Xuan Lich, and Vietnam’s defence ministry was seeking final approvals from national leaders.

“We expect it will be approved,” Davis said.

The arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in Vietnam will be welcomed by an emerging network of countries that are nervously eyeing China’s military rise, particularly its assertive stance and island-building activities in the South China Sea.

The busy waterway is a vital global trade route linking Northeast Asia with the Middle East and Europe.

In particular, the militaries of U.S., Japan, India and Australia are working more closely together as a “quad” of liberal democracies across what they now term the “Indo-Pacific” – moves driven by mistrust of China.

U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris last week described China as a “disruptive transitional force in the Indo-Pacific” after meetings with Japanese and Indian military leaders in New Delhi.

India, Japan and Australia have all boosted military relations with Vietnam in recent years, with New Delhi providing advanced training for its emerging submarine forces and jet fighter pilots.

BACKROOM DIPLOMACY

Thursday’s confirmation of the U.S. aircraft carrier visit to Danang caps months of backroom military diplomacy between Hanoi and the Pentagon, diplomats said.

The prospect surfaced when U.S. President Donald Trump met Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the White House last May, and talks continued when Vietnamese Defence Minister Ngo Xuan Lich met Mattis in Washington in August.

Vietnam’s Deputy Defence Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh became the country’s highest-ranking official to tour a U.S. carrier when he led 11 Vietnamese officials to watch flight operations aboard the USS Carl Vinson off southern California last October, the U.S. Navy said at the time.

Although no U.S. aircraft carrier has been to Vietnam since the end of the war, other, smaller U.S. warships have made high-level visits as ties improved in recent years.

That includes a 2016 visit by submarine tender USS Frank Cable and guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain to Cam Ranh Bay, which was a crucial logistics complex during the Vietnam War.

The planned carrier visit was “highly significant”, said Ian Storey, a South China Sea expert at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

“It is a potent symbol of the way the defence relationship has moved forward against the backdrop of China’s rising power,” Storey added.

Decades after the U.S. war in Vietnam, ties between the United States and the Communist-ruled state are increasingly seen through shared concern over China’s aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion in cargo passes every year.

Vietnam has emerged as the most vocal opponent of China’s territorial claims and has been buying U.S. military hardware, such as an armed, Hamilton-class Coast Guard cutter.

The ship, one U.S. official said, was larger than anything Vietnam had in its navy.

“(Vietnam) does have one of the region’s fastest growing economies and so freedom of navigation and access in the South China Sea will be critical to them economically and of course in their security efforts,” Mattis said before arrival on Wednesday.

U.S. ties with Vietnam have developed significantly in the decades since they normalised ties in 1995. Still, there were vivid reminders of the history of conflict during Mattis’ visit.

That included a stop by Mattis on Tuesday to a U.S. Defense Department office in Hanoi that seeks to recover the remains of U.S. troops killed in the conflict.

About 1,293 U.S. military personnel are still unaccounted for, a U.S. official said.

Additional reporting by Mai Nguyen in HANOI and Greg Torode in HONG KONG; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Clarence Fernandez

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

Considering the "ideological bend" of Erdogan and his political party/movement (as well as the amount of oil they bought from ISIS/Daesh when they held the oil fields) this is going to get a lot more involved and messier before it's "over"....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-kurd-ypg-or-risk-confrontation-idUSKBN1FE297

#WORLD NEWS JANUARY 25, 2018 / 7:32 AM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

Turkey to U.S.: End support for Syrian Kurd YPG or risk confrontation

Tuvan Gumrukcu, Dahlia Nehme
6 MIN READ

ANKARA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Turkey urged the United States on Thursday to halt its support for Kurdish YPG fighters or risk confronting Turkish forces on the ground in Syria, some of Ankara’s strongest comments yet about a potential clash with its NATO ally.

The remarks, from the spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan’s government, underscored the growing bilateral tensions, six days after Turkey launched its air and ground operation, “Olive Branch”, in Syria’s northwestern Afrin region.

In Washington, the Pentagon said that it carefully tracked weapons provided to the YPG and would continue discussions with Turkey.

“We carefully track those weapons that are provided to them, we ensure that they, to the maximum extent possible, don’t fall into the wrong hands and we’re continuing discussions with the Turks on this issue,” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, joint staff director, told reporters.

McKenzie said Turkey’s operation into Afrin was not helpful and was taking focus away from fighting Islamic State.

Turkey’s targeting of the YPG, which it views as a security threat, has opened a new front in Syria’s multi-sided civil war. The Syrian Kurdish group is a main part of a U.S.-backed rebel alliance that has inflicted recent defeats on Islamic State militants.

Any push by Turkish forces towards Manbij, part of a Kurdish-held territory some 100 km (60 miles) east of Afrin, could threaten U.S. efforts in northeast Syria and bring them into direct confrontation with U.S. troops deployed there.

“Those who support the terrorist organization will become a target in this battle,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said.

“The United States needs to review its solders and elements giving support to terrorists on the ground in such a way as to avoid a confrontation with Turkey,” Bozdag, who also acts as the government’s spokesman, told broadcaster A Haber.

The United States has around 2,000 troops in Syria, officially as part of an international, U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State. Washington has angered Ankara by providing arms, training and air support to Syrian Kurdish forces that Turkey views as terrorists.

The Kurdish-led autonomous administration that runs Afrin on Thursday called on the Syrian government to defend its border with Turkey in Afrin despite Damascus’ stance against Kurdish autonomy.

“We call on the Syrian state to carry out its sovereign obligations towards Afrin and protect its borders with Turkey from attacks of the Turkish occupier,” it said in a statement on its website.

The Syrian government has said it is ready to target Turkish jets in its airspace, but has not intervened so far. It suspects the Kurds of wanting independence in the long-run and does not recognize the autonomous cantons they have set up in northern Syria.

U.S. forces were deployed in and around Manbij to deter Turkish and U.S.-backed rebels from attacking each other and have also carried out training missions in the area.

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Erdogan on Wednesday to curtail the military operation in Syria, the White House said.

However Turkey has disputed that characterization of the conversation.

Turkey’s foreign minister said Erdogan told Trump that U.S. troops should withdraw from Manbij.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said she had seen media reports about the comments, but was not aware of any change in U.S. posture.

McKenzie added the United States and Turkey closely coordinated in the region but the United States would also ensure the safety of its troops.

GRAPHIC: Turkey Syria Incursion JPG - tmsnrt.rs/2Dy3Bhz

LIMITED GAINS
Six days into the campaign, Turkish soldiers and their Free Syrian Army rebel fighter allies have been battling to gain footholds on the western, northern and eastern flanks of Afrin.

They appear to have made only limited gains, hampered by rain and clouds, which have limited the air support.

Turkish warplanes struck the northern borders of Afrin, in tandem with heavy artillery shelling, and one civilian was killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Dozens of combatants and more than two dozen civilians have been killed so far in the offensive, the Observatory has said.

The Turkish military said in a statement it had killed 303 militants in northern Syria since the operation started.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a YPG-dominated umbrella group backed by the United States in the fight against Islamic State, has previously said that Turkey was exaggerating the number of the dead.

Relations between Ankara and Washington have neared breaking point recently over U.S. support for the YPG and other issues.

RELATED VIDEO

RELATED COVERAGE
U.S. in talks with Turkey about creating security zone in Syria: Pentagon
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Turkish Red Crescent prepares for refugee wave from Syria's Afrin

Ankara considers the YPG to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-long insurgency in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast. Washington sees the YPG as an effective partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

Turkey said the United States had proposed a 30 km (19 mile) “safe zone” along the border.

“(But) in order for us to discuss the security zone or any other issue with the U.S., we have to reestablish trust,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters.

In Washington, McKenzie said the U.S. and Turkey were continuing talks about a “secure zone” but there had been no final decision.

McKenzie said that he had not yet seen a movement of SDF fighters moving from the Euphrates River Valley to reinforce Afrin or Manbij, but was watching closely.

The Afrin operation has also triggered concern in Germany, another NATO ally, where the caretaker government said it would put on hold any decision on upgrading Turkey’s German-made tanks.

Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; Tom Perry in Beirut; Michael Nienaber Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alistair Bell

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...oalition-ahead-of-parliamentary-elections.php

Iranian-backed Iraqi militias form coalition ahead of parliamentary elections

BY AMIR TOUMAJ & ROMANY SHAKER | January 25, 2018 | amir_toumaj@defenddemocracy.org |

Ahead of Iraq’s May parliamentary elections, Iranian-backed militias announced the formation of a coalition called al Fatah al Mubin (Manifest Victory). It is led by Hadi al Ameri, chief of the Badr Organization and current Iraqi parliamentarian, who has close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani called Ameri a “living martyr” last year. The IRGC-backed coalition is poised to shape the next Iraqi government, highlighting the new political order.

Analysis of Al Fatah shows it is an Islamist coalition dominated by the political wings of the Iranian-backed groups of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The majority of its members have had long-standing links to Iran. The coalition also includes smaller parties that have no known armed wings, as well as at least one minority group. The Iranian-backed groups are using the cover of the coalition and political participation to provide a cover of legitimacy for themselves.

The coalition demonstrates how the Iranian-backed network has worked around recent arbitrary restrictions by Baghdad and Najaf’s top Shiite authority to separate arms from politics [see FDD’s Long War Journal report, Top Iraqi-Shiite cleric endorses incorporation of PMF into the state]. Thus far, Al Fatah consists of 18 groups:

Badr Organization
Al Sadiqoun, affiliated with Asaib Ahl al Haq
Jihad wal Bana Movement, affiliated with the Jihad Companies / Iraqi Hezbollah, led by Hassan al Sari
Islamic Taliyah Party, led by Aly al Yasseri, affiliated with the Khorasani Companies
Muntasirun (Victorious) Bloc, led by Mahdi al Musawi, affiliated with the Seyyed al Shuhada Brigades
Professionals for Construction Party – Al-Imam Ali Brigades
Al Ataa wal Sidq [Giving and Honesty] Movement, led by Murtada Ali Hammud al-Sadi, affiliated with Ansar Allah al Awfiya
The Islamic Movement in Iraq, led by former PMF spokesman Ahmad al Assadi, affiliated with the Junud al Imam Brigades
The 15th of Shaaban Movement, led by Razaq Yasser
Hezbollah / Iraq, led by Salem al Bahadeli
Kafa Sarkha Lil Taghir, founded in 2015 by Rahim al Daraji, no known affiliation with militias
Iraq Future Gathering, led by former Oil Minister Ibrahim Mohammad Bahr al Ulloum
Al Adalah and Al Wehda (Justice and Peace) Gathering, a party led by Sheikh Amir al Fayez
Al Wafaa Wal Taghyir (Faithful and Change) Bloc, founded by Iskandar Watut in 2012
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by Hammam Hamoudi
The Islamic Action Organization is an Islamist group founded in 1962 by Sheikh Jasim al Asai, akaMuhsin al Husayni. The party is led by deputy secretary general Hasan al Asadi.
The Independent Sha’bi Gathering, led by Falah al Jazayeri.
Shabak Democratic Gathering party, led by Hanin al Qaddo. The Shabak are a minority group from Nineveh province.
On Jan. 14, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi, who is heading the Nasr al Iraq (Victory of Iraq) coalition, announced a ticket with Fatah, hailing the alliance with sectarian figures as “cross-sectarian.” The move drew the scorn of many supporters, including firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who called it an “abhorrent” deal that would “pave the way for the return of corruption and sectarianism.” A day after Abadi’s announcement, Abadi’s alliance with Fatah fell apart. In a statement, Ameri said al Fatah is ready to form another alliance with Abadi following the election, citing “technical” issues for the breakup.

Soleimani brokered the initial deal between Abadi and Fatah according to journalists and Iraqi media reports. Kurdish journalist Abdullah Hawez tweeted that the Iranian general was in Baghdad on Jan. 13 and attended a meeting with Abadi, Amiri and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a US-designated terrorist who is the de-facto leader of the PMF and its operations chief. London-based Al Araby al Jadid citing “Iraqi political sources in the ruling national coalition” claimed Soleimani visited Baghdad again on Jan. 17 to help “narrow the divergences in views among the political protagonists within the ruling alliance after the sharp disagreements that arose from the formation of political alliances to run the 2018 parliamentary elections.” A senior official from the National Alliance says Soleimani met with every major Shiite political leader except Abadi and Sadr.

Regional media suggested that the new alliance fell apart due to Sadr’s objection to the inclusion of the Iranian-backed groups. Other media sources suggested that the IRGC-backed Badr and Asaib Ahl al-Haq have withdrawn following the inclusion of figure Ammar al-Hakim, who has reportedly fallen out with Iran after breaking off from ISCI last year and forming his National Wisdom Party against the wishes of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ameri has denied that al Fatah demanded the exclusion of Hakim and Sadr.

As Iraq’s elections draw near, Iran will use all means necessary to maintain and expand its influence on the Iraqi government by bolstering its network. The Iraqi state today depends on the PMF, which is dominated by Iranian-backed formations, to provide security. One of Soleimani’s deputies is leading a political coalition and will shape the next Iraqi government. The Iranian ambassador to Iraq and Qods Force commander Iraj Masjedi said this month he is overseeing Tehran’s “logistical, engineering and weapons” assistance package to an Iraqi military that “needs rebuilding,” adding that negotiations are continuing with Iraq’s defense ministry, federal police, interior ministry and the PMF. Last year, Masjedi discussed helping form “popular” intelligence and security units across Iraqi provinces. Meanwhile, Iran is looking to boost trade to Iraq to $20 billion within five years and continues to invest in religious and social projects, such as expanding Shiite shrines.

Iran’s attempts to promote sectarian and corrupt faces in Iraq further locks in the dynamics that have contributed to Iraq’s destabilization and undermines Abadi’s effort to project himself as a bulwark against sectarian forces who publically boast of their strong ties to the Islamic Republic.

Amir Toumaj is a Research Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Romany Shaker is a Research Aalyst and Arabic language specialist for Defense of Democracies.

Housecarl · Jan 25, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...ike-that-killed-haqqani-network-commander.php

Pakistan ‘condemns drone strike’ that killed Haqqani Network commander

BY BILL ROGGIO | January 24, 2018 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned a US drone strike that reportedly killed a Haqqani Network commander earlier today in the tribal agency of Kurram. The Pakistan government often criticizes US airstrikes that kill members of the Taliban, including Haqqani Network leaders.

Today’s strike, which is the second recorded inside Pakistan this year, targeted a home in the Spin Tal Dappah Mamozai area of Kurram, GEO News reported. The strike reportedly killed Ahsan aka Khoray, “a commander of the Haqqani Network,” as well as another person, the Pakistani news agency noted.

In an official statement released on its website, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed the US military struck a refugee camp for Afghan citizens.

“Pakistan condemns a drone strike in Kurram Agency carried out by the Resolute Support Mission (RSM) this morning, which targeted an Afghan refugee camp,” the ministry claimed.

“Such unilateral actions, as that of today, are detrimental to the spirit of cooperation between the two countries in the fight against terrorism.”

The Pakistani government has condemned numerous US drone strikes in the past, calling them “a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.” In its most controversial denouncement of a US strike, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a formal statement objecting to the attack that killed former Taliban emir Mullah Mansour in Baluchistan province on May 21, 2015.

These public objections of US strikes have been issued when the US targets members of the Taliban or other groups which are supported by powerful and influential elements of Pakistan’s military, Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and government. These groups, such as the Afghan Taliban (including the Haqqani Network), the Hafiz Gul Bahadar Group, and the Mullah Nazir Group, are referred to in Pakistani circles as the “good Taliban,” as they do not advocate attacking the Pakistani state. However, those groups do support jihadist groups that wage war on the government (referred to as the “bad Taliban,” such as the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan) and shelter foreign terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

The so-called “good Taliban” also support and wage jihad in Afghanistan and India. [See Threat Matrix report, Good Taliban are not our problem, adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister says.]

US focuses efforts against jihadists in Kurram

Over the past two years, the US drone campaign appears to have shifted its focus from the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan to Kurram. The US has launched 13 such attacks inside Pakistan since Dec. 2016; eight of them have occurred inside Kurram, according to data compiled by FDD’s Long War Journal. The last six US strikes have all taken place inside Kurram. [See US drone strike inside Pakistan targets ‘Afghan extremist’.]

Elements of the Haqqani Network, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, relocated to Kurram in 2014 after the Pakistani military telegraphed a planned operation to root out the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan’s network in North Waziristan. Sirajuddin is the operational commander of the Haqqani Network and serves as one of the Taliban’s two deputy emirs as well as its military commander.

Other elements of the Afghan Taliban as well as allied jihadist groups, including al Qaeda, are also known to operate from Kurram.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, drones, Pakistan, Taliban

2 Comments
Steve Silverman says:
January 24, 2018 at 8:19 pm
If they(Pakistan) can’t see the Light, then we need to turn up the Heat `

Reply
Joemama says:
January 24, 2018 at 9:17 pm
Haqqani were using Kurram as one of their bases during June 1, 2012 attack on FOB Salerno at Khost – see coverage in archives.

Reply

Housecarl · Jan 26, 2018

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.realcleardefense.com/ar...uild_8000_nuclear_weapons_by_2026_112963.html

Will Russia Build 8,000 Nuclear Weapons by 2026?

By Mark B. Schneider
January 26, 2018

In December 2017, Bill Gertz reported, “Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to deploy a total force of 8,000 warheads by 2026 along with modernizing deep underground bunkers, according to Pentagon officials. The 8,000 warheads will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads to circumvent arms treaty limits and support Moscow’s new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in any conflict.”[1] This is quite plausible. Existing Russian programs can support the deployment of 8,000 or more nuclear weapons with an emphasis on either strategic or non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons or both.

Russia has a nuclear weapons production complex that is clearly able to produce and sustain a stockpile of 8,000 or more nuclear weapons. Russia can produce 1,000 nuclear “pits” a year which translates into the ability to produce 1,000 complete new nuclear weapons per year.[2] Also, it has mothballed the ability to produce 2,500 more.[3] With a weapons life of 10-20 years, according to former Russian Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhaylov,[4] 1,000 pits a year permits a force of 10,000-20,000 nuclear weapons.

The Russian Government has announced over twenty strategic nuclear modernization programs.[5] Even more significant in terms of how many nuclear weapons Russia is planning to build is the very large number of warheads that will be carried on each type of new or modernized strategic missiles. Most notable is the new Sarmat heavy ICBM which will carry, according to TASS, “at least 15 warheads.”[6] The new version of the Soviet legacy SS-N-23, the Sineva, reportedly can carry double the number of warheads for which the SS-N-23 was limited to under the START Treaty.[7] Not satisfied with this, Russia went on to develop, test and deploy a second new version of the SS-N-23, the Liner (sometimes translated as Layner) which, according to Russian press reports, can carry 10 warheads.[8] The new Bulava-30 SLBM was declared to carry six warheads under the START Treaty, but reports are quite common in Russia that it, and the new RS-24 Yars ICBM, will carry ten warheads.[9] (This would likely require a new smaller RV). Russia has gone in exactly the opposite direction as the U.S. which has downloaded its strategic missiles. It is simply impossible for Russia to deploy uniformly anywhere near these warhead numbers under any arms control regime, which suggests Russia is planning to deploy many nuclear warheads outside of arms control constraints by cheating or breakout.

In December 2017, TASS quoted well connected Russian journalist Colonel (ret.) Viktor Litovkin as saying that Russia “…has five hundred strategic missiles carrying over 1,800 nuclear warheads,” which is 239 more warheads and about seventy more deployed missiles than Russia claims it had in September 2017.[10] An excellent 2015 study by James R. Howe concluded that Russia had the potential to deploy 2,664-5,890 warheads on its ballistic missiles.[11] These are not worst-case numbers. The large throw-weight of some Russian missiles could permit very large numbers of small nuclear warheads to be carried. For example, in 2010, ITAR-TASS reported the Russian SS-18 heavy ICBM “can deliver up to 36 warheads…”[12] The new Sarmat ICBM will have more throw-weight (10,000-kg)[13] than the SS-18. Howe’s estimate is based on official disclosures and Russian press reports concerning its plans for the new or modernized strategic missiles. In December 2017, he estimated that Russia would have 8,000 nuclear weapons in six years, a mix of high-yield, medium-yield, and low-yield nuclear warheads.[14]

Russia’s legacy Soviet heavy bomber force can carry about 850 nuclear warheads.[15] In 2022, Russia will be in the early stages of producing 50 new Tu-160M2 bombers at a rate of several per year.[16] In 2026, Russia will certainly be in the process of adding new strategic ballistic missiles. Russia will have finished the Borey A program and will be building new Borey B class ballistic missile submarines (reported IOC to be in 2026) and will later produce the new Husky class ballistic missiles submarines (construction start reported to be in 2023-2024) and PAK D stealth bombers (first flight reported to be in 2023).[17] There are also likely to be new programs that have not yet been disclosed. Hence, the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons will almost certainly go well over 3,000 and continue to increase even if Russia does not deploy the maximum reported warhead loads on each of its missile types. While Russian IOC dates are often delayed, this will not change any of the trends outlined above.

The Russian Federation clearly has thousands of non-strategic weapons.[18] In 2011, the U.S. Defense Department estimated Russia had between 2,000-4,000 tactical nuclear weapons.[19] Russia claims to have reduced its tactical nuclear weapons inventory by 75% from Cold War levels.[20] Similar or identical claims were made in the review conferences for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for about 15 years. This is significant because the P-5 states (the U.S., Russia, China, France and Great Britain) bend over backward to detail their nuclear weapons cuts during the NPT review conferences, yet Russian claims about non-strategic nuclear weapons reductions remained the same.[21] (Since their number of strategic warheads had increased, Russia resorted to an apples and oranges comparison of a number of warheads accountable under the START Treaty and the New START Treaty, despite completely different counting rules.) Since Alexei Arbatov, a Russian expert and former Vice Chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, and others (e. g., Graham Allison) have said that the late Cold War Soviet tactical nuclear arsenal constituted 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons,[22] this would mean Russia has retained 5,000+ tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed, in 2014, Pravda.ru reported, “Russia, according to conservative estimates, has 5,000 pieces of different classes of TNW [tactical nuclear weapons] - from Iskander warheads to torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads!”[23] In 2013, Alexei Arbatov indicated that the Russian arsenal of “nonstrategic nuclear assets (medium-range aviation, operational-tactical aircraft and missiles) are classified, but unofficial estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000 operationally deployed nuclear weapons, a considerable segment of which can also hit targets in regions adjoining Russia.”[24] “Operationally deployed” is a term associated with the 2002 Moscow arms control Treaty. It does not count the entire weapons inventory but only those weapons actually attached to delivery systems or stored at operational bases. Moreover, Arbatov has never counted Russian non-strategic warheads that he knows violate arms control commitments.

The Russian tactical nuclear arsenal is amazingly diverse. According to the 2017 Defense Intelligence Agency report on Russia Military Power, Russian tactical nuclear weapons “…include air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs, and depth charges for medium-range bombers, tactical bombers, and naval aviation, as well as anti-ship, anti-submarine, and anti-aircraft missiles, and torpedoes for surface ships and submarines. There may also be warheads remaining for surface-to-air and other aerospace defense missile systems.”[25] Additional types of tactical nuclear weapons are reported in the Russian press including nuclear artillery.[26]

Russian press reports of Russian development of precision low-yield nuclear warheads began in the late 1990s. In 1999, Russia’s First Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov said: “a ‘new generation’ of low-yield nuclear weapons ‘can really be used in case of any large-scale military conflict.’”[27] A declassified CIA report from August 2000 stated, “Senior Russian military officers have advocated the use of highly accurate, super-low yield nuclear weapons in Russian military journals such as Military Thought and Armeyskiy Shornik.”[28] It said, “Judging from Russian writing since 1995 and Moscow’s evolving nuclear doctrine, new roles are emerging for very-low-yield nuclear weapons—including weapons with tailored radiation output….”[29] The report also noted, “Moscow’s military doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons has been evolving and probably has served as the justification for the development of very low-yield, high-precision nuclear weapons. The range of applications will ultimately be determined by Russia’s evolving nuclear doctrine, and could include artillery, air-to-air weapons, ABM weapons, anti-satellite weapons or multiple rocket launchers against tanks or massed troops.…”[30] The 2009 report of the U.S. Strategic Commission stated, “Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield tests.”[31] In the last few years, there have been reports in the Russian press, including the State media, of actual Russian deployment of precision low-yield nuclear weapons with low sub-kiloton yields, including deployment on Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles.[32]

Thus, Bill Gertz’s report that Russia will build up to 8,000 nuclear weapons, including precision low-yield nuclear weapons by 2026, is quite plausible. Indeed, the number might be considerably higher. Russia may even be approaching 8,000 warheads today. In light of Russia’s nuclear doctrine which allows the first use of nuclear weapons in conventional war, this development is quite dangerous and we are only just beginning to come to grips with this threat.

Dr. Mark B. Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service, Dr. Schneider served in a number of senior positions within the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy including Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy and Representative of the Secretary of Defense to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commissions. He also served in the senior Foreign Service as a Member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.

Notes:
[1] Bill Gertz, “Russia Sharply Expanding Nuclear Arsenal, Upgrading Underground Facilities,” Washington Free Beacon, December 13, 2017, available at http://freebeacon.com/national-secu...ear-arsenal-upgrading-underground-facilities/.
[2] Houston T. Hawkins, “RETHINKING THE UNTHINKABLE,” Los Alamos National Laboratory National Security Science, December 14, 2014, p. 15, available at https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publi...014-december/_assets/doc/NSS-december2014.pdf.
[3] Ibid., p. 16.
[4] Mark B. Schneider, “The Nuclear Doctrine and Forces of the Russian Federation,”: (Fairfax Va.: National Institute Press, 2006), p. 14, available at http://www.nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Russian-nuclear-doctrine-NSF-for-print.pdf.
[5] For a list of these systems see Mark B. Schneider, “Russian Nuclear Weapons Policy,” Real Clear Defense, April 28, 2017, available at http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/04/28/russian_nuclear_weapons_ policy_ 111261.html. The only announced changes from the date of this publication are that Russia has put the rail-mobile ICBM program on hold and it has announced a new strategic submarine, the Borey B.
[6] “Formidable Sarmat: Satan’s successor that can piece any defense,” TASS, October 25, 2016, available at http:// tass.com/defense/908575.
[7] Pavel Podvig, “Liner SLBM explained,” Russian Force.org, October 11, 2011, available at http://russianforces. org/blog/2011/10/liner_slbm_explained.shtml.
[8] “Russian Navy takes into service Layner ICBM,” BBC Monitoring, April 2, 2014, available at https:// dialog. proquest.com/professional/docview/1511968598?accountid=155509.: U.S. Department of State, “Russian Federation MOU Data,” U.S. Department of State, January 1, 2007, available at http://20012009.state.gov/ documents/organization/83235.pdf.; Charles P. Vick, “A Highly Modified Topol-M/SS-27,” Globalsecurity.org, October 10,2013, available at http://www.global security.org/wmd/world/russia/rs-24.htm.; “‘Nuke trains’ with up to 30 Yars missiles rolling out from 2018 – Russian defense source,” RT, December 26, 2014, available at https:// www.rt.com/news/217795-russia-nuclear-missile-trains/.; “New START: Potemkin Village Verification,” The New START Working Group, The Heritage Foundation, June 24, 2010, p. 7, available at http://www.heritage.org/ research/reports/2010/06/new-start-potemkin-village-verification.
[9] Pavel Podvig, “Bulava has six warheads,” Russian Forces.org, April 3, 2006, available at http://russianforces.org/ blog/ 2006/04/ bulava_has_six_warheads.shtml.: Pavel Podvig, “Jane’s Cover Story,” Russian Forces.org, July 9, 2007, available at: http://russianforces.org/blog/ 2007/07/janes_cover_story.shtml.; “SS-N-32 ‘Bulava’,” Missile Threat.Com, August 10, 2016, available at https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/ss-n-32-bulava/.; “Yars Intercontinental ballistic missile,” Military Today.com, no date, available at http://www.military-today. “Russia: Comparison of Sineva, Bulava ICBMs, possible reason for Bulava’s failures,” BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, July 20, 2009, available at https://dialog.proquest.com/professional/docview/1511968598?accountid=155509.
[10] “Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces as its decisive defense,” TASS, December 19, 2017, available at http://tass. com/defense/981811.: U.S. Department of State, “Fact Sheets: New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms,” U.S. Department of State, October 2, 2017, available at https://www.state.gov/t/avc/newstart/ 274550.htm.
[11] James R. Howe, “Exploring the Dichotomy Between New START Treaty Obligations and Russian Actions and Rhetoric,” Vision Centric, Inc., October 2015, slide 4.
[12] “Russia Strategic Missile Forces Launch Command-staff Exercise,” ITAR-TASS, March 10, 2010. No longer posted on the TASS web site.
[13] Pavel Podvig, “Sarmat Tests to Begin in 2015,” Russianforces.org, January 26, 2015, available at http://russian forces.org/blog/ 2015/01/sarmat_tests_to_begin_in_2015.shtml.
[14] Gertz, “Russia Sharply Expanding Nuclear Arsenal, Upgrading Underground Facilities,” op. cit.
[15] Mark B. Schneider, New START: The Anatomy of a Failed Negotiation, (Fairfax Virginia: National Institute Press, July 2012), p. iii, available at http://www.nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/New-start.pdf.
[16] “In the coming years, the ASF will receive the latest PAK FA fighters and Tu-160M2 strategic missile carriers,” Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, June 19, 2017, available at http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/ country/more.htm?id=12129460@egNews.: “Russian Defense Ministry Says Eyeing “Purchase of 50 Modernized Tu-160 Bombers,” Sputnik News, July 18, 2017, available at https://sputniknews.com/military/201707181 5565 8243-russia-tu160-bombers-purchase/.
[17] “Russian Navy to receive improved Borei-class strategic submarine in 2026 — source,” TASS, December 25, 2016 available at http://tass.com/defense/982864.: “This is When Construction of Russian 5th-Gen Nuclear Sub is Expected to Start,” Sputnik News, July 28, 2017, available at https://sputniknews.com/military/20170728105 5958464-russia-fifth-generation-nuclear-submarine/.; “Russia’s next-gen strategic stealth bomber may be unveiled in 2018,” Russia Today, October 14, 2016, available at https://www.rt.com/news/362724-russian-next-gen-strategic-bomber/.
[18] “Obama Advisor Gary Samore, ‘The Ball is Very Much in Tehran’s Court’,” Radio Free Europe, April 14, 2011, available at http://www.rferl.org/content/interviewsamore_russia_iran_us_policy/3557326.html.
[19] “James N. Miller, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Statement before the House Commit-tee on Armed Services, November 2, 2011,” available at http://armedservices.house.gov/index. cfm/files/serve?File_id=faad05df-9016-42c5-86bc-b83144c635c9..
[20] “Russia not advising U.S. to raise issue of intermediate, short-range missiles at NPT conference,” Interfax, April 17, 2015, available at http://search.proquest.com/professional/docview/1673958229?accountid=155509.
[21] “Senior Diplomat Says Russia Abides By Nonproliferation Commitments,” ITAR-TASS, May 3, 2005, available at http://www.partnershipforglobalsecu...nd Publications/News/Nuclear News/2005/552005 111653AM.html#1D.
[22] Graham Allison, “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SOVIET SUPERPOWER’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL? CLUES FOR THE NUCLEAR SECURITY SUMMIT,” (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, March 2012), p. 12, available at https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/ publication/3%2014% 2012%20Final%20What%20Happened%20to%20Soviet%20Arsenals.pdf.: Alexei Arbatov, “Deep Cuts and De-alerting: A Russian Perspective,” in Harold Feiveson, ed., The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons, (Washington, DC.: Brookings Institution, 1999), p. 320.
[23] Dmitriy Sudakov, “Russia prepares nuclear surprise for NATO,” Pravda.ru, November 12, 2014, available at http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/politics/12-11-2014/129015-russia_nato_nuclear_surprise-0/.
[24] Aleksey Arbatov, “Look Before You Leap,” Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye Online, August 7, 2013. (Translation by World News Connection.)
[25] U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Russia Military Power: Building a Military to Support Great Power Aspirations, (Washington D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency, 2017), p. 31, available at http://www.dia.mil/ Portals/27/ Documents/ News/Military%20Power%20.Publications/Russia%20Military%20Power%20Report%202017.pdf.
[26] “Russia’s Severodvinsk attack sub to be armed with new cruise missiles,” ITAR-TASS, March 27, 2009. (Translated by World News Connection).: “Àêàäåìèê Åâãåíèé Íèêîëàåâè÷ Àâðîðèí: «Íàóêà — ýòî òî, ÷òî ìîæíî ñäåëàòü, à òåõíè÷åñêàÿ íàóêà — ýòî òî, ÷òî íóæíî ñäåëàòü»,” atomic-energy.ru, April 10, 2013, available at http://www. atomic-energy.ru/interviews/ 2013/04/10/41068. (In Russian).
[27] “Russia’s citadel of secrecy: Arzamas-16, birthplace of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb, still centre of nuclear activity: [Final Edition],” Calgary Herald, September 5, 1999, available at https://dialog.proquest.com/professional/ docview/244759414?accountid=155509.
[28] “Evidence of Russian Development of New Subkiloton Nuclear Warheads [Redacted],” Intelligence Memorandum, Central Intelligence Agency, August 30, 2000, approved for release October 2005, pp. 6, 10, available at http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001260463.pdf.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid.
[31] William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger, America’s Strategic Posture - The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2009), p. 83, available at http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf.
[32] Ilya Kramnik, “Nevsky and Novomoskovsk: Two Submarines for Putin,” Sputnik News, December 12, 2010, available at http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20101215/161784522.htmlz; Andrey Kislyakov, “Does Russia Need a ‘Wet’ Missile and One More Tank?,” Ria Novosti, January 19, 2008. (Translated by World News Connection).; “Russian pundit Litovkin argues case of Bulava,” Ekho Moskvy Radio, July 17, 2009. (Translated by World News Connection.)

WAR 01-20-2017-to-01-26-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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WAR 01-20-2017-to-01-26-2018___THEWINDSofWAR