WAR 01-23-2016-to-01-29-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

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http://www.janes.com/article/57450/indonesia-reverses-course-increases-defence-budget

Industry

Indonesia reverses course, increases defence budget

Craig Caffrey, London - IHS Jane's Defence Industry
25 January 2016

Indonesia has increased its defence budget by 2.0% for 2016 to IDR99.5 trillion (USD7.2 billion) according to figures released by the Ministry of Finance. The decision reverses a proposed 1.7% reduction in military expenditure which had been included under the draft budget.

Budgetary documentation, released on 14 January, also shows that actual spending on defence in 2015 reached around IDR102.3 billion, an increase of 4.8% or IDR4.7 trillion over the revised budget allocation planned by the government. As such, despite the upward revision, the 2016 budget ostensibly represents a 2.7% reduction compared with the funding provided for the previous fiscal year.


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[Housecarl]

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https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/china’s-role-middle-east

Expert Commentary

China’s Role in the Middle East

January 25, 2016 | Andrew Small

Andrew Small
Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund

President Xi Jinxing’s visit to the Middle East last week appeared to be business as usual. Short and relatively low-key, his studious avoidance of controversy was in keeping with China’s longstanding approach to the region: focus on energy and economics, and keep your head down on security and political matters. The extended absence of a senior Chinese visitor to the neighborhood and the cancellation of Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt last year had given this three-country tour the flavor of a reluctant necessity, with an agenda rich on trade and investment but otherwise limited. Promote the Belt and Road initiative, deliver a speech to the Arab League, toast the 60th anniversary celebrations in Egypt, and pull off quick stops to Riyadh and Tehran without getting embroiled in their intensifying rivalry.

Yet for all Xi’s careful treading around its high politics, this is now the region where many of the most significant shifts in China’s global security role are underway. The last 18 months alone have seen a number of important firsts: an agreement to build the first Chinese overseas naval base in Djibouti, the first non-combatant evacuation by PLA-Navy vessels in Yemen, the first deployment of a battalion of combat troops for peacekeeping in South Sudan, and the first confirmed kills by Chinese drones, with the Iraqi army’s strikes on ISIS targets in Ramadi. Go further back and you also have the first deployment of Chinese warships for military operations outside Asia in the Gulf of Aden, and the first use of PLA naval assets to support a civilian evacuation in Libya. Another even more dramatic first has been under discussion in Beijing recently: whether the PLA should involve itself directly in military actions against ISIS in Syria.

For a region that is supposed to embody Chinese strategic caution, this is a striking level of experimentation. While Xi touted dialogue and development as the path to security during his remarks in Cairo, China has shown more willingness to utilize military means in the greater Middle East than in any region beyond Asia—and the trends that have been driving this shift are likely to persist.

First has been a change in the terrorist threat that China faces. After years in which the most significant Uighur militant presence was in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, recent accounts suggest that Uighurs, now operating in Syria, are larger and more capable. ISIS itself is also one of the few transnational jihadi organizations to have targeted China so explicitly. Where Bin Laden tactically avoided taking Beijing on as another enemy, Baghdadi has had no such reservations, and the killing of a Chinese hostage, Fan Qinghai, is likely to prove a moment of real symbolic importance.

Second is a marked increase in the number of Chinese workers in the region and growing expectations at home about the Chinese government’s responsibility to protect them. This has been true elsewhere, but the turmoil in the Middle East in recent years has made it the most consistent focus of concern. Beijing was caught off guard by the unexpectedly large presence of Chinese nationals in Libya and has evacuated personnel from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in the last few years. That presence will further spike with the new wave of industrial investments under the One Belt, One Road scheme. Similar considerations apply to assets and trade routes. The PLA Navy was sent to the Gulf of Aden, not simply as a gesture of cooperation, but to ensure the safety of Chinese ships and to help secure the vast Chinese imports and energy supplies that pass through the waterway. Neither was the deployment of Chinese combat troops for peacekeeping duty in South Sudan a purely virtuous act. Behind-the-scenes negotiations were focused on whether they should be defending Chinese oil installations as well as endangered civilians.

Third, as Xi noted in his speech to the Arab League, is the sense of a “vacuum” as the United States steps back. While Xi argued that China is not “attempting to fill” the vacuum, the reference reflects Beijing’s anxiety that a more energy-independent United States will be increasingly unwilling to perform its usual security role in the region. Just as the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan prompted serious Chinese diplomatic efforts to forge a political settlement there, perceptions of a diminished U.S. presence in the Middle East are already catalyzing tentative moves on China’s part to adopt a more active stance.

Xi’s visit itself was no turning point. China is still determined to maintain its friendships with all the region’s major powers and steer clear of too much exposure to its knottiest politics. In recent years, Beijing has rebuffed solicitations from regimes in the Middle East that fear U.S. abandonment and want to see China step in on a grander scale. Yet for all its reluctance and caution, as Beijing’s economic plans for the region mushroom and its security concerns grow, the traditional limitations on its role can no longer be taken for granted.

 

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...tary-drills-island-off-chinese-coast-36517411

Taiwan Stages Military Drills on Island off Chinese Coast

By Johnson Lai ·KINMEN, Taiwan — Jan 26, 2016, 3:33 AM ET

Taiwan held small-scale military drills on an island it controls just off the Chinese coast Tuesday, in a renewed signal of its determination to defend itself from Chinese threats.

The head of Kinmen's defense command said the beach landing exercise and simulated attack by the navy's elite "frogman" commandos were to show the ability of the armed forces to provide security in the Taiwan Strait ahead of next month's Lunar New Year holiday.

The drills follow live-fire exercises held by China in the area just days after Taiwanese voters elected independence-leaning Tsai Ing-wen as president on Jan. 16. The unit involved in those exercises, the 31st Group Army, is charged with responding to contingencies involving Taiwan and is based in the city of Xiamen, directly across a narrow waterway from Kinmen.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to use force to bring the island under its control.

The Kinmen commander, Hau Yi-he, said no unusual Chinese military movements had been detected since the election and Taiwan's forces would continue with routine drills.

"We have been monitoring their (China's) military movements. So far, it has remained normal," Hau told The Associated Press during a visit to the island organized by Taiwan's Defense Ministry.

Taiwan retained Kinmen and the Matsu island group to the north as frontline defense outposts for Nationalist forces that retreated to Taiwan following the Communists' 1949 sweep to power in China's civil war.

Reporters were later flown to an air base in the southern county of Chiayi that is home to some of the air force's F-16A/B fighter jets, along with an air rescue group. Taiwan has sought to purchase the more advanced F-16C/D version of the plane from the U.S., a bid that, if successful, would be sure to elicit a furious response from Beijing.

While China in recent years has promoted the concept of peaceful unification rather than outright invasion, it has refused to drop its military threat and passed a law in 2005 laying out the conditions under which it would attack. While not setting a timetable, President Xi Jinping has told visitors he doesn't wish the issue of independence to be put off for future generations.

Writing Monday in the Communist Party newspaper Global Times, commentator and retired general Luo Yuan said China would never bend in its determination to realize unification, regardless of developments on Taiwan.

"As long as 'peace' has not died, we will give 100 percent," wrote Luo, whose views reflect a popular strain of thinking among nationalist Chinese. "But if the 'Taiwan independence' elements force us into a corner, then we have no other choice but 'unification by force.'"

 

[Housecarl]

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http://news.usni.org/2016/01/25/u-s...t-from-the-sea-in-expanded-iron-fist-exercise

U.S. Marines Teach Japanese Forces How to Fight From the Sea in Expanded Iron Fist Exercise

By: Gidget Fuentes
January 25, 2016 10:15 AM • Updated: January 25, 2016 3:34 PM

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – Over the next five weeks, a small force of Japanese soldiers is getting down and dirty with U.S. Marines, learning from them what it means to fight from the sea.

Japan’s eye is on the calendar. In two years, it expects to stand up the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, its first amphibious unit, and it needs a credible force to bolster its national defense capabilities.

About 300 soldiers from Japan’s Western Army Infantry Regiment arrived at Camp Pendleton last week for the annual training exercise— Iron Fist 2016. They are training alongside 500 Marines, mostly members of the Camp Pendleton-based 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, in scenarios that will take them from the large amphibious training base to desert training at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and offshore San Clemente Island.

In recent years, and through annual Iron Fist exercise, Japan’s military has been developing its own tactics, techniques and procedures in amphibious operations, guided by U.S. Marines and their naval counterparts. This year, unlike last year’s exercise, Japanese soldiers will get to sea: They will embark USS Somerset (LPD-25) to get familiar with sea operations and learn to plan and practice amphibious raids and assaults that will take place at San Clemente Island and Camp Pendleton.

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force soldiers just might be part of a new unit of 3,000 troops that by 2018 will provide Japan with an expeditionary force it can send to respond to national emergencies or hold or retake a far-flung island—without necessarily trailing U.S. forces. Japan wants a force that can rapidly deploy to emergency situations—like what it encountered after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami—and also secure Japan’s interests with the defense of its far-reaching islands under threat of China’s growing naval reach and influence in the region. It also could go to the defense of a partner nation under a recent reinterpretation of the Japanese constitution.

“By 2018, we are going to establish an amphibious brigade, and we are planning to make sure they improve on their skill sets,” said Col. Yoshiyuki Goto, the regimental commander, speaking through a translator. “The things we are focusing on [include] the ship-to-shore landing, but after the landing, being able to conduct [missions] and maneuver properly. That is what we want to improve by going to Twentynine Palms.”

This year’s exercise kicked off with a ceremony on 22 January. A contingent of Japanese soldiers and U.S. Marines, along with their color guards, stood at attention on the parade deck flanked by a pair of amphibious assault vehicles, 155mm howitzer cannons and Humvee. The Japanese soldiers settled into barracks at Camp Margarita, the home garrison for the 1st Marine Division.

Iron Fist, I MEF’s largest bilateral exercises held in Southern California, has been conducted annually since 2006 with a focus of improving the Western Army Infantry Regiment’s ability to plan, communicate and coordinate with a larger combined force in conducting amphibious operations, considered among the most complex military missions.

Harry H. Hornouchi, Japan’s consulate-general in Los Angeles, traveled to Camp Pendleton for the opening ceremony. The U.S.-Japan military relationship is an important part of the bilateral security alliance, he said. Beyond the paper agreement is the need to bolster interoperability and build mutual trust between both nation’s militaries, which exercises such as “Iron Fist” are designed to do.

“We don’t have the amphibious ability” to train forces, Hornouchi said after the ceremony. “For more than 10 years, we have been learning from the Marine Corps to have that ability for island defense.”

“We have to protect the defense of those islands. That is very important,” he said, adding the close work and interactions with the Marines is helping develop and refine that amphibious capability.

Japan plans to equip its amphibious brigade with Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), and the soldiers will get hands-on experience here operating and handling the vehicles in shipboard and littoral environments. The light-infantry force soldiers arrived with their small boats, small arms, machine guns and mortars, which the regimental commander expects they will put to good use during live-fire training in the desert.

Goto said “there are many limitations on the . . . types of training we are doing in Japan. Japan’s government is weighing expanding military training ranges and facilities at home, “but for now, the training here is very fruitful.”

“I am telling my troops that this is a very rare opportunity, so we want to take as much as possible from the Marines and take it back to our home country,” he said. At Twentynine Palms, “we will conduct live fire and tactical-level firing training.”

That will happen in restricted airspace at the desert base, something that Goto said will be an invaluable experience for his troops. “This type of training is not very possible in Japan,” he said. “By doing this, we will get very good training, and we will also be able to recognize our shortfall and what we will need to bring to the table in order to make ourselves a better regiment.”

The exercise will be memorable in other ways, too: Most of Goto’s soldiers have never been on board a ship and will get to experience life at sea for the first time.

Col. Clay Tipton, the 11th MEU commander, said “In the short span of a decade, this exercise allows our two services to come together and practice amphibious operations at a platoon, company and battalion level.” Marines and soldiers will practice marksmanship, amphibious reconnaissance and close-air support, among other skills. The pairing with Marines is very fitting. “Our roots are naval in nature. It’s what the 11th MEU does on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

The focus is on building individual and collective unit skill sets, Tipton said. Just working through the language barriers “will improve any unit that works with a host nation or partner military.”

After “lane training”—focused on individual and small-unit skills—the Marines and Japanese soldiers will travel to Twentynine Palms for live-fire and maneuver training. Then they will board ships, including Somerset, for amphibious training. “It’s a building-block approach, and it’s pretty complex,” Tipton said.

The move to create a credible amphibious force hinges on getting soldiers—sea soldiers, or “marines” in a sense—on board naval craft, something not typical routinely done among Japan’s self-defense forces. Recent training has seen an increasing cooperation among Japan’s military branches, notably the maritime or naval joining with the ground or army self-defense forces, as it plans for a more integrated joint force. For example, Japanese soldiers boarded three Japanese naval ships off Camp Pendleton in early September for amphibious-operations training during the joint multilateral exercise Dawn Blitz, which included forces from New Zealand and Mexico.

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?483210-Preparing-for-the-Next-Big-War

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http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/preparing-for-the-next-big-war/

Preparing for the Next Big War

David Barno and Nora Bensahel
January 26, 2016
Comments 6

“For almost twenty years we had all of the time and almost none of the money; today we have all of the money and no time.”

Those words were spoken by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall in 1940 as he was facing the imminent entry of the United States into World War II. He was lamenting the fact that when large conflicts suddenly arrive, all the money in the world cannot magically fix military shortfalls overnight. It is not hard to imagine a future Army chief of staff uttering those same words on the eve of a truly big war.

Between 1945 and 1989, the looming threat of global war between the United States and the Soviet Union informed every aspect of U.S. military preparations, from doctrine to organization to weaponry. But since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military has not been sized, organized, and globally postured to fight a large-scale and bloody war.

Today, virtually no one serving below the rank of colonel or enlisted senior chief has ever served in a military facing a powerful peer competitor, nor have they faced a realistic prospect of fighting a global war to protect the nation’s most vital interests and perhaps even its survival. Yes, the United States has been at war for the past decade and a half. But even at their peak, U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan included no more than 171,000 troops and 100,000 troops respectively. Compare that with the more than 537,000 troops deployed at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 — which was considered a small and limited conflict at the time.

The likelihood that the United States will have to fight a really big war — one that requires many hundreds of thousands of troops, with high levels of destructiveness and casualties — remains low, but the consequences would be enormous. And in a world threatened increasingly by disorder, violent extremism, and more aggressive large states, those low odds may be increasing.

What could trigger a big war? A massive, direct attack on the United States certainly would, but other lesser crises could also escalate unpredictably. Imagine, for example, a Russian invasion of another eastern European state; a territorial miscalculation between the United States, China, or a treaty ally in the South China Sea; an explosive Sunni–Shia conflict spilling beyond the Middle East; a regional conflict in South Asia or on the Korean peninsula; or a large deadly terrorist attack in the United States. An initial U.S. military response to any of these scenarios could escalate into a greater, and potentially even global, conflict. The requirements of such a war would greatly exceed current contingency plans for Iraq, Afghanistan, or even the Korean peninsula.

The potentially devastating consequences of the next big war demands that the U.S. military (and the nation as a whole) prepare as much for this scenario as for the range of lesser challenges demanding attention today. Today’s wars, likely contingencies, and simply running the Defense Department all require time, energy, and resources. Choices and tradeoffs must be made. Nevertheless, the Pentagon must identify the gaps that would put the United States at the biggest risk in a large, prolonged conflict against a highly capable adversary, and mitigate those risks to the greatest extent possible.

We believe that there are at least five big gaps that the United States must try to fill — and a sixth that cannot be fixed even though it may be the area of greatest U.S. vulnerability.

1. Precision Munitions and Advanced Weaponry. A large-scale conflict could consume vast quantities of U.S. and allied precision munitions in the opening weeks. Many of these weapons have been bought in limited quantities and would require immediate replenishment. Munitions production lines should be stocked with critical sub-assemblies and parts, and precious scarce materials warehoused to rapidly churn out more of these essential tools of war. Precision munitions will be consumed quickly even in medium size conflicts; upgrading this capability would yield high payoffs across most potential scenarios. Moreover, the Department of Defense and industry must be able to rapidly accelerate and combat test advanced weapons that are still in development (such as rail guns and laser weapons), so they can get into the hands of fighting troops quickly.

2. Platforms. Fighter planes, drones, bombers, even submarines and surface warships could see heavy losses in the first days and weeks of a big war. Other hardware may prove obsolete or vulnerable to enemy action and require immediate replacement or abandonment. Most of these complex platforms require months or years to produce. Warm production lines with readily available manufacturing materials must be available to accelerate production quickly. There may be some lessons to be learned from the rapid production of MRAPs at the height of the IED threat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Further, the services should inventory their boneyards to identify what systems could be rapidly reconfigured for combat use with some advanced preparation.

3. Troops. Defending the United States against potential homeland threats while deploying hundreds of thousands of troops overseas would require a significantly larger U.S. military, even after the National Guard and Reserves are mobilized. A new and massive effort to build, train, lead, and equip new forces may be necessary to generate sufficient combat power quickly and to sustain it over multiple months and even years of combat. All of the services need plans to expand rapidly if required, though this is particularly urgent for the Army and Marines. Since conscription might well be required, U.S. political leaders should ensure that the Selective Service System remains strong (and, as we have written, includes women), and think through what manpower requirements would require instating a draft.

4. Planning and Adaptability. Planning for a big war requires carefully examining vulnerabilities, making sober estimates of casualties and attrition, and realistically appraising how many men and women will be needed. Broad questions need to be asked about how the force might fight, where, and against what adversary; what new equipment and capabilities might be needed; and what current assumptions or constraints (such as relying on a volunteer force) might need to be discarded. Once a big war starts, the services will need to rapidly adapt to unanticipated battlefield conditions. They may need to invent new units and capabilities, either as physical formations or virtual capabilities — think space attack brigades, civilian chem-bio advisory teams, or micro-drone defense units.

5. Technology. Additive printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies all have important military applications — and every combatant will be racing to exploit them first in battle. The U.S. military must therefore maintain its technological superiority, and also find ways to rapidly find wartime applications for non-military technologies. However, the United States is likely to be far more vulnerable to cyber attack than almost any imaginable adversary, since its military, government, and business functions rely so heavily on the cyber realm. The U.S. government may need to mobilize key parts of the nation’s cyber workforce in an online version of the Civil Air Patrol to counter large-scale cyber attacks and defend U.S. public and private networks against hostile disruptions and direct attacks.

6. Stamina. This is a major strategic gap that may not be able to be filled before a big war starts, because it is psychological in nature. The military and the nation must both be mentally and emotionally prepared for large numbers of dead and wounded troops — and possibly civilians, too. Big wars tend to be bloodily indiscriminate toward both. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of killed and wounded may be incurred in hours and days rather than months and years; generals may no longer be able to carry slim packets of index cards with their names and stories as has become common practice in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Bloody mindedness” among fighting generals and admirals may once again become a necessary war-winning attribute — in stark contrast to recent limited wars. The willingness of the nation to endure a big war is a potentially large vulnerability, especially if the war does not involve a direct attack on the United States. Making the nation and military psychologically more resilient in the face of potential heavy casualties is a challenge that both civilian and military leaders should begin thinking about now.

U.S. political and military leaders face many constraints in addressing these gaps, including limited time, resources, and attention. Nevertheless, one of the most important things they (and their staffs) can do is to foster truly creative thinking in each of these six areas. That can be a very difficult challenge, since a big war would have a much different character and different requirements than the wars and challenges of today. That’s why, for example, we included the novel Ghost Fleet on our professional reading list for the incoming Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. It imagines a big war with China, and shows both the challenges and creative solutions that emerged as the United States filled its considerable pre-war gaps. (No plot spoilers here, but one example is Mentor Crew, which assigns retired military officers throughout the fleet to advise the many brand new crews that had to be formed.)

The United States cannot afford to enter an increasingly dangerous future without a sober look at the most demanding, even existential, military contingencies. The return of aggressive great powers, the diminishment of some allied military capabilities, and the rise of transnational threats all suggest a world in which a large, dangerous, and deadly war could arise unexpectedly. Creative thinking and problem solving must remain a very important part of how the Department of Defense and the services prepare now. As the U.S. military continues to reshape itself for an uncertain future, imagining the unimaginable next big war must become an essential part of its planning for a dangerous future.


Lt. General David W. Barno, USA (Ret.) is a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, and Dr. Nora Bensahel is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, at the School of International Service at American University. Both also serve as Nonresident Senior Fellows at the Atlantic Council. Their column appears in War on the Rocks every other Tuesday.

_

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[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/china-and-indonesia-joint-cyber-war-simulations/

China and Indonesia: Joint Cyber War Simulations

An important diplomatic precedent for collaboration.

By Greg Austin
January 26, 2016

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The news on Saturday that Indonesia and China will cooperate in cyber war exercises is big enough in itself for strategic relationships in the region. At the same time, it shows that the two countries have an advanced understanding of what cyber war will look like and it sets a new diplomatic precedent in how states must work together in preparing for the most likely impacts of cyber war.

The magazine Tempo reported that the two countries will develop a cooperation program that includes “cyber-war simulations, cyber-war responses and mitigations, cyber monitoring, cyber-crisis management, and data center restoration planning.” The intent of this program does not appear to be oriented to joint military cooperation but rather focuses on government responses to the inevitable impacts of cyber war on civil infrastructure.

The deepening collaboration in the defense relationship between Indonesia and China is a useful counter to the exaggerated sense of regional polarization over maritime security between China and other South China Sea littoral states, backed by the United States, Japan, and Australia. The relationship between Indonesia and China had been something of a roller-coaster ride between cooperation and enmity in the first half century after 1949, but it has now stabilized on all fronts. As just one example, in October 2015, the two defense ministers met and declared their intention to help maintain regional peace. Sydney University published an excellent study of the strategic relationship in November 2015.

The proposed cyber collaboration revealed this week covers four areas:
•information and communication technology strategy (cybersecurity awareness for decision-making purposes and cybersecurity in national infrastructure development);
•capacity building in operations and technology (in digital forensics, information security, network security, cyber risk management, big data analysis, and the digital economy)
•joint research in cybersecurity (cryptography operating systems, cyber law, cyber terrorism, and counter cyber intelligence)
•joint operations (cyber war simulation, response and mitigation in cyber war, cyber monitoring, cyber crisis management, and resilience).

The breadth of the proposed cyber relationship goes well beyond that between China and other developing countries, but does not approach the quite close cyber relationship China has with Russia. The unique aspect of this agreement is that it implies quite clearly an advanced understanding in both countries of the civil sector impacts of future cyber war. As outlined in my recent research paper, with an eye to the future threat horizon, all countries “need to develop complex responsive systems of decision-making for medium intensity war that address multi-vector, multi-front and multi-theater attacks in cyber space, including against civilian infrastructure and civilians involved in the war effort”.

The Indonesian official revealing the proposed cyber cooperation with China to the Indonesian News Agency was a specialist from the National Cyber Information Defense Security and Resilient Agency (DKKICN), Muchlis Ahmady. He shares my assessment, which is both self-evident and widely shared internationally, that most middle powers cannot provide national cyber security on their own. He observed that “the key to a successful cyberspace crisis management is coordination and sharing.”

Indonesia does not see China as its enemy in cyberspace but as a necessary partner. The two countries have set a diplomatic precedent for cyberspace cooperation outside of existing alliances or strategic partnerships by being prepared to consider joint cyber war simulations on a direct bilateral and official level. Other Asia-Pacific states could learn from this.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/ahead-of-kerry-visit-china-doubles-down-on-north-korea-position/

Ahead of Kerry Visit, China Doubles Down on North Korea Position

Ahead of meetings with the US secretary of state, China makes clear it will not change its approach to North Korea.

By Shannon Tiezzi
January 27, 2016

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As The Diplomat noted earlier, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is one his first trip to Asia in 2016, with stops in Laos, Cambodia, and China. Ahead of Kerry’s meetings with Chinese officials on Wednesday, Beijing is making it crystal clear that it has no intention of changing its position on North Korea – effectively scuttling one of the major purposes of Kerry’s trip before he even arrives.

The U.S.-China divide over how to respond to North Korea’s nuclear test on January 6 is clear from the news (or lack thereof) on additional UN Security Council sanctions. Nearly three weeks after North Korea detonated a nuclear device, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power was asked by Reuters if the United States and China (both permanent, veto-wielding members of the UNSC) were close to an agreement on sanctions. Her answer was short and to the point: “No.” By contrast, the UNSC passed a resolution with a new sanctions package just over three weeks after Pyongyang’s nuclear test in 2013.

Kyodo News and NK News indicated that the current sticking point is over a U.S. proposal that would heavily sanction oil exports to North Korea. China, North Korea’s major oil supplier, opposes that draft.

The disconnect over dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program will be“on the top of the agenda” during Kerry’s meetings in Beijing, a senior State Department officials told reporters on Monday. “The Secretary has made no secret either to the Chinese or to you, the media, of his conviction that there is much more that China can do by way of applying leverage,” the official said. “[…]I know that he’s going to be looking for practical and effective steps on the part of the Chinese.”

In particular, the official said Kerry would be talking not only about Security Council action, but also “the issue of what China on a unilateral basis, as North Korea’s lifeline, as North Korea’s patron, will choose to do.”

That’s not the first time U.S. officials have also publicly called on China to do more in the wake of North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. Kerry previously told reporters that China’s approach to North Korea was not working and that “we cannot continue business as usual.” He indicated he had said so directly to his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Such public remarks are designed both to send a message that the United States is taking a firm stance on the issue (though not necessarily a productive one, as 38 North’s Joel Wit explained in a recent podcast) and to up the pressure on China to act.

China’s response, however, has been to dismiss the criticisms out of hand, and double down on its usual response to North Korea’s violations of UN Resolutions: namely, to urge all parties to exercise restraint and return to dialogue via the Six-Party Talks.

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying defended China’s record on North Korea, saying U.S. criticisms “make no sense.” Hua also threw the ball back in the U.S. court, saying “it cannot solely rely on China to realize denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula… It calls for concerted efforts of all parties to work toward the same direction.”

“Some parties’ failure to do so is one major reason why the denuclearization process on the Peninsula has ran into difficulties and the Six Party Talks is on a temporary hold,” Hua added, and it was clear the major target of her remarks was the United States. So while the United States blames China for not enacting tougher sanctions, Beijing remains adamant that Washington is the problem for not returning to the Six Party Talks (which went officially defunct in 2009).

China has moved quickly from expressing “firm” opposition to the nuclear test to now urging “all relevant parities” to “shoulder their due responsibilities and obligations and push for an early and proper settlement of the Korean nuclear issue.” Beijing’s response comes alongside reports that North Korea has reached out to China saying it will not halt nuclear tests until it has negotiated a peace treaty with the United States. That provides ample opportunity for Beijing to blame Washington for its lack of vision in dealing with Pyongyang.

Given the content and tone of recent official remarks from China, Kerry’s not going to find a receptive audience in Beijing when he lays out the U.S. position on the North Korea issue. And unless the two sides can somehow forge a united approach to North Korea, a fifth nuclear test looks inevitable.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/chinas-marines-conduct-first-military-exercises-in-the-gobi-desert/

China’s Marines Conduct First Military Exercises in the Gobi Desert

China’s marines held live-fire drills, including a counterterrorism exercise, in Xinjiang.

By Shannon Tiezzi
January 27, 2016

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The Marine Corps of China’s PLA Navy (PLAN) held their first-ever field drills in the Gobi Desert, in Xinjiang province, late last week, China Military Online reports. A battalion of marines, armored vehicles, and artillery units took part in a “confrontation exercise” and a counterterrorism drill from January 22 to 23.

The confrontation exercise pitched a mock battle between the marines and “a reinforced infantry company of the PLA Army,” according to China Military Online. The marines won the day thanks to “better mobility and stronger firepower,” China Daily reported, citing the Navy’s statement.

Tellingly, the counterterrorism drill was a hostage rescue exercise, where the marines practiced reconnaissance, breaching a terrorist position, and evacuating from the area. There’s a special poignancy to that exercise, as a Chinese citizen was executed by the Islamic State last November. The victim, Fan Jinghui, was held hostage for months prior to being murdered, with Islamic State publicly soliciting an unspecified ransom for him. Yet what the foreign ministry described as China’s “all-out efforts to rescue him” were ultimately unsuccessful. A few days later, three more Chinese citizens died in a hostage situation in a hotel in Bamako, Mali, once again driving home the need for China to build up the capability to defend its citizens abroad – by force, if necessary.

I’ve written before that China has no interest in committing to an all-out military assault on terrorist groups overseas, such as the American or Russian air strikes against the Islamic State. However, conducting small-scale raids abroad to defend Chinese citizens or interests are not out of the question, particularly if Beijing can secure cooperation from the other government involved. In fact, China’s new counter-terrorism law provides a legal framework for Chinese troops to take part in counter-terrorism operations overseas.

What China is missing now is the capability to conduct such operations thousands of miles away from its borders. A new Chinese military facility in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, will help; so too, though, will less attention-grabbing developments like the recent marine exercises in Xinjiang. As Reuters notes, this drill in far-inland Xinjiang was a new step for China’s marines, providing an indication that they “are being honed into an elite force capable of deploying on land far from mainland China.”

The rear admiral who oversaw the drills said the exercises “enabled us to improve the marines’ long- range operational capabilities” – a must if China is ever going to deploy its elite forces overseas. According to a statement from the PLAN, it was the farthest the Marines have ever traveled for an operation; all told, the battalion of marines involved in the exercise traveled nearly 6,000 kilometers from their base in Guangdong to reach the exercise site.

Admiral Wu Shengli, China’s navy chief, was on hand to inspect the event, and commented that the marines must be trained to operate in various geographic regions. But don’t let the “desert” aspect give you the wrong idea – this was still winter training for the marines. Low temperatures in that region of the Gobi hovered around -15 degrees Celsius last week.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/us-admiral-warns-of-chinas-and-russias-growing-space-weapons-arsenal/

US Admiral Warns of China’s and Russia’s Growing Space Weapons Arsenal

In a speech, the head of U.S. Strategic Command also warned of China’s long-range precision strike weapons program.

By Franz-Stefan Gady
January 26, 2016

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Speaking last week at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Cecil D. Haney, struck a familiar tone when warning about Russia’s and China’s burgeoning space warfare capabilities.

“Once thought of as a sanctuary, space is more congested, contested, and competitive than ever, and it is becoming increasingly vulnerable. Other nations understand our reliance on space and the advantages we have reaped in defense and commercial sectors,” he noted.

“Adversaries and potential adversaries want to exploit those dependencies by turning them into vulnerabilities.” He cautioned that threats are evolving faster than the U.S. military ever imagined and that they could “potentially threatens national sovereignty and survival.”

He went on to say that countries like China and Russia are developing and demonstrating “disruptive and destructive counterspace capabilities.”

“Furthermore, they are exploiting what they perceive as space vulnerabilities – threatening the vital, national, civil, scientific, and economic benefits to the U.S. and the global community.”

Talking about Russia, the admiral notes:


Russia’s 2010 military doctrine emphasized space as a crucial component of its defense strategy, and Russia has publicly stated they are researching and developing counterspace capabilities to degrade, disrupt, and deny other users of space. Russia’s leaders also openly assert that Russian armed forces have anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, conduct ASAT research, and employ satellite jammers.

“China, like Russia, has advanced ‘directed energy’ capabilities that could be used to track or blind satellites, and like Russia, has demonstrated the ability to perform complex maneuvers in space,” he added.

Haney cited a November 2015 test of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses, as evidence for China’s burgeoning capabilities in the field (See: “China Tests New Hypersonic Weapon”).

Russia purportedly tested a similar weapon in February last year, The Diplomat reported. However, Russia is considered to be behind China in developing hypersonic glide vehicles.

A 2015 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that “China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons.”

As I noted in a previous article:


Chinese and Russian capabilities could potentially include cyber and electromagnetic attacks, jamming operations, and ground-based lasers as well as anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles. For example, China destroyed a defunct weather satellite with a missile in 2007. In addition, Beijing tested a missile-fired anti-satellite kill vehicle in the summer of 2014, disguising it as a ballistic missile defense test. Russia is allegedly developing a satellite hunter — a spacecraft able to track enemy satellites and destroy them. (…)

To counter Chinese and Russian threats, the head of U.S. Strategic Command outlined a more holistic deterrence strategy:


To effectively deter adversaries, and potential adversaries, from threatening our space capabilities, we must view deterrence holistically. Threats must be surveyed across the “spectrum of conflict,” where escalation may occur with more than one adversary and in multiple domains.

Whether we are deterring aggression in space, cyberspace, or nuclear – our actions and capabilities must make clear that no adversary will gain the advantage they seek in space, or in any domain; that they cannot escalate their way out of a failed conflict, and that restraint is always the better option.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...l/news-story/059ea115a0aa334c8afa55d5062b8282

Strategic risks from horrific toll

The Australian | January 22, 2016 12:00AM

The horrifying Islamic terrorist attack on Pakistan’s Bacha Khan University is a sharp reminder of the increasing instability that is threatening a country of vital strategic importance that has an estimated 120 nuclear warheads and is projected, within a decade, to become the world’s third-ranked nuclear power behind the US and Russia.

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than that of any other country and is set to outstrip those of China, France and Britain. In the context of the deepening conflict between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam this is a prospect carrying potentially major geopolitical significance. Pakistan is a Sunni nation closely tied to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which fear what they see as Iran’s drive to advance Shia hegemony.

As well, Pakistan is at the epicentre of global jihadist terrorism and there can be no doubt that the militants linked to the Taliban (though the Taliban has disavowed their action) who launched their murderous attack have as their ultimate goal not just the imposition of sharia law but control of Pakistan’s key nuclear assets. On its own, the murderous attack on a learning institution named to honour the legendary “Frontier Gandhi”, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, is bad enough. In the context of nuclear Pakistan’s descent into ever greater instability it takes on more significance and demands urgent re-evaluation by the US and its Western allies of the escalating jihadist threat to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The two countries present diabolical prospects that are challenging Barack Obama’s previous confidence that US and coalition forces could safely be pulled out of Afghanistan by the time he leaves office. Reality and recent events indicate otherwise. The porous frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan is, with the departure of most US and coalition forces, being left largely uncontrolled, allowing easy passage for different Taliban factions to operate with impunity and then retreat into safe havens. An army of 150,000 Pakistan has deployed along the frontier is proving largely ineffective, while Afghanistan’s beleaguered government is unable to meet the rising jihadist challenge. UN assessments show the resurgent Taliban insurgency has spread to more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001.

Pakistan has had some limited success. Since its new military commander, General Raheel Sharif (no relation of the lacklustre Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has ceded much of his power to his namesake), took over in 2013, there has, according to Pakistan’s Institute of Peace Studies, been a diminution in the number of jihadist attacks. But that has not reversed the steady terrorist advance, especially in the frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that includes the historic Khyber Pass, where Bacha Khan University is located and much of country’s powerful nuclear arsenal is believed to be stored. Jihadists are operating with impunity — in 2014 in an attack in the heart of the provincial capital, Peshawar, they massacred 150 schoolchildren and teachers.

Yet through its notorious ISI spy agency, Pakistan continues to double-deal with the jihadists, allowing Afghan Taliban leaders to live in the Pakistani city of Quetta and doing nothing to tackle the challenge posed by the potent “Haqqani network” of terrorists based in Pakistan. In dealing with a growing crisis that has the potential to impact significantly on the growth of Islamic terrorism in a strategically vital part of the world, Mr Obama must learn from the seminal mistake he made in Iraq. There, he defied the opinion of advisers and insisted on withdrawing all troops by the end of 2011. That spurred the growth of Islamic State, which is now active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Allowing Afghanistan to again be overrun by the Taliban and its al-Qa’ida allies, and for the jihadists to directly threaten Pakistan’s stability, would be a strategic disaster with grave consequences. In outrages like the terrorist attack on Bacha Khan University there is incontrovertible evidence of the growing strategic challenge posed by the jihadists.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12119815/What-happens-once-Isil-is-defeated.html

What happens once Isil is defeated?

The Islamic State is slowly being destroyed by attrition, but its collapse will most likely create a new era of guerilla jihadism

By Dr Azeem Ibrahim
8:15AM GMT 26 Jan 2016
Comments 219

Global jihadism has been around in its current form since the 1990s. Back then, few could have predicted that it would become a permanent feature of our new world order – and, some would argue, the greatest threat not just to the West per se but to the Western-dominated global system of nation states.

How did this happen? It is due, I think, to a remarkable combination of ideological and strategic consistency with incredible tactical flexibility and creativity. The end goal is the destabilisation and ultimate destruction of non-Muslim power in the world as a precursor to the “rebirth” of “Islamic” geopolitical dominance. The means: whatever works best at any given time.

Al-Qaeda was the first organisation to dominate the movement. Its tactical approach has been to draw the West into unwinnable wars in the Middle East. These wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, may not have led to the collapse of the West in any meaningful sense, but they have certainly overextended the West militarily, and its position in the global balance of power is now greatly diminished as a result.

Yet in the past 10 years or so, the West would no longer be dragged into such conflicts. Libya, Syria, post-insurgency Iraq, and even post-withdrawal Afghanistan: the West would not allow itself to be dragged into land wars it understood it could not win and stood nothing to gain from. Nor would the West be goaded by waves upon waves of terror attacks and attempted attacks on its home soil.

When this approach stalled, al-Qaeda lost much of its momentum. As a result, from the ashes of so many failing states, a new organisation came to the fore of global jihadism – the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, with a brand new tactical approach. Isil contended that the “rebirth of Islamic hegemony” must start with the foundation of a new, “morally pure” Caliphate (incidentally, a move quite common in Islamic history, such as for example the Islamic revolutions of the Abbasids or the Almoravids).

This new “Islamic” state was to make concrete the jihadis’ alternative vision of the ideal society as a challenge to the Western global order. And sure enough, that got everyone’s attention. Isil has dominated much of the international political discourse for the past four-five years, it has recruited tens of thousands of fighters from all over the world, and has had many other Islamist groups pledge allegiance to it. It almost succeeded in dragging the West into yet another war in the Middle East as well – though instead they caught Russia in the spider’s web.

This tactical approach worked extremely well for furthering the global jihadist movement – for a while. For the past few months, however, things have become palpably different. For one, the most important propaganda asset Isil had was military momentum: the way in which it seemingly came out of nowhere to control large swathes of Syria and Iraq, and took important cities and oil fields. That momentum is now lost. Though they remain the favoured faction in the Sunni hinterlands of both Syria and Iraq, they can’t make inroads or hold territory in the Shia and Kurdish areas that surround them – in no small part due to the ideological nature of the group and their genocidal tendencies.

Meanwhile Assad is being bolstered by Russia, the Kurds are being bolstered by the West and Shia Iraq is supported by Iran. All these alliances are progressively beating Isil back. The likely outcome is that from now on Isil will simply be eroded with a long war of attrition, until the group are no longer be able to recruit enough fighters to sustain its gains. At which point, it is likely it will collapse. It will not be easy, and it will not be pretty. But as things stand this is the direction in which the situation is heading.

This seems to have motivated a tactical change, yet again, from the jihadists: a large part of Isil propaganda has now shifted away from trying to recruit people for the “paradise” of the Caliphate, back towards the original al-Qaeda approach to inspire self-starter terrorist actions abroad, to destabilise hostile countries. If and when the “Caliphate” collapses, expect a wave of Isil fighters to spread all across the region and beyond. In the meantime, local self-starter cells are preparing the way with attacks such as those in Indonesia, Paris, and the US.

Perhaps for a brief period of time, the most enthusiastic jihadists genuinely believed that they could just set up a state out of the rubble they left behind while fighting Assad and Malaki, and maybe even that they could fight a war on all fronts against virtually the entire world from this base in the Levant. But much of the Isil top brass are former army and intelligence officers from Saddam’s regime. And these people, in particular, are not stupid. By now, they must have realised that they have run out of runway. The question they face now is “what next?”

Given the grossly disproportionate balance of power in this conflict, where the jihadis’ only advantage is superior resolve and motivation, reverting back to guerrilla tactics seems like the only logical next step. In other words, expect all the manpower and logistical resources at their disposal to now be redirected towards classic terror attacks. The targets will be the fragile regimes in the Middle East, and perhaps none more than Saudi and Egypt, but also the West. Europe in particular is likely to be hard-hit, since many of the jihadis can be expected to move in with the flow of refugees.

The so-called “Islamic State” may be on the way out – but global jihadism is only getting started. And with it, further terror attacks and political instability.


Dr Azeem Ibrahim is an RAI Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/01/25/the-tragedy-of-europe-location-location-location/

The Great Debate

The tragedy of Europe: Location, location, location

By Peter Apps
January 25, 2016

For years, skeptics warned of multiple threats to the European project. The strains of the single currency, they said, would rip it apart. Excessive regulation was another concern, along with lack of democratic accountability. Some felt Europe’s different peoples were just too different.

The reality, of course, has turned out to be much less complex. As real estate brokers say, it’s all about location. Europe is, quite simply, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the consequences may rip it apart.

If the escalating migration crisis of the last year has shown anything, it is that geography really, really matters. The Middle East — or more accurately, a handful of countries within it — is on fire. Many people who live there quite reasonably want to leave. And mainland Europe is the closest, richest and safest place for them to go.

At the same time, tens of thousands are also leaving often much more stable countries in Africa, heading north in the hope of better opportunity.

Some countries — particularly the United States, Australia and Canada, and to a lesser extent Britain — have the advantage of distance. Getting there is hard. America and Australia sit behind vast oceans that allow them to pick and choose who can legally cross their borders. Potential migrants can be made to wait 40 years if necessary, while their paperwork is processed. Even the English Channel — a mere 26 miles wide — is remarkably difficult to swim, as more than a few migrants have discovered. And small boats to help the journey — and the necessarily corrupt crews to man them — are much less available than in the Mediterranean.

Mainland Europe, though, is stuck. It cannot find a moral reason to stop people arriving because one does not exist. “Keeping Europe’s riches for Europe” is an understandable sentiment, but not particularly inspiring. Nor is it going to be easy or even possible to erect enough fences to stop migrants. And the speed with which new migrants arrive — particularly once spring comes to the Mediterranean — makes immediate integration impossible and politically divisive problems inevitable.

Largely as a result, it’s a toxic time to be a leader. For now, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains the linchpin of the continent. Her position, though, now looks far more assailable; some analysts believe she could fall within the year. Today, in almost every country, political elites look much less capable of handling worsening problems — even if French elections showed far-right extremists making significantly fewer gains than many had feared.

Strains are inevitably building — with events such as the Paris attacks and New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne adding fuel to the fire. Only a tiny minority of migrants might be militants or other troublemakers, but with such great numbers arriving, incidents are inevitable and so is the backlash.

Several countries have taken the once unthinkable step of effectively suspending the Schengen Agreement allowing borderless movement within Europe. Austria recently announced it was imposing unilateral limits on the number of asylum seekers it would take. Several other countries including Germany, Hungary and Sweden have also imposed additional controls.

For Mediterranean countries — particularly Greece and Italy — that means pulling people from the waves at considerable expense, and then nudging them on to wealthier northern countries more able to absorb them. For Germany, it means trying to take enough migrants to make the moral case for other countries to do their fair share. For Britain and the United States, it means sitting behind their coastlines, picking and choosing the refugees they want while condemning everyone else for not doing more — a somewhat hypocritical approach, however many refugees they ultimately allow in.

This year Britain faces a referendum on whether or not it will stay in the European Union. For now, the best argument for staying is that by doing so, Britain has a better chance of influencing events. The worse things get, however, the more likely a “no” vote will become.

Merkel’s decision last year to promise asylum to any Syrians who could reach Germany now looks like an error that might be encouraging some of the flood. By the same token, then, the more potential migrants believe Europe will shut its doors, the more sense it makes to for them to move now.

As more migrants arrive, it’s hardly surprising that some Europeans are asking what right they have to the welfare systems they did nothing to build. It’s a dangerous argument, though. Those arriving from Middle East conflict zones might equally complain that Western foreign policy helped create the wars they flee — although arguably, the mainland European countries bearing the brunt of the crisis are less to blame.

Stabilizing the Middle East, of course, would reduce the pressure on Europe. What is most striking about the current crisis, however, is that the conflict-affected countries providing the bulk of the migrants — Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular — are precisely those where Washington and its allies have exerted the greatest effort in recent years trying to create stability.

Europe is still, it’s worth remembering, one of the world’s best places to live when it comes to life expectancy, rights and access to benefits. Its institutions — particularly the EU and NATO — have kept the peace of a previously ludicrously violent continent for more than seven decades. As long as that remains the case, then, that stability will be part of the problem — the reason why so many people in the rest of the world want to get there.

That stability, however, is not guaranteed. The 1930s remind us of just how unpleasant the continent can become when populism and xenophobia run rampant. And even without that, the resurgence of Cold War-style strains with Russia mean state-on-state war in Eastern Europe is once again not entirely unthinkable.

One thing is for sure, though — history isn’t quite done with Europe yet. And the years to come may well be as tough as anything in recent memory.



This piece is published courtesy of the Project for Study of the 21st Century. For more information and commentaries, please visit www.projects21.com.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israels-electrical-grid-attacked-in-massive-cyber-attack-442844

By JPOST.COM STAFF \ 01/26/2016 18:28

'Israel's electrical grid attacked in massive cyber attack'

Steinitz says attack was dealt with.

As Israelis cranked up their heaters during the current cold snap, the Public Utility Authority was attacked by one of the largest cyber assaults that the country has experienced, Minister of Infrastructure, Energy and Water Yuval Steinitz said on Tuesday.

"Yesterday we identified one of the largest cyber attacks that we have experienced," Steinitz said at the CyberTech 2016 conference at the Tel Aviv Trade Fair and Convention Center.

Steinitz said that attack was dealt with by his ministry and the National Cyber Bureau and that it was under control.

The incident occurred during two consecutive days of record-breaking winter electricity consumption, with the Israel Electric Corporation reporting a demand of 12,610 megawatts on Tuesday evening as temperatures dipped to below-freezing levels.

"I can tell you that the virus was identified and software was activated to neutralize it," Steinitz said.

"This is a fresh example of what we need to be prepared to face at any time," he added.

Hundreds of international delegations were attending the CyberTech 2016 Conference.

The third annual event drew state leaders, representatives of leading multinational and Israeli corporations and startups, investors and entrepreneurs in the field of cyber security.

A US delegation led by Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a large Japanese representation, a group of Canadian banking executives and a delegation organized by the International Monetary Fund from developing countries were among those expected to attend what is referred to as the largest exhibition of cyber technologies outside the United States.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/26/world/isis-attacks-europe/index.html

ISIS planning 'special forces-style' attacks in Europe, report says

By Emily Smith, CNN
Updated 8:36 AM ET, Tue January 26, 2016

(CNN)—Europe should be prepared for more of the ruthless and coordinated attacks that ISIS carried out in Paris last year, officials say. The militant group is planning more large-scale, "special forces-style" assaults that don't even necessarily need to be coordinated from Syria.

That disturbing scenario was laid out in a report by Europol - Europe's law enforcement agency -- released Monday.

The report, entitled "Changes in modus operandi of Islamic State terrorist attacks," paints a picture of a terror group whose methods keep evolving and whose threat is two fold: Coordinated attacks and lone wolf operatives.

"The Paris attacks, and subsequent investigation, appear to indicate a shift towards a broader strategy of [ISIS] going global, of them specifically attacking France, but also the possibly of attacks against other Member States of the EU in the near future," the report said.

The report details some of the ways ISIS is adapting. Here are some of the key findings:

Soft targets are the most vulnerable

Attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets because of the impact and mass casualties they generate, the report says.

Intelligence also suggests that ISIS has developed a command structure to plan and coordinate "special forces style" operations abroad. This could mean that more Paris-style attacks are currently being planned and prepared, the report says.

Attacks aren't always planned from within Syria


In addition to training facilities in Syria, there are also smaller scale training camps in the EU and in Balkan countries.

ISIS-inspired attacks do not necessarily have to be coordinated from Syria.

"Central command in Syria is believed to map out a general strategy, but leaves tactical freedom to local leaders to adapt their actions to circumstances on the spot," the report says. Operatives can choose their targets based on capability and resources, which leaves room for spontaneity and makes it hard for law enforcement to identify targets and suspects.

Mapping ISIS attacks around the world


Recruits are young and not necessarily religious


Recruitment into ISIS happens quickly, without necessarily requiring a long radicalization process, the report says. The "romantic" prospect of being part of something important and exciting may also play a role in recruiting.

Peer pressure has replaced some of the religious components of recruiting, the report says.

Younger recruits are more impressionable and radicalize quicker. Less than half of all people arrested for joining ISIS or expressing an intention to do so have relevant knowledge about their religion. This makes them vulnerable to interpretations of the Koran that fit ISIS logic, the report says.

Recruiters use survival training to test recruits' fitness and ability. "Sports activities have been used for combat and interrogation resistance training," the report says.

A "significant" portion of foreign fighters were diagnosed with mental problems prior to joining the terror group. However, the report doesn't specify how they know this and what types of mental issues fighters may be suffering from. The report also says that a large portion of recruits have criminal records.

Refugees are not a threat, but...


There is no concrete evidence that terror groups (ISIS or otherwise) are using the current refugee crisis to slip into Europe unnoticed. Instead, the report says that there's a more "real and imminent" danger that members of the refugee population will become vulnerable to radicalization once in Europe, and that they're being specifically targeted by terror recruiters.


They use encrypted communication tools


ISIS has taken advantage of the availability of secure and encrypted communication methods such as WhatsApp, Skype and Viber for communication and to procure goods and services such as weapons and fake IDs.

Messaging app shuts down 78 ISIS channels


How they finance attacks in Europe is largely unknown


Travel costs, car rentals, safe houses and weapons require considerable sums of money, the report says. However, there is no evidence of ISIS -financing networks in the region.


Al Qaeda is still a threat


The report warns that Al Qaeda is still a "factor" in the region and a reason for the EU to focus broadly on religiously inspired groups.

A separate report charges that Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, is a greater threat to the United States in the long term than is ISIS, making the United States' current single-minded focus on the latter group misguided.

Recently, al Qaeda or Taliban affiliated groups have claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Pakistan, Burkina Faso and Somalia.

Report: Group 'more dangerous' than ISIS

Read the report
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/i...modus_operandi_of_is_in_terrorist_attacks.pdf

 

[Housecarl]

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http://csis.org/publication/revving-rebalance-asia

Revving up the Rebalance to Asia

By Kathleen H. Hicks, Michael J. Green
Jan 26, 2016

The events of this month have reminded Americans that Asia is a region of both great opportunity and significant risk. In just the first two weeks of the year, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, China began flying aircraft to airfields constructed on disputed features in the South China Sea, and Taiwan’s opposition candidate surged towards a victory in elections that will likely draw fire from Beijing.

The United States should be well-positioned to respond to these challenges. More than four years ago President Obama announced that the United States would have a “new focus” on Asia. Since that time, the Administration has demonstrated this rebalance in numerous high-level diplomatic visits to the region, a steady commitment to sustained and diversified U.S. military posture in the Pacific, and the conclusion of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Surveys show that American allies and partners in Asia welcome the rebalance. Nevertheless, they have growing anxiety that Chinese assertiveness and North Korean belligerence will outpace U.S. rebalance efforts. In particular, China’s tolerance for risk has exceeded most expectations. Meanwhile, support for the TPP is waning in Congress and Washington’s attention and resources are drawn elsewhere in the world as ISIS, Russia, and other actors stress U.S. force capacity and diplomatic energy. Two questions commonly heard in Asia and echoed in the halls of the U.S. Congress are these: is the rebalance effective and will the United States sustain it?

We recently completed an independent assessment of the rebalance policy’s defense dimensions, which was directed by the Congress. We have concluded that these two questions can be answered affirmatively only with important caveats. Although our analysis reinforces the need and the enduring bipartisan appeal of the Asia rebalance, it also underscores the urgency of restoring the strategy’s momentum.

Four imperatives stand out.

First, the United States needs a clear, coherent, and consistent rebalance narrative that our public, allies, and adversaries understand. In the course of our effort, we repeatedly heard confusion in Congress and across the region about the strategy’s purpose. The administration has largely conveyed its rebalance narrative through speeches, with little consistency across them regarding priorities and challenges. The next administration should prepare a publicly-available Asia-Pacific strategy that clearly sets out its goals and key lines of effort, updating the document as the environment warrants.

Second, the United States must leverage its unmatched alliance advantage by accelerating efforts to strengthen allies and partners. Increased regional capacity lessens other countries’ dependency on the United States. There are ample opportunities to network with and among allies and partners in Asia such as Japan, Australia and India. This federated approach to defense should extend to the Philippines and other frontline states that are eager to improve in the face of expanding Chinese naval and air presence in the First Island Chain. At the same time, the United States should continue to expand its military ties with China, exploring ways to build confidence in areas like humanitarian and disaster relief and crisis resolution.

Third, the U.S. military must continue to expand and improve its Pacific posture—military forces, footprint, and agreements—to promote stability and deter aggression. This includes already-concluded access agreements with Australia, the consolidation of Marine bases on Okinawa, and the opening of new facilities in Guam. We need to galvanize the lengthy negotiations that are bogging down some of these efforts. Moreover, we must continue placing a premium on U.S. military presence in Asia even as budgets contract and global force demand remains high. The Department of Defense should consider basing a second carrier in the Western Pacific to create more on-station presence within the shrinking carrier fleet.

Fourth, the United States must outwit and out-innovate potential adversaries, bending the cost curve in our favor even as regional competitors seek to deny our ability to project power in Asia. The security environment is highly dynamic and will require a culture of adaptability, a willingness to try new approaches and risk failure through experimentation, the ability to move rapidly from concept to acquisition, and the flexibility to collaborate with international partners and the commercial sector. The United States should focus its long-term defense capability investments for Asia in two broad areas. First, we should reduce known threats to U.S. forces, such as from ballistic and cruise missiles. Second, we should strengthen capabilities that provide an asymmetric counter to potential military competitors. Long-range strike, precision-guided munitions, attack submarines, and space and cyber capabilities are some of the most vital.

The rebalance to Asia should be a cornerstone of the next administration’s foreign policy, regardless of which party captures the White House. By pursuing the four imperatives described above, the United States can strengthen the rebalance and ensure its longevity. These initiatives require some additional resources, but they are not beyond our reach if Washington is prepared to move past the debilitating era of sequestration. The potential risks to U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific and beyond are too high to do otherwise.

Kathleen Hicks is senior vice president and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C. Michael J. Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at CSIS.

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ity-back-obama-seeking-fewer-limits/79353428/

Senate lobs Islamic State war authority back to Obama, seeking fewer limits

Erin Kelly, USA TODAY 5:14 p.m. EST January 26, 2016
Comments 6

WASHINGTON — The Senate has taken a small step toward authorizing the use of military force against the Islamic State, but leaders said Tuesday they will not actually pass legislation unless President Obama agrees not to limit where U.S. troops can fight, how long the battle will last or whether ground troops can be used.

Just before the blizzard hit the nation's capital, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quietly invoked a Senate procedure to place the the issue on the chamber's legislative calendar. But a spokesman for McConnell indicated Tuesday that no vote will be scheduled unless the White House offers an Authorization for the Use of Military Force with far fewer restrictions than Obama has sought in the past.

"If the president decides to put forward a serious plan for defeating (the Islamic State), and seeks an AUMF that doesn’t tie the hands of this or any future Commander in Chief, this is the type of AUMF that would be effective and that (McConnell) would support," said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

If that happens, McConnell would work with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to pass it through the committee before bringing it to a vote on the Senate floor, Stewart said.

Obama urged Congress in his State of the Union address to send the world a message by authorizing the use of military force against the Islamic State. But Senate leaders seem more interested in sending a message to Obama about what they see as his lack of an effective strategy to defeat the terrorist group.

"If this Congress is serious about winning this war, and wants to send a message to our troops and the world, authorize the use of military force against (the Islamic State)," the president said Jan. 12. "Take a vote. Take a vote."

McConnell's response is essentially telling the White House what kind of proposal Republican leaders prefer and passing the issue back to the president.

A White House spokeswoman said Tuesday that Obama remains opposed to sending in large numbers of ground troops to wage the kind of war that U.S. troops fought against Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration has focused its military efforts on airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against Islamic State militants, who are also referred to as ISIS or ISIL.

"We certainly welcome Republicans taking an interest in specifically authorizing the continued use of military force against ISIL," said Assistant White House Press Secretary Brandi Hoffine. "Passing an ISIL-specific AUMF with bipartisan support would provide a clear signal of unity — to the men and women of our armed forces, to our allies, and to our enemies — for the ongoing military operations against ISIL."

That's why the president submitted a draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force to Congress nearly a year ago, Hoffine said.

Congress never took up the president's proposal. GOP leaders objected to the fact that it would expire after three years and prohibit "enduring offensive ground combat operations." War-weary Democrats also were leery, saying it did not put strict enough limits on the use of ground troops.

"We have continued to state that we remain open to reasonable adjustments to that language," Hoffine said. "However, the president has also been clear from the beginning that we will not be engaging in the type of armed conflict that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that remains the case. We will review the proposal put forward by Leader McConnell."

The resolution that McConnell is holding up as a model to the White House is based on a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who introduced legislation in December.

"The AUMF I introduced...will not limit us in terms of time, geography, or means in the fight against ISIL," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It will show our enemies and friends alike that we will destroy ISIL wherever they reside, fight them as long as they pose a threat, and that we are ‘all-in’ when it comes to their destruction."

Whether or not Congress and the White House agree on a plan, the president intends to continue airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and there are no real efforts by Congress to change that.

"The American people should know that with or without congressional action, ISIL will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them," Obama said. "When you come after Americans, we go after you."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/01/27/understanding_italian_defiance_111679.html

January 27, 2016

Understanding Italian Defiance

By Adriano Bosoni

The Italian government has been in a rebellious mood of late. During a war of words with the European Commission over his plan to increase spending this year, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told Brussels "Italy is back, more solid and ambitious." In an op-ed published in The Guardian a few days later, Renzi added that "the political and cultural orthodoxy that has monopolized thinking on how Europe should be run for the last decade isn't working" and promised that "Italy will not stop demanding to have its voice heard."

To be sure, Italy - the third-largest economy in the eurozone and a net contributor of funds to the European Union - believes it has cause to be annoyed with the bloc's officials. Rome views Brussels' constant requests for spending cuts as an obstacle to economic growth. It is also disappointed by the lack of progress in EU efforts to address the migration crisis. More recently, doubts over the health of Italian banks reignited a debate between Rome and the European Commission over Italy's plans to protect its banking sector.


But Italy's recent actions are based on more than short-term calculations; they are intimately connected to the way the country sees the world. To understand Rome's behavior, it is necessary to consider how modern Italy was born and what shapes its policies. Present-day Italy was created by combining dozens of unconnected pieces, constantly at risk from over a millennium of foreign invasions. Elements of Italian history mirror the European Union's attempts to create a united Continent, and they offer clues to the bloc's future.

A Fragmented State

Italy is a mountainous country. The Alps serve as a natural border with its northern neighbors, while the Apennines bisect the Italian Peninsula from north to south. Italy also controls Sicily and Sardinia, the two largest islands in the Mediterranean. This fragmented geography facilitated the emergence of strong local identities, something exemplified by the extensive variety of dialects spoken in the country.

Geography also explains Italy's unequal levels of economic development. The Po River basin in the north, which runs from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea, is one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The richness of its soil, the river's navigability and the region's connection to other commercial centers in Europe enabled the Po Valley to become Italy's commercial and industrial core. These conditions fostered the growth of cities such as Turin, Milan and Venice, three powerful economic and political centers in constant competition.

By contrast, the south is characterized by lower economic development, the product of a semi-arid climate and an economy primarily based on agriculture. Failure to apply effective land reform before and after modern Italy's unification further hindered the south's development. This was in addition to the pervasive presence of groups and practices that exist in parallel to the formal system - from the grey economy to organized criminal organizations. Neither factor, however, prevented the emergence of important southern economic and cultural centers like Naples and Palermo.

Another key to understanding Italy's behavior is its location at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. The Ancient Romans understood that the peninsula would never be safe unless they had some degree of control over the lands surrounding the "Mare Nostrum" (Latin for "Our Sea"), and so they built their massive empire around it. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, Italian governments similarly sought colonies in Africa and the Balkans, albeit with much less success. More recently, Italy has based its Mediterranean strategy on maintaining good relations with governments in North Africa so as to secure energy supplies, open business opportunities for Italian companies and prevent the arrival of sea-faring immigrants.

Italy's privileged position at the center of the Mediterranean Sea made it a target for invaders. From the Germanic invasions that ended the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century to the invasions of the Austrian, Spanish and French empires in the 18th and 19th centuries, surrounding powers have repeatedly conquered Italy. This exacerbated the peninsula's political fragmentation. By the late 1850s, Italy was host to several political entities, including the Kingdom of Sardinia (under the House of Savoy), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (under Bourbon control) the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (under Habsburg rule) and the Papal States.

Austrian Empire Chancellor Klemens von Metternich once famously derided Italy as "only a geographic expression." There is some truth to this statement. When Italy became a unified kingdom in the 1860s, Italians shared little beyond the Roman Catholic faith. For decades, there had been attempts to unify Italy under the figure of the pope, but as Machiavelli wrote in the early 16th century, the Catholic Church was "too weak to unify Italy, but too strong to let it happen."

So, to unify Italy, its new leaders had to create a country from scratch. To do this they had to introduce a common currency, the lira; create a standardized educational system that would teach a common language; form a national army to instigate some sense of patriotism; and build thousands of kilometers of rail lines to connect the country. But despite these efforts, many regional differences remained.

More important, Italy's unification also involved a great degree of state violence. "Unification" is often a poetic way to describe what was actually the annexation of the rest of the peninsula by the Kingdom of Sardinia. In the south, "unification" was very close to a civil war, with occupation forces from the north fighting a confusing combination of Bourbon loyalists, local peasants and brigands. A century and a half after these events, mistrust between the north and the south has still not been completely overcome.

The Role of Public Spending

Unification was expensive, which forced the fledgling state to start issuing foreign debt from day one. Young Italy was in a dangerous position: Bourbon loyalists were ensconced in Rome as the pope's guests, the dukes and grand dukes of Central Italy were waiting in the wings for the Savoys to make a mistake, and Austria and France were permanent threats. This prompted Italy to assume all of its predecessor states' debts, hoping that Europe's great powers would recognize and support the new country. This opened a cycle of foreign debt that still defines Italy.

Public spending and lax government continued to hold the country together during the 20th century. In the south, large amounts of public money were spent on subsidies to prevent social unrest, while the mafia progressively became a national phenomenon. In the north, the economic success of companies partially depended on the state willfully ignoring tax evasion. Italy's "economic miracles" of the 1960s and 1980s relied on a handful of national champions like Fiat and myriad small and medium-sized manufacturing firms clustered in specialized industrial districts of the north and center. The south remained largely neglected.

The prosperity of these years came at the expense of the public finances; little effort was made to keep public spending under control. Frequent devaluations of the lira helped Italy stay afloat while keeping unemployment low. Small and medium-sized companies remain the backbone of the Italian economy, and their lack of competitiveness and their inability to adapt to an increasingly globalized world is one of the main reasons why Italy was dealing with low rates of economic growth even before the European crisis. Complicating matters, the introduction of the euro deprived Italy of the possibility of devaluing its currency to deal with crises, while its national budget must now be negotiated with Brussels.

Italy's seemingly chaotic political system is also connected to history and geography. Politics in Rome are complex because the Italian government often operates as umpire among conflicting interests. Rome is under permanent pressure to find a balance between the general needs of the country and the many vested interests in play, from local, regional and national political leaders to labor unions, the private sector and the Catholic Church. One of the most notable Italian novels of the 20th century, The Leopard, uses the transformations of the 1860s as a metaphor for a country where reforms are often meant to protect vested interests. This coined a term ("gattopardismo," from the book's Italian title) that is as relevant today as it was when the novel was first published in 1958.

A Permanent Balancing Act

Italy's main geopolitical imperative is to achieve a minimum level of unity to prevent the country's disintegration while finding a balance between pressure from domestic and foreign powers - and preventing those foreigners from invading again.

This explains Rome's complex relationship with the European Union. Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community, the EU's predecessor, because of its long tradition of intellectuals who saw the construction of a federal Europe as a means of overcoming the Continent's fragmentation by dissolving regional identities into a broader European identity. But foreign pressure was also a factor, because after World War II, the United States had an interest in Italy's membership in Western trade and defense alliances as means of promoting economic growth and limiting Russian influence.

Since then, Italy has used its strategic position at the heart of the Mediterranean to be attractive to the European Union and NATO while expecting them not to interfere too much with its domestic affairs. But the European crisis has made this balance hard to maintain. As the crisis progressed, Rome came under pressure from Brussels and international markets, which are fearful of the financial consequences of Italian political instability and lack of reform. This has forced Rome to negotiate internally and externally, seeking to apply just enough reform to appease foreign interests while keeping domestic dissent within tolerable margins.

An important element of Italy's strategy for coping with the EU crisis has been the premise that it is simply too big to fall. Many Italian politicians consider that the size of the country's economy means EU authorities will always ultimately come to the rescue. And they want Europe to do this without interfering too much in Italy's domestic affairs. This explains Rome's frequently strong reactions to Brussels' pushes for stricter fiscal discipline. The Italian government sees EU pressure as foreign interference in its domestic affairs and as a threat to internal stability. The ongoing debate between Brussels and Rome over Italian plans to create a bad bank are a part of this dynamic, as the European Union wants to prevent Italy from using public money to protect its banks.

Renzi presents himself as Europe's ultimate reformist, and his intentions are probably sincere, though he is most certainly making electoral calculations. His Democratic Party is still the most popular in the country, but it has lost support over the past year. Some of Italy's largest cities - including Rome, Milan and Turin - will hold elections in April, and Renzi has linked his political future to winning a referendum on constitutional reforms in October. The prime minister wants to be allowed to spend more in an important year, and he probably believes that anti-German and anti-Brussels rhetoric could win him some extra votes. The eurozone economic crisis has evolved into a political crisis where a growing number of voters oppose the European Union and the political elites who back it.

Renzi has a point when he says that the Italian opposition is fragmented, but if all the anti-establishment, nationalist and right-wing parties are combined, about half of the electorate supports forces that oppose different aspects of the process of EU integration, from the common currency to the free movement of people. At a time when prospects for growth are modest and unemployment remains high, Italian support for the EU can no longer be taken for granted.

Rome wants to be part of a Continental bloc where high public spending and inflation are tolerated to create jobs, and where resources are transferred from wealthy regions to poorer areas without interfering too much in their domestic affairs. But the Germans and the Dutch do not want to permanently subsidize the Portuguese and the Greeks, at least not without greater control over their economies.

Italy faces a fundamental problem: the kind of European Union the Italians want to build is similar to the type of country they have struggled to create at home. Italy is a miniature version of the European Union because it has a Germany and a Greece within its borders, in the form of a dynamic north and an underdeveloped south whose interests are not always aligned. It took a combination of money, compromise and coercion to build a unified Italy. In the European Union, the economic crisis has tarnished the promise of prosperity, compromises are becoming harder to find and coercion is not a basis for a sustainable Continental project. And while the Italians of the 1860s at least had some vague sentiment of a shared destiny, the same cannot be said of the current European Union.


Reprinted with permission from Stratfor.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-sky-not-falling-china-15020

The Sky Is Not Falling in China

Much in China’s economic slowdown looks reasonable, even favorable.

Milton Ezrati
January 26, 2016
Comments 94

With the Chinese stock market crashing, many have focused, with no small measure of fear, on that economy’s slowdown. Beijing’s statistical office reported recently that the real economy grew 6.9 percent in 2015, down from 7.3 the year before, below the government’s 7.0 percent target—and, as many have noted, also in fear, at the slowest pace in quarter of a century. Other indicators are no more encouraging. Industrial production in the twelve months ended last December grew 5.9 percent, down from earlier reports, while retail sales registered a gain of 11.1 percent, also down from the past. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects only 6.3 percent overall growth in the coming year and 6.0 percent in 2017.

While Americans, Europeans and Japanese would delight at such statistics in their own economies, the news has nonetheless created considerable pessimism about China’s prospects. Some contend that growth in China is really closer to 4.0 percent, while Chinese business people were rumored to have spoken of only a 2.2 percent growth rate. These many pessimists also note that electricity usage in China has hardly risen at all during the past year and that weak corporate earnings confirm a softer economy than the government figures imply. And because recent government efforts to stabilize financial markets have failed and past government stimulus programs have encouraged a tremendous build up in private debt outstanding, forecasts of a Chinese collapse have multiplied.

Surveying this almost universal pessimism, anyone with a memory cannot help but wonder how quickly perceptions change. Not too long ago, while China’s economy averaged real growth of 10-12 percent a year, consensus opinion saw it on the verge of overtaking the U.S. economy as the world’s largest—that China would soon eat America’s proverbial lunch. Now consensus thinking characterizes that once seemingly unstoppable power as a risk to itself and to the global economy.

Before, reality failed to match up with the older popular perceptions of China’s unstoppable strength. Now, though it contains much that is troubling about China, reality hardly points to the collapse that so many fear and, indeed, expect. On the contrary, much in China’s economic slowdown looks entirely reasonable, even favorable.

China’s straightforward passage into a more mature phase of development surely underlies much of it. The county’s impressive initial gains in large part reflected the leverage many countries enjoy when they first begin to redeploy their economic effort from agriculture to industry. China was particularly ripe for gains of this sort. When it first began to industrialize in the early 1980s, almost three-quarters of the nation’s output came from agriculture, and some 70 percent of the workforce toiled on the farm, overworked but not especially well employed or productive. These workers became much more effective as they redeployed to export industries. Those remaining on the farm also became more productive as industrialization mechanized their efforts. China can perhaps extend some of this effect. It still has about a quarter of its workforce on the farm. But it cannot recapture the effects of the initial structural adjustments. The resulting growth slowdown may have disappointed some, but it was inevitable and is hardly the sign of ill economic health, as consensus thinking seems to claim.

Part of the slowdown also doubtless reflects a judicious top-down design. Back during the first decade of this century, when China’s boom growth was at its height, Beijing could see that it was unsustainable. The country’s leadership noted at the time how China’s exports during the prior twenty years had climbed from nothing to 12 percent of the global total and that such a gain was not likely to repeat. Beijing decided then that the economy had to broaden its base, focus relatively less on exports and investments in exporting industries and more on domestic engines of growth, consumption, the development of service industries, and associated investments. It was well aware that the process would slow the pace of overall economic growth.

China has a long way to go in this planned broadening. It would be difficult in any economy but perhaps especially in one where so much commercial activity remains state owned—about 15 percent. An intense desire for centralized control makes it difficult for the authorities to facilitate the process by opening financial markets. Still, the fact that retail sales are expanding faster than the overall economy suggests that the effort is gaining traction. The fact that electricity use has slowed may well speak less to economic problems, as some have suggested, than to the tendency for consumption and services to use less power than industry, especially the industries behind China’s exports.

Not all the slowdown is so benign. China also suffers from the after effects of a real estate bubble that inflated during the early years of this decade. Easy credit conditions fostered by government policy inspired overbuilding, primarily of residential structures, and created a surge in private and provincial government debt that has taken the outstanding amount up to the troubling level of 350 percent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP). This overbuilding and the associated questionable debt will have their ill effects. Companies will suffer bankruptcies. The need to work off the overhang of unused structures will retard the pace of economic growth.

It would be a mistake, however, to exaggerate these problems. Westerners understandably become uneasy about such particulars, drawing easy parallels to their own real estate troubles of 2007-09. Media reports have played on such uneasiness. One of particular influence aired some months ago on the television show “60 Minutes.” Showing massive empty buildings in Chinese regional centers, it implied that if anything China’s troubles are worse than America’s were. But that is far from the case. For one, this country’s most intense problems arose in large part because a diffusion of subprime debt in the financial system created great uncertainties. China has no subprime debt. On the contrary, its debt, rather than suffused throughout the system, is concentrated largely with provincial governments and a few development companies. This is hardly good for the economy, but it avoids the uncertainties that beset American markets. What is more, the central government in Beijing has much less debt than Washington did during this country’s troubles and so is better able to backstop the financial system should the need arise.

These differences are most evident in the fact that China’s real estate adjustment has proceeded now for at least eighteen months without much bankruptcy or panic outside the recent equity market retreat, which in any case is not especially related to it. Building activity has fallen off and residential real estate prices have declined, so much, in fact, that home sales of late have actually begun to improve. The empty buildings that featured on “60 Minutes” are now all largely tenanted. If real estate problems were going to prompt a general collapse, it would have occurred at the beginning of the process not eighteen months into it.

China’s growth slowdown undoubtedly will continue. It may even become more pronounced than the IMF projections quoted earlier. The economic drag from the country’s real estate problems will linger as the country completes its adjustment, something that another IMF report estimates will take until 2018. The slowed pace of growth will remain even afterwards as the economy moves deeper into its present, more mature development stage and as it continues to substitute more domestic engines of growth for exporting. China’s economy has its problems, as does every economy, but little points to the prospect of collapse so popularly discussed those days.


Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and recently retired as Lord, Abbett & Co.’s senior economist and market strategist. His most recent book, Thirty Tomorrows, describing how the world can cope with the challenges of aging demographics, was recently released by Thomas Dunne Books of Saint Martin’s Press.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/america-should-stop-reassuring-saudi-arabia-15013

The Skeptics

America Should Stop Reassuring Saudi Arabia

Doug Bandow
January 25, 2016
Comments 10

On Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Riyadh to reassure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that the United States stood with them. “Nothing has changed” as a result of the nuclear pact with Iran, he insisted.

Washington’s long relationship with Riyadh was built on oil. There never was any nonsense about sharing values with the KSA, which operates as a slightly more civilized variant of the Islamic State. For instance, heads are chopped off, but only after a nominal trial. Women have no more rights, but can afford a better life.

The royals run a totalitarian system which prohibits political dissent, free speech, religious liberty and social autonomy. In its latest human rights report, the U.S. State Department devoted an astonishing 57 pages detailing the Saudi monarchy’s human rights abuses. To the extent that personal freedom exists, it is only in private. But even then the authorities may intervene at pleasure. Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., called the KSA “Hatred’s Kingdom.”

At a time of heavy U.S. dependence on foreign oil a little compromise in America’s principles might have seemed in order. Even then, of course, the KSA could not control the international oil market and the royals could not long survive if they did not sell their oil. They needed buyers as much if not more than buyers needed them.

Today, however, it’s hard to make a case that petroleum warrants Washington’s “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. The global energy market is expanding; Iran has begun selling more oil; new sources such as tight oil have come on line; U.S. crude oil production is the highest it has been in decades. Most important, the royal regime cannot survive without oil revenues and has continued to pump even as prices have collapsed.

In recent years Washington has treated Riyadh as an integral component of a containment system against Iran. Of course, much of the “Tehran problem” was made in America: overthrowing Iranian democracy and empowering the Shah, a corrupt, repressive modernizer, led to his ouster and the creation of an Islamist state. Washington’s subsequent support for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his aggressive war against Iran only intensified the Islamist regime’s antagonism.

Fears multiplied as Tehran confronted its Sunni neighbors along with Israel and continued the Shah’s nuclear program. Overwrought nightmares of Islamic revolution throughout the region encouraged America’s fulsome embrace of the KSA and allied regimes, such as Bahrain, where a Shia majority is held captive by a Sunni monarch backed by the Saudi military. In Riyadh, Secretary Kerry declared America’s undiminished support for the world’s leading feudal kleptocracy.

But this argument for supporting the Saudi royals has become quite threadbare. The regime opposes Iran for its own reasons, not to aid America. And Saudi Arabia is well able to do so. In 2014, the country came in at world number four with $81 billion in military expenditures, a multiple of Iran’s total. Threats of subversion reflect internal weaknesses beyond Washington’s reach: the kingdom’s general repression and particular mistreatment of its Shia minority, including the recent execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who urged nonviolent opposition to the monarchy.

Moreover, the nuclear agreement creates a real opportunity for change in Iran. The process will not be quick or easy, as is evident from determined resistance by more authoritarian regime forces. However hardline elements evidently feel threatened. In contrast to the KSA, there are (carefully circumscribed but real nonetheless) elections, political debate, religious diversity, generational resistance and liberal sentiments. Shifting the U.S. relationship with Iran could dramatically improve the region’s dynamic.

Whatever the alleged benefits of the Saudi alliance, America pays a high price. First is the cost of providing free bodyguards for the royals. For this reason the United States initiated the first Gulf War and left a garrison on Saudi soil. The inconclusive end of that conflict led to continual bombing of Iraq even during “peacetime” and ultimately the Iraq invasion. At the Saudis’ behest Washington backs their misbegotten war in Yemen and remains formally committed to the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the strongest force opposing the far more dangerous Islamic State. (On his latest visit to Riyadh Secretary Kerry mentioned discussing “new ideas” with the royals to bring peace to Yemen. The KSA could accomplish that by simply halting the war.)

Saudi Arabia also tramples American values beyond its own borders. In next-door Bahrain, Riyadh helped suppress the majority Shia population and in more distant Egypt the Saudis subsidized renewed military rule. The KSA also has underwritten extremist Islamic teaching in madrassahs around the world (Sunnis account for roughly 85 percent of all Muslims). Even Iran never attempted to so effectively create an entire generation of extremists. Moreover, Saudi money backed Al Qaeda and Saudis were among the 9/11 attackers. Similar private support for extremist violence apparently continues. Yet Washington shields the kingdom’s practices from scrutiny, refusing to release the section of the 9/11 report discussing Saudi funding of terrorism.

Over the last few years Riyadh’s behavior has become more harmful to America’s interests. The monarchy has been pushing to oust Syria’s Assad without worrying about who or what would follow. To the contrary, Riyadh has subsidized and armed many of the most extreme opposition factions. Moreover, in Yemen Saudi Arabia turned a long-term insurgency into another sectarian conflict. In the process the royals have been committing war crimes and creating a humanitarian disaster.

By executing al-Nimr the KSA triggered sectarian protests in Bahrain, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Riyadh responded by breaking diplomatic relations with Iran, undermining political negotiations to resolve Syria’s civil war. Yet after all this Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir criticized “the mischief that Iran’s nefarious activities can do in the region.”

Of course, the fact that Riyadh is a destabilizing force does not mean that the United States should attempt regime change in Riyadh. America has proved that it isn’t very good at overseas social engineering—consider Afghanistan, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Somalia, Syria and elsewhere. But Washington should stop lavishing attention, praise, support and reassurance on the Saudi royals. Particularly important, the United States should disentangle itself militarily from the KSA, especially the latter’s misbegotten war in Yemen.

The two countries need a new, more normal relationship. Jubeir opined that “I don’t believe the United States is under any illusion as to what type of government Iran is.” Nor should Washington have any illusions about the nature of the Saudi regime. The two governments should work together when advantageous and disagree when appropriate. Sell weapons to Riyadh without committing to provide a royal bodyguard. Most important, Washington should feel no inhibition in attempting to forge a better relationship with Tehran. Balance should return to American policy in the Middle East.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon).

 

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/why-the-new-us-philippine-defense-pact-could-be-a-double-edged-sword/

Why the New US-Philippine Defense Pact Could Be a Double-Edged Sword

The EDCA does little to boost Manila’s security and may end up exacerbating superpower rivalry.

By Richard Javad Heydarian
January 27, 2016

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An already growing security alliance between the Philippines and the United States received a huge boost when the Philippine Supreme Court cleared a legal obstacle to the implementation of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). For about a year, the new agreement, which was signed shortly before U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Philippines in mid-2014, was stuck in a constitutional limbo.

The Philippine Senate had adamantly demanded that the EDCA go through the ratification process, deeming it as a treaty agreement that mandates the concurrence of the upper chamber. Meanwhile, progressive groups challenged the constitutionality of the new security agreement, characterizing it as an affront to the Philippines’ national sovereignty. After extensive deliberations, members of the country’s highest court overwhelmingly (10-4) voted in favor of EDCA’s implementation.

The agreement paves the way for a massive increase in the American military footprint on Philippine soil, particularly across a series of much-prized bases, some of which are close to the South China Sea. Yet there is no assurance that this will significantly enhance Manila’s hands in the disputed waters. If anything, the regional maritime disputes could get even more complicated as two superpowers, China and the United States, move dangerously close to each other.

Much ado about nothing

One of the biggest misconceptions about the EDCA is that it paves the way for the re-establishment of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. Even the organizers of the Miss Universe contest seem to have fallen for this mischaracterization. A closer look at the agreement actually reveals that we are instead looking at a new generation of American overseas military access.

The EDCA provides U.S. forces rotational, negotiated, and limited access to a number of mutually-agreed upon locations. So far, the Americans have zeroed in on at least eight prime military bases, including Subic and Clark — the site of largest American military bases during Cold War — as well as Oyster Bay in Palawan, strategically close to disputed land features and waters in the South China Sea.

Instead of permanent U.S. bases, we are instead looking at the establishment of forward operating sites and cooperative security locations, where the host nation (theoretically) enjoys considerable supervision and control over the activities of visiting forces. The EDCA is particularly beneficial to the United States, because it will no longer have to pay huge sums to rent out Filipino bases à la Cold War days, not to mention that the Philippines will actually end up paying for the transportation and utility costs of visiting forces.

In short, the Pentagon will enjoy low-cost and flexible access to premium locations in the Philippines. So what is the Philippines is getting in exchange? There is nothing in the EDCA that compels the United States to come to the host nation’s rescue as far as Sino-Philippine territorial disputes are concerned. The Obama administration has consistently reiterated that the agreement is not aimed at China, but instead is aimed at enhancing the two allies’ capabilities in the realm of humanitarian relief and disaster-management operations.

A gray area in the alliance


A cursory look at Washington’s diplomatic position reveals that throughout the past decades, various U.S. administrations refused to clarify whether the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) will be applied in the event of a conflict over Philippine-claimed/occupied territories in the South China Sea.

No less than Henry Kissinger, in a diplomatic cable, made it clear that “there are substantial doubts that [Philippine] military contingent on island in the Spratly group would come within protection of (MDT),” limiting America to offering only “helpful political actions” in an event of emergency. Unless the Philippines and other claimant states legally and/or diplomatically settled their disputes, Kissinger notes, “[we] do not see legal basis at this time, however, for supporting the claim to Spratlys of one country over that of other claimants.”

This is the bedrock of the Obama administration’s policy of neutrality vis-à-vis sovereignty disputed in the South China Sea, although the United States has effectively negated Chinese claims over certain low-tide elevations by conducting Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations within their 12 nautical miles radius. The Philippines’ ongoing arbitration case against China, meanwhile, isn’t expected to definitively resolve the sovereignty-related aspects of their maritime disputes, since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has no jurisdiction over such concerns.

The Philippines, however, hopes that an increased U.S. military footprint on its soil will nonetheless provide some element of ‘latent deterrence’ against further Chinese provocations. Although legally not obligated to do so, Washington will surely come under tremendous political pressure to help the Philippines in an event of contingency in the disputed waters. Furthermore, EDCA facilitates the expansion of joint military exercises, the enhancement of interoperability among the two allies, and the transfer of more U.S. funds and military equipment to Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The two allies are also looking at the possibility of conducting joint FON patrols in the contested waters, both negating Chinese claims over certain land features as well as pushing back against Beijing’s purported efforts at restraining freedom of navigation and overflight in the area. As evident in Chinese state-owned media’s fiery rhetoric, Beijing sees the EDCA as nothing but a springboard for greater U.S. interference vis-à-vis the South China Sea disputes.

Anticipating a growing American military presence in the area, China could very well respond by accelerating its construction activities in the disputed features, stepping up its para-military and military patrols, and augmenting its own military footprint in the area. The stage is set for a new phase of Sino-American rivalry in the region.

Richard J. Heydarian teaches political science at De La Salle University, the Philippines, and is the author of Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China, and the Struggle for Western Pacific (Zed, London).

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/russia-japan-and-north-koreas-nuclear-test/

Russia, Japan and North Korea’s Nuclear Test

In its harsh response to the test, Moscow has its eye on a strategic victory.

By Samuel Ramani
January 25, 2016

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On January 6, 2016, North Korea’s state media announced that the DPRK had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. North Korea’s nuclear test resulted in a predictable array of international condemnations, but Russia’s harsh response to the DPRK’s belligerent action was especially intriguing.

Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vladimir Voronkov described North Korea’s nuclear test as a clear violation of international law and a national security threat. Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian State Duma’s defense committee echoed Voronkov’s statement, calling North Korea’s nuclear test “frightening” and urging the international community to contain the DPRK’s growing nuclear potential. Following from this rhetoric, Russian diplomats have engaged with their counterparts in the United States, Japan and South Korea. Russia has also not ruled out supporting tougher international sanctions against Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Russia’s hawkish response to North Korean belligerence appears to have at least temporarily halted the trajectory towards more favorable Russia-DPRK relations, cemented by joint military drills, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first-ever visit to the DPRK, and the declaration of a year of friendship between the two countries. Russia’s transformed North Korea policy in light of the hydrogen bomb crisis can be explained by two main factors. First, Russia wants to thaw relations with Japan to dilute its increased economic dependence on China. Second, Russia believes a mediation role in the Korean peninsula would greatly bolster its international status.

A Pivot to Japan

Even though Western analysts have frequently described stronger ties between Russia and North Korea as a renewal of the Soviet-era alliance, current cooperation has been much more limited and tactical in nature than the Cold War partnership. Vladimir Putin’s decision to reach out diplomatically to North Korea was a direct consequence of Western sanctions. To combat international isolation, Russia pivoted towards the Asia-Pacific and forged alliances with anti-Western authoritarian regimes across the developing world.

Although North Korean official rhetoric has hailed the DPRK’s pivot towards Russia as a diplomatic triumph, the partnership has weak economic foundations. Andrei Lankov, one of the world’s leading North Korea experts, believes that Russia’s pledge to expand trade with the DPRK to $1 billion by 2020 is primarily a symbolic gesture, as North Korea has little to offer Russia economically and Russia lacks the financial resources to rival Chinese investment in the DPRK.

As North Korea is little more than an expendable foothold for Russia in the Asia-Pacific region, its recent belligerence has caused Putin to look elsewhere. Russia is keen to avoid becoming economically dependent on China and is inherently fearful of Chinese economic hegemony in the Russian Far East, and Putin has attempted to use a common fear of North Korean aggression to thaw relations with Japan. Russia-Japan relations have been strained in recent years due to Japan’s disapproval of Russian military activities in Ukraine, its imposition of sanctions against Russia, and the ongoing Kuril Islands dispute. These tensions have resulted in a 30 percent decline in Russia-Japan trade in 2015, a worrying statistic for Kremlin policymakers seeking additional markets for Russian oil and gas.

Despite these ongoing sources of disagreement, Putin’s strategy of opposing North Korean belligerence to improve ties with Japan appears to be working. The vice president of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Masashiko Komura visited Moscow shortly after North Korea’s hydrogen bomb test. After consulting with Russian officials, Komura called for deeper Russia-Japan economic cooperation and collaboration on the development of a stricter UN Security Council resolution to deter further North Korean nuclear tests. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also hinted that Shinzo Abe would visit Russia in the near future. This is a marked reversal in policy – high-level diplomatic meetings between Japanese and Russian officials were shelved after Dmitry Medvedev’s controversial August 2015 visit to the Kuril Islands.

In response to these positive developments, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized in his January 12 statement, that both Russia and Japan desire stability on the Korean peninsula as peace allows for a “fruitful trade, economic and investment relationship.” Despite the conciliatory rhetoric, Japan is unlikely to break away from the Western consensus by lifting sanctions against Russia in the near future. But improved relations deriving from cooperation on Northeast Asian security could boost the prospects of a historic Japan-Russia treaty officially ending World War II and resolving the Kuril Islands dispute.

Komura officially displayed his support for peace talks on January 11. A successful diplomatic resolution to this long-standing conflict would be a major symbolic victory for Putin’s pivot to Asia strategy and potentially result in expanded Japanese investment in energy-rich Siberia.

Russia as Potential Mediator

Much like during previous security crises, China has been expected to lead mediation efforts after the latest escalation of hostilities on the Korean peninsula. South Korean president Park Geun-Hye has overseen significant improvements in the ROK’s bilateral relationship with China. Her calls for Chinese punitive measures against the North Korean regime will be a vital litmus test for the success of her diplomatic overtures. However, China’s vested interest in maintaining stability in North Korea to prevent a refugee crisis on its borders and to restrict the regional influence of the United States and Japan limits Beijing’s scope for action against the DPRK.

Even should China disregard these strategic concerns and threaten North Korea with drastic punitive measures, North Korea’s long-term compliance with a Chinese-mediated nuclear deal is not guaranteed. Kim Jong-un is keen to show domestic audiences that the DPRK is independent from China, despite its economic reliance on Beijing. The moral hazard created by past Chinese support for North Korea after nuclear tests could cause Kim Jong-un to question the credibility of Chinese threats.

In this context, Russia, North Korea’s second most important strategic partner, could have an opportunity to play a more prominent mediation role. While China’s improved relationship with South Korea was triggered in part by increased tensions with North Korea, Russia has arguably been more effective in balancing relations between North and South Korea. Even though Russia expanded military cooperation with North Korea after the annexation of Crimea, South Korea has refused to participate in Western sanctions against Russia. The ROK’s rhetorical statements on Ukrainian territorial integrity more closely resemble Chinese than European responses to Russian aggression in Eastern Ukraine. South Korea has also upheld a visa-free travel agreement signed in November 2013 and cooperates extensively with Russia in the heavy industry and aeronautics sectors.

Russia’s state-backed news agency TASS reported after the announcement of bilateral talks between Lavrov and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se, that South Korean experts were confident that Russia would spearhead the next wave of sanctions against North Korea. But Russia’s biggest contribution as a potential mediator on the Korean peninsula lies not in coercive diplomacy but in its ability to economically bridge North and South Korea. After forgiving 90 percent of North Korea’s debt in 2012, Russia announced extensive infrastructure investments, including the construction of a major natural gas pipeline from Sakhalin to South Korea. South Korean businesses responded to this proposal by participating in the Rajin-Khasan railway project that links a vital North Korean port city to Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway.

As Russia has much less of a vested interest in maintaining ties with North Korea than China does, North Korean elites would take a Russian threat to abandon these projects much more seriously than a Chinese threat to cut off assistance. Losing Russia as an ally could also threaten the DPRK’s diplomatic outreach to India and authoritarian regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa that have close relations with Moscow. By invoking the threat of complete international isolation for North Korea, Putin could compel Kim Jong-un to de-escalate hostilities on the Korean peninsula.

As the Russia-North Korea alliance was never as solid as the Communist-era partnership, Russia’s hawkish stance towards North Korea after Kim Jong-un’s latest provocations is unsurprising. Russia’s break from North Korea should be viewed as a tactical, short-term decision aimed at improving relations with Japan and bolstering its international reputation as a diplomatic arbiter. Should Russia succeed in achieving these objectives and become an indispensable player in one of Asia’s most intractable conflicts, Putin will greatly strengthen his case for Russia being an equal partner to China and the West.

Samuel Ramani is an MPhil student at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford in Russian and East European Studies. He is also a journalist who is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post Politics andWorld Post verticals, and recently to the Kyiv Post.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/indonesia-staying-calm-and-carrying-on/

Indonesia: Staying Calm and Carrying On

Indonesia’s restrained response to the recent Jakarta attacks is welcome.

By William Mackey
January 27, 2016

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It had been years since Indonesia had experienced an attention-grabbing terrorist attack. That changed on January 14. Early in the morning, four militants launched a brazen assault in downtown Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.

Several of the militants were suicide bombers, and detonated their explosives near a Starbucks outside of Sarinah, a popular shopping plaza. Others threw grenades, and fired at police officers stationed at a nearby traffic post. Once the smoke finally cleared, eight people were dead, including the four militants. More than twenty others were injured.

Soon afterwards, the Islamic State (ISIS) issued a statement via social media, claiming responsibility for the attack.

The attack, according to some, was the opening of a new battlefront for ISIS – yet another signal of how dangerous the group was becoming, not only in the Middle East but also in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

But such claims – that ISIS poses a major danger to the peace and security of Indonesia – are overblown. Yes, ISIS sympathizers and militants are active in Indonesia, as they are in other countries in the region, such as Malaysia and the Philippines. But that does not mean that they pose – or are capable of posing – a major threat to the Indonesian state and its people. Indeed, most Indonesian militants are poorly trained and largely incompetent, and prior to the January 14 assault they had failed to launch any large-scale attack, despite several attempts.

With this in mind, the Indonesian government response to the January 14 attack should be careful and measured. An overblown reaction risks the government losing popular support, and driving more Indonesian Islamists into the arms of ISIS.

It is important to note that a only tiny fraction of Indonesian Muslims has joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Indonesia has about 210 to 250 million Muslim citizens. Just five hundred or so have travelled to ISIS-controlled territory to fight with the group. As a proportion of Indonesia’s total Muslim population, that amounts to just 0.00012 percent, or about 1.4 people per million. The ratio of ISIS fighters travelling from Australia, meanwhile, is 14 per million. From Belgium, it’s 40 per million.

What’s more, few Indonesian extremists travelling to ISIS-controlled territory want to come home. As Sidney Jones, a veteran Indonesia watcher and Director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, points out: Indonesian Islamists who have traveled to ISIS territory want to live in the caliphate. They do not want to return to Indonesia, making it all the more difficult for them to train a new generation of Indonesian terrorists. (Most of Southeast Asia’s most-dangerous terrorists cut their teeth in Afghanistan, fighting against the Soviets in the 1980s. And when they returned to their home countries, they set up several deadly terrorist organizations, including Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an Al Qaeda affiliate.)

Indeed, in its struggle against ISIS, the Indonesian government is already winning on one of the most important fronts: the battle for public opinion. Many Indonesians practice a moderate form of Islam. They do not approve of ISIS’s harsh interpretation of their religion or the acts of violence perpetrated by extremists in the name of their faith. According to a recent poll from Pew Research Center, about 79 percent of Indonesians view ISIS unfavorably, and after the attacks in Jakarta, Indonesians took to the streets and to social media to condemn the militants. Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations – Nahdlatal Ulama and Muhammadiyah, with a combined following of 60 to 70 million people – strongly denounced the attacks, as well.

Indonesian Response

What is concerning, though, is how the Indonesian government will respond to the January 14 attacks in the coming months. The government needs to maintain the support of moderate Indonesian Muslims, and it needs to avoid using heavy-handed tactics against the extremists and their sympathizers. Indeed, if the government does respond with excessive force, it risks empowering those very same extremists.

Unfortunately, that story has played out before. Previously, in Aceh, a small province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Indonesian military and police used excessive force – such as extrajudicial killings – to quell a secessionist movement. Yet such tactics only enraged the local population, and over time, the leading secessionist group in Aceh, known as GAM, became increasingly popular.

Will the Indonesian government avoid making the same mistake? Given recent history, it seems like the government has learned from past experience. For instance, after the JI-orchestrated terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002, which killed more than 200 people, the Indonesian government created a new police counter-terrorism outfit. Known as Densus 88, the unit received training and funding from the United States and Australia. In a series of small-scale, surgical operations, the unit killed or captured many JI fighters, and within a matter of years, JI ceased to exist, at least in terms of being able to plan and conduct major terrorist attacks, as it had in Bali.

But Densus 88 was almost too successful. The Indonesian government saw the unit as a well-trained hammer, and a lot of the country’s internal conflicts suddenly looked like nails. Soon thereafter, Densus 88 was deployed against secessionist movements in Maluku and Papua. But the unit did not fair so well in those environments. It had trouble, in particular, operating among hostile populations, and reports accusing Densus 88 of human rights abuses began to emerge.

Some Indonesian Islamist groups even began to accuse Densus 88 of unfairly targeting Muslims. No other group, they said, was treated so harshly by Densus 88 – not even the secessionist groups. The unit, along with the Indonesian government, they suggested, were waging a war against their faith.

Those claims, at the time, rang hollow to most Indonesians, and still do. But the Indonesian government needs to make sure that this does not change. It needs to avoid the perception that it is unfairly targeting Islamists, so it does not lose mainstream Muslim support. One way of doing that is to continue to treat counterterrorism as a police issue, rather than as a military one, and to only use Densus 88 for counter-terrorism operations.

So far, at least, it seems like the government is doing exactly that. After the January 14 attack, the government did not respond with bellicose rhetoric, and it did not launch a brutal crackdown on the country’s Islamists. Rather, Indonesian President Joko Widodo – more commonly referred to as Jokowi – ordered the police chief and the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs to “pursue and arrest the perpetrators and their networks.” It was a criminal matter, according to Jokowi, and not a war. The police should therefore handle it. “I hope that people remain calm,” he added, “because it is all controllable.”

Indeed, in Indonesia, terrorist attacks – particularly those against police outposts – are nothing new. They have occurred, if not regularly, then at least consistently, during the course of the last several years (although few have been as deadly as the January 14 assault). And just because the most recent attacks were done in the name of ISIS, does not mean that Indonesia needs to panic. It is still facing the same poorly trained and poorly armed extremists as before, and they do not, at the moment, pose a major threat to the state or its people, despite their recent claims of being ISIS fighters.

As Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, told a press conference after the attack: “the government is planning to take a soft approach toward alleged IS sympathizers, in contrast to Western counterterrorism practices.”

That, at the moment, is exactly what is needed, and the Indonesian police have already arrested several suspected ISIS militants. Depending on what happens during the course of the next few months, Indonesia’s experience might ideally serve as a reminder about how effective a softer approach to counterterrorism can be.

William Mackey is a Bosworth Scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He previously lived in Indonesia, and worked at the US-Indonesia Society in Washington, DC. He has contributed pieces to The Jakarta Globe and Inside Indonesia.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/europe/russia-germany-berlin-rape/

Russia cries cover-up in alleged migrant rape of 13-year-old in Germany

By Tim Hume and Carolin Schmid, CNN
Updated 11:30 AM ET, Wed January 27, 2016


(CNN)¡XRussia's foreign minister has poured oil on a firestorm surrounding the alleged kidnapping and rape of a Russian-speaking teenager by asylum seekers in Berlin, charging that there's been a cover-up by German officials who say the crime never took place.

Members of Germany's Russian-speaking community and right-wing activists took to the streets of German cities in angry protests over the weekend, following Russian media reports, widely circulated on social media, that a 13-year-old girl had been abducted for 30 hours and gang-raped by Arab men in Berlin earlier this month.

They carried signs reading "We want security" and "Our children are in danger."

The Berlin prosecutor's office says the incident did not occur as the Russian reports and protesters claim.

No kidnapping, says prosecutor

A representative for the prosecutor's office said that the Russian-speaking girl had been reported as missing by her family when she disappeared on January 11.

When she returned, following a 30-hour absence, she claimed to have been kidnapped and raped.

But a subsequent medical exam found no evidence of rape or sexual intercourse, and the girl changed her story.

The prosecutor's office said investigators were still not clear where the girl was or what she was doing during her absence. But her answers to their questions led authorities to believe she may have had sex prior to her disappearance, which, due to her age, would be classified as child abuse or statutory rape, the representative said.

Police and prosecutors were investigating two men as suspects in relation to this, the representative said, but no further details on their identity were available.

Lavrov: Disappearance 'hushed up'

Despite German authorities having poured cold water on the accounts circulating on social media, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov waded in to the debate on the case at a news conference in Moscow Tuesday, accusing German officials of covering up the incident.

"I hope these issues do not get swept under the rug, repeating the situation when a Russian girl's disappearance in Germany was hushed up for a long time for some reason," he said.

He said Russian officials were communicating with the girl's lawyer, who was working with the girl's family and the Russian Embassy in Germany.

"It is clear that [she] did not exactly decide voluntarily to disappear for 30 hours. Truth and justice must prevail here," said Lavrov.

He said Russia wished Germany "success in dealing with the enormous problems caused by migrants."

"I truly hope that these migration problems will not lead to attempts to 'gloss over' reality for political motives -- that would be just wrong," he said.

"Problems need to be laid out honestly and admitted to the voters, open and clear solutions need to be proposed."

German government officials hit back at a news conference on Wednesday, accusing the Russian foreign minister of politicizing the case.

German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said he had full confidence in Berlin police and prosecutors' handling of the case -- but said he could not make the same claim about sections of the Russian media.

He urged politicians, the media and the girl's family to bear in mind "that this is about a 13-year-old girl, and it surely cannot be in her interest to somehow exploit this politically."

Concerns over migrant sex crimes

Sex crimes by migrants have become a hot-button issue in Germany this month as the country reels from a wave of mob sex assaults blamed on migrants on New Year's Eve.

More than 900 people reported being attacked by men of North African or Arab appearance during New Year's Eve festivities in the city of Cologne, with 523 of them reporting having been sexually assaulted. Similar attacks were reported in other German cities.

The attacks prompted a wave of criticism of authorities and the media, who were accused of being slow to acknowledge the crime wave had occurred due to a sense of political correctness. Cologne's police chief lost his job over his handling of the episode, and a German broadcaster apologized publicly for their tardy coverage.

Germany, Europe's political and economic powerhouse, is one of the most desirable destinations for migrants who have entered the continent in unprecedented numbers over the past year.

Under Chancellor Angela Merkel's hospitable policies, the country has taken in the bulk of the more than 1 million migrants who entered Europe's borders in 2015.

CNN's Atika Shubert, Olga Pavlova and Carol Jordan contributed to this report.


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[Housecarl]

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http://johnbatchelorshow.com/schedules/tuesday-26-january-2016

Hour Two

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics at NYU and Princeton. He’s also a member of the Board of the recently-formed American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); in re: Livinenko seems to have died from polonium; however, it's genuinely not clear that Putin was involved: in fact, Litvenenko had a lot of powerful enemies, incl the oligarch who later hanged himself, so to speak, in London. Since 2007 Russia has put up with one-way diplomacy: the West goes to Moscow and makes demands. That day is over.

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies; in re: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/01/25/a-dangerous-moment-for-ukraines-fragile-ceasefire/ Behind the scenes, U.S. diplomats are rediscovering Ukraine as a foreign-policy priority. On Jan. 15, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with a key Kremlin adviser at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s beachfront residence on the Baltic Sea. Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat responsible for European affairs, had traveled to Russia’s heavily militarized Kaliningrad region to sit down with Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s lieutenant overseeing the rebel regions in eastern Ukraine. Their six-hour “brainstorming” session, Surkov later told Russian journalists, touched on the thorniest issues of Ukraine’s tenuous peace process and proved both “constructive and useful.

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies; in re: WSJ Holman Jenkins advocating a get-tough policy with the Kremlin: “If you implement the Minsk Accords you're selling out Ukraine,” says the White House. Poroshenko is dawdling on implementing them. http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-wests-putin-silence-over-1453502873
The problems with this view are many. If the West was triumphalist at the end of the Cold War, Mr. Putin was a creation of that triumph. The Putin regime arose to loot the benefits of Russian integration in the world economy, especially its oil revenues. Economist Anders Aslund called it the “greatest corruption story in history.”

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies; in re: The Russian air campaign in Syria enabled strategic gains in the regime's longstanding effort to buffer its coastal heartland in Latakia from January 23 - 25. Russian strikes targeted opposition-held positions along the frontline in both Jebel al-Akrad and Jebel Turkmen mountain ranges in Northern Latakia, facilitating the regime's seizure of the town of Rabi'ah, the last major opposition-held town in the province on January 24. The regime's clearing operations in northern Latakia were enabled by Russian air support and were also reportedly guided by Russian advisers on the ground who likely contributed to the operation's success. The regime's consolidation of territory in northeastern Latakia comes after the seizure of Salma by pro-regime forces on January 12, which penetrated the opposition's defensive line and left opposition forces vulnerable to further regime gains. The Russian air campaign has prioritized the preservation of regime-held territory, especially on the coast and in the central corridor, since its inception. Russia began its military intervention shortly after opposition forces began advancing in northeastern Latakia, and the threat to the regime's heartland likely precipitated Russia's military effort in Syria. Regime advances in Latakia also apply increasing pressure on opposition forces in neighboring Idlib province, an opposition stronghold. Russian airstrikes also allowed pro-regime forces to fully recapture the town of Sheikh Meskin in Dera'a province on 25 January following several weeks of clashes with opposition forces.

https://audioboom.com/boos/4109425-...ar-1-26-16-stephen-f-cohen-eastwestaccord-com

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 3, Block C: Aaron Klein, Middle East Bureau Chief, Breitbart; in re: Report: Islamic State, Al-Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood Discuss ‘Mega-Merger’ in Libya. TEL AVIV – The Libyan branches of the Islamic State, Al-Qaida, and the Muslim Brotherhood are in discussions to complete a “mega merger,” the London-based A Sharq al Awsat newspaper reported.

Tuesday 26 January 2016 / Hour 3, Block D: Aaron Klein, Middle East Bureau Chief, Breitbart; in re: Ya’alon: Turkey Funds ISIS Militants by Buying Oil from Them Ynetnews reports: While Israel and Turkey’s representatives are hard at work on normalizing ties, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Tuesday accused Ankara of encouraging terrorism by buying oil from the Islamic State group. “As you know, Da’esh (Islamic State) enjoyed . . . / Report: Russian, U.S. and British Troops Deployed in Libya Ahead of Anti-IS Offensive TEL AVIV – Dozens of Russian, American, and British troops have been deployed to Libya ahead of an offensive against the Islamic State, Libyan sources told the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat. The forces are based in the Jamal Abdulnasir military base

https://audioboom.com/boos/4109497-...-al-qaeda-moslem-brothers-1-26-16-aaron-klein

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http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/01/25/a-dangerous-moment-for-ukraines-fragile-ceasefire/

The Great Debate

A dangerous moment for Ukraine’s fragile ceasefire

By Lucian Kim
January 25, 2016

Behind the scenes, U.S. diplomats are rediscovering Ukraine as a foreign-policy priority.

On Jan. 15, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with a key Kremlin adviser at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s beachfront residence on the Baltic Sea. Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat responsible for European affairs, had traveled to Russia’s heavily militarized Kaliningrad region to sit down with Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s lieutenant overseeing the rebel regions in eastern Ukraine. Their six-hour “brainstorming” session, Surkov later told Russian journalists, touched on the thorniest issues of Ukraine’s tenuous peace process and proved both “constructive and useful.”

To call the meeting unusual would be an understatement. Russian state media has consistently portrayed Nuland as the puppet-master of Kiev’s pro-Western Maidan revolution two winters ago, while Surkov, the designer of Putin’s decorative democracy, is viewed in the West as one of the masterminds behind the Crimea annexation. Because of his role, Surkov was blacklisted from entering the United States and the European Union in March 2014.

As President Barack Obama starts his last year in the White House, Washington is leading a final effort to defuse the still ticking time bomb that is Ukraine. Key European allies — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande — have been seriously distracted by the continent’s refugee crisis and newfound terrorism threat.

The Kremlin, chastened by low oil prices and a dim overall economic outlook, has signaled its readiness to implement the so-called Minsk peace agreement. Just as Putin did with eastern Ukraine, he has gone into contortions to be part of both the problem and the solution in Syria. By inserting Russia into the Middle East as a military actor, Putin forced Washington to take notice. On the eve of Nuland’s peace mission, Obama picked up the phone to urge Putin to do his part. After the meeting, Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and declared that Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia could be eased if the Minsk deal gains traction in the coming months.

The Minsk accords consist of two separate documents: the Minsk Protocol, the original cease-fire agreement from September 2014, and the follow-up “package of measures for implementation” hammered out by Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in an all-night negotiating marathon in the Belarusian capital last February. Known as “Minsk 2,” the additional document set out a sequence of measures, starting with a phased-in ceasefire, greater autonomy for the Donbas region, the withdrawal of Russian troops (“foreign armed formations”), local elections and, finally, the restoration of Kiev’s control over the border with Russia.

The deadline was the end of 2015. But because not even a lasting cease-fire is yet in place, all sides agreed to extend the Minsk process into 2016.

The West has accepted Minsk 2 as the only game in town, and there is no serious discussion of a Plan B or, say, a Minsk 3. Europe and its wider neighborhood are facing enough turmoil the way things are. For U.S. and EU diplomats, failure is not an option. The fighting in Ukraine has already cost more than 9,000 lives since April 2014, when armed Russian operatives infiltrated eastern Ukraine and seized government buildings.

The new urgency for a resolution stems from a fear in Western capitals that Poroshenko may now play for time, which would turn Minsk into an endless blame game between Kiev and Moscow. The Kremlin, for its part, is jumping on an opportunity to repair relations with the West at a moment when the European Union is preoccupied with other challenges.

If it starts to seem like Putin is cooperating and Poroshenko stalling, Brussels will likely find it difficult to maintain unanimity on renewing economic sanctions against Russia this summer.

Powerful lobbies in Germany, France and Italy are now pushing for sanctions relief. The successive economic restrictions adopted by the European Union and the United States during 2014 significantly curbed Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine. The threat of new sanctions, combined with a drop in global commodity prices, caused Russia’s economy to grind to a halt.

Though Western sanctions were “smart” in targeting individuals (like Surkov) and state companies, Putin retaliated with a blanket ban on EU and U.S. food imports, ultimately hurting ordinary Russians more than his enemies du jour.

Ukrainians, who face economic collapse themselves, view the continuation of sanctions against Russia as crucial to their own national survival. The hope in Kiev is that as the Russian economy contracts, so will Putin’s ability to wreak havoc on Ukraine. Conversely, should the West decide Russia is fulfilling the Minsk agreement and relax sanctions, Poroshenko faces the prospect of being left alone to deal with Putin.

Poroshenko’s dilemma is that he has a legal deadline this week to pass a constitutional change that paves the way for giving the breakaway regions “special status” as foreseen by Minsk 2. Currently, the Ukrainian president doesn’t have the necessary 300 votes in parliament to pass the amendment. Whether he loses or delays the vote, Poroshenko will end up looking like he’s not holding up his end of the deal.

“Minsk” has become a bad word in Ukraine. People are increasingly frustrated by the West’s focus on a constitutional amendment when more basic conditions of the peace process — a complete ceasefire, aggressive international monitoring, prisoner exchanges — haven’t been achieved. Many Ukrainians increasingly feel their country’s fate is being decided abroad. At the same time, they are afraid that Ukraine will be forgotten by the West, as yet another struggling state on Europe’s borders.

Merkel was driven to negotiate Minsk 2 by her panicked realization that Ukraine’s war could turn into a European conflagration. That’s how Putin managed to plant booby traps in the deal that are practically impossible to avoid: concessions to the rebel regions are highly unpopular in Ukraine, and holding local elections in accordance with national law is infeasible. The worst-case scenario in the German foreign ministry is that if Poroshenko fails to make the necessary legal changes, the separatists will go ahead with their own “elections,” which would bury the Minsk agreement and revive calls in Washington to arm Ukraine.

At the same time, there are indications that the Kremlin is serious about de-escalation. Separatist field commanders who have resisted even nominal rapprochement with Ukraine are reportedly dying violent deaths or otherwise being put out of commission. There’s talk that the Kremlin is now ready to give up its proxies in Donetsk and Luhansk — Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, respectively — in return for Kiev recognizing local elections.

Rebel fighters who fought for Novorossiya — a 19th-century Russian designation for most of present-day Ukraine — feel let down by the Kremlin. Igor Girkin, a retired Russian special ops officer who started the Donetsk rebellion in the town of Slovyansk, voiced his anger in a recent radio interview.

“While we were active in Slovyansk and Donetsk,” Girkin said, “at a minimum we were talking about the creation of an independent Novorossiya. Now we’re talking about the return of certain regions to Ukraine. … How long are we going to dance to the tune of our so-called respected Western friends who baited us into the war in Ukraine but didn’t let us win?”

Girkin, a die-hard Russian nationalist who has fought in five wars, doesn’t mince words. “The fate of the DNR and LNR is decided in Moscow,” he said, referring to the Russian abbreviations for the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

After the Kremlin recalled Girkin in August 2014, he lashed out against officials such as Surkov for abandoning the project of Novorossiya. The two men represent opposite poles of Russia’s ruling class: the cynics and the nationalists. While Surkov manages politics as a shifting game of deceit and manipulation, Girkin is unerringly committed to fighting for Russia.

“There’s a very difficult historical period ahead of us,” Girkin told his followers over the radio. “Believe in our country and our people — and that we’ll still get the chance to continue what we started in 2014.”

Even if Putin wants to put them back now, the genies he summoned to make war on Ukraine are out of the bottle.


__


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http://www.breitbart.com/jihad/2016...lim-brotherhood-discuss-mega-merger-in-libya/

Report: Islamic State, Al-Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood Discuss ‘Mega-Merger’ in Libya

by Aaron Klein and Ali Waked
25 Jan 2016
Comments 529

TEL AVIV – The Libyan branches of the Islamic State, Al-Qaida, and the Muslim Brotherhood are in discussions to complete a “mega merger,” the London-based A Sharq al Awsat newspaper reported.

Leaked documents have revealed that Libya’s biggest Islamist organizations are considering an alliance and the establishment of a joint council of sages, the Arabic language daily reported.

The prospective move comes in the wake of reports of an imminent international effort to form a unity government that would bring Libya’s numerous parties and militias together.

The paper said the Muslim Brotherhood is considering a united Islamic front even though the movement is officially in favor of forming a unity government. However, sources within the movement told the paper that their support for the international endeavor is merely tactical, and they’re waiting for it to collapse.

Negotiations between the three Islamic groups began because of reports of a rapprochement between the internationally recognized government based in Tobruk and the unrecognized government in the capital Tripoli, the paper said.

The groups wish to send a message to the forces coalescing around a unity government that they are not opposed by IS alone, but “all the Islamist opposition elements speak in one voice and should be treated as such,” a source said.

According to the documents, Muslim Brotherhood leaders said that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s regime “isn’t supported by the Americans because of his close relations with Russia. They can’t wait to see him leave the scene.”

The parties agreed to form a joint Shura (advisory) council and territories that are currently under Islamic control will be divided between them, echoing a similar agreement that is already underway in Benghazi.

Al-Qaida’s representative was quoted as saying that the move would inspire Islamists in Algeria and Egypt to follow suit.

This follows Breitbart Jerusalem’s own exclusive reporting on mediation efforts between the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Hamas in Gaza and Salafists aligned with the Islamic State.

Breitbart Jerusalem previously reported that Shadi al-Menai, one of the leaders of Wilayat Sinai, the Islamic State branch in Sinai, visited Gaza in a bid to mediate between Hamas and local Salafi groups after clashes erupted, resulting in the arrests of dozens of jihadists by Hamas forces.

Earlier this month, a leading Salafi source revealed that Menai mediated a deal whereby Hamas would give the Gaza Salafi opposition groups more leeway in exchange for Wilayat Sinai’s help in bypassing the Egyptian army’s restrictions on smuggling rocket parts into Gaza

This is not the first report of Hamas-IS cooperation in arms smuggling.

A Middle East think tank charged last month that there is information Hamas has been paying off the Islamic State’s Sinai branch to smuggle weapons into Gaza. “Over the past two years, IS Sinai helped Hamas move weapons from Iran and Libya through the peninsula, taking a generous cut from each shipment,” stated a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Despite the rapprochement between Hamas and IS-Sinai, tensions between the ruling faction and Salafi opposition groups in Gaza are rampant.

The Army of Islam, a Salafi group that aspires to become IS’s sole representative in Palestine, recently released an acerbic video in which it blames Hamas for straying from Sharia law and cooperating with anti-Islamic players, including Shi’ite Iran.

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http://www.breitbart.com/middle-eas...deployed-in-libya-ahead-of-anti-is-offensive/

Report: Russian, U.S. and British Troops Deployed in Libya Ahead of Anti-IS Offensive

by Aaron Klein and Ali Waked
25 Jan 2016
Comments 6

TEL AVIV – Dozens of Russian, American, and British troops have been deployed to Libya ahead of an offensive against the Islamic State, Libyan sources told the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat.

The forces are based in the Jamal Abdulnasir military base south of Tobruk, the seat of the country’s embattled parliament. A small American contingent was deployed near the capital Tripoli.

The paper quotes a senior security official as saying that the forces were sent on a reconnaissance mission and are set to advise the Libyan army on how to curtail the growth of Islamic militias, including IS, across the country.

The paper says that the deployment is the latest stage in an international effort to establish a universally recognized government to stabilize the country that has been ravaged by civil war since the fall of President Muammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The international effort has been met by stringent opposition on the part of local militias and political parties. Issa Baed al-Majid, an adviser to the Speaker of the Parliament, accused the United Nations and other international alliances of exploiting recent attacks carried out by IS in order to impose a pro-Western government on the Libyan people.

On Friday, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged decisive military action to halt the progress of IS in Libya, warning the global terrorist group was seeking to use the country as a regional headquarters and staging base.

“You want to take decisive military action to check ISIL’s expansion and at the same time you want to do it in such a way that’s supportive of a long-term political process,” Dunford said, using an alternative name for IS.

IS control of Libya would not only create a jihadi threat on Europe’s doorstep, it might further destabilize the anti-Islamic regime in Cairo and overtake Al Qaeda as the primary jihadi organization in North Africa.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20160126/NEWS03/160129639

U.S. rethinking its Afghanistan plans

Troops may be needed there for years

By Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan
© 2016, The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 9:19pm

U.S. military officials say it could take years to train Afghan security forces so they can defend their country and combat terrorist groups without U.S. support.

WASHINGTON – Top U.S. military commanders, who only a few months ago were planning to pull the last American troops out of Afghanistan by year’s end, are now quietly talking about an American commitment that could keep thousands of troops in the country for decades.

The shift in mindset, made possible by President Barack Obama’s decision last fall to cancel withdrawal plans, reflects the Afghan government’s vulnerability to continued militant assaults and concern that terror groups like al-Qaida continue to build training camps whose effects could be felt far beyond the region, said senior military officials.

The military outlook mirrors arguments made by many Republican and Democrat foreign policy advisers, looking beyond the Obama presidency, for a significant long-term American presence.

“This is not a region you want to abandon,” said Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who would likely be considered a top candidate for secretary of defense in a Hillary Clinton administration. “So the question is what do we need going forward given our interests?”

Senior American commanders have been surprised by al-Qaida’s resilience and ability to find a haven in the Afghan countryside as well as the Taliban’s repeated seizure of large tracts of contested territory.

In November, the U.S. military sent a company of elite U.S. Rangers to southeastern Afghanistan to help Afghan counter-terrorism forces destroy an al-Qaida training camp in a “fierce fight” that lasted for several days.

The training camp was “absolutely massive,” said Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, a military spokesman in Afghanistan.

“No matter what happens in the next couple of years Afghanistan is going to have wide ungoverned spaces that violent extremist organizations can take advantage of,” Shoffner said. “The camp that developed in southeastern Kandahar is an example of what can happen.”

In Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, U.S. officials said they have a willing and reliable partner who can provide bases to attack terror groups not just in Afghanistan but also throughout South Asia for as long as the threat in the chronically unstable region persists.

The new American mindset also marks a striking change for Obama, who campaigned on a promise to bring American troops home and has said repeatedly that he doesn’t support the “idea of endless war.” And it highlights a major shift for the American military, which has spent much of the last decade racing to hit milestones as part of its broader “exit strategy” from Afghanistan and Iraq. These days, that phrase has largely disappeared from the military’s lexicon.

In its place, there’s a broad recognition in the Pentagon that building an effective Afghan army and police force will take a generation’s commitment, including billions of dollars a year in outside funding and constant support from thousands of foreign advisers on the ground.

“What we’ve learned is that you can’t really leave,” said a senior Pentagon official with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The local forces need air support, intelligence and help with logistics. They are not going to be ready in three years or five years. You have to be there for a very long time.”

There are now 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, some of them advising local forces and some focused on hunting down al-Qaida and other hardline militants. Current plans call for Obama to halve that force by the time he leaves office, but he could defer the decision to the next president.

The U.S. military’s current thinking reflects its painful experience in Iraq, where Iraqi Army forces collapsed less than three years after American forces left in 2011. Senior American commanders who spent nearly a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money building the Iraqi Army have been shocked at how little of that force remains today.

“The speed and extent of the withdrawal in Iraq is a cautionary tale,” said Flournoy, who now heads the Center for a New American Security.

In Helmand Province, for example, where American troops suffered the heaviest losses of the war, Afghan units have struggled to hold onto territory taken by American forces from the Taliban in 2011 and 2012. “There’s a real will-to-fight issue there,” said a senior military official in Kabul.

Senior American commanders said that the Afghan troops in the province have lacked effective leaders as well as the necessary weapons and ammunition to hold off persistent Taliban attacks. Some Afghan soldiers in Helmand have been fighting in tough conditions for years without a break to see their family, leading to poor morale and high desertion rates.

Gen. John Campbell, the top American commander, has sent special operations forces to the province to help direct American airstrikes and provide help with planning. An American soldier was killed and two others were wounded earlier this month fighting alongside the Afghans.

In addition, about 300 U.S. troops in Helmand are advising Afghan commanders at the corps level, well removed from the front lines.

The American support is designed to arrest the immediate losses, but building an effective and sustainable fighting force that can manage contested areas such as Helmand Province, will take many years, said U.S. military officials.

The Afghan units lack effective mid-level officers and sergeants, foreign officials say, who can lead troops in combat and aren’t captive of patronage networks that dominate the country and sap soldier morale. Seeding the force with mid-level officers often requires bringing in young leaders from outside of the current system and training them from scratch.

“I think a generational approach has value,” Shoffner said.

Senior American officials point to improvements in areas such as evacuating wounded troops from the battlefield. As recently as 2013 it took the Afghan army 24 hours on average to get medical assistance to wounded troops. Now help usually arrives in four hours, still longer than desired. But other critical areas, such as building an effective resupply system for the country or a capable air force, can’t be accomplished in a few years. Many of the American pilots flying close air support missions for the Afghan military have 10 to 15 years of experience.

“How long does it take to grow a 15-year pilot? It takes about 15 years,” Shoffner said. “We’re starting a little late with the Air Force.”

Senior U.S. military officials and some former Obama administration officials increasingly compare U.S. plans for Afghanistan with its approach to South Korea, where the United States has maintained tens of thousands of troops for decades. Other top officials cite the example of Colombia where the United States has long provided training, money and contractors.

“Our presence right now helps serve as a significant bulwark against instability, and at a cost that I think is reasonable to bear,” said Daniel Feldman, who until recently served as the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan “Particularly if we’re not proposing a significant combat role, I think the American people would be open to the argument of sticking with Afghanistan.”?

The difference between Afghanistan and other long-term American commitments in Korea and Colombia is that Afghanistan remains a far more dangerous and unstable place for American personnel. Even though Afghan troops have assumed the lead combat role throughout the country with U.S. troops in an advisory role, Americans still face real dangers and have taken recent casualties there.

In some cases, senior U.S. officials have been surprised by the Taliban comeback in the last year. Emboldened by the departure of most foreign forces, Taliban fighters have seized district centers, inflicted heavy losses on government forces, and temporarily overran a provincial capital last fall. Now, Afghan forces must also grapple with an aggressive local branch of the Islamic State.

Some officials hold out hope that a long-term military presence might be unnecessary, if hoped-for peace talks with the Taliban make progress. The Afghan government has asked Pakistan, home to many Taliban leaders, to push the militants into talks.

A generational U.S. footprint “doesn’t need to be the case,” said Jeff Eggers, a former senior White House official with long experience working on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The Korea model is not necessary if the peace process moves forward -- that’s the preferred path for all parties.”

The obstacles to peace talks, though, are huge. Senior officials in Kabul and Islamabad are riven by suspicion and the Taliban remains deeply fractured following the revelation that its long time leader Mullah Omar has been dead for several years.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lithuania-russia-trial-idUSKCN0V51XV

World | Wed Jan 27, 2016 10:15am EST
Related: World

Lithuania opens trial of ex-Soviet military officers over 1991 killings

VILNIUS


A trial opened in Lithuania on Wednesday against dozens of former Soviet military officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a 1991 crackdown against the Baltic state's pro-independence movement.

Russia has refused to cooperate with the investigation and most of the accused, who live outside Lithuania, will stay away from the trial, which coincides with heightened tensions between Moscow and Vilnius over the Ukraine crisis.

Fourteen civilians were killed by the Soviet army in January 1991, prosecutors say, all but one of them during the storming of the state television headquarters and TV tower by Soviet paratroopers. More than 700 others were wounded.

Lithuania had become the first Soviet republic in March 1990 to declare independence from Moscow. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved in December 1991.

Former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, 91, is the highest-ranking person in the list of 65 former military officials and army officers charged by Lithuania's general prosecutor. They are all citizens of Russia, Belarus or Ukraine.

Two of the accused were present at Wednesday's proceedings. One of them, former tank commander Yuri Mel, 47, who was arrested in 2014 while on a shopping trip in Vilnius, was handcuffed and heavily guarded in the courtroom.

The second man, former Soviet munitions officer Gennady Ivanov, 64, lives in Vilnius and voluntarily cooperated with prosecutors. He told reporters the Russian embassy in Vilnius had hired a lawyer for him, saying he was too poor to afford one himself.

Mel and Ivanov both say they are innocent.

The other accused were represented by mostly court-appointed lawyers who have had no contact with their clients.


GORBACHEV TO BE TRIED?

Like Russia, Belarus has refused to cooperate with the investigation, while Ukraine has agreed to question five accused people living in that country, prosecutors said.

Lithuania, now a member of NATO and the European Union, has strongly criticized Russia's recent actions in Ukraine, including its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

"The attitude of both the Russian Federation and Belarus toward this criminal case is known and is obvious: these countries do not want their citizens to be put on trial," presiding judge Ainora Kornelija Maceviciene told the court.

Prosecutors are investigating whether to charge then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, now aged 84, and a decision is likely by the summer, investigating prosecutor Daiva Skorupskaite-Lisauskiene told Reuters.

The Russian embassy in Vilnius declined to comment on the case but said the Foreign Ministry in Moscow would issue a statement later on Wednesday. Russia protested in 2014 when Lithuania arrested and charged Mel.


(Reporting By Andrius Sytas; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Gareth Jones)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-kurds-idUSKCN0V51AC

World | Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:55pm EST
Related: World, Turkey

Curfew widened in southeast Turkey, clashes kill 23

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey | By Seyhmus Cakan


Security forces killed 20 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey while three Turkish soldiers died in a rebel attack, the military said on Wednesday, as authorities widened a curfew in the mainly Kurdish region's largest city, Diyarbakir.

Hundreds of locals, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-bound areas of Diyarbakir's Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded and police helicopters flew overhead, a Reuters witness said. Some people cried as they carried away possessions.

Southeastern Turkey has endured its worst violence in two decades since a 2-1/2-year-old ceasefire between the state and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants collapsed in July, reviving a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since 1984.

The army said 11 PKK members died in the town of Cizre, near the Syrian border, and nine more in Sur on Tuesday, bringing the militant death toll in the two towns to some 600 since security operations began there last month.

It said three soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Sur, where security sources said militants opened fire with rifles and a rocket launcher.

The ancient Sur district, enclosed by Roman city walls, has suffered extensive damage in the fighting and much of it has been under a round-the-clock curfew since Dec. 2.

The district governor's office said the curfew was extended to five more districts so security forces could remove explosive devices and barricades and fill in ditches set up by militants.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union all classify the PKK as a terrorist organization. The PKK says it is fighting for autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish minority.


"URGENT SITUATION"

Rights groups and locals have voiced growing concern about the civilian death toll in the security operations since last month. The pro-Kurdish HDP party puts the toll at nearly 120.

Rights groups and the HDP have highlighted the plight of some 28 people sheltering in a Cizre cellar, where four have died and three are in a critical condition, according to information obtained by Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch.

"Medical attention is not being provided to those in need. This is an urgent situation that the Turkish government needs to address imminently to prevent loss of life," she told a news conference in Istanbul.

Rights groups, and a doctors' association have called for ambulances to be allowed to rescue the wounded. The HDP said three of its parliamentarians had gone on hunger strike and were staging a sit-in at the offices of the Interior Ministry to force authorities to send ambulances.

The local governor's office said emergency services were unable to enter the area because of the PKK.

"Our ambulances have been sent to the closest (safe) location and have asked for all the wounded, if any, to be brought to this location. But despite all our efforts, our call has been ignored," the Sirnak province governor's office said.


(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul and Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Gareth Jones)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-media-idUSKCN0V52BU

World | Wed Jan 27, 2016 12:35pm EST
Related: World, Syria

Turkish prosecutor seeks life without parole for jailed journalists: document

ANKARA | By Gulsen Solaker and Ece Toksabay


A Turkish prosecutor is seeking life sentences without parole for two prominent journalists on charges of assisting terrorists, according to a court document seen by Reuters, after they published video footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping to send weapons to Syria.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the secular Cumhuriyet newspaper, and senior editor Erdem Gul were arrested in November in a case that has drawn international condemnation and revived concern about press freedom under President Tayyip Erdogan.

The two are charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and the publication of material in violation of state security.

Cumhuriyet published photos, videos and a report in May which it said showed intelligence officials transporting arms to Syria in trucks - allegedly to opposition fighters - in 2014.

Turkey's involvement in Syria is particularly sensitive as the NATO member is under pressure to step up the fight against Islamic State militants.

Erdogan, who has cast the newspaper's coverage as part of an attempt to undermine Turkey's global standing, has said he would not forgive such reporting.

He has acknowledged that the trucks, which were stopped by gendarmerie and police officers en route to the Syrian border, belonged to the MIT intelligence agency and they were carrying aid to Turkmens in Syria. Turkmen fighters are battling both President Bashar al-Assad's forces and Islamic State.

However, Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to order the trucks be searched, and that they acted as part of a plot to discredit the government – allegations that the prosecutors denied.

A prosecutor is seeking two life sentences plus 30 years for each man, according to the 473-page document submitted to an Istanbul court on Wednesday and seen by Reuters. The sentences include one of "aggravated" life, which means no chance of parole and solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. It also limits family visits.

The court has yet to decide whether to accept the indictment, according to lawyers familiar with the case. Erdogan and the state security agency are listed as the two plaintiffs in the indictment. The court declined to comment.

Government officials have said the case is matter purely for the judiciary, not a political issue.

Dundar and Gul say the case has no legal basis. They told Reuters in a faxed message from prison last week that their arrest was instead designed to send a warning to journalists.

The government denies there is a political agenda behind the investigation, saying there was an "open breach of law".

Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch expressed dismay, saying: "We are absolutely clear that Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, in publishing stories on the subject were doing their jobs as journalists and no more than that."

European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said on Twitter he was "shocked by life sentences" demanded for Dundar and Gul and that Turkey, negotiating for EU membership, must respect freedom of expression.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on a visit to Istanbul last week that Turkey was setting a poor example for the region in intimidating media. He met Dundar's wife and son during his trip, according to Turkish media reports.

Following Biden's comments, Erdogan said terrorist propaganda was not freedom of expression.


(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Editing by David Dolan, Nick Tattersall and David Stamp)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-opec-transneft-idUSKCN0V5279

Business | Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:16pm EST
Related: Russia, Saudi Arabia

Russians want to talk to OPEC about output, pipeline chief says

MOSCOW | By Jack Stubbs and Katya Golubkova


Russian officials have decided they should talk to Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries about output cuts to bolster oil prices, the head of Russia's pipeline monopoly said on Wednesday, remarks that helped spur a sharp rise in world prices.

Oil futures surged more than 5 percent after the comments by Nikolai Tokarev, head of oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, which gave the strongest hint yet of possible cooperation between the top non-OPEC oil producer and the cartel to try to reverse a record glut.

Brent crude rose by over $2 to $32.95 a barrel, after a session low of $30.83. It was also boosted by U.S. demand following a blizzard.

But there was still a long journey from starting discussions to actual cuts by Russian oil producers, with many of them saying reducing output was technically very difficult and could lead to Russia losing market share to its competitors.

Tokarev said oil executives and government officials meeting in Moscow on Tuesday had reached the conclusion that talks with OPEC were needed to shore up the oil price.

"At the meeting there was discussion in particular about the oil price and what steps we should take collectively to change the situation for the better, including negotiations within the framework of OPEC as a whole, and bilaterally," Russian news agencies quoted Tokarev as saying.

"The main initiative is being shown by, of course, our Saudi partners. They are the main negotiators. That means that they are the ones we need to discuss this with first of all."

He said output cuts would be on the agenda for talks with OPEC countries: "Yes, that is one of the levers or mechanisms that would allow us to in some way balance the oil price."

An energy ministry representative confirmed to Reuters that possible coordination with OPEC had been discussed at the meeting, which the ministry hosted.

"The meeting participants discussed the possibility of coordination of actions with OPEC members amid unfavorable market conditions on the global oil market," the Energy Ministry official said.


Related Coverage
› Russian government, producers discuss possible coordination with OPEC


LOW PRICES PRESSURE

Oil prices have fallen from around $115 in the middle of 2014, causing problems for Russia's cash-strapped budget and pushing the Russian economy into recession. Some members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries want coordinated output cuts to push up the price, and they have been pressing Russia to play its part.

If discussions with OPEC begin in earnest, that would be a major reversal in Russia's stance. Russian production reached a new post-Soviet high in December of 10.80 million barrels per day. That puts it on par with Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest producer, which also pumps more than 10 million bpd.

OPEC, which collectively accounts for a third of global output, failed to agree any cuts at a meeting last month, with the Saudis apparently determined to maintain their market share and drive out high-cost producers in the United States.

Iran, previously kept from international markets by sanctions lifted this month, is also planning to increase its production rapidly into a world that produces 1.5 million barrels per day more than it consumes and has been running out of capacity to store it cheaply.

So far, within OPEC, only Algeria and Venezuela have clearly expressed support for a production cut.

However, Iraq, OPEC's second biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, also showed signs on Wednesday of softening its stance. Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters in an interview that Baghdad was ready to take part in an extraordinary OPEC meeting and even reduce its oil output if all OPEC members and non-OPEC producers agree.

"It’s interesting to see how the positions from both Russia and Iraq seem to be softening slightly – but I don't think it means a thing because the Saudis continue to say that they will only take action with collaboration from Russia, Iraq and Iran," said Societe Generale oil analyst Michael Wittner in New York.


INDUSTRY RELUCTANT

Considerable obstacles remain to cutting Russian production. Speaking to Reuters before the meeting at the energy ministry took place, two senior officials said no groundwork had been laid for cooperating with OPEC on output.

"There are not any measures on possibly cutting production being discussed now," said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, echoed that. "It is impossible to coordinate the process and stop production in Russia," the second source said.

A manager at a top-four Russian energy firm said coordinated cuts would not be welcomed by an industry that was fighting the possibility of declining production because of a rising tax burden and aging fields.

"Russia has too much risk of seeing a natural decline anyway, without any agreed special steps," the manager said, playing down the possibility of agreed action. Another oil company source said: "We've heard nothing of any specific actions."

Helima Croft, Global Head of Commodity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets sounded a sceptical note.

"Ultimately, if we want to see cuts, we have to see this driven by (President Vladimir) Putin. Or even (Rosneft boss) Igor Sechin, who is close to the inner circle. But, he’s been publicly emphatic that there will be no cuts."

"Last year, the Saudis kept saying publicly and privately that they had asked the Russians to cut production in the run up to the November meeting. They decided they had no way to balance this on their own because Russia would just take their market share," Croft said.

Mikhail Leontyev, spokesman for Rosneft, Russia's biggest producer, said "he saw no grounds" to comment on the Energy Ministry's statement. Gazprom Neft, Russia's fastest growing oil company by volume, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Lukoil, Russia's No.2 oil producer whose vice-president said earlier this week that Moscow should start talking to OPEC, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, in charge of the energy sector, also declined to comment.

Russia holds regular discussions with various countries, including oil-producing ones, on the situation on oil markets but there are no plans as of now for coordinated actions, the Kremlin's spokesman said on Wednesday.


(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Margarita Papchenkova and Denis Pinchuk in Moscow, Jessica Resnick-Aultand in New York; Writing by Jack Stubbs, Christian Lowe and Katya Golubkova; Editing by Peter Graff)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-opposition-idUSKCN0V51CZ

World | Wed Jan 27, 2016 2:59pm EST
Related: World, United Nations, Syria

Syrian opposition demands answers before joining talks

BEIRUT/GENEVA/PARIS | By Tom Perry, Tom Miles and John Irish


Plans to hold the first negotiations to end the civil war in Syria for two years were in doubt on Wednesday after the opposition said it would not show up unless the United Nations responded to demands for a halt to attacks on civilian areas.

The Syrian government has already agreed to join the talks that U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura hopes to convene in an indirect format in Geneva on Friday with the aim of ending the five-year-old war that has killed 250,000 people.

Washington urged Syrian opposition groups to attend.

"Factions of the opposition have an historic opportunity to go to Geneva and propose serious, practical ways to implement a ceasefire, humanitarian access and other confidence-building measures, and they should do so without preconditions," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Preparations have been beset by difficulties, including a dispute over who should be invited to negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad's government as it claws back territory with help from Russia and Iran.

Kurds, who control a swathe of northern Syria, were not invited and predicted the talks would fail.

A Saudi-backed opposition council that groups armed and political opponents of Assad broke up a second day of meetings in Riyadh, saying it was waiting for a response from the United Nations to demands before it decided whether to attend.

While it has expressed support for a political solution and talks, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) says attacks on civilian areas must stop before any negotiations.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, it also called for the lifting of sieges on blockaded areas among other steps outlined by the U.N. Security Council in a resolution passed last month.


Related Coverage
› U.S. presses Syrian opposition to attend Geneva talks without preconditions

"We are waiting for the response of de Mistura first, and then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which is the most important ... If it is positive maybe there will be an agreement to go," Asaad al-Zoubi, an HNC member, told Saudi TV channel Al Ikhbariya.

Diplomacy has so far failed to resolve a conflict that has forced millions from their homes, creating a refugee crisis in neighbouring states and Europe. With the war raging unabated, the latest diplomatic effort has been overshadowed by increased tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.


KURDS LEFT OUT

The Syrian government, aided by Russian air strikes and allied militia including Iranian forces, is gaining ground against rebels in western Syria, this week capturing the town of Sheikh Maskin near the Jordanian border.

Russian air strikes that began on Sept. 30 have tilted the war Assad's way after major setbacks earlier in 2015 brought rebels close to coastal areas that form the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect and are of great importance to the state he leads.

While the Saudi-backed HNC includes powerful rebel factions fighting Assad in western Syria, Russia has been demanding wider participation to include Syrian Kurds who control wide areas of northern and northeastern Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is affiliated with the Kurdish YPG militia, was however excluded from the invitation list in line with the wishes of Turkey, a major sponsor of the rebellion which views the PYD as a terrorist group.

The PYD's representative in France, Khaled Eissa, who had been on a list of possible delegates proposed by Russia, blamed regional and international powers, in particular Turkey, for blocking the Kurds and forecast the talks would fail.

"You can't neglect a force that controls an area three times the size of Lebanon," he said. "We will not respect any decision taken without our participation."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the PYD could join the talks at a later stage.

Haytham Manna, a prominent opposition figure allied to the PYD and invited to the talks, told Reuters he would not attend if his allies were not there.

Manna is co-leader of an opposition group called the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which includes the PYD and was formed in December in Kurdish-controlled Hasaka province.

Ilham Ahmed, a Kurdish politician who co-chairs the SDC, heaped criticism on de Mistura.

"We hold him responsible - not America or Russia - him and the United Nations. He was tasked with forming the delegations in a balanced way and in a way that represents all the elements of Syrian society," she told Reuters.

"When the whole of northern Syria is excluded from these negotiations, it means they are the ones dividing Syria. They are always accusing the Kurds of dividing Syria, but they are the ones dividing Syria."


(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and John Davison, John Irish, and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood/Mark Heinrich)

 

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S. Korea Suspects N. Korea May Have Attempted Cyber Attacks

January 27, 2016 12:44 PM

SEOUL— South Korea said on Wednesday it suspected North Korea of attempting cyber attacks against targets in the South, following a nuclear test by the North this
month that defied United Nations sanctions.

South Korea has been on heightened military and cyber alert since the Jan. 6 test, which Pyongyang called a successful hydrogen bomb test, although U.S. officials and experts doubt that it managed such a technological advance.

"At this point, we suspect it is an act by North Korea," Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman of the South's Unification Ministry, told a news briefing, when asked about reports that the North might have attempted cyber attacks.

Authorities were investigating, Jeong said, but did not provide further details.

Last week, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the scope of threats from North Korea was expanding to include cyber warfare and the use of drones to infiltrate the South.

North Korea has been using balloons to drop propaganda leaflets in the South, amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula since the nuclear test.

Since the test, there have been unconfirmed news reports that the computer systems of some South Korean government agencies and companies had been infected with malicious codes that might have been sent by the North.

Defectors from the North have previously said the country's spy agency, run by the military, operates a sophisticated cyber-warfare unit that attempts to hack, and sabotage, enemy targets.

South Korea and the United States blamed North Korea for a 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pictures that crippled its systems and led to the leaks of unreleased films and employee data.

At the time, the company was set to release the film, "The Interview", featuring a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has denied the allegation.

In 2013, cybersecurity researchers said they believed North Korea was behind a series of attacks against computers at South Korean banks and broadcasting companies.

 

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Deported Swedish NGO Worker Concerned About Detained Colleagues in China

Joyce Huang
January 27, 2016 9:21 AM

Upon arrival back in Sweden, expelled rights activist Peter Dahlin, says he is concerned about the safety of three colleagues and close friends, all of whom remain in custody in China.

“I’m obviously quite happy to be back, but three of my colleagues and close friends are still incarcerated without a quick solution in sight,” Dahlin told Swedish Radio. Dahlin did not specify their names and also voiced his gratitude to the Swedish Embassy’s for their help in his case.

After being held for three-weeks, the 35-year-old says his girlfriend has been released with no allegations against her while he himself was released on medical and diplomatic grounds.

“This means that the allegations against me remain and if I return to China I will be put on trial for this crime,” he added.

Dahlin was arrested on January 3 and accused by the Chinese government of operating an unlicensed rights group in China to endanger the country’s national security and interfere in its sensitive legal cases.

Prior to his arrest, Dahlin was co-founder of the non-governmental organization Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which says it was established in 2009 to promote the development of the rule of law and human rights through training and the support of public interest litigation in China.

Unexpected release

Until his colleagues are released, they remain a hostage to Dahlin’s freedom to speak, which will make it harder to interpret the case’s significance, according to Jerome Cohen, professor of law at New York University.

Cohen, in a blog post Tuesday, argued Dahlin’s unexpected release and preferable treatment mostly reflected his cooperation in detention via a televised confession on the state-run CCTV last Tuesday.

On his TV appearance, Dahlin admitted the alleged wrongdoings of his group, which he said had paid and supported Chinese rights lawyers Wang Quanzhang and activist Xin Qingxian, the latter of whom brought the son of detained rights lawyer Wang Yu across international borders.

David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, however, calls China’s public spectacles of shaming “political bullying -- a form of punishment and ritual humiliation for the victims, and a powerful way for the party state to communicate which behaviors it finds unacceptable.”

Ultimately, the aim is to crush dissent and the supposed crimes are of middling importance relative to the act of submission itself, the researcher added.

Still room for NGOs to operate in China

Simon Chang, associate professor of politics at National Taiwan University, agrees, saying China has made its point clear that Dahlin and his other peers from foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have crossed a red line.

“The red line apparently has been drawn tighter along with tightened policies. That has a direct impact on [foreign] NGOs in the political [service] field, in particular, with relation to human rights issues,” Chang said.

“It also sends a warning to NGOs in other fields that: don’t you come meddling in our sensitive affairs,” he said.

The professor added that China recognizes the role NGOs play in public governance, which it believes complements the state’s declining ruling capacity. Yet, he said, authorities adopt a hard line when it comes to sources which they see may undermine the Communist Party’s legitimacy and trigger social unrest.

Thus, there is still room for NGOs to operate in China although some that are unregistered will be treading in risky waters, he said.

Earlier estimates by Tsinghua University showed that there were more than three million NGOs operating in China, of which only 15% were officially registered. The number of foreign NGOs was estimated to be around 10,000.

Sarah Brooks, East Asia program manager of the International Service for Human Rights, said Dahlin’s case showcases “the long arm of China,” whose influence now appears to have extended beyond its borders after neighboring countries such as Thailand assisted in the arrests of Chinese dissidents.

“You see the willingness of the Chinese public security apparatus to really disregard borders, in terms of implementing their mandate to uphold the will of the party,” Brooks said.

She said such intimidation, however, will only end up hurting China’s own development of civil rights, be it labor rights or education for migrate workers and financially-challenged children.

“Policies and laws, and frankly, outright intimidation that prevent NGOs from organizing or human rights defenders from doing their work undermines the very effort to realize the rights that the country claims to preference,” the Geneva-based manager concludes.


Related Articles

China Releases Swedish Human Rights Activist
China Law Could Trigger NGO Exodus

 

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Beijing’s exit: what would it mean for Africa if China’s economy were in flux?

By Editorial Board - 22 January 2016 at 1:01 pm

Chinese investment on the African continent is huge. This in itself is not news. In recent times the Chinese economy has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest economy. Yet, it is also a reality that Beijing began January 2016 by sending tremors of fear throughout regional and global stock markets, and so it need be considered what a continuation of this would mean for African nations. First, an overview of recent events is necessary.

Upheaval on the Chinese share market is not new. Foremost among the turmoil of recent times is perceived inexperience of new Chinese ‘mom and pop’ investors combined with the Chinese government’s need to maintain a positive economic outlook at all costs to ensure its ongoing legitimacy. Though investors may have traded before believing it a manageable risk Beijing could be artificially fabricating figures, the rate in which the economic slowdown in China has occurred – with this month’s figures showing annual growth the lowest in 25 years – has meant there is a rising concern the risks of doing business in China right now outweigh the rewards.

Yet, it is beyond Beijing alone that the real story of a Chinese downturn could have an impact.

The immense benefits on offer to a number of developing nations in trading with the world’s fastest growing economy have been well-documented. Further, save for Asia itself perhaps, no region has been so transformed by the rise of China as Africa. The trade off of this is were a downturn to occur in China, African nations would be among those hardest hit by the fall.

Furthermore, owing to globalisation and the subsequent finances of numerous nations becoming intertwined, an economic storm in China would have a broad impact on the world economy. In effect, African nations like South Africa would be prone to a double blow, experiencing both a decline in trade with Beijing, and the follow on effects of a slowing global economy.

It has been shown that the sensationalist view that China is outright exploiting Africa requires a more nuanced and sober appraisal. At the same time, while the United States may welcome opportunity to wield more influence in Africa upon a China exit it would remain complicated. Washington’s traditional emphasis on economic progress along with human rights progress faces a challenge of credibility that Beijing broadly does not, given its longstanding policy of ‘non-interference’.

It also need be noted the links beyond economics alone that China has sought to build in Africa. With Mandarin now being taught throughout South African schools, and Beijing increasingly willing to play a role in diplomatic relations and weigh in on civil unrest across Africa – notwithstanding the risk of shifting away from its ‘non interference’ policy – it is apparent Beijing’s influence is clearly beyond economics alone, though qualifying what impact a Chinese withdrawal would have beyond the hard numbers of trade is much more opaque.

This is both because of the potential cause of the collapse, as well as the wider ties of China and Africa. Unlike Japan in the early 1990’s – where the economy collapsed but democratic leadership and other governmental institutions continued on as normal – should China’s economy suffer a serious downturn of the legitimacy of its ruling party would be in real danger. Further, with Beijing suspected of concealing the true extent of China’s economic performance to shore up the ruling party’s legitimacy, the exact nature of what an economic decline would mean for China within its borders – much less beyond – is difficult to ascertain.

This means however unlikely it is right now, it is important African nations, the African Union and the broader global African community do consider how Africa could be impacted if China did hit sudden and serious economic turmoil. Beyond simple questions of how to weather a potential second Global Financial Crisis like the rest of the world, a number of national challenges would emerge. While Zimbabwe’s adoption of the yuan as a reserve currency in December 2015 is likely to go down in history as more a public relations effort than real policy shift, some graver questions remain.

With the Mugabe regime nearing its twilight years (amid great uncertainty as to who will be his successor), China has signaled its intention to grow economic ties with the nation, notwithstanding its history of sovereign risk. With domestic instability already on the horizon, the prospect of deepening economic ties between Harare and Beijing could stand to increase instability should a fault line emerge in the Chinese economy at the same time of a leadership change. Beyond Zimbabwe, a Chinese withdrawal – and sudden exit of profits and positive economic forecasts for the future – would see governments like Zambia’s face new pressure to answer for the apparent abuses that has been allowed to go in the name of economic gains.

Former Singaporean Prime Minister and noted foreign affairs strategist Lee Kuan Yew was asked what odds he placed on China continuing its economic growth long term. He said “four chances in five”. Additionally, numerous other noted thinkers have put forth their views that they expect China to keep growing long term, and the careful steward of China’s economy by its ruling party in recent decades suggests a steady (if not altogether certain) remains on the economic levers.

Yet, it’s also a reality the collapse of the Japanese ‘economic miracle’, and sudden fall of the USSR came unexpectedly. Japan’s economic bubble was marked by wider turmoil across the globe, and the geopolitical impact of the Soviet Union’s sudden fall continues to be seen today.

Africa would surely not be alone in failing to see a serious shock to China’s economy forthcoming, but with so much of Africa’s future invested in the Asian nation’s ongoing growth; it is undoubted a greater public debate needs to take place about the future of Asia’s biggest nation in Africa.

 

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Re-imagining Africa: What if big states did better?

Terence McNamee
Africa
22 Jan 2016 12:27 (South Africa)

Swing states in Africa cannot act as a stabilising force in their region if they, themselves, suffer from major internal conflict and violent divisions; instead they become exporters of insecurity. They also cannot galvanise regional or continental consensus around the key issues of our time if they are not acknowledged as leading nations, which represent and advance certain shared values and interests. By TERENCE MCNAMEE.

Imagine an Africa where its best performers are its most powerful states. It’s not easy but you should try. For many years the best performing states in Africa have been tiny. Atop the list of most major human development rankings are Seychelles, Mauritius and the “big” one of the lot, Botswana. After the latter two, puny Cape Verde is the best governed, according to Mo Ibrahim. Of the top five countries ranked by per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Botswana is the largest by population at just over two million. That’s about one-tenth the size of Lagos.

Apart from all the benefits accruing to their own people – they are usually safer, healthier, richer and better ruled than other Africans – Africa’s smallest states have not had much impact beyond their borders. The countries that really matter are hefty ones – the swing states. Such states can generate substantial political and economic effects – positive or negative – in their region and continent in ways that smaller states typically cannot. That’s why their performance bears particular attention. Think the United States, Japan, Germany. Being a swing state is partly a function of size but, it also relates to relative diplomatic and economic power, and geography.

Since independence, Africa’s swing states have not done very well. Their large territories and populations amplified the herculean challenges faced by the first generation of post-independence African leaders. Notwithstanding their own failings, none could have been prepared to manage relations between the fragmented ethnic groups perilously bequeathed into their new states by colonial rule. At the same time, basic economics would suggest that big states have inherent advantages in creating economies of scale and lower costs of trade. But for various reasons Africa’s larger states perennially disappoint. Thus we rarely consider how different the continent would look if the reverse were true.

That was the challenge put to a number of senior officials and analysts from three swing states in Africa – Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – brought together by the Brenthurst Foundation and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung for a roundtable last year. To dare to imagine “what if”…
•Kenya’s economic dynamism translated into a GDP per-capita the same as that of Mauritius, which is currently eight times higher?
•Oil-rich Nigeria’s governance record over the past three decades was similar to Botswana’s?
•South Africa’s hard-earned political and moral stature of the early post-Apartheid years still obtained today in Africa and the world?

It’s worth reflecting on what these and other “what ifs” might mean for swing states' neighbours and the continent as a whole in terms of economic and human development, peace and security. Not as some thought experiment, but as a way to create new maps and narratives to chart Africa’s future.

In the African context there are three specific reasons why the performance of swing states merits particular scrutiny.

The first relates to regional integration. Africa’s economic prospects are strongly linked to how effectively clusters of neighbouring states cooperate, club resources and support each other. A recent study by Yale University found that Africa is the least integrated region in the world economy. Comparative advantages exist within all its sub-regions – in building infrastructure, diversifying supply chains, combining tourism products – but are almost never exploited. Experience elsewhere shows that the extent of regional integration depends heavily on the commitment and political leadership of swing states. Europe without the consistent and strong political will of Germany and France would simply not be “Europe”.

The second reason is security. While the number of deaths in Africa resulting from armed conflict has dropped massively in the past two decades, vast swathes of the continent are still grappling with acute security threats and political volatility. Global experience suggests that swing states willing to use diplomatic and, if necessary, military might prudently to counter regional security threats are generally better “stabilisers” than external interveners. It is swing states, not United Nations or other foreign missions, who know the terrain best, and have the most skin in the game.

And the third reason is Africa’s role in the international system. Africa is at the margins of global politics. The interests of the great powers still prevail on issues of international justice, finance and security. But the global distribution of power is not static. The trend towards multi-polarity and the diffusion of power away from states is bound to alter the core political and economic institutions that have framed international relations for over 70 years. Resource-rich Africa, with a population predicted to reach two billion by 2040, must play a greater part in shaping that new future. Strengthening Africa’s voice globally will rest to a significant degree on the ability of swing states to forge a common narrative and approach to issues of concern to Africa and the world, such as reform of the UN Security Council. Ideally the African Union (AU) should play that role, but the organisation is still finding its feet, and unable to represent the African agenda internally or globally as effectively as joined-up swing states (potentially) could.

For the catalytic power of swing states to be harnessed for the betterment of their regions, the continent and the world, they need to be successful. They cannot manage or develop regional economic bodies if their own economies are mismanaged or dysfunctional. They cannot act as a stabilising force in their region if they themselves suffer from major internal conflict and violent divisions; instead they become exporters of insecurity. And they cannot galvanise regional or continental consensus around the key issues of our time if they are not acknowledged as leading nations, which represent and advance certain shared values and interests.

Currently neither South Africa nor Nigeria are anywhere near their constructive potential as swing states. Kenya is doing much better in one critical respect, but it too is beset by grave challenges. The briefest amalgam of lists would include: collapsing currencies, acute corruption, rising terrorism, declining commodity prices, communal discord and increasingly factious politics. Distinguished Africa expert Christopher Clapham once described the challenges facing Africa’s larger states as a “complex of interconnected predicaments”. Some of those predicaments flow from the “peculiarly damaging” way African states were historically incorporated into the global system and which continues to “exercise its baleful influence”.

Yet, each country, in their own way, also evince powerful signs of what is possible, areas of excellence which could spawn virtuous cycles of development and stability within and beyond their borders. For all Nigeria’s manifold problems, the country holds together despite near-constant predictions of its imminent collapse. Last year’s election was free, fair and peaceful, an outcome few thought possible. Cell phone penetration is now 100%, and across numerous sectors, the green-shoots of a more diversified economy are sprouting. And Nigeria is big. The fourth most populated country in the world in less than 25 years. That’s a lot of potential – potentially.

Kenya has often been left out of lists of Africa’s big players, but their exclusion is getting much harder to justify. It has become a subtle powerhouse in East Africa. Its wealth of innovators and entrepreneurs is epitomical of the Africa Rising story.

South Africa is straining, to be sure. But no African country has ever attained the international clout South Africa enjoyed in the 1990s, which it utilised to impressive effect as peacemaker and representative for a project of African renewal that is as essential and relevant today than when first articulated. The largely untapped influence and power of these three countries to lift the entire continent should not be underestimated.

All that said, much depends on swing states doing better at home. A recent example illustrates what can happen when they do not. South Africa’s economic weight in southern Africa is similar to that of Germany’s in the Euro area. Across nearly all key sectors such as telecommunications, retail, finance and mining, South African companies are heavily invested throughout the region. They act as drivers of growth in those economies, impacting civil societies and people on the ground in myriad ways. That South Africa’s economy is an “important anchor of economic stability” in southern Africa and even further into the continent is beyond doubt.

Within South Africa itself, migrant workers from neighbouring countries – numbering in the millions – provide much-needed revenue to their home countries in the form of repatriated wages. Zimbabweans comprise the majority of these migrants. Vast numbers returned home in 2015 for the Christmas holidays only to find that their hard-earned Rands did not go very far in a country on the brink of economic meltdown and localised famines. The price of staple products like bread was nearly twice as expensive as last year. Worse still, the collapse of South Africa’s currency, due in significant part to intensifying global pessimism over the future of Africa’s most advanced economy, meant that in places like Gweru and Bulawayo migrant workers found it difficult to find any vendors willing to even accept the South African currency. So they could not buy basic necessities like bananas, phone credit or a ticket for a taxi. Such are the second and third-order consequences swing states can unwittingly trigger in the continent when things go awry at home.

Banal as it may sound, being successful at home is key to being a successful swing state. “Success” does not mean being excellent on all levels simultaneously. Progress is bound to be uneven and subject to reversals, especially in Africa where nation-building processes are still in their infancy. And the basic ingredients for success – effective and inclusive institutions, political stability, sound policy choices – are often easier said than attained. History, as historians continually remind us, always unfolds in a contingent way. Amidst the particular challenges affecting Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, however, I would flag one key contradiction – elegantly framed by scholar Peter Lewis – that all three must confront boldly: transparency without accountability. Underway in each are a raft of commissions and investigations on issues vital to their future prosperity: official corruption, policing, state-owned enterprises. The list is long and growing. Transparency, a vital component of good governance, is strengthening. But this is largely meaningless unless it translates into more prosecutions, reforms and real accountability, which has yet to happen on a concomitant scale in any of the swing states. Kenya and Nigeria have their own Marikanas and their own Guptagates.

A major hurdle to overcome for each swing state, though to a lesser extent for Kenya, is convincing their neighbours and the continent as a whole that their external agendas are not entirely self-serving. No one should underestimate how deeply fear of dominance runs in Africa’s middle and smaller states. The robust spirit of Pan-Africanism has always co-existed with strongly nationalistic tendencies. Africa’s leaders have been fiercely reluctant to lessen the sovereignty of their states by surrendering powers to any supranational body despite the ethic of “African Unity”. In part this stems from fear that more powerful states will use Africa’s regional economic communities (RECs) to further their regional hegemony.

South Africa has come under particular scrutiny for what some neighbouring states perceive as “aggressive” economic policies, and also for putting their own global pretensions – exemplified by their BRICS membership – ahead of regional commitments. Kenya has arguably been most successful at achieving greater regional and continental influence through quiet diplomacy and collaboration. The indictments against Kenya’s president and other officials by the International Criminal Court illustrates the point, however one might feel about the merits of the case. Kenya deftly marshalled broad African support behind its cause without disengaging from the institution or its international partners that support it. Kenya would appear to understand better that there is a particular onus on swing states to build (or repair) trust in Africa’s regional frameworks, not least because their own agendas are questioned the most.

Kenya’s demonstrable commitment to building and empowering the East African Community (EAC) – the most integrated regional bloc in Africa – affords the rest of Africa salutary lessons on the benefits of integration. Perhaps above all, it shows what’s possible when the “politics” of regional integration give way to practical solutions.

Doing more to facilitate private sector regionalism should be a key priority of swing states. Business is already driving key regional initiatives. Corporate Pan-Africanism, exemplified in the major investments across borders by Nigerian cement mogul Aliko Dangote or South Africa’s SABmiller or Kenya’s ICT companies, is creating new identities and new connectedness outside the traditional spheres. By eschewing protectionism and instead promoting greater freedom of movement for business and labour, swing states will help Africa cure the pernicious “us (government) versus them (business, society)” disease.

Relations between swing states are vital to the success of continental organisations like the AU and the attainment of its Agenda 2063, the aspiration for “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena”. The European Union’s success would not have been possible without the complete transformation in relations between France and Germany in the second half of the 20th century. South America’s leading trading bloc, Mercosur, would not have been possible if its economic giants and close strategic partners, Argentina and Brazil, did not put aside mutual hostility and a dangerous nuclear rivalry in the 1980s. In the same way, the future success of the AU rests significantly on how the likes of Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and other major powers get along.

People-to-people links between Africa’s swing states are a key part of their relations. Currently, they are very weak. Educational, cultural and other types of exchanges between their respective citizens are, by international standards, comparatively meagre, and mostly confined to business. In the case of South Africans and Nigerians, levels of trust are low. Nigerians living in South Africa are often caricatured as gangsters or drug pedlars; the reputation of South Africans are scarred by the eruptions of xenophobia against other Africans and their own ‘delusions of exceptionalism’. In business, South African companies are very active in Nigeria, but it’s a one-way street: Nigerian (and other African) firms frequently cite South Africa’s protectionist policies and BEE regulations as barriers to entering its market, and a hard brake on intra-continental trade.

At the government level, much of the rhetoric suggests the two are in a battle for economic dominance in Africa and power projection globally. Much repair work will need to be done if the heady days of cooperation between then presidents Thabo Mbeki and his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo – originators of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – can be reinvigorated. Nigeria and South Africa’s approach appears to differ from Kenya’s “softer” diplomacy although relations between Kenya and South Africa, in particular, have suffered on account of the latter’s strict visa requirements which have deterred the flow of businesses and tourists.

Swing states need to do more to facilitate interaction between their citizens, not just in business and trade, but through the free movement of people and ideas. A common agenda and greater understanding will remain elusive otherwise.

Predictions based on quantitative data and trend analysis suggest that, from a global power perspective, for the next 25 years Africa is most likely to remain where it is currently: at the margins. Yet swing states could alter that prognosis significantly if they become, for lack of a better word, successful. Everyone has a stake in thinking about how to achieve that aim. It should not be left to dreamers to imagine what Africa might look like if its swing states were also its best performers. DM

Dr Terence McNamee is the Deputy Director of The Brenthurst Foundation. This article draws on the recent Brenthurst Foundation Discussion Paper he authored “Harnessing the Power of Africa’s Swing States: The Catalytic Role of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa”.

 

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Spartan Brigade Sets Pace for Future Missions to Africa

FORT STEWART, Ga. (Jan. 21, 2016) – Brigade and battalion staffs, assigned to the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, or IBCT, 3rd Infantry Division, conducted a command post exercise, or CPX, at the Mission Training Complex on Fort Stewart, Ga., Jan. 11-14.

The purpose of the CPX is to prepare for regional accord-series exercises, annual joint peacekeeping training exercises in support of U.S. Army Africa, or USARAF, that bring together U.S. Army personnel, United Nations partner militaries and counterparts in Africa.

“It’s unique in that this is the first time that this has been done,” said Maj. Joshua Teitge, brigade aviation officer and officer in charge of 2nd IBCT’s regionally-aligned forces, or RAF. “It’s a mini exercise teaching the brigade academics, and teaching how to train and mentor partner nations.”

Staff members from the brigade and its subordinate battalions attended the training, which was developed by the brigade. Regional accord planners, civil affairs Soldiers, and members of USARAF were also present to mentor and participate in the exercise.

“It’s all the subject matter experts for this, in one location, to build relationships and pass on knowledge,” Teitge said.

Cpt. Scott Saunders, who performs scenario development and management for USARAF, said that several aspects of what 2nd IBCT, or Spartan Brigade, did in this exercise will become a template for other regionally-aligned brigades.

“They’re leaning forward, trying to improve the foxhole for the next brigade,” Saunders said. “I really think it was unique and of great training value.”

Teitge said that past RAF took a couple of days to “get into the groove” of the accords and that this training was designed to significantly reduce the adjustment time. One hurdle that needed to be overcome is U.S. Army Soldiers are accustomed to digital equipment to assist in many planning tasks.

“We’ve stripped all the personnel of those digital systems that they’re so used to and familiar with and have regressed them back to the analog systems which is what they’ll use there,” Teitge said.

Teitge added that the planning process of the U.N. are different from the military decision making process used by the Army. He also said this was crucial to the mission for the staffs to adapt as military partners would already be familiar with the U.N. process.

Saunders and Teitge both expressed happiness about what the training accomplished.

“We’re doing the right training with the right people early enough out that they can focus their professional development,” Saunders said.

“It’s bringing together diverse groups of people and getting them all on the same sheet of music,” Teitge said. “It’s a very unique situation that Soldiers are learning from and that makes them more diverse.”

Spartan Brigade is active in its role as the regionally-aligned force for USARAF and is preparing to extend the brigade’s support of partner nations further in the coming months.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.gulf-times.com/story/477721/Growing-militant-threat-worries-West-Africa

Growing militant threat worries West Africa

January 27 2016 11:37 PM
By Malick Rokhy/AFP/Dakah

Faced with a growing militant threat, West African nations are scrambling to boost security but are seeing visitor numbers fall as foreign governments warn their nationals about the risks.

“The alert is being taken very seriously,” said a Senegalese security source after police carried out a weekend of security operations in a bid to tackle the “terrorist threat”.

Some 900 people were detained, mainly for security checks.

The situation is being taken particularly seriously in Dakar’s Corniche district, which is home to many hotels, he said.

Hotel security has been stepped up after 30 people were killed earlier this month in a deadly attack on a top Burkina Faso hotel and a nearby restaurant in the capital Ouagadougou.

Senegal is “an island of stability in an ocean of instability”, said Bakary Sambe, researcher on religious radicalism at Gaston Berger University, referring to the unrest gripping Mali to the east and Nigeria further south where the Boko Haram militants are active.

“It is increasingly a strategic retreat area for Western organisations” and occupies a “privileged position” in the region, he said.

That, however, is now making it an attractive target for destructive forces, “a symbolic target, because in attacking Senegal, you hit many interests”, he said.

Mohamed Fall Oumere, security expert and director of the Mauritanian newspaper La Tribune, said he expects militant attacks to extend westwards to countries such as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mauritania which have hitherto been largely spared “because of the security noose” around the area.

The militants want to send three messages, Oumere says.

One is to France, telling them that their 2013 intervention in Mali “remains unresolved” while another is to France’s allies to warn them that “they are still in the firing line”, he said.

The third is a message to the Islamic State group, a competing extremist faction, “which will unfortunately result in much damage and bloodshed”, he said.

Northern Mali fell under the control of militant groups linked to Al Qaeda in 2012.

They were largely ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013, although large swathes of the area remain lawless and prone to attacks.
In an interview with Mauritania’s Al-Akhbar website, a leader of the Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group threatened allies of the West, probably pointing to Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

Troops from the five countries make up most of the UN forces in Mali, and some of these nations host US and French military bases on their soil.

Speaking to AFP, French security expert Yves Trotignon, who knows the region well, said Niger seems very vulnerable and that mounting an attack on the capital Niamey “wouldn’t be very difficult”.

Last week, Niger’s Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou spoke for the first time of arrests over the past month of people who came to Niamey intending to carry out the kind of attacks seen in Ouagadougou.

“We receive information and threats around every two months,” he told the French broadcaster RFI.

In Dakar and Abidjan, the US and French envoys have urged their nationals to “avoid crowded areas” as they did after the November 20 attacks on a hotel in the Malian capital Bamako, which killed 20, 14 of them foreigners.

Even in Sierra Leone, where the Ebola virus has hit the tourist sector and where authorities lend little credibility to threats of attacks against hotels, security is being beefed up around major buildings, according to hotel sources.

Last week Idriss Deby Itno, president of Chad - a key member of France’s counter-terrorism mission in the Sahel region - said terrorism had become a worse threat than Ebola, which has killed over 11,000 people.

During a recently solidarity visit to Burkina Faso, he described terror as “an epidemic, worse than Ebola, worse than any illness”.

The Chadian leader said it imposed an additional burden on poorer countries that already had enough problems to deal with.

“With the meagre means available to us in this region, you cannot combat terrorism while also thinking about development, about youth employment, about creating jobs,” he said. “It’s impossible.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/common-security-progressive-alternatives-to-the-new-arms-race/5503957

Common Security – Progressive Alternatives to the New Arms Race

By Dr Steven Schofield
Global Research, January 27, 2016
The Less Network

Is a new arms race inevitable? Compared to the cautious optimism at the end of the Cold War, when the prospects for disarmament and a substantial peace dividend were universally welcomed, the rhetoric now is one of confrontation and existential threat.

Some extracts from the opening pages – subtitles added:

Under the Bush/Blair axis, with its determination to use military force to secure access to oil and other resources, the West embarked ona disastrous and illegal policy of invasion and occupation. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraqand Afghanistan were either killed or suffered serious injury as a direct consequence of military intervention and social breakdown,while millions more faced a bleak future as exiles and refugees.

If that legacy demonstrates anything it is that, however much the rhetoric remains one of defence to protect ourselves against dangerous enemiesand to encourage democratic governance, the reality is an aggressive militarism that has been an abject failure. Yet, decisions are being taken by the UK government that will reinforce our subordination to the United Statesbecause the very expense of the next generation of nuclear and conventional weapons makes us ever more dependent on US technology.

Common security offers the possibility fora much-needed and fundamental re-appraisal of the UK’s role in the world. Two essential criteria are disarmament and the release of resources from military spending for international economic and environmental programmes that address fundamental security issues around poverty and climate change.

This agenda can be tracedback to the very founding of the United Nations and its inspirational charter. Quite simply, the objective was to end the scourge of war after the most destructive conflict in world history. UN disarmament initiatives were based on the recognition that any new arms race must be vigorously opposed since the build-up of forces, in itself, was a major cause of instability, feeding the demand for further military preparations in an ever-increasing cycle of confrontation.Resources squandered on armaments could then be used for social priorities that addressed the growing gap in wealth and power between rich and poor and the underlying economic and social causes of conflict.

Since its founding, the UN has also been a leading body highlighting environmental concerns and the growing security threat from climate change

Such is the scale of the crisis that there are growing calls for the rapid transition to a post-carbon economy,leaving coal, oil and gas supplies in the ground and satisfying future requirements through renewable energy matched by energy-efficiency technologies to reduce overall demand. The scale of investment is one that has only previously been mobilised for arms production and war. The challenge is to mobilise on the same scale for common security and peace.

We are living through a neo-liberal political and economic experiment that is increasing, rather than reducing income inequalities and is punishing the poor for the profligacy of the banks

There should be no illusions about the barriers to any progressive alternative. Economic growth and prosperity are seen in terms of unfettered corporate power and further exploitation of non-renewable resources, underpinned by Western military force, even where this might lead to confrontation and war.

The idea of a internationally coordinated disarmament and development programme around climate change and common security would be anathema to the range of elite groupsin the military-industrial-complex that have direct access to political power and decision-making.

A climate of fear is being inculcated. Russia is now being re-established as a major threat on the scale of the former Soviet Union, while Islamic State is represented as a new form of terrorism that could use its territorial base in Syria and Iraq to build a network dedicated to the destruction of Western societies. The threat of war, therefore,far from receeding is now muti-faceted and the world is becoming ever more dangerous.

Yet the United States and its allies refuse to take any responsibility for the deterioration in relations between the West and Russia. The policy of military encirclement and its support for corrupt and anti-democratic regimes in the Ukraine gave the Putin leadership a simple cause through which to mobilise domestic support for its own military build up, leading to the annexation of Crimea. Nor will the United States take any responsibiligy for the chaos of post-invasion politics and economics in the Middle East and, more recently North Africa, in which extremist groups can gain support.

To argue for a de-escalation of military confrontation, therefore,is not an act of weakness but an act of strength if it is linked to common security policies that help transform the international system offering both environmental and economic security.

Read the full paper, Common Security – Progressive Alternatives to the New Arms Race:

http://www.lessnet.co.uk/docs/arms-race-alternatives.pdf

Dr Steven Schofield wrote this paper following the Defence and Security Review in order to highlight the common security framework as an alternative to the new arms race.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.justsecurity.org/28972/instability-terrorism-africas-sahel-primer/

Instability and Terrorism in Africa’s Sahel: A Primer

By Jeremy H. Keenan
Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 9:40 AM

Africa’s Sahel region has been in the international news a lot since 2012, largely because of its increasing political instability and insecurity. More recently, the region has gained attention because of a terrorist attack on the Radisson Blue Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, on November 20, 2015 — the attack killed 22 people, including two attackers — and a similar attack on the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on January 15 of this year, which left a death toll of 30.

At least four militant jihadist groups have claimed responsibility for one or both of the attacks. These include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Murabitoune, Ansar al-Dine, and the Macina Liberation Front (FLM). Members of MUJAO (Mouvement pour l’unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest), now mostly dispersed amongst these other four groups, were also probably involved.

Following the Ouagadougou attack, the BBC called the Sahel a “new frontier” in the war on terror. But it has been a “new” front for some time now. Similar words were used by Washington in 2003 when the Bush administration referred to the Sahel, which had just experienced its first encounter with post-9/11 terrorism, as “a second front in the global war on terror.” The response of President Bush was to launch the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) in 2004, followed by the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in 2005. Both programs were based largely on fabricated, “false-flag” and exaggerated incidents of “terrorism.” (I discusses this at greater length in my books on terrorism in the Sahara, The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara.)

The Sahel is possibly Africa’s least known region. The word “sahel” in Arabic means “shore” and refers literally to the southern “shore” of the Sahara; a semi-arid zone roughly 600 miles wide between the desert and the savannah and about 3,500 miles long from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Today, the term is used increasingly in a geopolitical context to refer to the countries of the western Sahel, namely Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad, and now, as a result of the January 15 attack, Burkina Faso. These countries have become increasingly destabilized politically — first, as a result of Washington’s PSI and TSCTI, and more recently (since 2011), by the fall-out from Muammar Qadhafi’s overthrow in Libya.

The Sahel is Africa’s most ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse region, being the interface between Islamic and non-Islamic Africa, and between “white-skinned” (Arabs and Berbers) and “black-skinned” Africans, racial designations that are still used in the region today. The Sahel is home to Muslims, Christians, and animists; nomads and farmers; Arabs, Berbers, and African tribes alike. Its extraordinarily rich ethnic diversity and power structures are rooted in the ancient kingdoms and empires of Ghana, Kanem-Bornu, Mali, Wolof, Songhai, and Fulani that emerged between the 8th and 19th centuries.

The region was under French colonial rule from the late 19th century until 1960. Since then, its countries have remained linked by their shared historical and colonial experiences, their predominant Islamic “sufi” religion, and their shared problems of recurring drought, underdevelopment, poverty, and now terrorism.

The post-colonial era has seen a painful, drought-driven, and often conflict-ridden shift from the predominance of nomadism and herding (especially in the north) to subsistence and commercial agriculture. In the last decade-and-a-half, the region has also added the contemporary lifestyles of the digitalized world: cell phones and the social media.

The population of these four Sahel countries is estimated at 50 million people, plus a further 17 million if Burkina Faso is included. Racial divisions were prominent in both pre-colonial and colonial times, and are still socially and politically relevant today. In 2014, for example, the Mali government urged the killing of “white-skinned” Arabs and Berbers whom it designated as “terrorists,” while in Mauritania, slavery and the mentality of slavery are still the country’s most defining social characteristic.

Even though almost wholly Muslim, the region is riven by different Islamic movements, many of which have come to the fore and been the cause of serious conflict in the last few years. The main tension is now between the region’s traditionally more moderate Sufi beliefs and more fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrines, with the last four years seeing the rise of violent “salafist-jihadism.”

In Mali and Niger especially, independence in 1960 resulted in political power being vested in the African peoples of the more densely populated southern regions. The previously dominant Tuareg and Arab tribes of the north became ethnic minorities. Post-colonial Mali and Niger have both been characterized by a series of unsuccessful revolts by Tuareg groups against their southern rulers in Bamako (Mali) and Niamey (Niger).

Following the US’s launch of its global war on terror into the Sahel in 2003, corrupt governments in Bamako and Niamey provoked Tuareg rebels to take up arms in order to portray them as “terrorists” and so gain further military and financial support from Washington.

The overthrow of the Qadhafi regime in Libya in 2011 further destabilized much of the Sahel — notably Mali and Niger — and triggered a further Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali, known to Tuareg as “Azawad.” By April 2012, the Tuareg rebels had put the ill-equipped and ill-led Mali army to flight. However, the rebels, having declared an independent Azawad, were themselves soon sidelined by “salafist-jihadist” insurgents covertly backed by Algeria’s secret intelligence serve. A military coup d’état in Bamako and the collapse of Mali into a state of crisis left southern Mali on the brink of falling to the insurgents. With regional and international organizations dithering, France took it upon itself to intervene militarily in Mali in January 2013 in what was known as Operation Serval.

However, far from destroying the jihadists, the French military intervention merely dispersed them to Tunisia and Libya, and across the Sahel. In mid-2014, France expanded its military “counterterrorism” operation throughout the Sahel as part of Operation Barkhane, the successor to Operation Serval. However, in spite of a UN peacekeeping force of some 10,000 in Mali, at least 3,800 French troops spread across the Sahel, and contingents of several hundreds of Dutch, Swedish, and German troops aided by US “specialists,” radical violent extremism has taken a deeper hold of the Sahel. 2015 saw Boko Haram spreading from Nigeria into Niger and Chad, while Mali suffered an average of about two jihadist attacks per month. Jihadist ideology in the region is being couched increasingly in language that is opposed to the weak, ineffective, and corrupt local governments, as well as the West and especially France, whose military presence in the region would appear to be exacerbating rather than diminishing extremist militancy. Spokespersons for the jihadist groups are now even talking about the creation of a Saharan caliphate.

This historical and political context points toward the greater need to understand the Sahel before rashly developing another round of military missions in the area. While the Sahel isn’t a “new” front in the war on terror, it is certainly one deserving closer attention. Decades of division and instability — and years of counterproductive Western counterterror operations — mean the region is a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist organizations.


About the Author

Jeremy H. Keenan is a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and a Visiting Professor at the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.africom.mil/newsroom/art...military-political-priorities-for-east-africa

Security conference aligns military, political priorities for East Africa

By Senior Airman Peter Thompson
U.S. Air Force
CJTF-HOA, January 26, 2016

Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa hosted the 2016 East Africa Security Synchronization Conference Jan. 20-22, at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti.

The EASSC is the only conference between U.S. Department of State and U.S. military representatives dedicated to aligning military and political priorities for East Africa.

More than 70 U.S. embassy representatives from each East African country and organizations including the African Union, U.S. Africa Command, and AFRICOM components attended the event to kick start the process of synchronizing and prioritizing all activities in East Africa.

“Events that bring together the diplomatic and military leaders from the U.S. and the region are incredibly valuable because we’re all working on the same set of problems, and they’re not easy issues,” said Amb. Tom Kelly, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Djibouti.

The ambassador said we can achieve progress by engaging in informal discussions, and the conference provides, “the luxury of us all being here together to talk about the tough issues.”

“All of these efforts are focused on achieving a single goal: operationalize the Theater Campaign Plan by synchronizing the combatant commander’s primary ways with all available means to achieve our end states and execute our enduring tasks,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Mark Stammer, CJTF-HOA commanding general.

The conference encompassed several working group sessions that consisted of discussions on some of AFRICOM’s major priorities, known as lines of effort, to include neutralizing Al-Shabaab, interdicting illicit activity and building the peace-keeping capacity of African partners.

Additionally, the conference consisted of discussion panels and briefings that addressed a spectrum of topics including upcoming political elections, regional threat analysis and training assistance activities to secure the best outcome for the region.

“A safe, stable and secure Africa is in our national interest,” Stammer said. “Our work together helps strengthen the defense capabilities of African states and regional organizations to enable them to address the security threats more effectively.”

The conference provided an opportunity for attendees to better understand the benefits of a regional approach to African security instead of strictly country-focused planning.

“This conference is important because it is easy to lose focus of regional priorities when members are settled into country,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Kimberly Walz, Security Force Assistance Division deputy director. “We often forget how individual countries and projects in those countries affect East Africa as a whole. This is a way to realign and recalibrate.”

Much of the conference gravitated around discussing the management of resources and assets dedicated to supporting operations in East Africa.

“Each year funds are allocated for the entire East African region,” Walz said. “Everyone has an opinion on how that budget should or shouldn’t be spent, while often overlooking the region as a whole.”

As the conference came to a close, Amb. Alexander M. Laskaris, AFRICOM deputy to the commander for civil-military engagement, challenged the audience to take what they learned during the two-day conference and couple it with lessons learned from the past.

“The key is to maintain relationships, maintain contacts and never accept things for the way they have always been,” Laskaris said. “We have to get it right. The good news is we have more partners than ever before, we are working together as a government better than ever before, we are working better with our European allies and non-traditional partners, and we are working better than ever before with Africa.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?id=195713

26 January 2016

China's New Crisis Diplomacy in Africa and the Middle East

How is China reacting to the growing threats to its human and material investments in Africa and the Middle East? According to Luke Patey, Beijing is abandoning its traditional policy of not interfering in the internal affairs of others and becoming more involved in conflict resolution, to include peacemaking and peacekeeping activities.

By Luke Patey for Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)

This policy brief was originally published by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) on 18 January 2016.

Crisis diplomacy is now a permanent fixture of Chinese foreign policy. Hardly a year passes without a crisis impacting China’s expanding economic footprint in Africa and the Middle East. Examples include the large-scale evacuation of citizens from civil war in Libya in 2011, the threat to energy assets from conflict in Sudan and South Sudan in 2012 and 2013, the 2014 kidnapping and evacuation of oil workers in Iraq, and the deaths of corporate executives in a terror attack in Mali in 2015.

China’s trade and investment in Africa and the Middle East have followed similar rising trajectories in the past decade and a half. Trade has increased some twenty-fold since the turn of the century, reaching over $200 billion with each of these regions in 2014. Oil and energy investments dominate commerce. Two-thirds of China’s oil imports come from Africa and the Middle East, and energy, finance and infra*structure represent growing sectors of economic engagement. Instability in both regions has necessi*tated a political and security response from Beijing.

As part of a broader realignment of its foreign and security policy, China’s new crisis diplomacy repre*sents the Chinese government’s efforts to protect their citizens and investments when these are threatened by insecurity and instability overseas. Beijing’s engagement in conflict resolution and deepening involvement in regional and international peacekeeping efforts marks a shift away from its longstanding principle of non-interference. Chinese diplomats have become more engaged in peace talks in Sudan and South Sudan, the Chinese navy has joined the international anti-piracy coalition off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and will establish a logistics facility in Djibouti, and Chinese combat troops are part of UN peacekeeping missions in Mali and South Sudan. China aims to sustain its growing interests abroad and to demonstrate greater support for international peace and security, though not through direct military intervention. Nonetheless, China’s gradual departure from the principle of non-interference represents a critical turning point in its foreign policy and the drivers of China’s new crisis diplomacy in Africa and the Middle East deserve further scrutiny.

Many actors and many interests

The number, variety and level of engagement of Chinese actors in Africa and the Middle East have grown dramatically over the past two decades. Just like any foreign player, China is not a monolithic actor overseas. At home and abroad, China is made up of many actors and many interests. To understand the interests behind China’s engagement overseas and the direction in which its foreign policy may be heading in a particular country or region, the diverse group of Chinese actors that make up China and their diversity of interests need to be disentangled.

Political bodies in the Communist Party of China (CPC), particularly the Politburo Standing Committee under President Xi Jinping, remain the highest authority on foreign policy. While President Xi is striving to consolidate decision-making, there remain different channels of influence on foreign policy both within and outside political and government organiza*tions. For instance, CPC bodies and branches of the People’s Liberation Army may be more involved in countries where historical socialist and military ties are still strong. The Ministry of Commerce and China’s policy banks, the China Export-Import Bank and China Bank of Development, will usually play a leading foreign policy role in countries where China has made resource-backed loans. Other bureaucratic channels of influence include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security and the National Develop*ment and Reform Commission.

Chinese companies and foreign policy

State-owned enterprises and private companies also influence China’s foreign policy decision-making. In the mid-1990s, China’s national oil companies took the first steps in what evolved into an official ‘Go Out’ policy for Chinese state-owned and private compa*nies. In search of new opportunities overseas, Africa and the Middle East became key regional destinations for Chinese companies. Foreign investment was accompanied by the migration of Chinese nationals completing contract work for Chinese state-owned companies or establishing small businesses on their own.

In the absence of other ties, the predominance of Chinese companies overseas has at times allowed special interests to have an uneven influence on Chinese foreign policy. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), for example, is the most signifi*cant Chinese actor in Sudan and South Sudan. While there are other Chinese corporate, political and military interests in the Sudans, CNPC is front and centre in relations, with investments of upwards of $10 billion in oil and infrastructure.

The corporate goal of CNPC to expand overseas and its high-level of autonomy from the Chinese govern*ment have indirectly steered China’s foreign policy. Without its presence in the Sudans, China’s involve*ment in crisis diplomacy in both countries would be minimal. Instead, in the face of conflict in the Sudans in recent years, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has in practice discarded its stringent adherence to the non-interference principle by engaging in conflict resolution and urging the warring sides not to target Chinese oil investments and personnel. Yet in its rhetoric it is slowly exploring alternatives to a new policy of limited engagement. It has also thrown its support behind the UN mediation efforts in which the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), has taken a leading role.

There are, however, only a few cases where a single Chinese company plays such an influential role in Chinese foreign policy. In Iran, for instance, China has oil interests, but different corporate and political channels of influence nonetheless balance its foreign policy. The activities of infrastructure and telecommu*nications companies, along with political and military links, and the demand that China closely balance its relations with Iran with other regional powers ensure that China’s national oil companies do not monopolize relations.

Converging and conflicting interests

More often than not, the interests of Chinese actors in Africa and the Middle East converge around common objectives. Building globally competitive national champions out of China’s state-owned enterprises is a priority for China’s political leadership. But there have been notable instances during crises in Africa and the Middle East where the corporate interests of Chinese state-owned and private companies conflict with Chinese foreign policy.

The Chinese state arms manufacturer, the China North Industries Corporation, widely known as Norinco, has been involved in several cases. In Libya, the company negotiated deals with the Gaddafi government in the summer of 2011 just months after China voted in favour of a UN arms embargo. In 2014, the Chinese embassy in South Sudan needed to backtrack on statements that China would not sell arms to the South Sudanese government when Norinco was found to be moving ahead with an earlier sale. Whether these were misunderstandings between Norinco and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a fast changing environment or the arms manufacturer simply disregarding official policy is unclear. What is evident is that, rather than pursuing a well-coordinat*ed foreign policy, many Chinese actors are following their own narrow interests. Without stronger coordina*tion efforts from the Chinese government, cases of discord between Beijing and Chinese corporations will only multiply as China’s overseas investments grow.

Hedging its bets

Elsewhere China has stayed closer to its principle of non-interference. In Syria Chinese economic interests are relatively small, and to date Beijing has perceived the political costs of intervention to be relatively high. Along with Russia, China has vetoed Western-drafted UN resolutions on the civil war. But unlike Moscow, Beijing seeks to be a neutral player. Chinese officials have met with both the Syrian government and opposition groups in an attempt to balance its foreign policy approach. After witnessing the rapid deteriora*tion of stability in Libya following NATO intervention, Beijing remains unconvinced of the utility of military force in resolving conflict. China does support the fight against the militant group Islamic State and the terrorism it perpetrates, but it opposes the US-led military intervention and America’s efforts to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Similar to China’s endorsement of international and regional efforts to broker a political settlement in South Sudan, Beijing backs UN and Arab League mediation in the Syrian civil war. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on the international community not to ‘arbitrarily interfere’. But supporting regional organizations, while essential, also poses its own set of hurdles to overcome. Both the East African regional body, IGAD, in South Sudan and the Arab League in Syria have member states complicit in the conflicts they are attempting to mediate.

Hard to stay neutral

In South Sudan, Libya, Syria and other internal conflicts, China has committed itself to a neutral position. However, as its economic presence expands in Africa and the Middle East, and national security concerns come to be linked with international events, such as the threat of terrorism, Beijing may have little choice than to engage further in crisis diplomacy. One of the most pressing foreign policy and security challenges that China faces in Africa and the Middle East is coordinating a diverse set of Chinese actors, with different channels of influence back in Beijing, to fall in line with a common policy of engagement. Similar to other major powers, China’s foreign policy is made up of many actors with converging and conflicting interests. Understanding these complexes will reveal what tools China can bring to the table to solve some of these long-running and severe crises, as well as identifying where China continues to face challenges.

Recommendations
China should give renewed attention to inter-agency coordination between government ministries and state-owned enterprises during crises overseas.
Governments and corporations can collaborate with a variety of Chinese stakeholders, from government ministries to state-owned enterprises, on risk mitigation strategies.
Western governments seeking to work more closely with China on crises should attach a high priority to working through regional organizations in Africa and the Middle East.