WAR 02-27-2016-to-03-04-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(204) 02-06-2016-to-02-12-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...12-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(205) 02-13-2016-to-02-19-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...19-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(206) 02-20-2016-to-02-26-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...26-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

__

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-cessation-idUSKCN0VZ2Z6

World | Sat Feb 27, 2016 6:36am EST
Related: World, United Nations, Syria

Truce halts most Syria fighting; Russia stops flights

BEIRUT | By Tom Perry and Mariam Karouny


Fighting mostly stopped across western and northern Syria on Saturday and Russia halted its air raids, under a cessation of hostilities which the United Nations called the best hope for peace since civil war began five years ago.

Under the U.S.-Russian accord accepted by President Bashar al-Assad's government and many of his enemies, fighting should cease so aid can reach civilians and talks can open to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people and made 11 million homeless.

Russia, which says it intends to continue strikes against areas held by Islamist fighters that are not covered by the truce, said it would suspend all flights over Syria for the day on Saturday to ensure no wrong targets were hit by mistake.

A Syrian rebel commander said government shelling had stopped in some parts of Syria but continued elsewhere in what he described as a violation that could wreck the agreement.

The truce is the culmination of new diplomatic efforts that reflect a battlefield dramatically changed since Russia joined the war in September with air strikes to prop up Assad. Moscow's intervention effectively destroyed the hope his enemies have maintained for five years -- encouraged by Arab and Western states -- to topple him by force.

The agreement is the first of its kind to be attempted in four years and, if it holds, would be the most successful truce of the war so far.

But there are weak spots in a fragile deal which has not been directly signed by the Syrian warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire. Importantly, it does not cover powerful jihadist groups such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria.

"Let's pray that this works because frankly this is the best opportunity we can imagine the Syrian people has had for the last five years in order to see something better and hopefully something related to peace," U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said at a midnight news conference in Geneva.

He said he expected occasional breaches of the agreement but called on the parties to show restraint and curb escalation.

Several insurgents in the western and northern part of the country said early on Saturday that it was mainly quiet so far.

Nevertheless, Fares Bayoush, head of the Fursan al-Haqq rebel group which fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that continuing violations could lead to the "collapse of the agreement".

"There are areas where the bombardment has stopped but there are areas where there are violations by the regime such as Kafr Zeita in Hama, via targeting with artillery, and likewise in Morek in northern Hama countryside."


Related Coverage
› Russia says not carrying out Syria air strikes to avoid mistakes
› Syrian rebel commander says continued government violation could end truce


REPORTS OF VIOLENCE

In early reports of violence, a Syrian rebel group in the northwest said three of its fighters had been killed while repelling an attack from government ground forces a few hours after the plan came into effect. Its spokesman called it a breach of the agreement; the Syrian military could not be reached immediately for comment.

Syria's state media said at least two people were killed and several wounded when a car bomb exploded at the entrance of Salamiya, a town east of Hama city and a frontline between government forces and Islamic State group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict said it was carried out by Islamic State.

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said Islamic State fighters had attacked Tal Abyad, a town near the Turkish border.

Damascus and Moscow say they will respect the agreement but continue to fight the Nusra Front and Islamic State. Other rebels seen as moderates by the West say they fear this will be used to justify attacks on them.

Russia's defense ministry said it would suspend air strikes in a "green zone" -- defined as those parts of Syria held by groups that have accepted the cessation -- and make no flights at all on Saturday.

"Given the entry into force of the U.N. Security Council resolution that supports the Russian-American agreements on a ceasefire, and to avoid any possible mistakes when carrying out strikes, Russian military planes, including long-range aviation, are not carrying out any flights over Syrian territory on Feb. 27," the defense ministry said.

Sergei Rudskoi, a lieutenant-general in the Russian air force, told a news briefing that Moscow had sent the United States a list of 6,111 fighters who had agreed to the ceasefire deal and 74 populated areas which should not be bombed.

Nusra Front, one of Syria's most powerful Islamist rebel groups, often operates close to other groups, making it potentially difficult to prove whether strikes have targeted it. On Friday, Nusra urged insurgents to intensify their attacks on Assad and his allies.


"THERE IS CALM"

A rebel fighter said government forces briefly fired artillery at a village in Aleppo province, which he said was under the control of the Levant Front, another group under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army which has backed the truce.


Related Coverage
› Syrian rebel Jaish al-Islam says records truce violations by government
› U.N. expects breaches of Syria truce, urges restrained response

Nevertheless he said the frontline was quieter than before the agreement took effect.

"There is calm. Yesterday at this time there were fierce battles. It is certainly strange, but the people are almost certain that the regime will breach the truce on the grounds of hitting Nusra. There is the sound of helicopters from the early morning," he told Reuters earlier on Saturday.

Fighting raged across much of western Syria right up until the cessation came into effect but there was calm in many parts of the country shortly after midnight, the Observatory said.

"In Damascus and its countryside ... for the first time in years, calm prevails," Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said. "In Latakia, calm, and at the Hmeimim air base there is no plane activity," he said, referring to the Latakia base where Russia's warplanes operate.

Some gunfire had been heard shortly after midnight in the northern city of Aleppo, and there were some blasts heard in northern Homs province, but it was not clear what had caused them, Abdulrahman said.

After years in which any action by the United Nations Security Council was blocked by Moscow, Russia's intervention has opened a path for multilateral diplomacy while undermining the long-standing Western demand that Assad leave power.

The Security Council unanimously demanded late on Friday that all parties to the conflict comply with terms of the plan. De Mistura said he intends to restart peace talks on March 7, provided the halt in fighting largely holds.

U.N.-backed peace talks, the first in two years and the first to include delegations from Damascus and the rebels, collapsed earlier this month before they began, with the rebels saying they could not negotiate while they were being bombed.

The government, backed by Russian air strikes, has dramatically advanced in recent weeks, moving close to encircling Aleppo, Syria's biggest city before the war, and threatening to seal the Turkish border that has served as the main lifeline for rebel-held areas.

Washington said it was time for Russia to show it was serious about halting fighting by honoring a commitment not to strike Syrian groups that are part of the moderate opposition.


(Reporting by John Davison, Mariam Karouny and Tom Perry in Beirut, Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations in New York, Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Writing by Mariam Karouny and Peter Graff)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/...deploy-spain-nato-military-exercise/81010020/

B-52s deploy to Spain for NATO military exercise

By Oriana Pawlyk, Air Force Times 7:20 p.m. EST February 26, 2016

Three B-52 Stratofortress bombers and more than 200 airmen are in Spain for a military exercise led by Norway.

The deployment for exercise Cold Response is the latest in a series of steps taken by the Pentagon to reassure allies in Europe who are increasingly worried about Russian aggression.

The bombers are assigned to the 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.

"Strategic bomber deployments enhance the readiness and training vital to rapidly projecting global power and responding to any potential crisis or challenge,” Adm. Cecil D. Haney, U.S. Strategic Command commander, said in an Air Force release on Friday.

USSTRATCOM said the bombers would be in the area for a short-term deployment, but did not specify exactly how long they would take part in the mission.

“Supplementing U.S. European Command’s forward presence with B-52s exercises the forward operating locations that enable our collective defense capabilities while demonstrating our ability to command, control and conduct global bomber operations,” Haney said.

The exercise is meant to rehearse "high-intensity operations in winter conditions," according to the Defense Department. The training of more than a dozen countries is meant to highlight NATO's ability "to defend against any threat in any environment."


Oriana Pawlyk covers deployments, cyber, Guard/Reserve, uniforms, physical training, crime and operations in the Middle East, Europe and Pacific for Air Force Times. She was the Early Bird Brief editor in 2015. Email her at opawlyk@airforcetimes.com.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1976871-china-starts-building-military-base-in-north-africa/

China Starts Building Military Base In North Africa

By Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times | February 26, 2016
Last Updated: February 26, 2016 10:06 pm

The Chinese regime has begun construction on a military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, that will be used to extend the reach of its military.

“Currently, construction of infrastructure for the support facilities has started, and the Chinese side has dispatched personnel to Djibouti for relevant work,” said Colonel Wu Qian, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense, in a transcript of a Feb. 25 press briefing.

Qian said logistical support will be among the base’s main uses. He claimed the Chinese regime would use it for missions to escort ships through the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast, and for “peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.”

According to other Chinese officials, however, the base could be the start of a more nefarious agenda.

A major general in the Chinese military recently called for China to contain the United States by attacking its finances, saying “that’s the way to control America’s lifeblood.”

The call was made by Maj. Gen. , a professor at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) National Defense University, in an op-ed published in the official mouthpiece of the PLA, China Military Online.

Liang said a key part of this strategy, the CCP should place strategic importance on major shipping channels, including the South China Sea, the Malacca Strait, Gwadar Port, and the China–Pakistan Railway.


MORE:•You’re on File: Exclusive Inside Story on China’s Database of Americans
•Investigative Report: A Hospital Built for Murder


The PLA’s military base in Djibouti is at the mouth of the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, which sees close to 3.2 million barrels of oil pass through it each day.

Liang is one of two PLA officers who wrote the 1999 book, “Unrestricted Warfare,” which has become a roadmap for China’s use of unconventional warfare—from currency manipulation to cyberattacks.

In his recent op-ed, and noting a long-term strategy to control key points with geopolitical value, he states “To effectively contain the United States, other countries shall think more about how to cut off the capital flow to the United States while formulating their strategies.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/26/politics/isis-attacks-genocide-claims/index.html

Pressure increases for U.S. to call ISIS attacks genocide

By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd, CNN
Updated 9:41 PM ET, Fri February 26, 2016


(CNN)—The Obama administration this week faced intensifying pressure from lawmakers and activists to label what ISIS is doing in Syria and Iraq a genocide.

Advocates of religious freedom stepped up their campaign with a petition and a commercial to be aired on cable news channels, demanding the United States make a legal determination to call the atrocities by ISIS a genocide, actions that include brutal attacks on the Yazidis in Iraq and the bloody beheading of Christians.

A website operated by the Knights of Columbus and listing representatives of several denominations counts presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio among their backers, as well as religious figures including Pope Francis, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles. Even former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has weighed in, declaring in December, "What is happening is genocide."

At three separate hearings this week, Secretary of State John Kerry was pressed by Republican lawmakers.

"It's time for America to act," said Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California at Thursday's hearing. "We are talking about the lives of tens of thousands of people who are brutally being brutally slaughtered, targeted for genocide."

"I share just a huge sense of revulsion over these acts," Kerry told lawmakers Wednesday. While he promised a decision soon, he said fact-gathering and legal analysis were required first.

"We are currently doing what I have to do, which is review very carefully the legal standards and precedents," he said.

Thousands of members of the Yazidi religious sect in Iraq have been killed by ISIS fighters, activists say, starting with an attack on them in 2014 in Sinjar, Iraq.

One Yazidi, Sabah Mirza Mahmoud, told CNN afterward, "ISIS killed my dad, my uncles, they kidnapped 25 relatives, including women." Another said, "A man was shot next to me, and fell on me. I was covered with his blood."

Many of the victims said the Islamic State attacked them because of their religion.

A 19-year-old Yazidi woman who escaped said ISIS fighters came to her village and said, "You have to convert to Islam, or we will kill you."

And a woman who said she had been captured and raped told CNN that her ISIS captor said, "Anyone who doesn't convert to Islam, we will kill the males and 'marry' the girls."

But Christian advocacy organizations and some lawmakers say the Yazidis are not the only victims, and are demanding that the administration declare that Christians are victims of ISIS genocide, too.

They point to the brutal beheadings by ISIS of Christians from Ethiopia and Christians from Egypt, and to ISIS propaganda that explicitly pledges to wage war on Christians. One issue of their magazine Dabiq showed an ISIS flag flying over the Vatican, with an article saying, "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women."

U.S. officials tell CNN there has been a debate inside the White House and the State Department going back to last year over whether to invoke the genocide label.

"There are lawyers considering whether or not that term can be properly applied in this scenario," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said earlier this month. "It has significant consequences, and it matters for a whole variety of reasons, both legal and moral."

But he added that the designation would not change the administration's response, which he described as an aggressive campaign to push back ISIS, coupled with efforts to protect minorities, such as the coalition effort to help Yazidis escape from Sinjar.

In general, genocide characterizes the systematic destruction of a national or ethnic group, specifically by execution or murder.

One thing a genocide designation could do for victims is bolster their asylum claims in other countries, according to Travis Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council.

"They can say, 'Look, it's been clearly established that we're the target of genocide based on our religion,' " he said.

But such a designation could also open complicated questions about U.S. obligations to refugees and asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq, and to calls for greater U.S. military engagement. While there are no concrete steps it would specifically require the administration to take, it could rally the international community to step up the campaign against ISIS, according to former State Department senior adviser Robert McKenzie, now at the Brookings Institution.

"That would not only mean more bombing. Potentially, that would also mean more support to displaced persons," he said.

Still, McKenzie said, a genocide label is unlikely to have a practical effect on Islamic State's violent ambitions.

"I mean, this is a group that has an apocalyptic worldview," he said. "I don't suspect that this is going to impact the way that they operate."

CNN's Elise Labbott, Atika Shubert, Ivan Watson and Nick Paton Walsh contributed to this report.

 

[vestige]

U.S. officials tell CNN there has been a debate inside the White House and the State Department going back to last year over whether to invoke the genocide label.

?????

but it is definitely not terrorism.... just an isolated incident (x10,000)

BS

 

[Housecarl]

Since "moderate" is a relative term we'll see what deeds they wrought......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-election-vote-idUSKCN0VZ0E7

World | Sat Feb 27, 2016 6:01pm EST
Related: World

Iran's pragmatic Rouhani cheers election wins, says government stronger

TEHRAN | By Samia Nakhoul


Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earned an emphatic vote of confidence and reformist partners secured surprise gains in parliament in early results from elections that could accelerate the Islamic Republic's emergence from years of isolation.

While gains by moderates and reformists in Friday's polls were most evident in the capital, Tehran, the sheer scale of the advances there suggests a legislature more friendly to the pragmatist Rouhani has emerged as a distinct possibility.

A loosening of control by the anti-Western hardliners who currently dominate the 290-seat parliament could strengthen his hand to open Iran further to foreign trade and investment following last year's breakthrough nuclear deal.

"The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government," Rouhani said, adding he would work with anyone who won election to build a future for the industrialized, oil-exporting country.

The polls were seen by analysts as a potential turning point for Iran, where nearly 60 percent of its 80 million population is under 30 and eager to engage with the world following the lifting of most sanctions.

Millions crowded polling stations on Friday to vote for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, which selects the country's highest authority, the supreme leader. Both bodies have been in the hands of hardliners for years.

Supporters of Rouhani, who promoted the nuclear deal, were pitted against hardliners close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are wary of detente with Western countries.


ACUMEN

Rouhani and key ally and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were leading the race for the Assembly of Experts with most votes counted, and appeared to be sure of winning seats, early results released on Saturday showed.

Until now, the contest for this seat of clerical power was an unremarkable event, but not this time. Because of Khamenei’s health and age, 76, the new assembly members who serve eight-year terms are likely to choose his successor. The next leader could well be among those elected this week.

Rafsanjani is among the founders of the Islamic Republic and was its president from 1989-1997. Nearly always at the center of Iran's intricate webs of power, the arch-fixer is famous for his pragmatism and political acumen.

Two prominent hardliners were on course to be elected with lesser scores in the experts assembly race: Ahmad Jannati was in 11th place and the assembly's current chairman, Mohammad Yazdi, was 15th. Arch-conservative Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi appeared unlikely to win a seat, according to partial results.

The results were initially announced as final in an official statement. A later statement said the results were partial and a final tally would be announced in due course.


INFLUENCE

A Reuters tally, based on official results published so far, suggested the pro-Rouhani camp and allied independents were leading in the parliamentary vote. Some moderate conservatives, including current speaker Ali Larijani, support Rouhani.

A breakdown of the results had independents on 44, reformists on 79, and hardliners on 106, the tally showed. A number of seats will be decided in run-offs in late April because no candidate won the required 25 percent of votes cast. Eight of the initial winners were women.

Analyst say the large number of independents may be significant as they could cooperate across ideological lines with Rouhani's government.

Whatever the outcome, Iran's political system places much power in the hands of the conservative Islamic establishment including the Guardian Council, which vets all laws passed by parliament.


(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Sam Wilkin; Editing by William Maclean and Leslie Adler)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.expressnews.com/news/us-...r-weapons-boss-urges-upgrades-now-6858417.php

U.S. nuclear weapons boss urges upgrades now

Associated Press
February 27, 2016

VANDENBERG AFB, Calif. — In describing how little room the Pentagon has to extend the life of its decades-old nuclear forces, the top U.S. nuclear war-fighting commander, Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, says “we’re at the brick wall stage.”

Time to begin modernizing the country’s nuclear weapons is running short, he and other Pentagon leaders say. They contend the force is still in fighting shape: “Safe, reliable and effective” is the official mantra. But they argue that the time has come to begin modernizing the force or risk eroding its credibility as a deterrent to attack by others.

They don’t face brick wall-like resistance in Congress, but the debate over spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build and field a new generation of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and land-based missiles is just beginning.

Critics say full-scale modernization is neither affordable nor necessary.

The debate is influenced not only by the perceived need to fully replace aging weapons but also by worries about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and concern over what Defense Secretary Ash Carter calls Russia’s “nuclear sabre-rattling.”

Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, said the Pentagon will need an estimated $18 billion a year between 2021 and 2035 to modernize the three “legs” of the U.S. nuclear triad — weapons capable of being launched from land, sea and air.

“We need to replace these,” Work said. “We can’t delay this anymore.”

The enormous sums needed are at risk of getting squeezed by high-priority requirements for non-nuclear, weapons. And Work’s numbers don’t include the billions that would be needed to modernize the nuclear warheads on missiles and bombs.

“Modernization now is not an option” — it must happen, said Haney, just hours after watching a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. The Minuteman, which has been on constant 24-hour alert since 1970, has long surpassed its 10-year life expectancy.

Haney said the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads is the oldest it has ever been.

“We have to realize we can’t extend things forever,” Haney said, noting that the Navy is planning to replace its aging Ohio-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines, while the Air Force intends to build a new nuclear-capable bomber to replace the B-52.

Work said that although the Pentagon is closely monitoring Russia’s nuclear modernization, which includes development of new versions of its ICBMs, those moves are not driving U.S. decisions about how quickly and broadly it should modernize its nuclear forces.

But some private analysts see the U.S. and Russia entering a new arms competition.

“It’s disturbing how quickly both the United States and Russia are sliding back toward the Cold War, both rhetorically and operationally,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear policy analyst and author.

“Worse still, both the United States and Russia are now using each other’s nuclear programs and military activities to justify and rationalize their own,” he added.

Haney and Work both were present Thursday night for the Minuteman 3 test launch, which was the second such test of the year. Work said Friday that the test was successful, with the missile’s payload landing within a targeted area of water near Kwajalein Atoll in the south Pacific. He said it was the eighth consecutive successful Minuteman test launch, which would mean the last unsuccessful test was in December 2013, according to a chronology provided by the Air Force.

 

[vestige]

“Modernization now is not an option” — it must happen, said Haney, just hours after watching a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. The Minuteman, which has been on constant 24-hour alert since 1970, has long surpassed its 10-year life expectancy.

Trump will inherit a mess worse than that Reagan inherited from Carter.

The "Peace Dividend" was spent long ago on entitlement programs.

Diversity isn't cheap.

Stay at the top

 

[Nowski]

Trump will inherit a mess worse than that Reagan inherited from Carter.

The "Peace Dividend" was spent long ago on entitlement programs.

Diversity isn't cheap.

Stay at the top

While at the barber shop last week, there were several that were discussing how bad things
were under Carter, and how much worse it is now under zero.

There have been, and always will be divisions in a nation like the USA, and these divisions,
have been made much worse, under the current administration, especially the racial divisions.

I truly believe, that there is no fixing of the current USA, not back to what it was
under the Reagan administration. There are millions upon millions of people in this nation,
that do not have the abilities, to perform even the most simplest of manual tasks,
and more and more are being brought into this world, with each passing minute.

One of the first tasks of putting this nation back together is, what to do with these millions
upon millions of nothing but basically leeches on the American society. They come in all colours,
but one specific demographic has never assimilated to this nation, and they are filled
with an incredible hatred for anyone who has worked hard, and has achieved in this nation.

Even if Trump is elected, it is going to be hell soon in this nation, the likes of which no one
could have dreamed, even in their most worst nightmare.

Regards to all,
Nowski

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/02/26/israels_strategic_vulnerability_111725.html

February 26, 2016

Israel's Strategic Vulnerability

By George Friedman

The strength of Israel's position in the Middle East has been the subject of a recent spate of articles. That strength is clear, for the moment. The question, however, is how durable it is. The current situation in Israel's vicinity indeed makes it appear that Israel has an enormous advantage, but a more careful reading of the situation shows its position to be more brittle than meets the eye.

The argument of Israel's strong strategic position is persuasive. The joint Israeli-Egyptian hammerlock on Gaza has constrained operations by Hamas and weakened its authority to some extent. This has not markedly strengthened the Palestinian National Authority, which has its own problems holding together a fractious Palestinian community on the West Bank. The recent wave of knife attacks against Israelis does not threaten Israel's strategic position in any way.

Egypt's peace treaty with Israel has proved to be among the most durable features of the region, even surviving the 2012-2013 government of Mohammed Morsi, led by the country's largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. The relationship goes beyond neutrality to a degree of collaboration against the major powers in the region. Jordan remains under Israel's strategic umbrella, an ally. Syria, which had been a major adversary of Israel, is so shattered by the civil war that, regardless of what emerges from the chaos, it will take at least a generation to recover. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been severely weakened by its involvement in Syria, and is in no position to reopen conflict with Israel.

The rise of the Islamic State as a defined territorial entity is something that Israel can cope with should the need arise, but in destabilizing Syria and Iraq it draws off a great deal of Arab power that might be used against Israel. The Russian intervention in Syria has benefited Israel by blocking IS from further expansion and securing a crippled Assad regime, the best outcome for Israel. It also has forced Turkey, in confrontation with Russia, to re-evaluate its tense relationship with Israel. In addition, the rise of IS has alarmed the states on the Arabian Peninsula, particularly Saudi Arabia, and led to increased cooperation with Israel.

Finally, Israel maintains its massive nuclear advantage over Iran, even while its own program appears to be on hold. While Israel has spoken of the threat Iranian forces in Syria can pose, this is hard to take seriously. The distance from Iran to Syria is about a thousand miles along vulnerable roads and unstable regions. Iran does not have the power to deploy a force significant enough to confront Israel at that distance. The Iranian threat remains theoretical.

Finally, Israel's dependence on the United States has declined. The improvement in its strategic condition allows it less dependence on the United States and more room for maneuver should it need it. Israel's greatest strategic weakness has been that its national security needs outstripped its capacity in many areas, from production to manpower. It therefore needed the patronage of a major power, creating the most serious vulnerability Israel had - if its interest diverged from the United States (its main patron since after 1967) it would be caught in a dangerous position. The decline of regional threats frees Israel to at least a limited extent from U.S. controls and that has locked in its strategic advantage. For now.

The problem with this assessment is that it assumes that a transitory situation in the Arab world is permanent. It is not. The chaos we are now seeing is the collapse of states created by France and Britain, and inevitably, after a terrific fight, a new system of states and relationships will emerge. The model here is Lebanon, whose government essentially collapsed and was replaced by a series of factions battling for security and supremacy. This dynamic has lasted for generations, starting in the 1970s. In due course, the battling - which drew in Israel, the United States, the Soviet Union and Iran in various ways - finally resulted in a new constitution that created a new and complex stability in Lebanon. No conflict is permanent, and after the conflict ends, what emerges is not only new, but frequently has the strength of the battle-forged.

It is possible that IS or a successor entity will over time emerge as a major power, which would threaten Israel. But in my mind, this is not the major threat. The power that will ultimately emerge is Turkey. Whatever the current complex calculations of the Turkish government, it cannot permanently accept ongoing chaos along its southern border. The Russians are incapable of pacifying the region, and are ultimately a threat to Turkish security, since Russian involvement in the region requires supply lines through the Bosporus. The United States is not going to allow a recurrence of Iraq, where it is compelled to undertake unlimited occupation warfare with limited forces against a determined enemy.

That means there are two powers that have an interest in stabilizing the region: Turkey and Iran. Turkey is a major power, and while Iran is weaker, it can still field a significant force. Neither is an Arab country and each is concerned that the outcome of the fighting could be a nation-state larger than any previous states - a true form of the United Arab Republic that the founder of modern Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, sought to build in the late 1950s. The alternative would be ongoing chaos on an escalating path with unforeseen consequences. Syria and Iraq following the Lebanon model would concern both non-Arab powers. Iran has a deep interest in Iraq. Turkey will be forced to take a deep interest in Syria, particularly as it stabilizes.

This is Israel's problem. The ideal situation for Israel is the one that exists now. However, if it evolves toward stabilization, the emergence of a united Arab state hostile to Israel is less likely than the intervention by Turkey and Iran. In either case, Israel's strategic position would begin to dissolve. For the moment discounting Iran, Israel would then face a powerful Turkey, whose longer-term intentions would not be clear. Once it has taken the offensive to solve a defensive problem, the defensive problems would start piling up and necessitate increasing offensive operations.

The current situation is inherently unsustainable. The logical outcome is Turkey and Iran inserting themselves to prevent the emergence of potentially hostile states. In that case, Turkish troops would reach the Israel border at some point. We cannot predict how the Jordanians would respond, nor how Egypt would react in the face of a rising Turkey. The problem is that Israel can't calculate the other countries' actions either. Certainly, it has a powerful position because of the chaos. But it is precisely that chaos that can create a more serious strategic threat. The chaos will either end with competitors settling and creating a new and more united nation-state or a Lebanon-style solution will trigger interventions by other regional powers.

And then, as I have said, the future of Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian relations will depend on the intent and capabilities of an extremely significant nation-state. The Turks would actually be following the model of the Ottoman Empire, which intervened in various directions to protect itself from competitors. I suspect at the time of intervention Turkey would see Israel as a competitor.

Until now, Israel has faced weak nation-states on its frontier and maintained a close relationship with the United States. It now faces a fractious frontier and a weakening relationship with the United States. In my reasoning, this is the calm before the storm, a storm that is no less dangerous for being a decade or more away. Israel will either face a united Arab entity to its east, or Turkey to its north. It also cannot predict the American view of the Turkish evolution. For example, the United States is urging a Turkish intervention in Syria. Clearly, the United States sees Turkey as key to solving this problem, while it sees Israel as less important. Such things change among nations, but that ought to be the most sobering thought to Israel.

Reprinted with permission from Geopolitical Futures.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-advisor-idUSMTZSAPEC2Q6G3JRH

Politics | Fri Feb 26, 2016 6:04pm EST

Trump being advised by ex-U.S. Lieutenant General who favors closer Russia ties

WASHINGTON | By Mark Hosenball and Steve Holland

Donald Trump is receiving foreign policy advice from a former U.S. military intelligence chief who wants the United States to work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues, according to three sources.

The sources, former foreign policy officials in past administrations, said retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama from 2012-2014, has been informally advising Trump.

Trump, who is leading the Republican race to be the party's presidential candidate in November's election, said earlier this month that he would soon release a list of his foreign policy advisers, but has yet to do so. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Flynn.

Flynn declined to comment when asked by Reuters whether he is advising Trump. Asked to describe his views about ties with Russia, he referred Reuters to his public statements.

The question of who has been advising Trump on national security issues has become more pertinent as prospects that the New York real estate mogul will secure the Republican nomination, possibly within weeks, have increased.

Trump won the surprise endorsement of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday, the most prominent mainstream Republican to come on board.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who won popularity for his handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has also been in regular contact with Trump, said a former top aide to Giuliani.

A close associate of Flynn said that Trump was not the only presidential hopeful who had consulted the former DIA chief. "He responds to one and all but is not working for any one," the associate said.

Trump has struck a notably different stance on Russia from his main rivals for the nomination, calling President Vladimir Putin "highly respected" and advocating a warming of now icy bilateral ties.

Other Republican candidates have frequently taken to bashing Putin and have cited his military interventions in Ukraine and Syria as evidence that President Barack Obama has been weak in standing up to the Russian leader.

Trump has vowed to destroy Islamic State and to undertake an aggressive rebuilding of the U.S. military, but has signaled more flexibility than his rivals on some issues - for example, by not vowing to tear up the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.

SAT WITH PUTIN

Flynn resigned from his position as the head of the Pentagon's main intelligence agency a year before his term was officially due to end.

Flynn raised eyebrows among some U.S. foreign policy veterans when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today, an international broadcasting network funded by the Russian government.

His son Michael G. Flynn, who acts as his chief of staff, declined comment on the banquet and on the reasons for his father's departure from the Pentagon.

Flynn told Russia Today in an interview published on Dec. 10 that the United States and Russia should work together to resolve the Syrian civil war and defeat Islamic State.

The Obama administration has protested Russia's military intervention on behalf of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, accusing Moscow of hitting opposition forces rather than ISIS.

"Right now we have essentially the U.S. strategy and we have a Russian strategy in the region that does not appear to be in line with each other. And I think we have to step back and try to figure out how do we align those," Flynn told Russia Today.

Flynn was also quoted this month as telling German magazine Der Spiegel that the Iraq war launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush was a mistake that gave rise to Islamic State.

Trump has often strongly condemned the Iraq invasion.

A former U.S. intelligence official who worked with Flynn said the retired general believes in a more aggressive approach to U.S. interests around the world.

“He’s a sharp guy, he understands foreign policy and national security and really understands intelligence," said the official. "His positions and opinions are not always in line with popular thinking.”

Giuliani's office did not respond to a request for comment on his relationship with Trump.

Randy Mastro, a New York lawyer who was a deputy mayor in Giuliani's New York City administration, said Giuliani has close ties to Trump. “I know that Rudy and Donald Trump have a long-standing relationship and personal friendship that goes back many years, and they do speak to each other on a regular basis," said Mastro.

(Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Martin Howell)

This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://in.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-putin-insight-idINKCN0VZ1G8

Fri Feb 26, 2016 5:20pm IST

Insight: The road to Aleppo - how the West misread Putin over Syria

BEIRUT/WASHINGTON/MOSCOW | By Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Jonathan Landay and Maria Tsvetkova


Last July, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seemed to be losing his battle against rebel forces. Speaking to supporters in Damascus, he acknowledged his army's heavy losses.

Western officials said the Syrian leader’s days were numbered and predicted he would soon be forced to the negotiating table.

It did not turn out that way. Secret preparations were already underway for a major deployment of Russian and Iranian forces in support of Assad.

The military intervention, taking many in the West by surprise, would roll back rebel gains. It would also accelerate two shifts in U.S. diplomacy: Washington would welcome Iran to the negotiating table over Syria, and it would no longer insist that Assad step down immediately.

"That involved swallowing some pride, to be honest, in acknowledging that this process would go nowhere unless you got Russia and Iran at the table," a U.S. official said.

At the heart of the diplomacy shift – which essentially brought Washington closer to Moscow's position – was a slow-footed realization of the Russian military build-up in Syria and, ultimately, a refusal to intervene militarily.

Russia, Iran and Syria struck their agreement to deploy military forces in June, several weeks before Assad's July 26 speech, according to a senior official in the Middle East who was familiar with the details.

And Russian sources say large amounts of equipment, and hundreds of troops, were being dispatched over a series of weeks, making it hard to hide the pending operation.

Yet a senior U.S. administration official said it took until mid-September for Western powers to fully recognise Russia's intentions. One of the final pieces of the puzzle was when Moscow deployed aircraft flown only by the Russian military, eliminating the possibility they were intended for Assad, the official said.

An earlier understanding of Russia’s military plans is unlikely to have changed U.S. military policy. President Barack Obama had made clear early on that he did not want Washington embroiled in a proxy war with Russia. And when the West did wake up to Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions, it was short of ideas about how to respond.

As in Ukraine in 2014, the West seemed helpless.

French President Francois Hollande summed up the mood among America's European allies: "I would prefer the United States to be more active. But since the United States has stepped back, who should take over, who should act?"


SIGNPOSTS

In July last year, one of Iran's top generals, Qassem Soleimani, went to Moscow on a visit that was widely reported. The senior Middle Eastern official told Reuters that Soleimani had also met Putin twice several weeks before that.

"They defined zero hour for the Russian planes and equipment, and the Russian and Iranian crews," he said.

Russia began sending supply ships through the Bosphorus in August, Reuters reported at the time. There was no attempt to hide the voyages and on Sept. 9 Reuters reported that Moscow had begun participating in military operations in Syria.

A Russian Air Force colonel, who took part in preparations and provided fresh details of the build-up, said hundreds of Russian pilots and ground staff were selected for the Syria mission in mid-August.

Warplanes sent to Syria included the Sukhoi-25 and Sukhoi-24 offensive aircraft, U.S. officials said. In all, according to U.S. officials, Russia by Sept. 21 had 28 fixed-wing aircraft, 16 helicopters, advanced T-90 tanks and other armoured vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft batteries and hundreds of marines at its base near Latakia.

Despite this public build-up, the West either played down the risks or failed to recognise them.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sept. 22 that Russian aircraft were in Syria to defend the Russians' base - "force protection" in the view of U.S. military experts.

At the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 28, the French announced their own first air strikes in Syria.

"The international community is hitting Daesh (Islamic State). France is hitting Daesh. The Russians, for now, are not doing anything," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius Fabius said at the time.

The next day Russia announced its strikes in Syria.


WARNINGS

One former U.S. official, who was in government at the time, told Reuters that some U.S. officials had begun voicing concern that Russia would intervene militarily in Syria two weeks before the bombing began.

Their concerns, however, were disregarded by officials in the White House and those dealing with the Middle East because of a lack of hard intelligence, the former U.S. official said.

"There was this tendency to say, 'We don't know. Let's see,'" recounted the former U.S. official.

Yet between October and December, American perceptions shifted, as reported by Reuters at the time.

By December, U.S. officials had concluded that Russia had achieved its main goal of stabilizing Assad’s government and could maintain its operations in Syria for years.

"I think it’s indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was," a senior administration official said.


DIPLOMATIC U-TURN

At that point, the U.S. pivoted to the negotiating table with Russia and Iran. Officials say they had few other options with Obama unwilling to commit American ground troops to Syria, aside from small deployments of Special Operations forces, or provide U.S.-backed opposition fighters with anti-aircraft missiles.

In Munich on Feb 12, Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced an agreement for humanitarian access and a "cessation of hostilities" in Syria, far short of a ceasefire.

"Putin has taken the measure of the West... He has basically concluded, I can push and push and push and push and I am never going to hit steel anywhere," said Fred Hof, a former State Department and Pentagon Syria expert now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

Today, U.S. officials sound a far different note than in the early days of the uprising against Assad when they said his exit must be immediate. Now, with the war entering its sixth year, they say they must push the diplomatic possibilities as far as possible and insist Kerry is fully aware of what Russia is doing to change facts on the ground.

In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Kerry acknowledged there was no guarantee the "cessation of hostilities" would work, adding: "But I know this: If it doesn’t work, the potential is there that Syria will be utterly destroyed. The fact is that we need to make certain that we are exploring and exhausting every option of diplomatic resolution."

For the rebels, the reality is bleak.

Government forces have closed in on the city of Aleppo, a major symbol of the uprising. Their supply routes from Turkey cut, rebels in the Aleppo area now say it may only be a matter of time before they are crushed altogether.

"We are heading towards being liquidated I think," said a former official in a rebel group from the city.

Other fighters remain determinedly upbeat, saying Assad is only gaining ground because of Russian air power and he will not be able to sustain the advances.

For Syrians living under government rule in Damascus, Moscow's intervention has inspired a degree of confidence. They credit one of the calmest periods since the start of the war to the death of rebel leader Zahran Alloush, killed in a Russian air strike on Christmas Day.

There are few foreign visitors these days. Bashar al-Seyala, who owns a souvenir shop in the Old City, said most of his foreign customers are Russians. His shop had just sold out of mugs printed with Putin's face.


(Additional reporting by John Irish, Arshad Mohammed, Lesley Wroughton, Warren Strobel, Lou Charbonneau and Mark Hosenball; Writing by Giles Elgood; editing by Janet McBride)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...on-peacebut-it-buying-lot-weapons-taking-arms

Banyan
Taking arms

The Asia-Pacific region is at peace—but it is buying a lot of weapons

Feb 27th 2016 | From the print edition
Comments 13


THOUGH parts of Asia are racked by long-running insurgencies, terrorist groups, banditry or low-level civil wars, it is striking that the continent has not suffered a full-scale war between countries since China’s brief and bloody punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979. All the more striking, then, that the region now accounts for almost half of the global market for big weapons—nearly twice as much as the war-ravaged Middle East, and four times more than Europe.

This week the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which maintains a database of arms transfers, published data showing that six of the ten largest importers of heavy weapons are in Asia and the Pacific: India, China, Australia, Pakistan, Vietnam and South Korea. From 2011-15 the region as a whole bought 46% of global arms imports, up from 42% in 2010-14. Asia is not witnessing a classic arms race between two great powers and their allies, of the sort Britain and Germany engaged in before the first world war, or a cold-war contest like that between America and the Soviet Union. But certainly Asian countries are competing to modernise their military forces. The “Military Balance”, an annual report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a British think-tank, noted this month that most have seen “sustained, multi-year increases in defence spending”.

China’s rise and recent assertiveness are most often cited for the arms build-up. In the East China Sea, tensions have grown between China and Japan over the uninhabited Senkaku, or Diaoyu, islands. Since 2012 China has been sending ships and planes close to the islands in ways designed to challenge Japan’s claim to be administering them. In the South China Sea, China finds itself at odds with a number of South-East Asian countries, especially the Philippines and Vietnam, over even tinier islets, rocks and reefs. By means of massive artificial island-building over the past two years, disregarding the concerns of rival claimants, China seems simply to be taking what it thinks is its own. That helps explain, for example, why Vietnam’s arms imports in 2011-15 were eight times higher than in the previous five years, taking its share of the global total to 2.9%. The country has bought eight combat aircraft, four fast-attack craft and four submarines. A further six frigates and two submarines are on order.

Even were China not filling in the sea so enthusiastically, its military build-up would probably provoke a reaction. In particular the rapid expansion of its navy, with the apparent intention of eventually upsetting American primacy in the western Pacific, represents a big shift in the strategic order. Other regional navies are also modernising—above all by buying submarines. Besides Vietnam’s purchases, India has ordered six from France, and Pakistan has bought eight from China, which is also providing two to Bangladesh. Germany is to deliver two to Singapore and five to South Korea, which has sold three of its own manufacture to Indonesia. Australia is to buy between eight and 12, with fierce competition for the order between France, Germany and Japan.

But Tim Huxley, Asia director of the IISS, says it is misleading to see military spending in the region as “all about China”. Rather, it points to a much longer trend reflecting the region’s rapid economic growth and increased wealth. Countries have a range of external and internal security concerns. For example, despite its tiny size, Singapore is much the biggest defence spender in South-East Asia, outspending even Indonesia, with 45 times more people. Yet Singapore has no territorial claim in the South China Sea. Rather, its (unstated) fears have more to do with potential instability in its own immediate neighbours.

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sit...2016/02/articles/body/20160213_woc913_290.png
Peninsula of provocation: A timeline of clashes between North and South Korea

Also encouraging continued military spending is that none of Asia’s big strategic fissures, dating back decades, is really narrowing. India and Pakistan have been arguing and at times going to war over Kashmir since 1947. For China, victory in the civil war in 1949 was incomplete, because Taiwan remained outside its grip, and it has never ruled out the eventual resort to military force to achieve “reunification”, if peaceful means run out of steam. The Korean war ended in 1953 with an armistice but no peace treaty; North Korean dictators—three generations of belligerent Kims—have stoked tension ever since. China’s invasion of northern India in 1962 and subsequent withdrawal left the two countries’ competing claims over each other’s territory unresolved.

At times back-channel talks over Kashmir have led to hints of a breakthrough between India and Pakistan. But none of these disputes—nor those in the South and East China Seas—is subject to anything resembling a peace process, and none is discussed in more than broad-brush terms at any of the various regional security talking shops. Armies, lobbying for a budget to buy the latest kit, can always point to the risk that a dispute might flare up into conflict; and to the need to build up a deterrent capacity.

THAAD’s the way they don’t like it

One country’s deterrence, of course, can be another’s threat. In response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests this year, for example, conservative politicians in South Korea are again calling on the government to develop its own nuclear deterrent. They are very unlikely to have their way. But the South has been in talks to deploy an American anti-missile system, known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD.

This in turn alarms China, which argues that the associated radar threatens its own security and has lobbied hard to dissuade South Korea from adopting THAAD. Another aspect of China’s assertiveness is its readiness to intervene in other countries’ security policies. It has even suggested to Australia that it should think twice about buying Japanese submarines, because of historical sensitivities over the second world war. This diplomatic expansionism, however, tends to have much the same effect as the sea-filling kind: raising alarm and hackles, and driving China’s neighbours closer to America—and to suppliers of heavy weaponry.

From the print edition: Asia

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bloombergview.com/articl...to-aid-iranian-moderates-failed-spectacularly

Declassified

Obama's Plan to Aid Iranian Moderates Failed Spectacularly

Feb 25, 2016 4:33 PM EST
By Eli Lake
comments 72

Remember when the nuclear deal with Iran had a chance to strengthen the country's moderates? Jeb Bush was the Republican presidential front-runner. Fetty Wap ruled the charts. Serena Williams nearly won the Grand Slam of Women's Tennis. 2015. What a year.

You don't really hear this line any more from President Barack Obama. To understand why, consider Friday's elections in Iran. In theory, Iranians will be choosing members of their parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a panel of Islamic scholars who will choose the country's next supreme leader, who controls Iran's foreign policy and nuclear program.

With most sanctions lifted, the nuclear deal is popular in Iran. So this should be a golden opportunity for Iran's relatively moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, to consolidate his power. But this is Iran.

Beginning in January, the regime's Guardian Council began purging any candidates who espoused the slightest deviation from the country's septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Candidates who favored releasing political prisoners -- including the leaders of the Green Movement that many Iranians feel won the 2009 presidential elections -- were disqualified. Even members of the Assembly of Experts, who had previously passed the vetting process, were disqualified. So too was the grandson of Iran's first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To paraphrase a former top U.S. negotiator in the Iran talks, Wendy Sherman, Iranians on Friday will have a choice between hardliners and hard hardliners.

This counts as a failure of U.S. policy. To be sure, Obama has said repeatedly that the Iran nuclear deal does not depend on changes in the nature of the regime. But nonetheless, he sought to empower Rouhani's moderates against the supreme leader and his hardliners.

This administration policy began almost as soon as Rouhani himself was elected. After he won the presidency in June 2013, the Treasury Department paused the process for blacklisting front companies and other Iranian concerns targeted by sanctions.

More recently, U.S. and European diplomats worked hard to speed up the implementation of the nuclear agreement so that it occurred before Friday's elections. A policy memo prepared by the State Department on the legal justification for overriding visa requirements for people who have traveled to Iran since 2011, says explicitly that the new law undermined a U.S. national interest of "Iran moderating politically over time."

Over the summer, Obama expressed guarded optimism that the nuclear deal would open up new possibilities for Iran's moderates. He told NPR that one possible consequence of engaging in nuclear talks is that "Iran starts making different decisions that are less offensive to its neighbors; that it tones down the rhetoric in terms of its virulent opposition to Israel."

He had previously said that, after agreement on a nuclear deal, "my hope would be that that would serve as the basis for us trying to improve relations over time."

This is not how things have worked out. Instead, the fanatics who run Iran have been more bellicose than ever. They have taken two more Iranian-Americans prisoner; detained and humiliated U.S. Navy sailors; tested new missiles and arrested more human rights activists. Just this week Iran's state-run Fars news agency renewed the bounty on the head of novelist Salman Rushdie.

Defenders of the deal tell us that these provocations are really aimed at undermining Rouhani, who has tried his best to alleviate the strain on his country's economy and civil society. This presumes that different forces in Iran are vying for power and that Iran's long term trajectory is up for grabs.

But this misses an important point. The purges are part of a longer pattern that show the hardliners are not so much interested in gaining political advantage but in eliminating any political competition at all. The Iranian reformers who briefly came into power in the late 1990s and early 2000s are today completely marginalized, exiled or in jail.

To understand the degree of Iran's political stagnation, consider this bit of history. When Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was president of Iran in the 1990s, the journalist Akbar Ganji documented Rafsanjani's role in the murder of dissidents and intellectuals. In 2013, Ganji -- who is himself living in exile -- endorsed Rafsanjani for the presidency, in part because the choices were already so narrowed by the unelected part of the Iranian state.

And so it is today. Despite the humiliation of the electoral purges, Rouhani has encouraged Iranians to vote nonetheless. He has long given up on his promises to release political prisoners or address human rights. If Rouhani is lucky, he will only have to contend with hardliners in the parliament, as opposed to the "hard-hardliners." But the chance to deliver on the promise of political change that Obama hoped he could deliver has evaporated, particularly since the assembly of experts will end up being stacked with reactionaries.

All of this brings us back to the nuclear deal. Despite what Obama says, the only way it can be considered a success is if, over time, Iran really does undergo reform and its leaders abandon the revolution that threatens the rest of the Middle East.

This is because the limits on Iran's nuclear program will expire in 10 to 20 years, after the nation will have had a chance to rebuild its economy and modernize its military. If the hostage-taking terror enthusiasts who run Iran today are in charge of the country when that day comes, then Obama's nuclear negotiations will be revealed to have been little more than a shake down.

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

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

 

[China Connection]

Things are rough but we still have the best militarily

Pity the whole world is at war with its-self. Imagine if this money was put into cleaning up all the pollution and improving agricultural water resources. However things are not that sane.

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Geopolitical-Futures-founder-George-Friedman

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-george-friedman-predictions-for-the-future-2016-2

STRATFOR founder George Friedman gave us some jarring predictions for the future

Armin Rosen and Jonathan Garber
7h
Comments 18

Screen Shot 2016 02 26 at 4.34.21 PMYouTube/Conscious
George Friedman speaks at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in December 2015.

George Friedman founded Strategic Forecasting in 1996. Stratfor's existence is based on the controversial but now influential premise that geopolitical events can be anticipated and even predicted in ways that can benefit private-sector actors.

Friedman stayed at the pioneering political-risk firm until May 2015, when he left to found a new company called Geopolitical Futures.

Friedman is a commentator on international affairs and author of the book "The Next 100 Years."

He spoke to Business Insider earlier this month about the future of war, the next stage in the European debt crisis, and how and whether it's even possible to predict what's coming next.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Business Insider: You are an innovator in the field of political risk — in taking events in international politics and applying them to business or economics decision-making. Where do you draw the line between political risk and the kind of work the research division of an investment bank does, or the kind of work a think tank does? What do you see as the contribution that political risk makes that those sorts of institutions can’t?

George Friedman: A think tank advocates policies. A research division develops marketing material for its deal makers. We have no policy position. If you have a policy position you can’t possibly forecast.

So as soon as you want something to happen you begin skewing the data to support it. Our stuff is invaluable to decision-makers precisely because we have no ax to grind.

So you go to Brookings, or you go to Heritage or others, they know their position on any subject before they research it. If you go to an investment bank, they know what parts of the world they are going to cover and what parts of the world they are not going to cover depending on client interest.

We cover the world without being skewed by that. And that makes it more valuable.

SyriaREUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Residents look for survivors at a site hit by what activists said were three consecutive air strikes carried out by the Russian air force, the last of which hit an ambulance, in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria, January 12, 2016.

BI: How is it that international affairs can even be predicted at all? For instance, it seems that people have gotten Syria wrong at every phase of the conflict.

GF: We didn’t.

You begin with what’s not possible. If you go through the list of things that are not possible you’re left with a very finite amount of possibilities. The fancy name for this is constraint theory. It's a nonquantitative model, but it's a field of mathematics.

Constraint theory argues a number of things. First, that the impossible has to be identified. Second, that the actor is then constrained by circumstances to act a certain way. For example, should we invade ISIS? Can we invade ISIS? What would it take to invade ISIS? Once you ask that question you discover the price of that option and then you take a look at American politics and see that the country is probably not prepared to invest the 2 to 3 million people that it would take to defeat ISIS and the insurgency afterwards. All right, so that’s not going to happen.

So then the entire debate over what we should do about ISIS takes a different shape. Constraint theory defines for you what outcomes are possible and what outcomes are impossible. It also eliminates wishful thinking.

Policymakers engage in a great deal of wishful thinking because they are trying to get something done. I'm not trying to get anything done.

Remember also that politicians are enormously smart and rational. They don’t have the same interests as businessmen ... But a man rises to the top of the United States. He’s clawed his way out of 330 million people. OK. He didn’t do that because he was dumb, or lucky, or something like that. He understands power. And he understands how to take it. And he understands how to keep it.

So that lets take two men that seem the most different: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They have more in common with each other than with anyone else because they both became president. And also take a look at how much of Obama’s policies are the same as Bush’s. If you really understand how to play chess, you know there are really only a few moves to make. Do you play chess?

BI: Yes. Not well, but I play.

GF: OK, but if you played it well, what you’d realize is that all those different moves you thought you had, you don’t. So although it appears on the chessboard that you have 16 or 20 moves to make at the opening you have three or four. And once you’re playing the game there is one optimal move.

This is why you can memorize grandmaster’s games. Now if you can recognize and memorize a grandmaster’s game, and you have the respect to understand [Zimbabwean president Robert] Mugabe who has survived past anyone’s expectations, and make the simple assumption it wasn’t an accident, and you understand why he did what he did, now you’re ready to predict ... The key to forecasting is to understand both the constraints nations are under and the manner in which the struggle for power shapes leaders.

Bashar al-AssadReuters
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad greets a crowd while visiting Raqqa city in eastern Syria, November 2011.

BI: To get back to Syria as an example: For years there was this assumption that Bashar al-Assad was Western-educated, he was a reformer, that his attitudes on power were somehow different from that of his father, the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad, or the regime, and all ended up being completely wrong. How do you isolate that part of human nature that is so variable but which could end up having such a huge impact on global events?

GF: I’m not a journalist. So I didn’t sit down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say "my god he’s got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal."

Your job as a journalist is to interview people. And they can con you.

... If you begin with the history of how Syria's Alawite minority came to power and then you forget the Assad family, you realize the Alawites are the most educated and by necessity ruthless people in Syria, and you ask how these fragmented movements can defeat them.

And then you remember another point. No regime has ever been overthrown unless its army split or went over the enemy. Assad’s army didn’t split ...

One of the great weaknesses of journalists is they interview people and they think that’s important. They think that they are going to show them their true hand. But more to the point, they’re trapped. Assad’s mother was a terror. He was terrified of her and she kept saying to him, you’re not like your father. That’s interesting, but it's useless information. It doesn’t tell me anything about how the first and second armored brigades are going to operate.

BI: Is Assad going to get overthrown, or is he going to hold onto power? Will there be even more regime change in the Middle East?

GF: With the decline of American interests in the outcome of this region, there is no glue holding it together. And the countries in this region are invented ... The last guarantor of the region's borders was the United States, and the US has basically said “the hell with it.” What you’re really having is the collapse of nation-states because they’re not nations. They’re only states.

And you have the Russians trying to hold it together in Syria for various reasons of their own. But you can’t hold it together. It’s coming apart.

And that’s why ISIS is so interesting. The only native natural movement in the region is, god help us, ISIS.

US Navy flight deckU.S. Navy photo by Naval Air Crewman (Helicopter) 2nd Class Christopher Harris/Released
USS Theodore Roosevelt being replenished.

BI: Why do governments get things wrong? Why do the US and its allies have such a difficult time anticipating events?

GF: What is American strategy first of all? So American strategy is to command the seas, right? The foundation of our power is sea control. Nobody can invade us, but we can invade them.

What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other’s throats so they don’t have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

Now we are in a situation where our goal is to prevent the emergence of a hegemon. We don’t have to win. We just have to not lose ...

The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don’t want Serbia to reemerge as a major power.

BI: So what does failure look like for the US as far as our geopolitical objectives go?

GF: Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It’s very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don’t have conflict here.

Success looks like you sitting here pretty confident that an armed brigade isn't going to come pouring in here and blow your head off. Which I don’t think is your major concern. Therefore, the United States’ foreign policy is successful.

aircraft carriers
globalsecurity.org


BI: How big of a threat do you think the US debt is?

GF: When I get asked the question, “Do I want to loan you money?” I want to know, how much do you earn? How much do you owe? What is your net worth? When people talk about countries for some reason they only ask how much did you earn and what’s your debt? ...

The United State has a net worth against which our debt is a joke ... we wrote in 2008 the United States is going to come out of this recession fast. The Europeans are going to fragment. The Chinese are going to be cremated. Why could we come out of it? Why has all economic theory been proven wrong? Because we’re rich and we could afford it ...

There is no difference in a country between military, economic, and political affairs. It's useful for Business Insider to divide things that way. That’s useful for a college program. But a country is a country. How do you understand China’s economy without China’s army? If you take these all into account you’re ready to explain a question like, “How come the US doesn’t have a debt problem?”

Because the US has control of the sea. Because the US has built up its wealth. Because the US is the only country in the world really not to have a war fought on its territory since the time of the Civil War ... Therefore we can afford mistakes that would kill other countries. And therefore we can take risks that they can’t ... the core answer to why the United States is like this is we didn’t fight World War I and World War II and the Cold War here.

Italy NPLs
Andy Kiersz / Business Insider

BI: You’ve written a lot about the state of the Italian banking system. How bad do you think it really is? Do you think that an institution at the scale of a Deutsche Bank is going to have that Lehman-type moment in Europe?

GF: Our position has always been that Greece is not an outlier, it's a forerunner.

Italy is the fourth-largest economy in Europe and the eighth-largest economy in the world, and its banking system is collapsing. And Germany is desperate. It must maintain its standard of living. It can only do that with exports and Deutsche Bank is very exposed to Italian debt. But so is the rest of Europe.

So Europe, which is barely not in a depression or recession, is really going to be crushed by Italy. So constraint theory: Italy has 17% bad debt. Take it seriously, believe it. What happens if that 17% of the loans they made are unpayable?

One of the things you have to be able to do when you forecast is believe what you see, even if it’s different from what The New York Times said. How else could it end? Will the Germans save them? Ultimately they have to. Can they? 17% of the Italian banking system is a lot of money.

BI: Do you think this is going to spill over into the other PIIGS countries, like Portugal or Spain?

GF: It’s going to spill over into the Netherlands, it’s going to spill over into Germany. Germany is the new PIIG. Germany depends on exports and its markets are drying up. When the Germans start getting 10% unemployment, 15% unemployment, which is the real variable, how are they going to handle it?

Italy spills over to everything. Italy is a huge banking system. It has been the major banking system in Eastern Europe. It’s worked with Austria’s banking system. There’s all sorts of interplays there. So it's not the PIIGS one should worry about. Germany hasn’t even begun falling yet. And when Germany falls, and it will, that’s when the panic begins to set in.

china militaryReuters
Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China arrive on their armoured vehicles at Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2015

BI: Do you think that there will be an offensive nuclear strike in my lifetime anywhere in the world? If you could put the chances at a percentage level.

GF: They are very low. There’s a very simple reason. Because the country that launched it would become nuclear glass. And the person who launched it, even if he’s in Korea, doesn’t want that to happen. So that’s constraint theory.

Constraint theory asks: What is the price for doing this? Now one way around constraint theory is declaring your enemy crazy. Crazy and stupid are not concepts used in forecasting ...

When people say they’re really stupid or they’re crazy, that’s laziness. That means I don’t want to think through their position or about what they’re really going to do.

BI: In this day and age it's relatively unusual for nations to go to war against one another. Do you see that changing? Do you see interstate warfare making a comeback?

GF: From 1815 to 1871 there was not an interstate war of any substance in Europe. Then came World War I, a biggie.

I’ll give you another statistic. There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war — a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.

Do you want to bet this will be the only century that doesn’t have one? I’ll take that bet ...

When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that’s when systemic wars start. That’s when it gets dangerous, because they haven’t yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos. So we’re looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war.

BI: Any predictions on where it could be?

GF: Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

But every time new powers emerge they have to find their balance. New powers are emerging, old powers are declining. It's not that process that’s dangerous, it's the emerging position that’s dangerous.


SEE ALSO: A global intelligence analyst explains what makes ISIS so strong »

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...r-inducting-its-first-nuclear-armed-submarine

India Nears Completion of Nuclear Triad With Armed Submarine

by Nc Bipindra
February 25, 2016 — 2:00 PM PST
Updated on February 25, 2016 — 11:17 PM PST

- 6,000-ton Arihant said to be in final trials in Bay of Bengal
- Move may spur similar efforts by China, Pakistan, North Korea

India is close to becoming the world’s sixth country to put a nuclear-armed submarine into operation, a move that would give it a leg up on neighboring Pakistan and intensify a race for more underwater weapons in Asia.

The 6,000-ton Arihant, developed over the past three decades under a secret government program, is completing its final trials in the Bay of Bengal, according to a senior navy officer who declined to be identified because he’s not authorized to speak about the program. The vessel will be operated by the navy yet remain under the direct control of India’s Nuclear Command Authority headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The deployment would complete India’s nuclear triad, allowing it to deliver atomic weapons from land, sea and air. Only the U.S. and Russia are considered full-fledged nuclear triad powers now, with China and India’s capabilities still largely untested.

India’s move may prod China to bolster its undersea arsenal and assist nuclear-armed allies Pakistan and North Korea in developing similar technologies. That risks potentially more dangerous altercations in Asia’s waters, where territorial disputes have contributed to a region-wide naval buildup.

Tensions Rising

"You will probably see more friction in maritime sub-regions such as the South China Sea or the Bay of Bengal, which China and India increasingly view as their future bastions" for nuclear ballistic-missile submarines, said Iskander Rehman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program. "Tensions will no doubt arise from subsurface encounters in such areas, particularly as both conventional and nuclear submarines continue to proliferate throughout the Indo-Pacific region."

On Nov. 25, the Arihant reportedly test-fired a training missile, the Indo-Asian News Service reported, citing officials it didn’t identify. Defense spokesman Nitin Wakankar didn’t respond to questions seeking comment on the submarine’s deployment or the test.

Both India and China espouse a no-first-use policy on nuclear arms. Their efforts to arm submarines with atomic weapons are theoretically aimed at preventing the outbreak of war by discouraging enemies from attacking. Ballistic-missile submarines are considered to have played such a deterrent role in the Cold War.

Second-Strike Capability

The U.S., UK, France, Russia and most recently China now have nuclear-armed submarines in operation. The 110-meter long Arihant would be harder to detect than India’s nuclear weapons on land and air, giving it a "second-strike" capability to retaliate powerfully against an enemy who managed to destroy the rest of the arsenal.

China began combat patrols of an armed nuclear-powered submarine last year, the Washington Times reported in December, citing the U.S. Strategic Command and Defense Intelligence Agency. While China hasn’t made a formal announcement, and U.S. officials haven’t confirmed that nuclear-tipped JL-2 missiles were on board the submarines conducting patrols, they have no evidence that the vessels weren’t armed.

‘Prudent’ Assumption

"Given China’s known capabilities and their efforts to develop a sea-based deterrent, in absence of indicators to the contrary, it is prudent to assume that patrols are occurring," Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for the Strategic Command, told the Washington Times.

Even so, neither India nor China has quite reached the technical prowess to give them a credible nuclear deterrent. Their submarines are loud and easily detected, making them an unlikely second-strike asset, the Lowy Institute for International Policy said in a September report.

Potentially more worrisome is that neither Pakistan nor North Korea subscribe to a no-first-use policy, and there are signs that both nations are pursuing cruder methods of deploying nukes at sea.

Pakistan, North Korea

Last year, Pakistan finalized a deal to buy eight Chinese conventional submarines, raising concerns that they could be equipped with riskier nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. North Korea also claimed to have tested a submarine-launched missile and said that it had developed technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

"There will likely be a long phase of initial instability as China and India start deploying nuclear missiles on submarines," the Lowy report said. "Chinese and Indian nuclear-armed submarines -- along with possible Pakistani and North Korean units -- may remain detectable by adversaries, making their activities unpredictable in times of crisis. Moreover, these supposedly stabilizing new forces may worsen wider maritime tensions."

China boasts at least 62 submarines, including four capable of firing nuclear ballistic missiles, according to the Pentagon. China’s construction of artificial islands, radar facilities and runways in the South China Sea may be aimed at using the territory as a
base for its nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet, the Lowy report said.

Soviet Help

The Arihant will be India’s first nuclear-powered and armed vessel that has been designed and built at home. The country is believed to have begun work on it in the 1980s with help from the Soviet Union, particularly on the vessel’s miniaturized reactors. In 2012, India also leased a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia under a 10-year, $1 billion contract. The two countries are negotiating a deal to lease another one, the Pioneer reported this month, citing Alexander M. Kadakin, Russia’s ambassador in New Delhi.

Despite numerous setbacks, India is making progress on developing the weapons to arm the undersea vessels. In 2013, India test-fired an underwater ballistic missile with a range of 750 kilometers, the Hindu reported, citing an unidentified scientific adviser to the defense minister. Last September, India’s Defense Research and Development Organization publicly acknowledged having readied a submarine-launched ballistic missile with a 3,500-kilometer range at an awards event for military scientists attended by Modi.

India needs to show the world it can capably and effectively operate the nuclear-armed submarine, said Jon Grevatt, Asia-Pacific defense-industry analyst for IHS Jane’s. The “important milestone" is part of a bigger strategy to ensure its security, he said.

"The Arihant is a stepping stone for India," he said. "I don’t think it will alter the balance of power in the region unless India has a fleet of four or five such submarines."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-billion-gulf-arab-debt-crunch-amid-oil-slump

Arab States Face $94 Billion Debt Crunch on Oil Slump, HSBC Says

by Stefania Bianchi
February 28, 2016 — 1:02 AM PST

- $52 billion of bonds, $42 billion of loans due this, next year
- Refinancing challenging with slow growth, rating downgrades

Gulf Cooperation Council countries may struggle to refinance $94 billion of debt in the next two years as the region faces slowing growth, rising rates and rating downgrades, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.

Oil-rich GCC states have to refinance $52 billion of bonds and $42 billion of syndicated loans, mostly in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, HSBC said in an e-mailed report. The countries also face a fiscal and current account deficit of $395 billion over the period, it said.

Expectations that these funding gaps "will be part financed through the sale of sovereign U.S. dollar debt will complicate efforts to refinance existing paper that matures over 2016 and 2017," Simon Williams, HSBC’s chief economist for the Middle East, said in the report. "With the Gulf acting as a single credit market, the refinancing challenge will likely be much more broadly felt" and "compounded by tightening regional liquidity, rising rates and recent downgrades," he said.

GCC states, which collectively produce about a quarter of the world’s oil, are taking unprecedented measures to shore up their public finances as crude prices struggle to rebound from the lowest levels in 12 years. The countries, which include Saudi Arabia and Oman, have also been hit by a series of rating cuts, while billions of dollars have been drained from the region’s banking system.

Sovereign Debt

Gulf countries have about $610 billion outstanding in FX-denominated bonds and syndicated loans, HSBC said. This includes financial and corporate debt, as well as sovereign debt, mainly in the U.A.E., Bahrain and Qatar, it said.

HSBC is confident that the funding gaps will be covered and expects a "raft" of foreign sovereign bond issuance to fund budget deficits. Any new issuance will have to compete with upcoming refinancing needs, the bank said.

Almost half of the maturities due in the next two years are in the banking sector, HSBC said, "suggesting any increase in costs at refinancing could quickly feed through into a broader monetary tightening."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201602270022

S. Korean scholars, politicians call for hard-line approach against Pyongyang

February 27, 2016
By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent

SEOUL--South Korean scholars and politicians, particularly military veterans, are joining a mounting call for a pre-emptive air strike against North Korea in a desperate bid to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile development programs.

Although the use of force against North Korea could lead to an all-out war embroiling East Asia, Seoul may need to take a more hard-line stance against Pyongyang if public opinion in South Korea leans further toward such an approach.

At a public discussion held in Seoul on Feb. 16, Park Hwee-rhak, dean of the Graduate School of Politics and Leadership at Kookmin University, called for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea’s nuclear weapons facilities.

According to Park, an army veteran, the South Korean military rules out waging a “preventive” attack on enemy forces unless there is a considerable sign of being attacked.

But after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in 2013, it started considering the possibility of pre-emptively attacking North Korea if Pyongyang shows a clear sign of attacking the South, he said.

The scholar, however, admitted that it will take two to three years for the South Korean military to develop the capability to effectively deliver a preventive air strike, even if Seoul starts preparation for such a strike now.

“In addition to the possible strong public backlash against a preventive attack on North Korea, a pre-emptive strike mission that needs to be completed within 30 minutes poses a high technical hurdle for our military,” Park said.

To wage a pre-emptive strike on the North’s nuclear and missile facilities, South Korea will need to obtain consent and cooperation from its main ally, the United States.

Park said the U.S. military, armed with F-22 stealth fighters, submarine-mounted Tomahawk missiles and other advanced attack weapons, has developed the capability to complete a pre-emptive strike within 35 minutes.

During a map drill by South Korean and U.S. forces held in California from Feb. 24 to Feb. 26, the two countries likely confirmed operational procedures to wage a pre-emptive attack on North Korea if they confirm a sign of being attacked.

The U.S. military, with its nuclear attack capabilities, will likely play a leading role for such a pre-emptive military campaign.

Although Washington gave serious consideration to delivering a limited air strike on North Korea’s nuclear facility in 1994, it refrained from using force, given the enormous number of potential casualties among South Korean citizens if Pyongyang struck back.

Effectively destroying North Korea’s weapons capability may be much more difficult today than two decades ago, because the nation has increased nuclear and missile development facilities around the country.

Still, former government officials, including a former South Korean Cabinet member, have said that Seoul may have no option but to consider a limited attack on North Korea in a “show of pressure” to force it to abandon its weapons programs.

Despite President Park Geun-hye’s parliamentary address on Feb. 16 urging stronger actions to force Pyongyang to change its attitude, Seoul has no effective measures to pressure the North after the suspension of the Kaesong industrial project.

Former South Korean unification minister Kang In-duk said that unless China steps up to apply effective pressure on North Korea, Pyongyang will not abandon its nuclear programs.

“While it remains to be seen if the United States will give a green light to South Korea’s use of force, the preventive strike will be the only viable option for the South to force the North to give up its weapons development,” Kang said.

Meanwhile, a former senior government official said the stakes are too high for South Korea to wage a preventive strike on the North.

“A preventive attack will inevitably heighten tensions,” the official said. “Because it will also draw much backlash from the international community, it is unlikely the Park administration is considering it as a viable option.”

Pyongyang is expected to react sharply to the pending U.N. Security Council resolution to expand sanctions on North Korea and a joint U.S.-South Korea military drill scheduled from March 7.

If tensions on the Korean Peninsula increase further, public sentiment in South Korea calling for a more hard-line approach to counter the North’s weapons programs will increase, including calls for a pre-emptive use of force against its nuclear and missile facilities.

By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/un...ont-lines-in-nigerias-war-against-boko-haram/

United States Putting ‘Advisers’ On The Front Lines In Nigeria’s War Against Boko Haram

Doug Mataconis
Sunday, February 28, 2016
14 Comments

In another example of news that is getting buried in the avalanche of election coverage, the U.S. announced late last week that military advisers would be sent to the front lines of Nigeria’s war against the extremist Jihadists of Boko Haram:

DAKAR, Senegal — The Pentagon is poised to send dozens of Special Operations advisers to the front lines of Nigeria’s fight against the West African militant group Boko Haram, according to military officials, the latest deployment in conflicts with the Islamic State and its allies.

Their deployment would push American troops hundreds of miles closer to the battle that Nigerian forces are waging against an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians in the country’s northeast as well as in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. By some measures, Boko Haram is the world’s deadliest terrorist group.

The deployment is a main recommendation of a recent confidential assessment by the top United States Special Operations commander for Africa, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc. If it is approved, as expected, by the Defense and State Departments, the Americans would serve only in noncombat advisory roles, military officials said.

Even as President Obama has drawn down the large American armies sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, he has relied heavily on Special Operations forces to train and advise local troops fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and to carry out clandestine counterterrorism missions.

Already, about 50 American commandos are advising fighters battling the Islamic State in eastern Syria. Scores more in a new, secret kill-or-capture unit are hunting Islamic State militants in Iraq. The Pentagon has offered to send American advisers with Iraqi brigades on the battlefield instead of restricting them to bases inside Iraq. Dozens of American commandos are conducting surveillance missions in Libya and counterterrorism missions in Somalia.

“Rather than entangle U.S. combat forces on the ground, help build the capacity of regional forces to tackle their countries’ security challenges,” said Jennifer G. Cooke, Africa director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who visited Nigeria last month. “Training and advising and perhaps imparting the lessons we learned the hard way is a good thing.”

Since taking office last year, Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has vowed to pursue a military campaign against Boko Haram more vigorously than his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. His shake-up of the military high command and new cooperation with neighboring countries has proved effective.

Mr. Buhari, a former general, has boasted of the military’s successes in wresting control of a huge portion of terrain from the group, declaring a “technical” victory late last year. But while the military has killed or captured thousands of militants and put an end to raids of villages by dozens or more fighters, the group has still carried out suicide attacks at a relentless pace in Nigeria and neighboring countries.

“Despite losing territory in 2015, Boko Haram will probably remain a threat to Nigeria throughout 2016 and will continue its terror campaign within the country and in neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad,” James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee in Washington on Thursday.

Two weeks ago, Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, hosted Nigeria’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin, at the American headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. “To contain Boko Haram, working together is a priority,” General Rodriguez told his visitor.

About 250 American service members have deployed to a military base in Garoua, Cameroon, where United States surveillance drones flying over northeastern Nigeria are sending imagery to African troops. Drone photos recently helped the Nigerian Army avoid a major Boko Haram ambush, according to a senior American intelligence officer.

Another breakthrough occurred late last year when General Bolduc, a Green Beret with multiple Special Forces tours in Afghanistan, visited Nigeria. When officials there asked for assistance, General Bolduc quickly sent an assessment team to conduct a 30-day review.

Among the team’s main recommendations was to position “small dozens” of Special Forces in Maiduguri, a major city in the northeast on the edge of the conflict, to help Nigerian military planners carry out a more effective counterterrorism campaign. British special forces are already assisting in the city. (The American military now maintains only a tiny intelligence cell in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.) Nigerian military officials have embraced the recommendations and are drawing up detailed requests, American officials said.

Just last fall, life seemed to be turning back to normal in the areas near Maiduguri, which for years had been the epicenter of Boko Haram’s activities. But after a major military operation uprooted the militants from nearby villages they had seized, many fighters have returned to Maiduguri to launch repeated suicide bombing operations in the city or in villages on the outskirts that have caused dozens of deaths.

As with other international conflicts, the news of ‘advisers’ being sent into combat areas is one that causes the ears to perk up and the questions to start flowing. For one thing, it’s unclear exactly what the mission of these ‘advisers’ will be going forward and what role they would actually play in combat between Nigerian forces and Boko Haram and other groups engaged in a battle that has been ongoing in Nigeria between the Christian and Muslim populations in the country for quite some time now. If the point of the mission actually is simply to train Nigerian forces then it’s hard to see why this is something that has to happen in a combat area, especially since one would assume that troops sent into a combat zone would already have been trained as sufficiently as possible from the beginning. Additionally, a combat zone seems like a fairly dangerous area within which to conduct training operations since the possibility of capture or ambush, which is already quite high, would seem to be higher when you’re dealing with untrained or insufficiently trained troops.

If, on the other hand, the point of the mission of the U.S. forces is to actually assist in combat against Boko Haram, then that raises a whole other set of questions. Until now, the conflict between Nigeria and Boko Haram is one that the United States had largely stayed out of beyond providing some technical assistance and military equipment to the Nigerians and others involved in the conflict. If that is now changing to the point where American troops are going to be involved in fighting in a military conflict in Central Africa that most Americans had never heard of. What happens if and when one of these American advisers is killed or captured by Boko Haram and, all of a sudden, this conflict is brought into America’s living rooms? I think it’s fair to say that most Americans have no idea that these advisers are now in a combat situation, so it won’t be until we reach a point like that when they’d even be likely to find out.

At the very least, before we start sending even a small group off advisers off to get involved in yet another war that has, at best, only dubious connections to American national interests, there should be some burden on the Administration to explain what it is doing to the American people. What is the scope of the mission, for example, and what rules of engagement will these troops be operating under? Will they be engaging in combat operations or just acting as “advisers,” and if they second then why the necessity to place them so close to combat areas? What plans does the Administration have to end this mission, or do they even see an end to this mission? And, most importantly, exactly what American national interests are implicated such that direct American involvement in this war is deemed necessary? And, finally, what happens if and when an American soldier is killed or captured or American civilians or business interests in the region are attacked? The fact that we haven’t had any debate at all in this county about whether or not its wise for America to involve itself in this conflict will likely be ignored, and we’ll be involved in yet another war in yet another country. As the Internet meme puts it, “Thanks, Obama.” For pretty much nothing.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...pgrading-nations-nuclear-forces/#.VtShFaTMvIV

U.S. military official says time running out to begin upgrading nation’s nuclear forces

AP
Feb 28, 2016

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA – The top U.S. nuclear war-fighting commander says time is running short to begin modernizing the decades-old U.S. nuclear forces.

Navy Adm. Cecil Haney and other Pentagon leaders contend the force is still in fighting shape — “safe, reliable and effective” is the official mantra. But they also argue the time has come to begin modernizing the force or risk eroding its credibility as a deterrent to attack by others.

The debate in Congress over spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build and field a new generation of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and land-based missiles is just beginning.

Critics say full-scale modernization is neither affordable nor necessary.

The debate is influenced not only by the perceived need to fully replace aging weapons but also by worries about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and concern over what Defense Secretary Ash Carter calls Russia’s “nuclear saber-rattling.”

Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, said the Pentagon will need an estimated $18 billion a year between 2021 and 2035 to modernize the three “legs” of the U.S. nuclear triad — weapons capable of being launched from land, sea and air.

“We need to replace these,” Work said. “We can’t delay this anymore.”

The enormous sums needed are at risk of getting squeezed by high-priority requirements for non-nuclear, conventional weapons. And Work’s numbers do not include the billions that will be needed to modernize the nuclear warheads on the business end of missiles and bombs.

“Modernization now is not an option” — it must happen, Haney, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in an interview Friday, just hours after watching a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. The Minuteman, which has been on constant 24-hour alert since 1970, has long surpassed its 10-year life expectancy.

Haney said the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads is the oldest it has ever been. As head of Strategic Command he is the military’s top nuclear war-fighter.

“We have to realize we can’t extend things forever,” Haney said, noting that the navy is planning to replace its aging Ohio-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines, while the air force intends to build a new nuclear-capable bomber to replace the B-52.

Work said that although the Pentagon is closely monitoring Russia’s nuclear modernization, which includes development of new versions of its ICBMs, those moves are not driving U.S. decisions about how quickly and broadly it should modernize its nuclear forces.

Some private analysts, however, see the U.S. and Russia entering a new arms competition.

“It’s disturbing how quickly both the United States and Russia are sliding back toward the Cold War, both rhetorically and operationally,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear policy analyst and author.

“Worse still, both the United States and Russia are now using each other’s nuclear programs and military activities to justify and rationalize their own,” he added.

Haney and Work both were present Thursday night for the Minuteman 3 test launch, which was the second such test of the year. Work said Friday that the test was successful, with the missile’s payload landing within a targeted area of water near Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. He said it was the eighth consecutive successful Minuteman test launch, which would mean the last unsuccessful test was in December 2013, according to a chronology provided by the air force.

 

[Housecarl]

Says a lot about the relationship we've got with Pakistan, despite the aid, including military aid, we're sending them.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-usa-defence-idUSKCN0W10YY

World | Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:40am EST
Related: World, China

India, U.S. closer to pact to share military logistics: officials

NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON | By Sanjeev Miglani and David Brunnstrom


India and the United States are closing in on an agreement to share military logistics after 12 years of talks, officials said, a sign of strengthening defense ties between the countries as China becomes increasingly assertive.

The United States has emerged as India's top arms source after years of dominance by Russia, and holds more joint exercises with it than any other country.

It is in talks with New Delhi to help build its largest aircraft carrier in the biggest military collaboration to date, a move that will bolster the Indian navy's strength as China expands its reach in the Indian Ocean.

After years of foot-dragging by previous governments over fears that the logistics agreement would draw India into a binding commitment to support the United States in war, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration has signaled a desire to move ahead with the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA).

That would allow the two militaries to use each other's land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repair and rest, officials said.

Admiral Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Command, said the two sides were working on the LSA, another agreement called the CISMOA for secure communications when the militaries operate together, and a third on exchange of topographical, nautical, and aeronautical data.

"We have not gotten to the point of signing them with India, but I think we're close," Harris, due in India this week, told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

The progress comes as the countries consider joint maritime patrols that a U.S. official said could include the South China Sea, where China is locked in a territorial dispute with Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan among others. [nL3N15P2JZ]

Both sides, though, said there were no immediate plans for such patrols, which drew strong condemnation from Beijing.


MAIN HURDLE CLEARED

An Indian government official said the main impediment to signing the LSA had been cleared, after Washington gave an assurance that New Delhi was not bound by it if the U.S. went to war with a friendly country or undertook any other unilateral action that New Delhi did not support.

"It has been clarified that it will be done on a case-to-case basis; it's not automatic that either side will get access to facilities in the case of war," the official familiar with the negotiations said.

Asked whether China was concerned such cooperation was actually aimed at Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "We hope the relevant cooperation is beneficial to regional peace and cooperation and should not be aimed at the interests of third parties."

India's previous center-left government was worried the agreements would undermine India's strategic autonomy and that it would draw it into an undeclared military alliance with the United States.

Concerns linger over the proposed communications agreement, with some branches of the military including the air force fearing it would allow the United States to access their communications network.

U.S. officials said they hoped that once the logistics agreement was signed, the others would follow.

A U.S. defense industry source engaged in business in India said there were expectations the LSA could be sealed by the time U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited New Delhi in April.

The source said Modi's office was directly involved in the matter and actively considering the agreements as a key for enhanced cooperation.

India has been alarmed by Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean and its involvement in maritime infrastructure on island nations that it traditionally considered its back yard.

It has moved to shore up naval forces and build defense ties with Japan and Vietnam, besides the United States.

"There is growing convergence between Obama's Asia pivot and Modi's Act East policy," said Saroj Bishoyi, an expert on the proposed India-U.S. collaboration at the government-funded Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.

"The LSA currently appears to be a doable agreement."


(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/japan-the-next-major-player-the-taiwan-strait-15343

The Buzz

Japan: The Next Major Player in the Taiwan Strait?

Emily S. Chen
February 29, 2016
Comments 295


In his recent talk with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, China’s Director of the Taiwan Affairs Office Zhang Zhijun reiterated [4] Beijing’s cross-Strait policy. Beijing will continue to uphold the 1992 Consensus, which accepts “one China” but allows strategic uncertainty surrounding its precise definition, resolutely opposes to any form of secessionist activities seeking Taiwan independence and firmly safeguards national sovereignty and territorial integrity. As Taiwan’s president-elect Tsai Ing-wen and her traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) still decline to accept the “One-China” principle of the 1992 consensus, the future of cross-strait relations is fraught with uncertainty. While it is important for the DPP to find [5] “a mutually acceptable mode of interaction between Taiwan and the mainland,” changes of the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific region and the close people-to-people relations between Taiwan and Japan have given Tsai Ing-wen a new opportunity to cooperate with Japan in the cross-Strait issues, which currently involve only Taiwan, China and the United States.

A Changing Strategic Environment in the Asia-Pacific

Since the Obama administration announced its “pivot”—later termed the “rebalance”—to the Asia-Pacific region in 2009, the United States has focused on strengthening and modernizing its alliance with Japan. The new Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation (“the Guidelines”), which was announced in April 2015, has reinforced alliance cooperation without preset geographical limits and enabled “seamless and effective [6]” alliance responses to security threats. Japan’s enactment of two new security bills later that year has also expanded the scope of its Self-Defense Forces (SDF)’s activities overseas and broadened the areas in which they can operate. This enhancement of Japan’s defense posture allows Japan to play a greater role in the regional security, which seems to create a strategic environment from which Taiwan could benefit in managing ties with Beijing.

That said, to what extent the United States and Japan will cooperate in the event of a Taiwan Strait contingency so far remains ambiguous. Although the Guidelines and the security bills signal an expansion of Japan’s military role abroad, they did not explicitly mention the areas of alliance cooperation have extended to the Taiwan Strait. How much Taiwan can actually benefit from these changes of strategic situations thus sees limitations. Instead of sitting and waiting for a more favorable international environment, the Taiwan government can take the initiatives to turn the tide in its favor.

Deepening the Friendship

The Taiwan government can capitalize on a growing cordiality between the Japanese and Taiwanese people to make Japan a bigger player in the cross-Strait issues. It is hoping that with a deep affinity with the Taiwanese people that is formed in the Japanese society, a pro-Taiwan momentum will emerge. Along with the help of Taiwan-friendly bipartisan caucus in the Diet, the strong force of public opinion can press the Japanese government to adopt a more active response to a Taiwan contingency.

Based on the reasoning, the new Taiwan government’s Japan policy can be two folds. First, the policy can encourage frequent people-to-people exchanges between Japan and Taiwan to increase positive views of Taiwan in the Japanese society. Currently, a regular people-to people exchange between the two sides is underway. On bilateral visits, the most recent data released by Japan Tourism Agency showed [7] that Taiwan, following China and South Korea, is the third favorite destination among Japanese travelers. It is worth noting that while the number of the Japanese tourists to China and South Korea has been declining since 2010, the number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan each year has grown. Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau also reported [8] that Japan was the most favored destination for Taiwanese travelers in 2015. Continuous people-to-people exchanges between Taiwan and Japan have benefited people’s positive impressions toward each other. According to a 2011 survey [9] released by Taipei Economic & Cultural Representative Office in Japan, 67 percent of Japanese respondents expressed that they felt close to Taiwan, which was 10.8 percentage points higher than in 2009. The same survey also showed that 91.2 percent of the respondents reported that the Taiwan-Japan relations were on good terms. Increasing favorable views on Taiwan can help generate a strong force of public opinion in Japanese society, which can influence the Japanese government in crafting its Taiwan policy.

In addition to building a pro-Taiwan momentum in the Japanese society, the Taiwan government should be in frequent contact with Taiwan-friendly bipartisan caucuses in the National Diet in Japan. Because lacking an understanding of the complexity of the cross-Strait relations, the Japanese public’s positive sentiments for the Taiwanese people may not automatically turn into people’s active support for Japan to play a greater role in the cross-Strait issues. According to a 2015 survey [10] conducted by The Genron NPO, when the Japanese public was asked if they support the use of American force in a military conflict between Taiwan and China, public opinion in Japan is divided: 28 percent would support the deployment of U.S. forces and 25.1 percent oppose it. Significantly, 45.9 percent of the Japanese people said they “don’t know.” In the same survey, a relevant questions asking the likelihood of a conflict between China and Taiwan, a sizable one third of the Japanese people answered they “don’t know” either. The poll results indicate that while more than a simple majority of the Japanese people feels close to the Taiwanese, the Japanese public is still unfamiliar with the cross-Strait issues. To effectively convey Taiwan’s political appeals, the Taiwan government also needs to rely on the Taiwan-friendly bipartisan caucuses, which have better understanding of the cross-Strait issues and can directly put pressure on the Japanese government.

In fact, the exchanges between the caucuses and the new Taiwan government are in progress. In a meeting with Tsai Ing-wen on January 27, Keiji Furuya, chief executive of the Japan-ROC Diet Members’ Consultative Council (“Nikkakon”) said [11] that the caucus will support Taiwan in its efforts to participate in the second round of the TPP negotiations. Even during the presidential campaign, Tsai Ing-wen visited [12] Nikkakon in Japan to emphasize the importance of strengthening the Japan-Taiwan relations.

Instead of managing the relationship with Japan at only the official level, Taiwan has been maintaining a close non-governmental, working-level relations with Japan. Against the backdrop of a strengthened U.S.-Japan alliance and an expanded Japan’s defense scope, Taiwan can provide incentives to make Japan play a greater role in the cross-Strait issues. Taking advantage of a pro-Taiwan momentum in the Japanese society can be a way to effectively pressure the Japanese government to support Taiwan in its political appeals.

Emily S. Chen is a Silas Palmer Fellow with the Hoover Institution, a Young Leader with the Pacific Forum CSIS and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for the National Interest. She holds a Master’s degree in East Asian Studies and a focus on international relations at Stanford University. Emily tweets @emilyshchen.

Links:
[1] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/japan-the-next-major-player-the-taiwan-strait-15343
[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/emily-s-chen
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] http://www.gwytb.gov.cn/wyly/201601/t20160121_11371090.htm
[5] http://csis.org/files/attachments/160119_csis_brookings_taiwan_transcript.pdf
[6] http://www.mod.go.jp/e/d_act/anpo/pdf/shishin_20150427e.pdf
[7] http://www.jnto.go.jp/jpn/reference/tourism_data/pdf/20151207.pdf
[8] http://admin.taiwan.net.tw/upload/statistic/20160128/1f19caa7-49d4-401a-bc2d-dacaed34170c.xls
[9] http://web.roc-taiwan.org/jp/post/1822.html
[10] http://www.genron-npo.net/en/pp/archives/5216.html
[11] http://www.dpp.org.tw/news_content....der_type=desc&order_col=add_date&data_type=新聞
[12] http://www.dpp.org.tw/news_content....der_type=desc&order_col=add_date&data_type=新聞
[13] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...rom=777177&c1=777177&d1=15&s=200&a=list&o=200
[14] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/security
[15] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/defense
[16] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/taiwan
[17] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/japan
[18] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/china
[19] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/politics
[20] http://nationalinterest.org/topic/security
[21] http://nationalinterest.org/region/asia-pacific

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://news.usni.org/2016/02/29/nav...ight-of-increased-attack-sub-other-ship-needs

Navy Revising Force Structure Assessment In Light Of Increased Attack Sub, Other Ship Needs

By: Megan Eckstein
February 29, 2016 5:45 AM • Updated: February 28, 2016 7:40 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C. –The Navy will reexamine the assumptions behind its 308-ship requirement, as the operational landscape has changed drastically since the previous Force Structure Assessment (FSA).

The Navy released a new FSA in 2012 and amended it in 2014, but Navy leadership and combatant commanders have expressed concern in the past week that previous assumptions about how many surface ships and submarines are needed to counter global threats are proving inapplicable to today’s world. For example, the Navy has a standing requirement for 48 attack submarines, but combatant commanders say they are only receiving about 62 percent of the subs they need to meet growing threats in Asia and Europe.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said Friday at a Brookings Institution event that the 48-sub requirement is based off of analysis from 2006.

“Last time we did that (FSA) we really didn’t have to account for a resurgent Russia, we really didn’t have to account for (the Islamic State), so we’re starting again,” he said.
“The strategic landscape has changed sufficiently that we have to constantly reassess.”

Last year the surface navy community expressed concern that a growing missile threat, particularly from China, would require an increase in the large surface combatant fleet above the stated requirement of 88. This year, the focus in congressional hearings and Washington-based events has been on the attack submarine fleet.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said at the Brookings event that the Navy would reach its 308-ship requirement by 2021 and that budget decisions being made now would affect the shape and size of the fleet in the years beyond that. Mabus more than doubled shipbuilding in his seven years as secretary compared to the previous seven-year period, and several classes are in serial production today – but with a projected shortfall in the attack submarine fleet, an ongoing shortfall in the amphibious ship fleet, ever-growing demand for ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers, and the need for smaller ships to conduct partnership-building activities, the shipbuilding budget has been strained to keep up.

Richardson said at the event that, despite the many needs the Navy has, the service is aggressively looking at ways to build more attack submarines.

“It’s also been pretty well known that even with that 48 (submarine) requirement we’re going to dip below that as the Los Angeles-class submarines come out of the inventory faster than the Virginia-class is coming in. And so managing our way through that trough, if you will, has been a topic that we’ve been watching closely and doing everything we can to mitigate that,” he said.
“That’s becoming a more urgent situation, and so we are examining everything that we can, working closely with the industrial base, with leadership in the department and in Congress, to see that we’re not missing a trick to mitigate that trough.”

During a House Armed Services seapower and projection forces hearing Thursday, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley told lawmakers that the Navy is working closely with industry to make the Ohio Replacement Program ballistic missile submarines – a $100 billion program in design now and set to begin construction in 2021 – as affordable as possible so that perhaps the savings generated could be used to buy an additional attack submarine in 2021.

Also discussed at the Brookings event was the amphib shortfall – the Marines have 30 today, with a requirement for 38. Though the Navy and Marine Corps have worked hard to find alternative platforms to put Marines on, global threats are growing faster than the Marines’ ship count.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller said at the event that the Marines needed a ship in the Mediterranean, rather than solely cover Europe and Africa with the land-based Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (SP-MAGTF).

Mentioning the new expeditionary mobile base USNS Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller (T-ESB-3), which is destined for the Middle East when the ship makes its maiden deployment late this year or early next year, Neller said he wanted that ship for his European SP-MAGTF.

“I would like very much for that ship to be based in the Med. Right now that’s not the plan, but we’re going to continue to work on that,” he said.
“The COCOMs, both AFRICOM and EUCOM, have written a letter saying hey we’d like to have this capability in the Med to service West Africa and the Med because there’s stuff going on there that we need to be able to move around. You don’t want to be tied to a land base.”

Mabus agreed, saying “the Lewis B. Puller, that’s an expeditionary seabase, it’s an incredible capability. It carries a lot of stuff and it’s got a flight deck. We need one in the Med, we need one for Africa and for Europe. We’re building two more because we need ones in other parts of the world too.”

Neller said having more amphibs and alternative ships to move Marines around is important because Marines are distributed over great areas and crises can pop up quickly. In Asia in particular, though, Neller said the need for ships is also about self-preservation.

Discussing the growing missile threat in the Pacific, he said “the survivability you mentioned because of the missiles, when we did the (Pacific) laydown and the plan, the capability that our potential adversaries have didn’t exist. So do we need to look at how we’re going to harden ourselves? Do we need to look at where we’re going to position ourselves? Ideally I think you’re much more survivable if you’re moving on a ship, and we’d like to be on a ship, so wherever we end up in the Pacific we have a requirement for mobility.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...hina-s-military-expands-its-global-reach.html

STRING OF PEARLS
02.28.16 9:01 PM ET

Slowly, Relentlessly, China’s Military Expands Its Global Reach

With military bases and deepwater ports from Sri Lanka to Djibouti, and plans to build new aircraft carriers, China is looking to project power far beyond East Asia.

Brendon Hong

HONG KONG — On the horn of Africa, as you may have read, the tiny nation of Djibouti, home to American, French, German, Italian, and Japanese military bases, is about to welcome the Chinese as well.

Last November, China and Djibouti reached an agreement to set up a naval base in the Obock region in the north of the country, where an American outpost was evicted last August.

The U.S. base that remains, called Camp Lemmonier, costs the United States $70 million a year in lease fees and development aid.

For 10,000 Chinese troops to move in to East Africa, Beijing promised the completion of a $3 billion railroad to connect Djibouti with the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and a $400 million investment to expand and modernize the East African nation’s port.

This will be the first overseas military installation of the People’s Republic. Chinese officials say the base will be a logistics and supply center, which sounds innocuous enough. But its location has major strategic significance: south of the Suez Canal at the mouth of the Red Sea, facing the Gulf of Aden and the Somali coastline.

In fact, whoever controls Djibouti’s strategic position controls a key chokepoint of global trade.

Even if China doesn’t present its project that way, clearly that’s the attraction.
Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, the foreign minister of Djibouti, told the press, “The goal of the base is to fight against pirates, and most of all, to secure the Chinese ships using this very important strait that is important to all the countries in the world.”

“For Djibouti,” he added, China is “an additional strategic ally.”

Those Chinese ships Youssouf was referring to are carrying oil, and lots of it.

By taking advantage of crashing commodities prices, China has been buying up the world’s petroleum. Last year, Bloomberg reported that China purchased half a million barrels of crude in excess of its daily needs in the first seven months of 2015. In the current economic downturn that is rocking markets across the world, China is saving $460 billion per year in its purchase of commodities, about $320 billion of which is from cheap oil.

China’s new base in Djibouti can be seen as part of its policy in Africa and the Middle East. Last December, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion in funding to China’s partners in Africa. The next month, he visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran.

For many years, Saudi Arabia was China’s biggest supplier of crude oil (Russia now periodically displaces the kingdom in that role), with bilateral trade reaching $69.1 billion in 2014.

China will lend the Central Bank of Egypt $1 billion to prop up Egypt’s foreign reserves.

Xi was the first foreign head of state to visit Tehran after sanctions on Iran were lifted, leaving with 17 signed agreements to increase bilateral trade to $600 billion in the next decade.


Beyond commerce, Beijing has also taken an interest in Middle Eastern geopolitical affairs.

Xi announced his support for a full Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and has made new forays into the Afghanistan peace process.

State media say China is “never absent in contribution to peace and development in the Middle East,” and is eager to share “Chinese wisdom” to solve “Middle East problems.”

Another way to view China’s new base in Obock is as an element of Chinese naval expansion, driven by conflicting territorial claims closer to home, and the desire to counter American influence in its backyard and regions where Chinese trade is seen as a matter of national security.

On the final day of 2015, a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson announced that the navy’s second aircraft carrier was being built in Dalían, a city in northeastern China. The first, the Liaoning, was built by the Soviet Union, purchased from Ukraine in 1998, then refitted by Beijing. This second ship will be built entirely in China, although its design is a copy of a Soviet-era vessel with some modern touches. It is lighter than the Liaoning but with a slightly larger flight deck. China’s J-15 fighter jet pilots and carrier crew have been training on the Liaoning, and the Chinese military announced in late-December that it is now able to operate ship-borne aircraft.

Conflicting claims to islands, reefs and rocks in the East and South China Seas have set off verbal battles between neighbors in East and Southeast Asia, and those spats are constantly on the verge of escalation.

From July to September last year, Japanese jets scrambled 117 times to prevent incursions by Chinese jets over the islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Beijing has built artificial islands in the South China Sea to strengthen its claim to existing island chains. Following the USS Lassen’s freedom of navigation operation near the Spratly Islands, which China calls Nansha and claims as part of its territory, China’s naval commander, Admiral Wu Shengli, told his American counterpart, Admiral John Richardson, that a minor incident could spark war if the United States does not halt “provocative acts.”

Last month, the USS Curtis Wilbur, made a similar pass near the Paracel Islands. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the operation “was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features.”

Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesperson Yang Yujun said the American ship’s patrol “damaged the peaceful, safe, and good order in relevant waters and is not beneficial to regional peace and stability.”

More recently, the Chinese military placed two batteries of eight missile launchers, plus a sophisticated radar system, on Woody Island, which is part of the contested Paracel Island chain.

When Secretary of State John Kerry met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing in late-January, Wang reiterated Chinese President Xi Jinping’s commitment to avoid the militarization of the South China Sea—a pledge made during Xi’s September visit to the U.S. last year. Wang also said China had built civil installations in the South China Sea, then added ominously, “International law has given all sovereign countries the right to self-defense.”

By Beijing’s logic, missile batteries make the South China Sea a safer place.
China is eager to expand its wartime capabilities, in fact.

In the military publication PLA Daily, a researcher at the People’s Liberation Army’s Naval Military Academic Research Institute said the country needs at least three aircraft carriers in rotation for naval patrols, training, and maintenance. However, analysts in the U.S. predict a much more viral rate of expansion.

Under directions from Congress, the Pentagon commissioned an independent assessment of American strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. The Center for Strategic and International Studies produced that report in January. The study warns that the South China Sea will be “virtually a Chinese lake” by 2030, because there will be so many Chinese aircraft carriers operational by then.

A base in Djibouti, or any other location open to hosting the PLAN (the suggestive, if coincidental, acronym for the People’s Liberation Army Navy) would be necessary to project that power beyond China’s immediate neighborhood.

Ultimately, China’s base in Djibouti is a component of Xi Jinping’s flagship “One Belt, One Road” initiative.

Superficially that looks like a project to deepen economic ties between China and many of its trade partners. But consider the series of ports that China is building, has developed, or expressed interest in.

China is building Colombo Port City, a patch of land to be reclaimed off the shore of Sri Lanka’s capital, and will own Port City when it is operational.

China has ambitions to transform Bangladesh’s Chittagong port. (That may not happen. Japan might have established a foothold there already.)

A Chinese state-owned enterprise signed a 40-year lease for control of the Gwadar Port free trade zone in Pakistan.

China invested $2.5 billion in a port on Maday Island in Burma to secure an oil and gas pipeline in Yunnan Province.

China uses Port Victoria in the Seychelles as a refueling point for anti-piracy operations, and gifted a purpose-built vessel to the Seychelles Coast Guard for patrols.

A decade-old Booz Allen Hamilton report calls these ports part of China’s “string of pearls”—a network of facilities that run through major maritime chokepoints and strategic locations.

What we see now is the PLAN expanding westward.

China says it maintains a non-interventionist principle in its foreign policy, but when Chinese troops set foot in Djibouti, it will be clear that Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” economic plan has a strong military component, setting a disturbing precedent where China attempts to exert dominance of global shipping routes, both economically and militarily.

For the Chinese navy, that means a significant adjustment to their role. Not only are they meant to secure Beijing’s interests in the East and South China Seas, the Chinese navy is now also a tool of power projection around the globe.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.voanews.com/content/china-arms-exports-double/3212411.html

China Arms Exports Double as Regional Tensions Mount

Shannon Van Sant
February 29, 2016 2:16 AM
Comments 2

HONG KONG— A research group says China’s arms exports have almost doubled in five years as the country has moved to become a major player in the global industry.

Chinese exports of major arms grew by 88 percent between 2011 and 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

“China is actively pushing for exports. A lot of the exports are going to countries where China has had good relations for a long time, so there’s also a strategic incentive for China to supply weapons. Pakistan for example, Bangladesh, Myanmar,” said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher with the institute.

China is now the world’s third largest arms exporter behind the U.S. and Russia, and the country accounted for nearly six percent of arms exports between 2011 and 2015.

The U.S. and Russia’s weapons exports grew by 27 and 28 percent respectively during the same period, although both countries are still far ahead of China and the rest of the world in total sales.

Imports of arms to China fell 25 percent compared with the previous five-year period, indicating that China now has the technological capability and know how to produce many of its own weapons.

Wezeman said territorial disputes and the growing modernization of China’s military may be spurring an arms race in Asia. China’s military budget was up 10 percent from the year before, to more than $141 billion.

“You can see a general arms build-up in Asia. You can see countries reacting to what neighbors are doing, and a strong driver for this is Chinese military modernization, expanding Chinese capabilities, linked to a quite assertive Chinese policy,” he said.

Vietnam jumped from 43rd place to become the eighth-largest arms importer from 2011 to 2015. The country now accounts for roughly 3 percent of world-wide arms purchases during that period. India imported 14 percent of globally traded arms during that time period.

Tensions rising across Asia

Gregory Poling is the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and a fellow with the Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asia Studies at CSIS. Poling said China's recent actions in the South China Sea are raising tensions throughout Southeast Asia.

“More immediately this is clearly destabilizing the wider region, for states like Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, would much rather be focused on economic development and boosting regional architecture," Poling said. "Instead they’re caught in what they see as an almost existential need to boost their militaries, to purchase arms, to divert budgets towards modernization in ways that they would rather not but they’re facing a Beijing that they see as an increasing security threat.”

Five trillion dollars in global trade passes through the waterway every year, and the sea is thought to be rich in oil and gas reserves.

Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS, said while territorial disputes may boost arms sales in Asia, China's neighbors' won't be able to keep up with the pace of China's military modernization.

“They want to have other choices rather than feeling that they simply have to accommodate to China, and they don’t have enough capability, even with their increased weapons spending and procurements, no country on China’s border is going to be able to keep up with China," Glaser said. "Look at its defense spending. So countries are going to have to find more creative ways. They can certainly enhance their own capabilities.”

Collaboration among China’s neighbors has already increased to protect their territorial claims. Earlier this month Vietnam announced it will allow India to set up a satellite tracking center in southern Vietnam that will provide it with access to overhead images of the South China Sea.


Related Articles

US Commander: China Seeking to Control East Asia
Australia Announces $21 Billion Defense Expansion
US, South Korea to Practice Offense During Joint Exercises

 

[Housecarl]

In the category of "WTF?!?!"....If they need "bomb trucks", Block 52s are overkill for the "bad" Taliban....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.voanews.com/content/paki...16s-from-us-for-counterterrorism/3213065.html

Pakistan Says It Needs F-16s From US for Counterterrorism

VOA News
February 29, 2016 1:28 PM

Pakistan said Monday at the start of strategic talks with the United States that a contentious sale of F-16 fighter jets would strengthen the South Asian nation's ability to mount counterterrorist operations and promote regional stability.

The U.S. government this month approved the sale of the aircraft, radar and electronic warfare equipment to Pakistan in a deal worth nearly $700 million.

Neighboring India opposes the sale, which has drawn criticism from some U.S. lawmakers. Congress could block the deal, although such action is rare.

Secretary of State John Kerry last week told a House committee that Pakistan's existing fleet of F-16s has been critical for its counterterrorism fight on its western border with Afghanistan.

Kerry did not mention the F-16 sale in his remarks on Monday, but he commended Pakistan's counterterrorism operations, including in North Waziristan, a tribal area where militants have launched cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

Watch Kerry's comments on Pakistan
Video

Picking, choosing militants

Pakistan has been accused of targeting some militant groups but nurturing or turning a blind eye to others.

Kerry welcomed Pakistan's commitment to not differentiate among terrorist groups. He said groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba seek to undermine Pakistan's relations with its neighbors.

Kerry also said they would also discuss Pakistan's "obligations of being a responsible state with nuclear weapons."

Adam Ereli, a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, said Pakistan is a country of enormous geo-strategic consequences.

"Given the fact that it is a nuclear power [with] an ongoing conflict with India, given its role in Afghanistan, given the fact that it’s a Muslim nation of 150-160 million, with severe economic and political challenges...the US has a very very strong interests in a stable and cooperative relationship with Pakistan,” Ereli said

As the threat of Islamic extremism has grown in Pakistan, so has international concern grown about the security of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Experts say Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is growing fast, and it is developing tactical nuclear weapons to deter rival India's larger conventional forces.


Related Articles

Pakistani Military's Taliban Ties Seen as Important to Afghan Peace Talks

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/...s-support-expanded-operations-libya/81107750/

Pentagon signals support for expanded operations in Libya

By Andrew Tilghman, Military Times 1:25 p.m. EST February 29, 2016

The Pentagon is prepared to expand military operations against the Islamic State faction in Libya, but only after the war-torn county agrees on a national unity government, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday.

“I’m certain they will want help and the international community will help,” Carter said at a press briefing.

“We fully expect that when — which we hope is soon — a government is formed in Libya, it will welcome not just the United States but the coalition,” Carter said.

The U.S. military’s attention on Libya has intensified in recent weeks as intelligence reports suggest that the size of the Islamic State force there has grown to nearly 6,000, roughly double last year's estimates. The extremist group now controls large swaths of the Libyan coast.

On Feb. 19, U.S. aircraft launched an airstrike on an Islamic State training camp near the Libyan coastal town of Sabratha. Dozens of militants were likely killed including a senior leader named Noureddine Chouchane, defense officials said.

The U.S. military has also reportedly deployed special operations troops to Libya to identify local militias fighting the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

MILITARYTIMES

In Libya, the U.S. opens a fourth front in war on ISIS

Yet the U.S. is reluctant to get more directly involved in Libya until the end of the civil war that erupted five years ago after an American-led air campaign helped topple Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The North African country has two competing governments, both backed by loose alliances of militias.

The international community has supported the government based in the eastern part of Libya, but diplomatic efforts to reconcile the two warring factions have failed.

Carter said establishment of a central government is essential to stopping ISIS, which has taken advantage of the lawlessness and established a new foothold.

“That is the key, which is try to get a government in [the capital] Tripoli that can win the support of all of the many factions in Libya so that Libya isn’t the kind of disordered state that provides fertile ground for ISIL to spread.,” Carter said.

“But in the meantime,” Carter said, airstrikes may continue if U.S. intelligence identifies specific threats.

“We’re going to protect ourselves against ISIL in Libya as anywhere else,” Carter said.

That plan was underscored by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also spoke at the press briefing Monday.

“I’d foot stomp” the fact that “we are very much aware of ISIL's expansion in Libya and … the strike in Sabratha was designed to get after that,” Dunford said.

The current strategy is to find “opportunity to conduct operations against ISIL, to disrupt them at this point and not undermine the political process,” Dunford said.

“Right now, it very much is informed by a balance between wanting to contain or — disrupt, better said — ISIL, and at the same time, ensure that the [national unity government] has a full opportunity to be seated,” Dunford said.

Carter said Italy has offered to take the lead in some Libya operations, “but we have already promised that we will strongly support them. And so I hope that's part of the future there.”

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/pentagon-army-target-isis-iraq/index.html

Army's Delta Force begins to target ISIS in Iraq

By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
Updated 1:58 PM ET, Mon February 29, 2016 | Video Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)—The U.S. Army's elite Delta Force operations to target, capture or kill top ISIS operatives have begun in Iraq, after several weeks of covert preparation, an administration official with direct knowledge of the force's activities told CNN.

The official said the group has spent the last several weeks preparing, including setting up safe houses, establishing informant networks and coordinating operations with Iraqi and Peshmerga units. It's the same strategy that Special Operations forces have used in previous deployments to combat zones.

Several Pentagon and military officials declined to discuss specifics of the so-called Expeditionary Targeting Force with CNN.

But Defense Secretary Ash Carter seemed to confirm in comments made at the Pentagon on Monday that the Special Operations forces had begun missions.

"The only thing I'll say is the (Expeditionary Targeting Force) is in position, it is having an effect and operating, and I expect it to be a very effective part of our acceleration campaign," he said during a press conference.

According to Carter, the force will conduct raids, seize places and people, and free ISIS-held hostages and prisoners.

Carter also told reporters that the force would cause ISIS "to fear that anywhere, anytime, it may be struck."

A U.S. official told CNN that Carter's statement reflects that Delta operations have begun.

RELATED: Former CIA Director: Syria, Iraq 'no longer exist

CNN is not detailing any precise locations or operations. Based on several interviews with U.S. officials however, a growing role is rapidly emerging for Special Operations forces in Iraq and Syria.

CNN has learned that Delta Force plans to replicate the strategy that Special Operations forces used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan. The plan: Gather enough intelligence to stage raids on terror compounds and hideouts. Then from intelligence gathered at those sites, such as laptops and cellphones, forces will try to rapidly learn more about ISIS networks and quickly attack additional related targets.

It's a strategy that worked in May 2015, when Delta raided a compound in Syria, killing ISIS operative Abu Sayyaf and capturing his wife.

U.S. military officials have said material gathered at the raid and the interrogation of his wife provided extensive intelligence of ISIS networks that has been used in subsequent missions.

The Abu Sayyaf raid is the only known ground combat operation inside Syria for U.S. forces outside of a failed hostage rescue attempt. All other operations to kill ISIS operatives have been conducted by overhead drones. Putting forces on the ground is seen as a way to go more directly after key individuals, although it poses the risk of any ground combat operation.

Carter announced the initial details in December during congressional testimony, saying that the Pentagon was sending a "specialized expeditionary targeting force" to conduct "raids and intelligence gathering missions."

Carter also said at the time that "this force will also be in a position to conduct unilateral operations in Syria." For now, the force is in fact working only in Iraq, but is prepared to go into Syria if it gathers enough intelligence to warrant a mission.

Conducting targeted operations inside Syria is seen as potentially more risky because there would not be a local force on the ground for the U.S. troops to work with.

The ETF -- which numbers about 200 personnel -- has collected enough intelligence now about ISIS operations in Iraq in up to half a dozen locations that raids and field operations are ready inside Iraq.

These are described as "targeted" missions, in which the military is going after a specific individual or ISIS operation. Targeted missions required days, if not weeks, of continuous surveillance of the area to ensure civilians are not nearby. Depending on the situation, the President often will be asked to approved specific missions.

The personnel are largely made up of Delta Force, one of the U.S. military's so-called "Tier One" Special Operations units. As with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group -- publicly known as Seal Team 6 -- Delta operatives are highly trained to operate secretly in hostile environments.

RELATED: Cessation of hostilities in Syria continues to hold

There remains a raging debate inside the administration about whether to acknowledge the ETF operations once they begin. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of the the U.S. Special Operations Command has warned all his troops not to talk about it because of security concerns. But Pentagon officials acknowledged to CNN that there is pressure within the administration to tout the success of the effort -- if indeed the operations are successful.

While the ETF is not yet operating in Syria, a separate group of about 50 U.S. special forces have greatly expanded their initial operations there in recent weeks after the Pentagon announced they were going to Syria.

This group's mission is to accompany tribal, Arab and Kurdish forces in Syria as they try to regain territory from ISIS. Small U.S. teams now regularly leave their locations in northern Syria and go into the field. Several U.S. military officials confirmed that most recently U.S. troops went with local fighters to a location near the town of Al-Shaddadi in eastern Syria to help coordinate their operations and assist them in calling in airstrikes. ISIS has in recent days been driven from the area and U.S. officials see it as a victory for the policy because getting ISIS out of the town cuts a key route between Syria and Iraq.

But expanding Special Operations forces in Syria by sending the ETF remains complicated in addition to security concerns. If the teams capture operatives in Iraq, the plan calls for them to be turned over to the Iraqi government. If ISIS operatives are captured in Syria, the U.S. might try to turn them back over to their home countries, officials said. But clearly if there are Syrians and other nationalities fighting, that might make a turnover difficult and the U.S. is not planning to hold the people it captures beyond a short period of time.

And in another complication, so far it is not clear to what extent the U.S. would inform Russia of any ground operations to ensure U.S. troops are not inadvertently bombed in Russian airstrikes. Currently the Russians have only been given the broad indications, and not specifics, of where Special Operations force are based in northern Syria, U.S. officials said.

Carter also said Monday that "momentum is now on our side" in the fight against ISIS.

He told reporters that he fully expects the U.S. to play a greater role in assisting the Iraqi military's effort to retake Mosul.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford also said that U.S. forces would "do more in Mosul" to help the Iraqi Army reclaim the city -- the country's second-largest -- from ISIS.

Carter also discussed the U.S. cyber campaign against ISIS, using another terms for the organization, saying it was intended to "disrupt ISIL's command and control" and "overload their network," thereby impacting ISIS' ability to control its forces, the local population and the economy.

CNN's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/er...tway-.aspx?pageID=449&nID=95797&NewsCatID=409

MURAT YETKÝN
murat.yetkin@hurriyet.com.tr

Erdoðan’s fury at the Constitutional Court and the Ankara beltway

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoðan reacted harshly against the release of two journalists, Can Dündar and Erdem Gül, on Feb. 28.

Before taking off from Istanbul for a tour of West African states, Erdoðan not only slammed the Constitutional Court, which ruled on Feb. 25 that the pre-trial arrest of the journalists was against constitutionally protected freedom of the press, but also the local criminal court that released them upon the top court’s ruling, ending their 92 days in jail.

“I do not respect to the ruling. I’m not going to abide by it. The [14th Istanbul Criminal] Court could have insisted on its original ruling [when it arrested the journalists] and avoided the Constitutional Court’s ruling. Then they [Dündar and Gül] would have been able to go to the European Court of Human Rights. This whole process is not right at all,” Erdoðan said.

He also stressed that the two journalists’ actions had “nothing to do with the freedom of the press,” instead insisting that it was a case of “espionage.”

Daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Gül had reported in 2015 about documents submitted to court on the alleged transport of illegal military material to opposition groups fighting against the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria in early 2014. Erdoðan’s lawyer, Muammer Celaloðlu, then applied to the prosecutor’s office claiming they should be tried for military espionage and helping an illegal organization. A court case was immediately opened against the journalists and they were arrested on Nov. 26, 2015, put in Silivri Prison near Istanbul.

Erdoðan stressed on Feb. 28 that their release did not mean an acquittal and the court case was still ongoing. That remark might open a debate in Ankara over whether it would mean putting pressure on the court to imprison them.

But Erdoðan’s fury may not be limited to the case of the two journalists, which has turned into a kind of personal issue for him.

Events over the last couple of weeks in the Ankara beltway indicate an unusual rise of tension within the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), which has ruled for nearly 14 years.

First of all, a fire that could have been set alight by statements from a number of the party’s old guard, including Bülent Arýnç - a member of its founding triumvirate – had to be put out by another founding member, former President Abdullah Gül, following a dinner between him and Erdoðan.

Then came an interview with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoðlu on Al Jazeera, in which he questioned the reliability of the Arab countries who wanted Turkey to get involved in Syria with ground troops. That would mean breaking the NATO seal, he said, stating that Turkey would not make a unilateral move. But these remarks from Davutoðlu coincided with Erdoðan questioning the Western alliance, right after a long telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama during which the two leaders’ differences of opinion regarding the role of militant Kurdish forces in Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and their possible links to terrorist acts in Turkey, continued.

Meanwhile, another example showing that the military is also against any move outside of NATO came on Feb. 27, when Turkish Chief of the General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar addressed the relatives of the victims of the Feb. 17 suicide bomb attack, which blew up military personnel service buses and killed 29 people in Ankara on behalf of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). “We are not going to let this go unanswered, but we are not going to let our anger exceed our reason,” Akar said.

Another example of discrepancies within the ruling party can be observed in the debate over the environment in the northeastern province of Artvin, renowned for its green, mountainous landscape. Locals there have been protesting against a new mining project that has been taken to court but still continued by the company. In a surprise move, Davutoðlu accepted a meeting with the local committee that wanted to talk to him last week. A day before the meeting, Forest and Water Affairs Minister Veysel Eroðlu, who is a long-time fellow of Erdoðan, vowed that there would be “no back-peddling” from the project. But the next day Davutoðlu suspended the company’s works until the completion of the court case. Erdoðan then said on Feb. 27 that he saw the Artvin protests as a “junior” version of the Gezi Park protests in June 2013, which he considered an attempt to overthrow his rule.

Now there are reports, like the one by Nuray Babacan in daily Hürriyet, about the cabinet meeting chaired by Erdoðan on Feb. 22, a day before the Davutoðlu interview appeared on Al Jazeera. It was reported that the meeting saw a lively foreign policy debate, particularly on the AK Parti’s Syria, Israel and Egypt policies.

Ankara has been trying to adopt a new foreign policy line, return to more engagement with the European Union. The question is whether that will take place without anyone asked to pay the bill for evident failures - not only in Ankara’s Middle East policy but also in its handling of the Kurdish issue amid the uptick in terror acts by the PKK, which is related to what has been happening in Syria and Iraq.

All in all, the outlook shows that Erdoðan’s anxiety may not be limited to the Constitutional Court’s ruling and the release of the journalists Dündar and Gül.

February/29/2016


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[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-babel-analysis-idUSKCN0W10AQ

World | Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:08am EST
Related: World

EU's Tower of Babel may fall while leaders distracted

PARIS | By Paul Taylor


It's little wonder the European Union can't find common solutions to Europe's urgent problems when its main members are having such different national conversations.

Like the biblical Tower of Babel, Europe's ambitious construction is in danger of toppling because its peoples are not speaking the same political language.

Tune in to Germany and the fierce debate is all about how to cope with an influx of a million migrants, whether to limit the numbers and, in some quarters, how to stop them coming.

Switch to France and you're listening to a nation that thinks it is at war, still living under a state of emergency and in shock after last November's attacks by Islamist militants that killed 130 people in Paris.

Flip to Britain and the talk is all of national sovereignty and a possible Brexit in the build-up to a June referendum that might end the country's schizophrenic membership of the EU.

Look east to Poland and people are arguing over the new government's moves to curb the media and the constitutional court, over who may have been a Communist informer 40 years ago, and over the perceived Russian threat to eastern Europe today.

Around central Europe the discussion is about how to resist German pressure to take in a share of refugees.

Turn south and the Italians and Portuguese are engrossed in domestically focused debates about how to revive economic growth despite the EU's budgetary corset while cleaning up legacy bank problems. Spain meanwhile is preoccupied by Catalan separatism, political paralysis and the risk of a breakup of the country.

When those countries' leaders come to Brussels, they often cannot even agree what they should be discussing.

For the last two EU summits, Britain wanted the focus to be on its demands for a renegotiation of its membership terms to give Prime Minister David Cameron a "new settlement" he can sell in a June 23 referendum on whether to stay in the bloc.

He secured a deal on Feb. 19, but many fellow leaders were frustrated at having to spend time on what they see as side issues and rhetorical formulations when their house is on fire.

"Everyone in the room and corridors was rather irritated that here we are dealing with some rather obscure issues of child benefits indexation, while we have real problems in Syria, member states closing borders, major issues we should really be on instead of this," a diplomat involved in the talks said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, fighting for her political life against domestic critics of her open door for refugees, wanted the EU to concentrate on urgent measures to secure Europe's external borders, register migrants, send home rejected asylum seekers and share out refugees among EU states.

Desperate to find a common "European solution" to the migration crisis, she has forced yet another European summit on March 7 with Turkey, days before three German regional elections in which anti-immigration rightists could make big gains.

French President Francois Hollande, for his part, goes to Brussels seeking more cooperation against terrorism and support for military action against Islamic State in Syria and Libya.

His prime minister, Manuel Valls, irked German officials by using a trip to the Munich Security Conference to criticize Merkel's welcome for refugees and declare that Europe could not take any more migrants.


WANING AUTHORITY

Unlike many past European crises, where disagreements could be postponed or salami-sliced into gradual steps that turned a political dispute into a technocratic process, there is no obvious way to delay or defuse the migration issue.

Events on the ground are moving faster than the EU's ability to manage them. Governments along the main Western Balkans migration route, under pressure from populist forces, are resorting to beggar-thy-neighbor solutions.

Austria, a key transit country, unilaterally imposed daily caps on migrant entries and asylum applications in mid-February.

In a sign of the waning authority of Brussels and Berlin, Austria brought together 10 central European and Balkan states last week - meeting without Germany, the EU authorities or Greece, the main arrival point for migrants - to coordinate national measures to choke off the northward flow of migrants.

As boatloads of migrants defy winter seas daily to cross from Turkey, that lockdown is rapidly turning Greece, the EU's most economically enfeebled state, into a giant refugee camp.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has warned his country will not become "a warehouse of souls" and said he will hold up other European business if Athens' partners do not share the burden.

EU countries have largely ignored the quotas of refugees they agreed last year to take in, and Hungary is now planning a referendum on whether it should have to accept any.

Britain and France are keeping their heads down rather than helping Merkel, Europe's most experienced and respected leader.

Cameron won't take any refugees already in Europe for fear that public hostility to migration could cost him the referendum. Hollande too fears fuelling support for far-right populist Marine Le Pen if he offers Berlin more assistance.

Barring an improbable halt to arrivals from Turkey in the coming weeks, the most likely next step is that Europe's 26-nation Schengen zone of passport-free travel will be officially suspended for two years to pre-empt a disorderly collapse.

A major achievement of EU cooperation on a continent scarred for centuries by wars will be put into an induced coma to prevent it dying immediately. The result will likely be long lines at borders that had all but disappeared two decades ago.

At that point, Germany, with or without Merkel, will probably have to impose its own curbs on new migrants.

While Europe's weak and divided leaders remain distracted by internal debates, the union that provided the framework for post-World War Two prosperity will start to unravel.


(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2016/02/europes_mena_nightmare.html

Europe's MENA Nightmare

Posted by Andy Langenkamp on February 29, 2016
22 Comments

Andy Langenkamp is a global policy analyst for ECR Research.

In its 2016 Preventive Priorities Survey, one of the world's most respected and influential think tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations, meticulously lists 11 conflicts whose possible repercussions are so far-reaching that their prevention (or mitigation) should take top priority. This political risks list does not bode well for Europe, as it implies that migrants are likely to continue flocking to the Continent in large numbers:

-- Intensification of the Syrian civil war
-- Attacks on the United States or its allies, with numerous fatalities
-- A large-scale cyber-attack on the United States' core infrastructure
-- A major crisis in or with North Korea
-- Political instability in the EU on the back of the refugee crisis
-- Worsening chaos in Libya
-- Further escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
-- Additional political violence in Turkey
-- Growing instability in Egypt
-- More atrocities and unrest in Afghanistan
-- Further fragmentation in Iraq, caused by the Islamic State group and sectarian violence

Instability Ground Zero

It is almost a dead certainty that the Syrian civil war will continue to rage for quite some time. There are too many factions, militias, and parties that are fighting each other, while several of the major external players have conflicting interests. A durable truce is unlikely in the near-to-medium term.

The Syrian war affects virtually all of the other potential crises and conflicts on the CFR list. It would be more accurate to speak of the Syrian-Iraqi war. ISIS's menacing presence in Iraq, growing animosity between Sunnis and Shia, and chaos and corruption are undermining the country and its government. We cannot, at this point, rule out a full-blown civil war in Iraq as well.

The countries near Syria and Iraq that are put most at risk by the war now raging are Libya, Turkey, and Egypt, according to the experts. The situation in Egypt, however, is unlikely to get out of hand in the near future. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi is an authoritarian leader who appears to be in firm control of the country. He does not have any urgent reason to fear his neighbors, who seem relieved that the country shows a semblance of stability.

Libya and Turkey are a different matter entirely. The former is hopelessly divided -- it even has two parliaments. There have been some attempts to create a national unity government, but in view of Libya's history and the existing imbalance of power, I am pessimistic, particularly now that ISIS is targeting Libya as a new base of operations. The country is certainly well qualified to hold the office. It is already a lawless haven for extremists, teeming with weapons, and its location offers excellent opportunities to anyone planning terrorist attacks in Europe.

Turkish Theocracy & Taliban Tensions

Turkey, too, is contaminated by the civil wars on its borders. It is embroiled in a drawn-out conflict with the Kurds, who aim to form a state that consists of parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The successes gained by the Syrian Kurds have made Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan very jittery. At the same time, Erdogan sees Syrian President Bashar Assad as a real threat, and this perception has caused him to turn a blind eye to Islamic State in the past. That is no longer the case, however, following attacks on Turkish soil, and thanks as well to Western pressure.

This does not mean that Erdogan is prepared to collaborate with the Kurds. On the contrary, Turkey's Kurds are increasingly repressed. Some experts claim a civil war is already in progress in the southeast of Turkey. Erdogan makes good use of the struggle with the Kurds, as it enables him to sell his authoritarian Islamization of Turkish politics to the population. On the other hand, that part of the population resisting Erdogan's dictatorial tendencies makes Turkey more vulnerable. Add to this the presence of millions of refugees who cannot officially apply for asylum. (Due to a strange exception in international treaties, Turkey is allowed to only designate migrants from the West as refugees.) The political risks facing Turkey are daunting.

Afghanistan's condition is even worse. The Taliban are on the march once again. It is feared that the country will become a major and essential link in the so-called Crescent of Chaos that runs from West Africa to Pakistan, and that it will continue to attract all sorts of extremists. The upshot could be mounting tensions between arch-rivals India and Pakistan, while the Americans (and NATO) could be forced to increase their military involvement.

Crumbling Cohesion

More violence in Afghanistan, and persistent civil war in Syria and Iraq, imply that refugee flows will grow instead of diminishing. Along with Kosovo, the three aforementioned countries are the most prolific suppliers of refugees in Europe. There is little doubt that the number of migrants will rise again in the spring, and in the summer. Yet it is extremely unlikely that the underlying problems will be addressed simultaneously. This means the pressure on Europe will only increase, and any remaining solidarity -- among member states and with refugees -- will be severely undermined. Borders are closing all over the Continent while the rules imposed on migrants are tightening -- to an antisocial degree in some countries. And as the populist parties become more popular, cohesion continues to crumble inside the European Union.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-calais-idUSKCN0W21F8

World | Mon Feb 29, 2016 10:36am EST
Related: World, France

Clashes break out as France begins clearing Calais migrant camp

CALAIS, France


Clashes with police broke out on Monday as work got underway to clear part of the shanty town outside Calais in northern France where migrants are trying to reach Britain.

Police fired tear gas around midday, about 150-200 migrants and activists threw stones, and three makeshift shelters were set ablaze, according to a Reuters photographer at the site.

Earlier, one person was arrested for trying to stop a group of about 20 workers under heavy police protection from clearing the site, where about 3,000 people are staying.

"The migrants are just going to run and hide in the woods and the police are going to have to go after them," said activist Francois Guennoc of the Auberge des Migrants migrant support group.

Regional Prefect Fabienne Buccio had said the police presence was needed because "extremists" could try to intimidate migrants into turning down housing offers or buses to reception centers.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said last week that authorities would work with humanitarian organizations to relocate the migrants to a nearby park of converted shipping containers or other reception centers around France.

On Thursday, a judge upheld a government order to evict migrants living in the southern part of the camp, although a few makeshift buildings of social importance such as a school and a theater are to remain untouched.

Thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty, from Afghanistan to Syria, have converged on the northern port over the past year.

Many attempt to climb illegally onto trains using the Channel Tunnel or into lorries heading to Britain where they hope to settle. Their presence has led to tension with some of the local population and to a permanent police deployment.

Earlier on Monday at another European migrant crisis flashpoint, Macedonian police also fired tear gas to disperse hundreds who stormed the border from Greece. The migrants had torn down a gate as frustrations boiled over at restrictions imposed on people moving through the Balkans.


(Reporting by Pascal Rossignol and Pierre Savary; Writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lawmaking-idUSKCN0W225P

World | Mon Feb 29, 2016 11:41am EST
Related: World, China, Germany, Japan

Exclusive: Major powers team up to tell China of concerns over new laws

BEIJING | By Jason Subler


The United States, Canada, Germany, Japan and the European Union have written to China to express concern over three new or planned laws, including one on counterterrorism, in a rare joint bid to pressure Beijing into taking their objections seriously.

The U.S., Canadian, German and Japanese ambassadors signed a letter dated Jan. 27 addressed to State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun, voicing unease about the new counterterrorism law, the draft cyber security law, and a draft law on management of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In what sources said was a coordinated move, the ambassador of the European Union Delegation to China, Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, sent a letter expressing similar concerns, dated Jan. 28.

Reuters reviewed copies of both letters.

The cyber security and counterterrorism laws codify sweeping powers for the government to combat perceived threats, from widespread censorship to heightened control over certain technologies.

Critics of the counterterrorism legislation, for one, say that it could be interpreted in such a way that even non-violent dissidents could fall within its definition of terrorism.

The four ambassadors said areas of the counterterrorism law, which the National People's Congress passed in December, were vague and could create a "climate of uncertainty" among investors. They did not specify which areas.

The EU ambassador used the same phrase to describe the law's impact, and both letters expressed an interest in engaging with China as it worked out implementing regulations around the law, to try to mitigate those concerns.

Guo could not be reached for comment. China's State Council Information Office, Ministry of Public Security and Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While countries often give feedback on proposed legislation in China, the rare joint response by several major powers, and coordination with the EU, signals an increased readiness to lend weight of numbers to their argument.

It also points to growing frustration that the low-key, individual approach taken in the past may not be working.

"While we recognize the need for each country to address its security concerns, we believe the new legislative measures have the potential to impede commerce, stifle innovation, and infringe on China's obligation to protect human rights in accordance with international law," said a strongly-worded letter co-signed by the four ambassadors.

China has defended the new and draft laws, saying such steps, including heightened censorship, were necessary to ensure stability in the country of over 1.3 billion people.


"CLIMATE OF UNCERTAINTY"

The diplomatic push comes as Beijing arguably needs cooperation from the signatories to the letters more than ever.

A slowing Chinese economy and fragile markets highlight the importance of foreign investors' confidence.

Chinese companies are increasingly looking to get approvals from foreign governments for acquisitions, and the European Union is debating whether to give China "market economy" status.

On the draft cyber security law, all five ambassadors were particularly concerned by provisions requiring companies to store data locally and to provide encryption keys, which technology firms worried may impinge on privacy and mean they would have to pass on sensitive intellectual property to the government in the name of security.

Both letters said the draft NGO management law had the potential to hinder academic exchanges and commercial activities, calling them "crucial elements" of their relationships with China.

Critics have said the draft legislation risked choking off NGOs' work by requiring them to get official sponsors and giving broad powers to police to regulate their activities.

In the letters, the ambassadors asked China to open both draft laws to another round of public consultations.

The U.S. and Canadian embassies in Beijing did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article. A spokesman for the EU Delegation had no comment when reached by Reuters.

German embassy spokesman Nikolas Bader said: "The Embassy does not comment on the letter. But we are clearly concerned about these issues and have repeatedly raised them in the past."

The Japanese embassy said: "We pay attention to Chinese movement over relevant laws or drafts of laws."

The parties to the letters decided to express their concerns together after it became unclear to what degree China was taking their individual input on the laws on board, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

"We're trying to avoid the divide and conquer approach (by China). They like to do that on any possible occasion. We wanted to send a counter-signal that when we have shared interests, we cannot so easily be split," the person said, adding that there had been no clear response by China so far to the letters.

"We don't plan to establish a pen-pal relationship. We want something to happen."


(Additional reporting by Michael Martina, Megha Rajagopalan and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

 

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Once I Saw Light in Iran. Now It’s Mostly Shadows.

By AZADEH MOAVENI
FEB. 29, 2016

I REMEMBER vividly the first time I ever voted in an Iranian election. It was a balmy summer day in June 2001, in the election that won the reformist president Mohammad Khatami a second term. The blue stamp was the first on the voting page of my identification card, and I felt a sharp, exhilarating pride.

That election is much on my mind now, as I watch the results of Friday’s voting with my family, disagreeing on what it might mean for the future.

Back in 2001, Iran was heading down an irrevocable path toward internal reform, a process untainted by any Western intrusion, with citizens and progressive-minded leaders showing the way. Those leaders seemed, at the time, as exciting as Vaclav Havel and the revolutionary cleric Musa al-Sadr rolled into one. Elections felt — unlike the vote this past weekend — full of consequence, a genuine chance to recast political power rather than an exercise in slightly recalibrating it.


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FEB. 28, 2016

Tehran then was a naïve young intellectual’s paradise. There were Islamist reformers and secular reformers, women’s rights campaigners who went door to door in villages, and urban activists working to save everything from the Iranian cheetah to the rapidly evaporating Lake Urmia. You could sit at the feet of an ayatollah in the morning and hear a Koran-backed strategy for gender equality; by afternoon, you could be with the radical student opposition in a decaying house in the center of the city, still strewn with shredded documents removed from the United States embassy during the 1979 hostage-taking. There were literary readings almost every night, and subversive theater that lampooned the system, using metaphors from baseball to Moliere.

The reformists in those days were punchy; they invoked Karl Popper, and said one day freedom would come to Iran, and we would all support the Palestinians and thumb our noses at the West and be a beacon of progress for the rest of the Middle East, which in those days was a political wasteland, the kind of place that “didn’t have politics.”

In Tehran, dissidents didn’t cower in the shadows as in Tunis or Cairo. They would write newspaper columns saying things like, “My family gave three martyrs to the war with Iraq; I’m the only son left, I support change, and have the right to speak.” People would throng newspaper kiosks and buy five papers each.

I reported on trials where feminist lawyers, representing the families of dissident students killed by paramilitary forces, raised their voices against turbaned judges. To be a part of all this as a journalist felt like some sort of heart-stopping privilege; I would lay awake at night thinking about the day’s conversations, and how it seemed that history was not made by charismatic leaders, but the daily decision of ordinary people not to be scared.

But the seasoned correspondents in the Western press corps, I recall, were distinctly unmoved by all this fizz. They asked pedantic questions about constitutional reform, unelected institutions and parallel security services. They were no fun at all, and seemed to me, at the time, calcified cynics, immune to the buoyancy of Iranian youth and the vitality of the Tehran intelligentsia. They were unaffected by the revolutionary songs the students used to sing, songs that would bring me to tears, and didn’t seem to appreciate how radical painting, avant-garde theater, and a highly sophisticated population, were reshaping Iran from below. A country was its people, I used to think.

Today, I am the cynic. When anyone under 25, or anyone compulsively protective of the Islamic Republic, writes passionately about the state reforming on its own terms, about the choice between “bad and worse,” I go cold. If the past 15 years have made anything clear, it is that meaningful, legislated change does not emerge out of grass-roots evolution. Iran has had it all: hadith-driven feminism, vibrant civil society, a culture of engagement with politics and a patience for slow, internal reform. If these were the key ingredients required for political change, Iran would have had it by now. The hard truth is that those things are not enough. A country is both its people and its leaders.

Iran had important elections this past Friday, for Parliament and a key state institution, the Assembly of Experts. Moderate candidates won resoundingly in Tehran and they topped the list for the Assembly of Experts, a small humiliation for the hard-liners. But outside the capital, initial results indicate that the showing was not so buoyant, and we must remember that Iran has had a pro-reform Parliament and a moderate president before; that synergy did little in the face of the overwhelming structural and economic advantages the system affords hard-liners and their institutions. And now, they have had to make electoral deals with pragmatists, diluting the very notion of “reformist” as a political category.

The reform-minded in Tehran are energized, but their strategists talk of making the economy a priority and taming the extreme hard-liners, rather than pursuing social or political liberalization. The reformists who used to shake their fists and claim that Islam was on their side now speak about the importance of moving slowly, grateful simply to be out of prison. Genuine reformism, as a relevant intellectual and political culture or strategy, is effectively stalled, waiting for some major shift of circumstance, or the much dreamed-for hard-line retrenchment, to make it viable again.

I often think back to the young journalist I once was, eyeing the veterans with dismay. I was willing to do anything, wear the head scarf cheerfully when dealing with Iranian officials outside the country, spar with American conservatives determined to paint Iran black, if it would make a difference to how Iran was regarded. I remember saying over and over again, I reject the victim narrative. We are not victims, not yet, because our thinking and our culture remains passionately independent; we are ruled by the Islamic Republic yet we are not of it.

But today, all those inspiring young people I sat in cafes with and wrote about aren’t so young anymore. They’re in their 40s, scattered across the world feeling dislocated and wasted, or stuck inside the country; they stopped believing they could change things, and became different people.

One of the first friends I made in Tehran was a young fellow Iranian-American named Siamak Namazi. We sparred a lot over politics. I used to praise the Islamic Republic for its literacy rates and the astonishingly high number of university-educated women. “Just look how far ahead of Egypt we are,” I would say, to his irritation. “Stop comparing us to Egypt, that’s no measure for Iran,” he would say. “We should be comparing ourselves to South Korea, or if anything, Turkey.”

He said this because like all those determined young Iranians, he aimed high. Like them, he believed in peaceful, incremental change. Today he sits in Evin prison on unknown charges. Last week the authorities arrested his 80-year-old father, a former provincial governor and Unicef official who worked on poverty eradication, an Iranian-American who most Iranian officials I ever met would tell you privately was unstintingly decent and a patriot.

Now that Iran has rehabilitated itself by signing a nuclear deal with the West, the unyielding media images of a death-cult totalitarian land that I used to push back against have given way to elegant fashion spreads, lists of Persian foods that blow your tastes buds away and features touting skiing in Iran over the Alps. There is too little outrage that Tehran is holding another American citizen and imprisoning his aged father.

Is the image of Iran that holds sway at any given moment tethered to any reality, or is it simply a projection of what we wish and require of it at the time? Many years ago, I was determined to see only the light in Iran, but now, perhaps like those before me who had friends imprisoned or had been watching long enough to know better, my gaze is drawn mostly to the shadows.


Azadeh Moaveni is a lecturer in journalism at Kingston University and the author, most recently, of “Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.”

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 1, 2016, in The International New York Times. Today's Paper|Subscribe

 

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Iran election surprise: How moderates gained ground

A moderate-reformist coalition supportive of President Rouhani overcame disqualifications, a media blackout, and other impediments to chip away at the power of Iran's hard-liners.

Christian Science Monitor
By Scott Peterson
1 hour ago

Hard-line factions in Iran suffered unexpected defeats in the first major electoral test for President Hassan Rouhani since he struck a nuclear deal, boosting prospects for his outreach to the West and bid to ease social restrictions.

Election day Friday was a humiliating day for hard-liners as Iranians voting in twin contests loosened the factions’ decade-long grip on power.

In results announced Monday, a moderate-reformist coalition swept all 30 seats in Tehran for the 290-seat parliament, with the remainder more evenly divided nationwide.

Pro-Rouhani ayatollahs also won 15 of the 16 Tehran seats in the Assembly of Experts, squeezing out two hard-liners in the 88-member clerical body that will choose the next supreme leader.

Despite a host of handicaps, from mass disqualifications to a media blackout on top reformist leaders, a moderate-reformist coalition managed to maximize the result in their favor – giving a symbolic win that will enable Mr. Rouhani to pursue with greater determination his agenda of reaching out to the West and enhancing personal freedoms at home.

“The hard-liners called them every name they could think of – traitors, followers of the British, seditionists. The very clear message they sent was, ‘Give up hope, this is our game,’ ” says a veteran political analyst who asked not to be named.

“Against all the odds, moderates and reformists orchestrated unity out of differences, something Iran has been missing for a long time,” says the analyst, about voting blocs created with candidates from across traditional political lines. The moderate-reformist bloc for Tehran, for example, included maverick conservative Ali Motahari, who has called for the release from house arrest of reformist leaders, and who won the second highest vote count in the capital.

“It’s too soon to say if it is a benchmark, of not sticking to your own faction,” says the analyst. “But that idea of being strictly reformist or conservative is broken.”

The result “showed that people went to give the vote emotionally out of a kind of fear, because they believed that [hard-line] camp was a threat to them, to their hopes and their wishes,” says Amir Mohebian, a conservative editor and analyst. “Maybe people don’t love – maybe they hate – the people who attacked the nuclear deal."

Leading that charge was former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mr. Rouhani, who scored highest in the Assembly of Experts, in a vote that rejected hard-line ayatollahs Mohammad Yazdi, the incumbent chairman, and Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, the spiritual icon of Iran’s most hard-line factions.

Just 10 days earlier, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had praised those two clerics, as well as hard-line Ayatollah Ali Jannati, who barely clung to his seat.

On voting day, Mr. Khamenei called on a mass vote to “ruin the hope of the enemies,” and with 60 percent turnout nationwide, on Sunday he praised the “glorious participation” of Iranians, “victorious in another great examination.”

Mr. Rafsanjani also hailed the result. “No one is able to resist against the will of the majority of the people and whomever the people don’t want has to step aside,” he said Sunday.

Conservative newspapers largely ignored the moderate sweep in Tehran. The headline of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper read: “Parliament remains revolutionary,” with the sub-headline that the “Death to America” slogan “will stay in parliament.”

Channels on Telegram, an increasingly popular messaging app, went much further, with one run by Iran’s ideological Basij militia asserting that Tehran had “said ‘no’ to the leader,” and that Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani should “not send anyone to [fight in] Syria from Tehran,” implying that they could not be trusted.

Addressing Tehranis, one post read: “If [Islamic State] comes to Tehran, you defend it yourself.”

But not all conservatives were angry about the result. One hard-line official, who served as a security guard during the tumultuous 1979 return from exile of Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said he was impressed with the election result and how interconnected Iran’s youth are today by social media, noting especially Telegram and Facebook.

“They are so much more aware than we were,” says the official, who could not be named, but noted that his under-30 son was active in the technical side of the running of the vote.

“I say from the bottom of my heart, these youth today are more revolutionary than we were. They are active in the field themselves.”


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US, Russia in new Syria military safety talks

AFP
36 minutes ago

Washington (AFP) - Pentagon officials spoke with Russian counterparts on Monday as part of a series of discussions aimed at avoiding military mishaps in Syria.

Russia and a US-led coalition are conducting separate military campaigns in war-torn Syria, with the United States targeting the Islamic State group and Russia supporting regime forces, and officials worry about a midair collision or some other accident.

"The two sides discussed measures to enhance operational safety ... including the means to avoid accidents and unintended confrontation between coalition and Russian forces whenever the two sides operate in close proximity," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.

The video call was the latest communication in a "memorandum of understanding" agreed in October.

Russia and the United States did not address Syria's current "cessation of hostilities" aimed at bringing humanitarian aid into the country, as that partial ceasefire does not include operations against the IS group.

"The events there (are) having no effect on our counter-ISIL campaign," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters, using an alternative acronym for the jihadist group.

"There's certainly no cessation of hostilities there."

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Syrian army takes land east of Damascus during fragile truce

Reuters
25 minutes ago

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian armed forces took territory east of Damascus on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, on the third day of a fragile international attempt to halt nearly five years of fighting.

A Syrian rebel spokesman said this was a violation of the truce deal in place.

The Observatory said that Syrian government forces took control of a strategically important piece of land between two neighborhoods in the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus.

The capture of the land between Beit Nayim and Harasta al-Qantara came after Syrian and allied forces fought Islamist factions and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front for around 24 hours, the Observatory said.

A fragile truce came into force in Syria early on Saturday, but the main opposition group has said that the deal could collapse because of continuing attacks by government forces.

Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for the Alwiyat Seif al-Sham group, part of a rebel alliance in the south, said government forces had been trying to storm the area in eastern Ghouta since the first day of the truce.

"This is a clear violation of the ceasefire," Shami said.

The cessation of hostilities, drawn up by Washington and Moscow, is a less formal arrangement than a ceasefire and is meant to allow peace talks to resume and aid to reach besieged communities.

The agreement does not include jihadist groups, such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, and Russia --which is supporting Syrian forces with air attacks -- has made clear it intends to keep bombing them.

Eastern Ghouta is regularly targeted by the Syrian army and its allies. It is a stronghold of the Jaish al-Islam (Islam Army) rebel group, which is an influential member of the main opposition alliance, the High Negotiations Committee, and has been used as a launch pad for rocket and mortar attacks on Damascus.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-puts-tearful-detained-american-cameras-071336108.html

North Korea puts tearful detained American before cameras

Associated Press
By ERIC TALMADGE and JON CHOL JIN
28 minutes ago

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea presented a detained American student before the media on Monday in Pyongyang, where he tearfully apologized for attempting to steal a political banner — at the behest, he said, of a member of a church back home who wanted it as a "trophy" — from a staff-only section of the hotel where he had been staying.

North Korea announced in late January it had arrested Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student. It said that after entering the country as a tourist he committed an anti-state crime with "the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation."

No details of what kind of charges or punishment Warmbier faces were immediately released.

According to Warmbier's statement Monday, he wanted the banner with a political slogan on it as a trophy for the church member, who was the mother of a friend.

In previous cases, people who have been detained in North Korea and made a public confession often recant those statements after their release.

He was arrested while visiting the country with Young Pioneer Tours, an agency specializing in travel to North Korea, which is strongly discouraged by the U.S. State Department. He had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, which is located on an island in a river that runs through Pyongyang, the capital.

.. View gallery
American student Otto Warmbier speaks as Warmbier is …
American student Otto Warmbier speaks as Warmbier is presented to reporters Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, i …

It is common for sections of tourist hotels to be reserved for North Korean staff and off-limits to foreigners.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that as a general practice, it was not uncommon for North Korea to detain and imprison people on false or "trumped-up" charges, and use detentions for propaganda purposes.

But Kirby said he could not comment on Warmbier's case because of privacy considerations, nor on whether Sweden, which handles consular affairs for the U.S. in North Korea, has had access to him.

In his comments, Warmbier said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 by a member of the church. He said the church member told him the slogan would be hung on its wall as a trophy. He also said he was told that if he was detained and didn't return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation.

Warmbier identified the church as the Friendship United Methodist Church, which is in his hometown, Wyoming, Ohio.

.. View gallery
American student Otto Warmbier, right, bows as Warmbier …
American student Otto Warmbier, right, bows as Warmbier is presented to the reporters on Monday, Feb …

Meshach Kanyion, pastor of the church, would not confirm whether he knows Warmbier or if he is a church member.

"I don't have any comment at this time," he told The Associated Press.

Warmbier's parents said they had not heard from their son since his arrest and were greatly relieved to finally see a picture of him.

"You can imagine how deeply worried we were and what a traumatic experience this has been for us," Warmbier's father, Fred Warmbier, said in a statement provided by the University of Virginia.

"I hope the fact that he has conveyed his sincere apology for anything that he may have done wrong will now make it possible for the (North Korean) authorities to allow him to return home," he said.

.. View gallery
American student Otto Warmbier, center, arrives at …
American student Otto Warmbier, center, arrives at the People's Cultural House, as Warmbier is p …

The university said it had no immediate comment other than that it was in close contact with Warmbier's family.

Warmbier told reporters in Pyongyang that he had also been encouraged in his act by the university's "Z Society," which he said he was trying to join. The magazine of the university's alumni association describes the Z Society as a "semi-secret ring society" that was founded in 1892 and conducts philanthropy, puts on honorary dinners and grants academic awards.

Warmbier said he accepted the offer of money because his family is "suffering from very severe financial difficulties."

"I started to consider this as my only golden opportunity to earn money," he said, adding that if he ever mentioned the involvement of the church, "no payments would come."

North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to control the Korean Peninsula.

.. View gallery
American student Otto Warmbier holds onto handwritten …
American student Otto Warmbier holds onto handwritten notes as Warmbier is presented to the reporter …

U.S. tourism to North Korea is legal and virtually all Americans who make the journey return home without incident.

Even so, the State Department has repeatedly warned against travel to the North. Visitors, especially those from America, who break the country's sometimes murky rules risk detention, arrest and possible jail sentences.

Young Pioneer describes itself on its website as providing "budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from."

The agency, based in China, also has tours to Iran, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Iraq and other former Soviet countries.

After Warmbier's detention, it stressed in a news release that he was the first of the 7,000 people it has taken to North Korea over the past eight years to face arrest.

"Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit," it says on its website.

In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Both had crossed North Korea's border from China illegally.

It took a visit in November 2014 by U.S. spy chief James Clapper to bring home Matthew Miller, who had ripped up his visa when entering the country, and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been incarcerated since November 2012.

Jeffrey Fowle, another U.S. tourist from Ohio detained for six months at about the same time as Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S. government plane.

He left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.

___

Talmadge, the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief, reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Sarah Brumfield and Matthew Pennington in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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http://news.yahoo.com/u-led-coalition-discussed-possible-syria-ground-incursion-190430861.html

U.S.-led coalition discussed possible Syria ground incursion: Saudi official

Reuters
By Ece Toksabay
1 hour ago

ANKARA (Reuters) - Defence ministers from the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State discussed the possibility of a Syrian ground incursion two weeks ago in Brussels, but have not made a decision, an aide to Saudi Arabia's defense minister told Reuters on Monday.

"It was discussed two weeks ago in Brussels," Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri said in a telephone interview from Riyadh. "It was discussed at the political level but it wasn't discussed as a military mission," he said.

"Once this is organized, and decided how many troops and how they will go and where they will go, we will participate in that," he said. "We need to discuss at the military level very extensively with the military experts to make sure that we have a plan."

Asseri also said the Kingdom was now ready to strike Islamic State from Turkey's southern Incirlik air base, where four Saudi fighter jets have arrived last week. The jets haven't yet participated in any attacks, he added.

(Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by David Dolan)

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