WAR 03-28-2015-to-04-03-2015_____THEWINDSofWAR

Housecarl · Mar 30, 2015

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http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...shipping-oil-rigs-mare-sicuro-fremm/70515116/

Italy Deploys Ships To Monitor Libyan Coast

By Tom Kington 3:31 p.m. EDT March 28, 2015

ROME — As fighters from the Islamic State group build beachheads in lawless Libya, Italy is sending a naval fleet to monitor the Libyan coast and protect Italian shipping and oil rigs from jihadi attacks.

The mission, dubbed Mare Sicuro, or Safe Seas, will likely involve a landing helicopter dock vessel, two FREMM-class frigates, a patrol vessel and Predator UAVs, a defense source said.

A contingent of marines will join the mission, and use high-speed craft to intercept and board suspicious shipping, he added.

Speaking in parliament on March 19, Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said the assets would also be used for the "surveillance of jihadi formations." The source said that could involve monitoring ISIS communications in Libya and radar monitoring of shipping.

DEFENSE NEWS

Italy Beefs Up Air, Naval Presence in Med

Italian Predators will fly surveillance missions from Sigonella air base in Sicily where US Global Hawks already operate. Italian Predators previously flew missions over Libya from Sigonella during the NATO air campaign in 2011, which led to the ousting of longtime dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Since then, Libya has descended into chaos, with two rival governments claiming power — moderate Islamists in Tripoli and an internationally recognized government in Tobruk. Between them, ISIS fighters have set up in Derna and Sirte.

Fears that ISIS fighters would try to attack Italian ships or rigs, or even try to reach Italy on migrant vessels that sail from Libya, grew in Italy following a March 18 terrorist attack in Libya's north African neighbor, Tunisia.

Two gunmen burst into a museum in the capital Tunis and killed 20 foreign tourists before being shot dead by police. Although Tunisia emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring with a stable, democratic government, experts have said an attack was to be expected after more than 3,000 young Tunisians headed to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS.

After the attack, ISIS claimed responsibility, although the Tunisian government blamed a local group with ties to al-Qaida. But it was also revealed that the gunmen had trained in Libya, making it the first recent terror attack on Western targets launched from Libya.

Although Pinotti said there was still no proof that ISIS fighters would sail to Italy from Libya, she added that the Tunisia attack helped prompt the establishment of Mare Sicuro.

Additionally, she told parliament that Italy would supply Tunisian security forces with night vision goggles, on loan from the Italian Army, to help them control the Libyan border

Not all were convinced Mare Sicuro made sense.

"Without an international mandate. we won't be able to stop arms shipments at sea. And in any case, the militias are already very well armed," said one Italy-based analyst who declined to be named.

"Secondly, we cannot stop the oil tankers leaving Libya, which are financing militias. And if our ships get mixed up with saving migrants whose boats sink at sea, it will interrupt their military mission," he said.

"And what are the rules of engagement?" he added.

"The mission seems a bit paranoid," said Habib Sayah, a Tunisian political analyst. "Individual members of ISIS have spoken about attacks on Italy and we cannot rule it out, but there are no serious indications that there is a plan underway," he added.

On the other hand, an investigation by magistrates in Sicily has reportedly established links between Libyan militias and the people smugglers who make millions loading African migrants in rickety vessels that often sink.

In February, the Italian coast guard, picking up migrants at sea, was confronted by armed traffickers who arrived on a separate boat and ordered the Italians to hand over the migrant vessel once it was unloaded.

Additionally, Italy has a strategic reason to patrol international waters off the Libyan coast. State-controlled energy firm ENI manages oil and gas rigs just offshore and helped lay a gas pipeline that enters the Mediterranean west of Tripoli and emerges in Sicily, bringing important gas supplies to Italy.

The chances of a national government being formed in Libya look as faint as ever, despite a UN representative working hard this month to kickstart negotiations between the Tripoli and Tobruk factions.

"The distance between the diplomatic situation and the real situation on the ground is getting bigger," said Gabriele Iacovino, an analyst coordinator at the International Study Center in Rome.

Iacovino said a Libyan military leader, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who ostensibly commands forces for the Tobruk government, was impeding talks.

A former Gadhafi soldier who later tried to oust him, Haftar spent years in the US before returning to Libya as Gadhafi fell.

"Tobruk is finding it harder to control Haftar," said Iacovino. "As they talk to the UN, he is bombing Tripoli airport. But he has Egyptian backing and Egypt has no intention of negotiating with the Islamists in Tripoli, which makes Haftar stronger."

Email: tkington@defensenews.com

Housecarl · Mar 30, 2015

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http://news.yahoo.com/why-white-house-cannot-afford-ignore-yemen-civil-211032250.html

Why White House cannot afford to ignore Yemen civil war

A protracted war that leaves Yemen a failed state would not just pose a threat to the neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, but also to the US.

Christian Science Monitor
By Howard LaFranchi
1 hour ago

With another civil war looming in the Middle East in Yemen, President Obama has been served another sharp reminder that reducing the weight of the Middle East in America’s national security portfolio is more easily envisioned than accomplished.

Not long ago it was the Syrian war that exploded and raised the prospect of renewed US military intervention in the region. But Mr. Obama was determined not to see America dragged into another Mideast war – and he fashioned a Syria policy accordingly.

The Syrian civil war is entering its fifth year, with the US remaining largely on the sidelines. But in the eyes of many critics at least, the lack of US intervention gave rise to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the extremist Sunni Islamist group spreading its tentacles beyond Syria and Iraq to Libya and deeper into Africa.

Recommended: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.

Now fighting in Yemen between a government–on-the-run and Sunni tribesmen supported by Saudi Arabia on one side, and Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels on the other, threatens to turn into a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Left to intensify, the fighting could degenerate into a new front in the region’s Sunni-Shiite schism and a wider regional war that would be increasingly difficult – and dangerous – for the US to sit out.

Two factors underscore why, and help explain why Obama’s vision of “rebalancing” US interests and foreign policy toward Asia is likely to fade further with war in Yemen.

Yemen’s strategic position along the Gulf of Aiden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and at the southern mouth of the Red Sea, an important petroleum-transport corridor, is one factor.

But the other is perhaps even more disconcerting for American national security interests: Yemen is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is considered by terrorism experts to be Al Qaeda’s most active and threatening brand, particularly in terms of its ability to mount terrorist attacks against the West.

A protracted war that leaves Yemen a failed state would not just pose a threat to the neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, which shares a 1,100-mile-long border with Yemen, but also to the US.

Until the advancing Houthis forced US-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the capital of Sanaa in late February (and then the country last week), the US had special forces in Yemen to assist in the fight against AQAP. Now the US has pulled those forces, along with all of its diplomats. The chaos of an extended Houthi-Sunni fight in Yemen could work to AQAP’s advantage.

Obama has signaled that he plans to employ the lead-from-behind strategy toward the Yemen fighting that he followed in the fight against former dictator Muammar Qaddafi in Libya in 2011. In that effort, the US took a backseat as Europeans led the air strike campaign against the Qaddafi regime.

Last week, Obama authorized logistical and intelligence support for the Saudis in their campaign of air strikes against advancing Houthi forces. Plans to implement a strictly supportive role were evident in administration statements.

“While US forces are not taking direct military action in Yemen in support of this effort, we are establishing a Joint Planning cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support,” National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Wednesday.

At the same time, the US announced its support of a newly formed coalition of 10 Sunni Arab countries designed to back the Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Houthis. Egypt, part of the group, has floated the idea of sending in ground troops to thwart the Houthis – who besides being Shiites are also Arabs.

For many critics of Obama’s stand-back approach to the Middle East’s mounting conflicts, the most apt description for the strategy is “incoherent.” Exhibit A for their criticism is the juxtaposition of the situation in Iraq with that of Yemen.

In Iraq, US forces are bombing IS positions in Tikrit in support of Iran-backed and -commanded Shiite militias on the ground; while in Yemen, the US is providing logistical support to the Saudis, who are bombing Iran-backed rebel forces.

The administration’s response appears to be that the US is not acting to tip the balance one way or the other in the region’s centuries-old Sunni-Shiite schism, but is acting in the interest of US national security and in support of regional stability.

Thus in Iraq, the US finds itself on the same side as Iran is it assists the Iraqi government, through military training and advising and now air strikes, in its efforts to dislodge IS forces from Iraqi cities; and in Yemen, the US is on the opposite side from Iran as it assists the Saudis and other Sunni Arabs seeking to repel Iran-backed insurgents.

The administration’s more long-term goal appears to be to hand off responsibility for the region’s security (or at least a greater share of it) to a set of more or less balanced regional powers – including Iran, to the horror of longtime American allies Saudi Arabia and Israel.

One reason Obama backed off getting the US involved militarily in the Syrian conflict in September 2013, despite the Syrian president crossing the White House’s red line on using chemical weapons, to avoid making the Middle East the focus of the rest of his presidency and killing any chance of implementing a supporting-role-only Mideast policy.

Now the Yemen conflict threatens, to the president’s chagrin, to ensure that Obama leaves office with the US still mired in conflict in the Middle East.

Related stories
Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.
Cover Story How big a threat are the world's jihadi groups?
Yemen crisis: Saudi Arabia launches airstrikes to halt Houthi rebels (+video)
Yemen is in a civil war. But where is it headed? (+video)

Related Stories

1. Instant View: Saudi Arabia coalition air strikes in Yemen risks wider conflict Reuters
2. Iran, Saudi Arabia fighting bloody proxy wars across region Associated Press
3. [$$] Obama Struggles With a Messy Middle East The Wall Street Journal
4. Pakistan mulling Saudi request to send ground troops to Yemen Christian Science Monitor
5. A look at America's complicated collage of a Mideast policy Associated Press

Housecarl · Mar 30, 2015

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http://www.thenational.ae/world/yemens-houthis-renew-offensive-on-aden

Yemen’s Houthis renew offensive on Aden

March 30, 2015 Updated: March 30, 2015 11:51 PM

SANAA // Yemen’s Shiite rebels and forces loyal to the former president launched a fresh offensive on Monday against the city of Aden as King Salman said Saudi Arabia was open to a meeting of Yemeni political parties.

His call came as an attack on a displaced persons camp in a northern rebel stronghold killed 40 people. The rebels, known as Houthis, said the deaths came from an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition. Yemen’s foreign minister however blamed Houthi artillery.

King Salman told a cabinet meeting that Saudi Arabia would be open to a meeting of all Yemeni political parties willing to preserve the country’s security and stability.

Such a meeting must be “under the umbrella of the Gulf Cooperation Council in the framework of preserving legitimacy”, King Salman said in a statement reported by the state news agency SPA.

The conditions for the talks would include returning weapons to state authorities and not threatening the security of Yemen’s neighbours, it added.

Despite five days of airstrikes against Houthi positions, the rebels continued their offensive on Aden yesterday, shelling it and battling local militias, but were pushed back by at least two airstrikes.

Aden was declared the provisional capital by President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi before he fled the country last week.

The Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in September. They are backed by Iran and allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down following a 2011 Arab Spring uprising but has maintained influence through loyalists in the security forces.

Yemeni security officials said the combined force of Houthis and Saleh loyalists is positioned about 30km east of Aden, near the southern city of Zinjibar. The rebels have used artillery to target pro-Hadi militias known as the Popular Committees. Battles were also underway near the airport.

Emboldened by the air strikes, the Popular Committees have largely held their ground in Aden province and still control most of the city.

Warships from the coalition joined the battle to save Aden, shelling a column of Houthi fighters as they tried to advance on the city of Aden on Monday, residents said.

They said the vessels were believed to be Egyptian warships that sailed last week through the Suez Canal toward the Gulf of Aden. Egypt is a member of the Saudi-led coalition that also includes the UAE and Kuwait. Yesterday, Pakistan’s defence minister said it had not yet decided whether to send troops to Saudi Arabia but “if Saudi Arabia as a state comes under threat we will surely protect it”.

The death toll in Aden since the air strikes began on Thursday has reached 86, with some 600 people wounded, according to Abdel-Nasser Al Wali, head of a local medical centre in the city.

Meanwhile in Sanaa, a series of air strikes shook the city overnight and early Monday morning. The strikes have targeted militants, jets, air defence systems and Scud missile launch pads that could threaten Saudi Arabia.

Later in the day, the officials said aircraft struck areas near the presidential palace in Sanaa.

There were differing accounts of the attack on the Al Mazrak camp in Hajja province in the north-west.

The International Organization for Migration said 45 internally displaced people were killed and 65 wounded. IOM spokesman Joel Millman said the organisation had 75 staff on hand assisting the victims.

However, witnesses told the Associated Press that the camp was used to house displaced people from a conflict that ended five years ago and is now occupied by Houthi forces and that most of those killed were fighters.

Earlier Doctors Without Borders said 15 dead bodies and 30 wounded were taken to a hospital where it operates near the Al Mazrak camp.

MSF’s Middle East programme manager Pablo Marco said 500 new families had arrived at the camp over the past two days.

Speaking in Riyadh, Yemen’s foreign minister Riyadh Yaseen denied the attack was linked to the Saudi-led military operations and said it came from “artillery strikes” by the Houthis.

The daily airstrikes have created a climate of anxiety and uncertainty in Sanaa. Schools are shuttered, residents are staying indoors, and hundreds have fled to the safety of nearby villages.

Leaders meeting in Egypt for a two-day Arab League summit unveiled plans on Sunday to form a joint Arab military intervention force – setting the stage for an escalation in the conflict.

So far the strikes have targeted eight out of Yemen’s 21 provinces. Since the air campaign began, the Houthis have arrested about 140 foreign nationals on suspicion that they are providing the Saudis with intelligence on the locations of army barracks, radars and air defence positions, according to the rebel-controlled interior ministry.

Meanwhile, nations have been rallying to evacuate their nationals from the country,

A Chinese naval flotilla, which had been carrying out antipiracy escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters, was sent to Yemen on Sunday to evacuate Chinese nationals. More than 500 Chinese citizens have been evacuated over the past two days, China’s defence ministry said.

About 4,000 Indian nationals have been caught up in the conflict, more than half of them working as nurses. India’s foreign ministry said it was attempting to airlift nationals from Sanaa. Eighty Indians were flown out on Sunday to Djibouti and 400 were being evacuated by sea from Aden and would reach Djibouti on Tuesday.

Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/the-end-of-ccp-rule-and-the-collapse-of-china/

The End of CCP Rule and the Collapse of China

Is the CCP on the verge of collapse? Or is its ‘dynasty’ just getting started?

By Bo Zhiyue
March 30, 2015
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Ever since the publication of David Shambaugh’s controversial essay “The Coming Chinese Crackup” on March 6, 2015, China scholars have been debating the demise of communist rule in China. Shambaugh made two basic points in the essay: the endgame of communist rule in China has begun and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures have accelerated the demise of the CCP’s rule in China. His critics hardly challenged his first point but mostly disagreed with him on his second point.

By world communist standards, the CCP has indeed entered its endgame. After 70 years, for instance, communist rule in the Soviet Union ended on December 26, 1991. In six months, the Chinese Communist Party will have ruled the People’s Republic of China for 66 years. With rampant corruption at all levels of the party and the government — where a typist has taken bribes in the amount of four million yuan and a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission took cash bribes weighing more than one ton — the CCP seems unlikely to outlive its Soviet counterpart by a large margin.

Nevertheless, by Chinese dynastic standards, the CCP’s rule is not in its endgame. Instead, it might very well be in its beginning. The last dynasty, the Qing, lasted for 267 years; by that standard, CCP rule is still in its infancy. In 1710, 66 years into the Qing Dynasty’s rule in China, the country was at its peak as a prosperous and powerful nation under the wise leadership of Emperor Kangxi. The dynasty would last another 200 years.

As a ruling dynasty, the CCP has had a mixed record so far. While it is true that the CCP under Mao Zedong unified most of the country, Mao’s policies did not make China more prosperous and stronger. Tens of millions perished in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, and the entire population suffered during the decade-long power struggles of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping heralded a new era of economic prosperity, but his GDP-oriented policies have severely strained China’s environmental capacities. China witnessed the best performance in terms of economic growth in the decade from 2002 to 2012 under the leadership of Hu Jintao. Yet corruption and environmental degradation worsened in the same period, in spite of Hu’s signature slogan of a “scientific outlook on development.”

In the past two and a half years, Xi Jinping’s leadership has been long on anti-corruption campaigns but short on anti-pollution efforts. One hundred officials at the rank of vice minister and above have been investigated for corruption, but there is no sign that the central leadership is taking environmental issues more seriously. A series of new leading small groups have been created to manage national security, internet issues, reforms, and military modernization, but no central leading small group on environmental protection has been set up.

Given these mixed results, Xi Jinping could very likely be the last ruler in China as a communist. Yet he could also start another new era of prosperity and strength as a new emperor of the CCP Dynasty. Whether the People’s Republic of China will end up like the Soviet Union or follow the footsteps of Manchus on its way to international prominence will depend on what this new leadership will do (or will not do) in the next seven years.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chin...-exercise-between-taiwan-and-the-philippines/

China's Air Force Conducts Exercise Between Taiwan and the Philippines

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force carried out a one-day exercise over the Bashi Channel.

By Ankit Panda
March 31, 2015
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On Monday, China’s air force held its first exercise in western Pacific Ocean airspace. As reported by the South China Morning Post, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) carried out drills in the air over the Bashi Channel, the body of water between Taiwan and the Philippines archipelago, considered the rim of the first island chain. The purpose of the exercise was to boost the PLAAF’s capability to carry out far-sea operations.

Little is known about the specifics of the exercise. Colonel Shen Jinke, the PLAAF spokesperson who was quoted by a Chinese military news outlet, gave little information about the number of aircraft involved or specific types. The PLA Daily‘s English-language article on the exercise was accompanied by pictures of PLAAF “new-type” strategic bombers, suggesting the exercise could have had a strategic bombing focus.

“Training in the airspace far from China is an effective way for the PLA Air Force to temper its combat capability and also a common practice of world powers’ air forces,” said Col Shen, according to the PLA Daily. To assuage concerns from neighboring states, the report notes that “this training by the PLA Air Force complies with relevant international laws and practices, is not aimed at any country or target and poses no threat to any country or region.”

The exercise is indicative of China’s interest in preparing its military branches for expeditionary and far-sea operations. Traditionally, the People’s Liberation Army has been an insular military force, primarily concerned with the defense of China’s territory from external threats. However, with China’s rise and growing strategic interests in Asia’s near seas, the PLA has focused its efforts on expeditionary readiness. The PLAAF’s recent exercise is but a step in realizing a robust expeditionary capability.

The United States is concerned about the modernization of China’s air force. Last year, the Pentagon’s annual report described the modernization of the PLAAF as “unprecedented in history,” suggesting that China is heavily investing into its air power. “The PLAAF is pursuing modernization on a scale unprecedented in its history and is rapidly closing the gap with Western air forces across a broad spectrum of capabilities including aircraft, command and control (C2), jammers, electronic warfare (EW), and data links,” the Pentagon said in that report.

Other signs of the PLAAF’s growing prominence within the Chinese military include the accession of senior PLAAF airmen into prominent all-PLA leadership roles. Senior PLAAF officers, such as Xu Qiliang, have even ascended to the level of the Central Military Commission, China’s apex military body.

Despite these trends and U.S. acknowledgments of China’s growing air power capabilities, most strategists in the United States continue to read China’s military modernization by focusing on its anti-access/area-denial capabilities (A2/AD). To be sure, China’s A2/AD implementation, as it is perceived by the West, sidelines air power. Air power’s role is more crucial in a protracted conflict across the Taiwan strait.

The exercise is also a reminder that China’s air power extends beyond its immediate borders. Given recent comments by U.S. military leaders calling for joint ASEAN patrols in the South China Sea (and even Japanese air patrols in the region), China has good reason to remind observers of the PLAAF’s reach and capability.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/philippines-fires-back-at-chinas-south-china-sea-charges/

Philippines Fires Back at China’s South China Sea Charges

Manila hits back at Beijing.

By Prashanth Parameswaran
March 31, 2015
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The Philippines dismissed concerns raised by China over Manila’s “hypocrisy” in conducting activities in the South China Sea while crying foul at Beijing’s efforts to do so.

The Philippines had halted activities in the South China Sea last year and suggested other nations follow suit due to concerns about an ongoing legal case against China. However, as The Diplomat previously reported,Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario said last week that Manila would now resume some activities amid massive Chinese land reclamation efforts that could alter the status quo before any legal verdict could be reached. Beijing said this announcement had “exposed the Philippines’ hypocrisy.”

But in a direct response to China, a Philippine foreign ministry spokesman on Saturday dismissed any attempt to compare Manila’s proposal to resume limited repair and reconstruction works with Beijing’s massive land reclamation efforts that involved changing the very nature of individual features.

The possible repair “is in no way comparable to China’s massive reclamation activities, which not only violate international law… but also unnecessarily raise regional tensions,” Philippine foreign ministry spokesman Charles Jose said in a statement.

The Philippines has repeatedly accused China of violating international and regional agreements, primarily the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, inked in 2002 between Beijing and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Jose also said that China’s recent comments should not distract the international community from the main issue in the South China Sea: China’s nine-dash line, which covers about 90 percent of the entire South China Sea.

“China’s recent statement expressing concern over what the Philippines plans to do should not distract us from the real issues in the South China Sea, which are China’s illegitimate ‘nine-dash line’ claim and China’s unilateral and aggressive behavior in asserting that claim as exemplified by its massive and unrestrained ‘reclamation’,” Jose added.

The Philippines’ ongoing legal case against China at the arbitral tribunal at The Hague is expected to be concluded in early 2016. China has declined to participate in the case.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/after-the-izumo-whats-next-for-japans-navy/

After the Izumo, What's Next for Japan's Navy?

Japan has its largest post-war helicopter carrier — how will it use it?

By Robert Farley
March 30, 2015
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With Izumo in hand, what’s next for the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force?

As several contributors have noted, JDS Izumo has entered service with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. Izumo is the largest carrier (or “helicopter-carrying destroyer”) constructed by Japan since World War II. The 27,000 ton, 31 knot flat-decked warship gives the JMSDF critical advantages in anti-submarine and amphibious capabilities, and immediately becomes one of the most effective units in the Asia-Pacific.

Izumo and her sister represent an evolutionary step beyond the Hyuga-class light carriers, which displace about 19,000 tons. With the experience gained from construction and operation of the Izumos, Japan could easily take the next step to an even larger flat-decked amphib, or potentially to a full fleet carrier.

However, the JMSDF faces two significant obstacles in pushing to the next step in carrier evolution.

First, the current geopolitical environment may not require the JMSDF to operate anything larger than Izumo and her sister. Japan does not, at the moment, require power-projection capabilities, and any demand for such capabilities is ably filled by the carriers of Japan’s primary ally, the United States. If the strategic environment changes in the future to a point where Japan requires either a) a strike capability, or b) active fleet air defense, then the JMSDF could consider building larger carriers. Equipping the Izumos with F-35B VSTOL Joint Strike Fighters could help bridge a short term gap in capability if Japan determines that it does require full carrier capability, although the limitations of both the Izumos and the F-35B make this option less preferable than dedicated fleet carriers. Izumo could also carry attack helicopters in her current configuration, which fits with recent global practice of using helicopters in a strike role.

The more difficult problem lies with the historical legacy of Japanese naval power. Naval aviation represented the “killer app,” enabling Japan’s conquest of East and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. This legacy, poisonous in the region and in Japan, is why the JMSDF remains reluctant to call its aircraft carriers by their name, even as India and China flaunt their naval aviation progress. If Japan constructed a carrier with serious offensive capabilities (or even took fullest advantage of what the Izumos can offer), it would supply anti-Japanese activists in China, Korea, and elsewhere with fodder about Japanese aggression.

For now, the image of a reborn Kido Butai frightens many Japanese as much as it does Japan’s neighbors. But given that India, China, and possibly Russia appear committed to increasing the size and sophistication of their carrier fleets, in the future it may become easier for Japan to envision a force of fleet carriers. The JMSDF should have contingency plans on hand for both maximizing the potential of the Izumos as well as looking to the next generation of carriers.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://atimes.com/2015/03/pepe-escobar-in-eastern-ukraine-howling-in-donetsk/

Pepe Escobar in eastern Ukraine: Howling in Donetsk

Author: Pepe Escobar March 30, 2015 3 Comments

Empire of Chaos, Pepe Escobar

Asia Times’ roving correspondent Pepe Escobar just returned from a reporting trip to the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the pro-Russian enclave in the Donetsk Oblast province of eastern Ukraine. The area’s been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military.

I’ve just been to the struggling Donetsk People’s Republic. Now I’m back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.

Quite a few people – in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe – have asked me what struck me most about this visit.

I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”.

But these were the Cold War mid-1950s. Now we’re in early 21st century Cold War 2.0 .

Thus what I saw were the ghastly side effects of the worst minds of my – and a subsequent – generation corroded by (war) madness.

I saw refugees on the Russian side of the border, mostly your average middle-class European family whose kids, when they first came to the shelter, would duck under tables when they heard a plane in the sky.

I saw the Dylan of Donetsk holed up in his lonely room in a veterans’ home turned refugee shelter fighting the blues and the hopelessness by singing songs of love and heroism.
The Dylan of Donetsk

The Dylan of Donetsk

I saw whole families holed up in fully decorated Soviet-era bomb shelters too afraid to go out even by daylight, traumatized by the bombings orchestrated by Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operations”.
Soviet-era bomb shelter

Soviet-era bomb shelter

I saw a modern, hard-working industrial city at least half-empty and partially destroyed but not bent, able to survive by their guts and guile with a little help from Russian humanitarian convoys.

I saw beautiful girls hangin’ out by Lenin’s statue in a central square lamenting their only shot at fun was family parties in each other’s houses because nightlife was dead and “we’re at war”.
Donetsk girls by Lenin's statue

Donetsk girls by Lenin’s statue

I saw virtually the whole neighborhood of Oktyabrski near the airport bombed out like Grozny and practically deserted except for a few lonely babushkas with nowhere to go and too proud to relinquish their family photos of World War II heroes.
Bombed out Oktyabrski neighborhood

Bombed out Oktyabrski neighborhood

I saw checkpoints like I was back in Baghdad during the Petraeus surge.

I saw the main trauma doctor at the key Donetsk hospital confirm there has been no Red Cross and no international humanitarian help to the people of Donetsk.

Oktyabrski neighborhood, bombed hospital

Oktyabrski neighborhood, bombed hospital

I saw Stanislava, one of DPR’s finest and an expert sniper, in charge of our security, cry when she laid a flower on the ground of a fierce battle in which her squad was under heavy fire, with twenty seriously wounded and one dead, and she was hit by shrapnel and survived.

I saw orthodox churches fully destroyed by Kiev’s bombing.

I saw the Russian flag still on top of the anti-Maidan building which is now the House of Government of the DPR.

I saw the gleaming Donbass arena, the home of Shaktar Donetsk and a UFO in a war-torn city, deserted and without a single soul in the fan area.

I saw Donetsk’s railway station bombed by Kiev’s goons.

I saw a homeless man screaming “Robert Plant!” and “Jimmy Page!” as I found out he was still in love with Led Zeppelin and kept his vinyl copies.

I saw a row of books which never surrendered behind the cracked windows of bombed out Oktyabrski.

I saw the fresh graves where the DPR buries their resistance heroes.

I saw the top of the hill at Saur-mogila which the DPR resistance lost and then reconquered, with a lone red-white-blue flag now waving in the wind.

Top of the hill at Saur-moglia

Top of the hill at Saur-moglia

I saw the Superman rising from the destruction at Saur-mogila – the fallen statue in a monument to World War II heroes, which seventy years ago was fighting fascism and now has been hit, but not destroyed, by fascists.

The superman statue rising from the destruction at Saur-mogila

The superman statue rising from the destruction at Saur-mogila

I saw the Debaltsevo cauldron in the distance and then I could fully appreciate, geographically, how DPR tactics surrounded and squeezed the demoralized Kiev fighters.

I saw the DPR’s military practicing their drills by the roadside from Donetsk to Lugansk.

I saw the DPR’s Foreign Minister hopeful there would be a political solution instead of war while admitting personally he dreams of a DPR as an independent nation.

I saw two badass Cossack commanders tell me in a horse-breeding farm in holy Cossack land that the real war has not even started.

I did not see the totally destroyed Donetsk airport because the DPR’s military were too concerned about our safety and would not grant us a permit while the airport was being hit – in defiance of Minsk 2; but I saw the destruction and the pile of Ukrainian army bodies on the mobile phone of a Serbian DPR resistance fighter.

I did not see, as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe international observers also didn’t, the rows and rows of Russian tanks and soldiers that the current Dr. Strangelove in charge of NATO, General Breedhate, sees everyday in his exalted dreams invading Ukraine over and over again.

And I did not see the arrogance, the ignorance, the shamelessness and the lies distorting those manicured faces in Kiev, Washington and Brussels while they insist, over and over again, that the entire population of Donbass, traumatized babushkas and children of all ages included, are nothing but “terra-rists”.

After all, they are Western “civilization”-enabled cowards who would never dare to show their manicured faces to the people of Donbass.

So this is my gift to them.

Just a howl of anger and unbounded contempt.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-ukraine-crisis-poland-idUSKBN0MR0KU20150331

World | Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:10am EDT
Related: World
Poland says will train 50 Ukrainian military staff this year
WARSAW

(Reuters) - Poland will provide training to around 50 Ukrainian army instructors this year, the Polish ministry of defense said on Tuesday, a part of NATO's efforts to boost Ukraine's defense capacity as it faces a pro-Russian rebellion in the east.

The Ukrainians will be trained in Poland, the ministry said in a statement, with the courses scheduled to take place in June, September and October this year. Other NATO countries will organize similar courses, the ministry also said.

Earlier this year, Britain said it would send 75 military personnel to Ukraine to help train its army. [ID:nL5N0VY4QG]

Poland has been one of the most outspoken critics of Russian policy towards a pro-Russian separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine, joining Western allies in accusing Moscow of supplying help to the insurrection -- something the Kremlin denies.

(Reporting by Wiktor Szary; Editing by Larry King)

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKBN0MQ1MQ20150330

World | Mon Mar 30, 2015 5:38pm EDT
Related: World, Turkey, Syria
Syrian military source alleges Turkish role in Idlib offensive
BEIRUT/AMMAN

(Reuters) - A Syrian military source accused Turkey on Monday of helping Islamist rebels to stage an assault on Idlib, a provincial capital which fighters seized at the weekend.

The source declined to comment on the situation in Idlib, citing security considerations, but a monitoring group has confirmed the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and allies now control Idlib and said the Syrian air force bombed the city on Monday.

The fall of Idlib, 30 km (20 miles) from the Turkish border, marks only the second time in the Syrian civil war that Damascus has lost control of a provincial capital. The first was Raqqa, which the ultra-radical Islamic State group has turned into the de facto capital of its self-declared caliphate.

Echoing more general comments by President Bashar al-Assad, the military source accused both Turkey and Jordan of supporting the insurgents in their Idlib offensive, saying they were "leading operations and planning them". The insurgents were using advanced communication apparatus that had been supplied to them via Turkey, the source added.

The Turkish foreign ministry declined to comment.

Turkey is one of the regional states most hostile to Assad, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In an interview with the U.S. network CBS, Assad described Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as a "Muslim Brotherhood fanatic" who was directly supporting insurgents "logistically and militarily" daily.

Syria's government has not commented on the fall of Idlib, though the pro-government Watan newspaper published in Damascus reported on Monday that the Nusra Front and its allies had raised the al Qaeda flag over government buildings in the city.

Nusra Front was joined by groups including the hardline Ahrar al-Sham in seizing Idlib on Saturday, a reminder of the pressures facing Damascus after more than four years of crisis.

The Islamist alliance rejected a call by the Turkish-based mainstream political opposition to let an interim government set up its headquarters in Idlib, saying it would ruled by those "in the trenches and not in hotels".

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group, said warplanes staged a number of raids on Idlib. More than 170 people on both sides were killed in the fighting, including at least 126 Syrian insurgents, the Observatory said.

GOVERNANCE QUESTION

The setback for Assad in Idlib coincides with growing tension over Yemen between Saudi Arabia and Iran, one of Assad's firmest backers. Turkey has come out in support of a Saudi-led military intervention against Iranian-allied Houthis in Yemen.

The Syrian conflict, in which an estimated 220,000 people have been killed, has been a major arena for Iranian-Saudi rivalry.

The Nusra Front's influence in northwestern Syria has been expanding at the expense of mainstream rebel groups, some of which received U.S. military support. It is a rival of Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that has seized territory in both Syria and Iraq.

Ahrar al-Sham issued a statement urging the people of Idlib to help fighters run the city and saying they were not seeking to set up an Islamic emirate.

"There was an agreement by all factions to protect and ensure that essential services are continued," said an Ahrar al-Sham fighter who said he was speaking from Idlib during an interview conducted via the internet. He did not give his name.

But there are many questions over how groups that won Idlib in a joint operation will run the city.

"The rebels have certainly shown they can cooperate on the battlefield - that is not new - but the governance question has been much more difficult for them, particularly in the north, and particularly in Idlib province where Nusra has been asserting unilateral dominance," said Noah Bonsey, a senior analyst with International Crisis Group.

Mainstream rebel groups fighting Assad in southern Syria say they recently received increased support from his foreign enemies in response to a government offensive there.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said the death toll among Syrian government forces and personnel was much lower than among insurgents. An opposition activist in the area said the government had withdrawn personnel and anything sensitive to the state in apparent anticipation of losing the city.

(Reporting by Tom Perry and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Omar Fahmy in Cairo, and Humeyra Pamuk and Jonny Hogg in Turkey; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp)

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-japan-usa-defence-idUSKBN0MR0KM20150331

World | Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:08am EDT
Related: World, Japan
Japan and U.S. look to extend naval missions after law change
TOKYO

(Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to revise the constitution to allow Tokyo's right to collective self defense will pave the way for closer cooperation between U.S. and Japanese forces in Asia, a top U.S. commander said on Tuesday.

Expanded training and joint missions could extend across Asia from Japan through the disputed South China Sea - claimed in whole or part by China, Vietnam, the Philippines and other nations in the region - into the Indian Ocean.

Neither the United States nor Japan have territorial claims in the South China Sea, but the Seventh Fleet operates in the area. A Japanese naval presence there could irritate Beijing.

Lawmakers in Japan are set to approve Abe's constitutional reinterpretation to recognize Japan's right to collective self defense (CSD). The Japanese parliament, where Abe enjoys a big majority, will vote on the new security legislation in May.

"CSD makes it easier for the Seventh Fleet and JMSDF to exercise and operate across the Indo Asia Pacific," Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the force said aboard his command ship, the USS Blue Ridge, in Yokohama.

The Japanese "have the capacity and capability for operations in international waters and international airspace anywhere on the globe," he told a media briefing with Admiral Eiichi Funada, commander of the JMSDF.

A broader regional military role for Japan is being welcomed by Washington, as it pushes its allies in Asia, including Australia, to do more as China takes an increasingly assertive stance in territorial disputes in the region.

Japan and the United State have said they will decide by the end of June on a new set of guidelines for their decades-old alliance that will give Japan a more prominent role.

The two admirals had earlier discussed expanding the scope of joint operations, in areas such as combating piracy and human trafficking and in human aid and disaster relief, Thomas said.

The two countries could also conduct training exercises in more diverse locations, he added.

The most powerful naval fleet in Asia, the U.S. Seventh Fleet remains the main counterweight to China's growing maritime power in Asia. Centered around a carrier battle group that operates out of Japan, the U.S. Seventh Fleet includes some 80 vessels, 140 aircraft and 40,000 sailors making it the most powerful naval force in the western Pacific.

Japan's navy consists of around 120 vessels, including more than 40 destroyers and a submarine force of around 20 boats.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-03/31/c_134110994.htm

News Analysis: Arab joint force to end Western military intervention in Middle East

English.news.cn 2015-03-31 04:36:56 [More]
by Ahmed Shafiq

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The formation of a combined Arab force will gradually degrade the U.S. and West military intervention in the Middle East, experts said on Monday.

"This force will take care of resolving the conflicts in Arab countries in addition to countering terrorism," retired Egyptian army general Adel Qalla told Xinhua.

"There is an Arab resilience not to let any foreign country intervene in the Arab internal affairs... This was clear in the speeches of Arab leaders during the Arab Summit who voiced out rejection of outside intervention," he noted.

The expert also said that the Arabs had been submissive to the United States and the West policies for decades due to their economic and military weakness, affirming the long-sought Arab force has changed the rules of the political game and turned the Western plans to spread their influence in the region upside down.

Arab leaders, who met in Egypt on March 28-29, agreed to form the joint Arab military force to counter growing security threats.

The goal of the force is to militarily counter challenges that threaten safety and security of the member states, based on request of the concerned country.

Prior to the proposal, Saudi Arabia formed an Arab military coalition last week without getting the permission of the Arab League (AL) or the United Nations Security Council.

The coalition carried airstrikes against the Shiite Houthi group which seized parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, and is closing in on the southern port city of Aden, the last stronghold of the fleeing Yemeni President Hadi.

The idea of forming the multinational force was initiated by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to face common challenges that threaten Arab national security.

His initiative came after 21 Egyptian Copts were killed in Libya by Islamic State (IS) militants in February.

Back in 1950, AL member states signed a Joint Arab Defense and Economic Cooperation Treaty to counter the expansion of Israel.

However, the Joint Arab Agreement has been frozen since it was signed.

PAST OF U.S.-WESTERN INTERVENTION

It has never been a secret that the Western powers always wanted to control Arab oil and maintain the security of Israel, Cairo-based political analyst Saeed Lawendy told Xinhua.

The United States wanted to replace the West, mainly France and Britain which occupied most of Arab countries for decades in last century, as the leading force in the Middle East, he said.

Since the end of the Cold War, said Lawendy, use of force was U.S. main way to become a dominant power in the region.

"The United States and the West have been intervening politically and militarily in many Arab countries in the recent couple of decades to spread their influence in the region," he said.

The first major American intervention in the Middle East was in 2003 when the U.S. army, supported by troops from Britain, Australia and Poland, invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The United States said the occupation of the Arab country was meant to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people from dictatorship.

The 2011 upheavals in the Arab world, further opened the gates for external Western military involvement in the region.

Since the beginning of regional unrest, there has been a trend of direct and indirect U.S. and Western intervention in Libya against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the IS group in Syria and Iraq.

"Even before their involvement in direct military actions in Libya, Iraq and Syria, the United States and the West provided military training and equipment to particular opposition groups in those countries to keep the war against the ruling regimes going on," Lawendy added.

U.S. INTERVENTION TO CONTINUE

Lawendy believed that the U.S. military role in the region will not fade away rapidly for many reasons.

"The joint Arab force is opposed by many Arab countries including Iraq that has been militarily assisted by an Arab-Western coalition in the fight against the IS group," he said.

Even if the Arab force is going to strike IS in Iraq, the leading role will be given to the United States who initiated the war against the IS, he added.

The West will also continue its anti-IS military campaign in the war-stricken Syria as the Arabs appear reluctant to play a military role in the Arab country that is strongly backed by Russia and Iran, the expert expected.

But after all, he said, these wars will end and the role the West and United States are playing now will vanish step by step because they will not get a chance to have any military role in any future conflicts until the Arabs ask for their assistance.
Editor: yan

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...3fd6b4-d6fd-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html

The Post's View
An Arab military force could compound the region’s problems

By Editorial Board March 30 at 8:08 PM
Comments 8

THE SAUDI-led intervention in Yemen and the announcement of a new transnational Arab military force may mark a historic turning point in the Middle East. Traditional U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, fed up with U.S. passivity in the face of mounting turmoil and alarmed by President Obama’s push for a nuclear deal with Iran, are moving aggressively to defend their interests without relying on Washington.

This development may be welcomed by an administration that has sought to extract the United States from Middle East wars. But the Arab initiatives — under-resourced and with questionable objectives — are as likely to compound as resolve the region’s wars, and they ultimately may undermine U.S. interests.

In Yemen, the Saudis and like-minded nations are attempting to turn back an offensive by an alliance of dissident Yemeni forces and ethnic Houthis, a Shiite sect that has received weapons and training from Iran. The Saudis are probably correct in claiming that Iran is attempting to replace a Saudi-friendly government with another Iranian client militia; the Houthis share the ideology of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. But it’s not clear how the military campaign, which so far has consisted of bombing and naval shelling, will turn back the forces now besieging the southern port of Aden — much less accomplish the announced aims of restoring the previous government in Yemen and forcing the Houthis to disarm.

Egypt and Pakistan have hinted that they could send ground forces to Yemen, and Saudi units are reported to be massing near the border. But military experts doubt that those armies have the capacity to defeat the battle-hardened Houthis and pacify a lawless country the size of Iraq. As The Post’s Liz Sly reported, some regional observers believe that, failing a quick turn to political negotiations, the offensive may serve only to further polarize Yemen and create space for the expansion of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

The new Arab military force, announced Sunday by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi after an Arab League summit, is similarly problematic. In theory it will consist of 40,000 volunteers contributed by Arab states. But the capability question remains: Egypt, the biggest Arab power, has been unable to clear jihadist forces from its own Sinai Peninsula. Moreover, in parts of the region, Arab states are currently backing opposite sides. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are supporting one of Libya’s rival governments, while Qatar and non-Arab Turkey aid the other.

For more than a half-century, it has been the role of the United States to provide the leadership and military muscle that its Arab allies could not muster on their own. In Yemen, the Obama administration could have used air assets to turn back the Houthis before they overthrew the previous government; instead, intent on striking a deal with Iran, the White House at first indicated it could accept the Houthi takeover.

The administration now is offering intelligence support to the Saudi intervention. That will neither ensure its success nor bring about the negotiated settlement that is Yemen’s best option. The war that rages there could soon merge into a regional war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their allies — a conflict that flourishes in the vacuum created by U.S. retreat.

Read more about this topic:

Yochi Dreazen: In Yemen, the Middle East’s cold war could get hot

Fareed Zakaria: Where George W. Bush was right

David Ignatius: The lesson from Yemen

The Post’s View: Yemen’s turmoil exposes Mr. Obama’s crumbling ‘partners’ strategy

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32126515

Iran nuclear talks: 'Hurdles remain' as deadline looms

1 hour ago

Talks have resumed in Switzerland ahead of Tuesday's deadline for a preliminary nuclear deal with Iran.

Foreign ministers from six world powers are meeting their Iranian counterpart, amid hopes of a breakthrough after almost 18 months of negotiations.

They want to impose limits that would prevent Iran from producing enough fuel for a nuclear weapon within a year.

Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, wants to see crippling sanctions lifted in return.

Ben Bland reports.
Read more
Iran nuclear talks intensify as key deadline nears

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/30/how-france-became-an-iran-hawk/

How France Became an Iran Hawk

The French don't trust Iran's nuclear promises, but they don't trust Washington much, either.

By Joseph Bahout, Benjamin Haddad
March 30, 2015

As a March 31 deadline looms in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and France, two strong allies, have found themselves increasingly at odds, at times quite publicly.

While the White House has been pushing hard for consensus on the framework for a deal ahead of the deadline, Paris has been pushing back. “Repeating that an agreement has to be reached by the end of March is a bad tactic. Pressure on ourselves to conclude at any price,” Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador in Washington, tweeted on March 20. On Tuesday, François Delattre, France’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that Iran’s progress was “insufficient.”

The word from Paris has been equally unsupportive of the U.S. push for a deal. “France wants an agreement, but a robust one that really guarantees that Iran can have access to civilian nuclear power, but not the atomic bomb,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared on March 21.

What gives? Is France’s Socialist President François Hollande actually a neoconservative? Has Paris suddenly turned into a hawk among nations?

Not quite. France’s policy is dictated by a set of principles with regard to nonproliferation that have guided administrations on both sides of the political spectrum in the talks with Tehran since 2002. And the tension with Washington is just one expression of a larger disagreement between the two countries over U.S. strategy in the Middle East.

Differences between Washington and Paris have been quietly brewing for months. The French feel that they are being kept out of the loop in critical discussions. The multilateral framework of Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) has turned into a bilateral discussion between Iran and the United States.

This exclusion has been coupled with increasing pressure from Washington. French diplomats complain (albeit only privately) that their American counterparts are trying to force them to make concessions on issues like the number of centrifuges allowed or sanctions in order to reach an agreement by March 31, a deadline that the French, like many of the White House’s critics back home, see as artificial and counterproductive.

The French do not share the sense of hurry that Washington seems to feel. As France’s ambassador to the United States tweeted on March 3: “We want a deal. They need a deal. The tactics and the result of the negotiation should reflect this asymmetry.”

But the differences between the French and American positions go beyond process and into matters of substance. The lifting of sanctions, the scope of inspections, research and development capacities, the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to maintain, and how long the agreement will last are all areas in which Paris and Washington differ. In Lausanne last week, France rejected Iran’s demand to immediately lift United Nations Security Council sanctions linked to proliferation after an agreement, arguing that this can only come progressively, with verifications.

A central concern is “breakout time” (the minimum time needed to make weapons-grade uranium). According to current reports, a deal would ensure that Iranian breakout time would be moved back to one year. French negotiators want to ensure that Iran’s agreed-upon breakout time will last the entire duration of the deal — and after. They also want a deal that lasts as long as possible.

“Ten years is short when you talk about nuclear issues,” one diplomat said.

“Ten years is short when you talk about nuclear issues,” one diplomat said.

Another diplomat summed it up: “We spent more than 10 years talking, slowly setting an architecture of sanctions, of pressure, defining principles of negotiations. Once we dismantle this, it won’t come back up. So we better get the best possible deal.”

French diplomats insist a political agreement, if reached by March 31, will only be a first step. Tough negotiations will continue. Bruno Tertrais, an expert in nuclear issues who is influential in the French diplomatic community, even suggested recently that a series of temporary deals could be a better alternative to a bad definitive deal.

None of this goes against long-standing French policy, though. France has consistently been the toughest member of the European Union when it comes to Iran, going back to the administration of President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. Paris has consistently advocated for firmer sanctions and EU sanctions, beyond the scope of United Nations resolutions. In 2012, France was notably responsible for convincing Europeans to ban the import on oil products, despite the objections of many countries.

Nuclear deterrence has been central to France’s foreign policy ever since Charles de Gaulle’s presidency, a pillar that has been largely bipartisan. And just as nuclear doctrine has stayed remarkably stable through the years, so have the officials in charge of conducting French nuclear strategy and proliferation policy, regardless of who is in the Élysée.

In fact, some of the most preeminent positions in the French diplomatic and defense establishments are occupied by career civil servants trained as nuclear strategists who have worked on Iran for over a decade. This close-knit group of diplomats includes, among others, Araud, as well as Jacques Audibert, Hollande’s diplomatic advisor, both of whom previously served as France’s chief nuclear negotiator with Iran.

These diplomats generally share the conviction that Tehran’s enrichment program is aimed at obtaining a nuclear weapon and that a bad deal that allows the Iranians to keep enriching uranium at dangerous levels will lead to a disastrous game of regional proliferation. Araud, Audibert, and their colleagues know the situation well: They have been engaged in 12 years of talks on these issues and at this point they feel they have little reason to trust the Iranians, or to believe that regional arrangements with Iran would decrease Tehran’s desire to acquire nuclear capabilities.

But policymakers in Paris might not trust the Americans much, either — and not just when it comes to the nuclear negotiations. French officials no longer hide their dismay at many of Washington’s policies in the Middle East.

Numerous French diplomats suspect that the United States, now that it is less dependent on Gulf oil, “pivoting” to Asia, and focused on fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is on the verge of profoundly reshaping its traditional alliance system in the Middle East, moving from a system where Iran replaces Saudi Arabia as the central pillar of regional stability. This especially concerns the French because they have built strong political and defense relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in recent years.

The nuclear talks, French diplomats suspect, are just one part of a strategic rapprochement with Iran. Washington has practically subcontracted the war against the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq to Iranian special forces and Tehran’s Iraqi militia proxies. The French view this as a potentially counterproductive move, one more part of Washington’s turn away from its Sunni allies and toward Tehran.

French officials are also critical of the American strategy of fighting the Islamic State first in Iraq, then in Syria, disregarding the fact that both theaters are interlinked. Paris would rather see more and better inclusion of Sunnis in both countries, including more concrete support for the moderate Syrian rebel factions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. approach to Syria’s civil war is seen in Paris as hesitant and ambiguous, lacking means and resolve, and indirectly leaving aside the core question of the Assad regime’s fate — thus comforting the dictator in Damascus. This issue has come up publicly recently, such as after Secretary of State John Kerry said on March 15 that negotiating with Assad would be necessary to end the war in Syria. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a day later that “There will not be a political solution, there will not be a solution for Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad stays, and John Kerry knows it.” Among the concerns for French policymakers is that the temporary survival of Assad endangers Lebanon, a country that remains dear to France.

Relations between Paris and Washington have been tainted with suspicion ever since Syria used chemical weapons in August 2013 and Obama failed to enforce his “red line.” The sudden American about-face was perceived by Hollande as a sign that Obama was dumping his allies. European countries, and France in particular, were ready to attack Syria in September 2013, after two weeks of stepping up pressure and building up their military presence in the Mediterranean.

Paris is in good company, alongside many of Washington’s traditional allies in the region, including the Gulf states, Israel, and Turkey, which have all felt shunted aside in the interest of reconciliation with Iran. Within the nuclear talks, France, which has strong ties with Gulf countries, has voiced these concerns.

Behind the Iran nuclear talks hovers the question of the future and shape of American power and leadership. For a decade, European countries have worked on trying to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. France, like the other countries, has taken an economic hit in this effort, thanks to the sanctions regime. Now the view from Paris is of a Washington that seems to lack empathy and trust for its longtime friends and partners — more interested in making nice with Iran than looking out for its old allies.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/saudi-led-forces-pound-yemen-rebels-as-iran-sends-aid-1.2305282

Saudi-led forces pound Yemen rebels as Iran sends aid

Ahmed Al-Haj, The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, March 31, 2015 6:37AM EDT

SANAA, Yemen - Saudi-led coalition warplanes pounded Yemen's Shiite rebels for a sixth day on Tuesday, destroying missiles and weapons depots and for the first time using warships to bomb the rebel-held airport and eastern outskirts of the port city of Aden.

The airstrikes' campaign by Sunni Arab states, which began last week, is meant to halt the advance by the Shiite rebels known as the Houthis who have overrun the country and forced Yemen's president to flee abroad.

Overnight and into early hours Tuesday, the coalition bombed the Iran-backed rebels around the capital, Sanaa, according to Yemeni military officials. The strikes targeted Houthi positions and camps, as well as weapons depots controlled by the rebels, the officials said.

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Meanwhile, Iran said it sent an aid shipment to Yemen, according to the official IRNA news agency - Tehran's first such delivery since the Saudi-led airstrikes started last Thursday. The aid contained 19 tons of medicines and medical equipment and two tons of food provided by the Iranian Red Crescent, IRNA said.

The agency reported that the aid was delivered by air early Tuesday but did not say where the cargo landed. The coalition has bombed a number of rebel-held airports and has announced it is in full control of Yemen's airspace.

The conflict in Yemen marks a major escalation in the regional struggle for influence between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which also back rival sides in Syria's civil war. Arab leaders unveiled plans at a conference Sunday in Egypt to form a joint military intervention force for Yemen, which could raise tensions further.

Critics of the Houthis charge that they are an Iranian proxy. Iran has provided aid to the rebels, but both Tehran and the Houthis deny it has armed them. Iran reiterated those denials Tuesday.

“Claims about the dispatch of weapons from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Yemen are completely fabricated and sheer lies,” said the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham.

Afkham criticized Saudi-led airstrikes, saying they have caused a high number of casualties and extensive damage.

The Saudi-led coalition on Monday announced it has effectively imposed a naval blockade, days after taking control of the country airspace, to prevent weapons or fighters from getting in or out of Yemen. Also Monday, the coalition repelled a push by the Houthis and their allies, loyal to Yemen's ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, toward Aden.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi had declared Aden a temporary capital after fleeing rebel-controlled Sanaa. Hadi, who was a close U.S. ally against Yemen's powerful al-Qaida affiliate, fled the country last week, but remains Yemen's internationally recognized leader. The U.S. has provided support to the Saudi-led coalition but is not carrying out direct military action.

On Tuesday, coalition warships bombed Aden's airport and Houthi positions on the eastern outskirts of the city, according to Yemeni security officials. It was not immediately clear which coalition countries the ships belong to.

All military and security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

----

Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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Iran's power rises, with or without deal
4:12AM Tuesday
March 31, 2015

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Deal or no deal in the Iranian nuclear talks, Tehran is already behaving like it's made a killing.

Sure, U.S. and international sanctions inflicted staggering damage on Iran's economy, convincing the longtime American foe to join talks aimed at limiting its nuclear program. Those talks face an important Tuesday night deadline.

But it's not just Iran's nuclear aspirations that have everyone's attention -- though just the fact that Iranian officials are at the table with the world's most powerful countries has elevated Iran's international status.

Getting the bomb would greatly magnify its regional -- even global -- role, but Tehran is also making big moves in a tumultuous Great Game of Middle East geopolitics that is challenging U.S influence and prestige and chilling Washington's allies.

As it engages on its nuclear program, Tehran has exploited the divisions of the Arab Spring and the power vacuum of America's downgraded involvement in the region. It has also taken advantage of the leeway the United States offered in prioritizing a nuclear deal over attempts to restrain Tehran's proxies that could risk breaking up the negotiations.

The result is that Iran -- often through militant groups it sponsors -- has become a key player in conflicts in neighboring states all the way to the edge of the Mediterranean.

Its drive for regional pre-eminence is becoming an increasing problem for the Obama administration as it contemplates selling a nuclear deal -- which is already drawing considerable skepticism -- to opponents in Congress and to anxious allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, who are watching Iran's maneuvering up close.

Critics are accusing President Barack Obama of turning a blind eye toward Iran's nefarious motives and proxy wars in the Middle East to safeguard a legacy-enhancing push for a deal that could lift his presidency's historic potential after decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran.

They fear Iran is not only about to walk away with a deal that leaves its nuclear infrastructure intact, but that it is also playing the United States for a fool by using the talks to shield its hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East.

"They have completely schooled the American and European diplomats," said Michael Rubin, an Iran analyst and critic of the administration at the American Enterprise Institute.

"The Iranians used to brag that they play chess and we play checkers. It turns out that they play chess, while we play solitaire."

Iran has used its Revolutionary Guard Corps and a host of proxies to fill the power gap left by the U.S. departure from Iraq and the political tumult stirred by the collapse of authoritarian governments felled by now-defunct popular reform movements.

"Iran was destined to expand its influence one way or the other, and the U.S. was not going to prevent that, especially because of the cost involved in trying to pacify Iraq," said Reva Bhalla, vice president of global analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence and advisory firm.

"Iran benefited from the Arab Spring as well."

Iran has also seen an opportunity in the U.S.'s shifting policies and interests in the region. The George W. Bush administration pushed out the regional strongman in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, who kept Iran in check through a hostile balance-of-power arrangement. The subsequent collapse of the Iraqi state left a festering sectarian stew that Tehran was quick to use to forge links in Shiite areas.

And Obama, in addition to withdrawing American forces from Iraq, has sought a lighter touch in hot spots like Syria, Yemen and Libya, where chaos has created an opening for outside fighters and radical domestic groups to swoop in.

The regional meltdown that has seen governance collapse and national borders redrawn on sectarian lines has provided a potent breeding ground for radical, stateless Islamic groups --- like ISIS -- to grow and threaten both U.S. and Iranian national interests.

So the Obama administration also sees a common interest with Iran in fighting ISIS. But some critics say its desire to do so has blinded it to Iran's activities elsewhere.

This has left the White House in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why the United States appears to be tacitly cooperating with Iran, with which it has waged a de facto ideological war for 30 years.

Senior U.S. officials deny they are going soft on Iran to keep Tehran sweet on nuclear talks. They say the negotiations are walled off from concerns about Iran's aggressive moves elsewhere. And they point out that Tehran would be much more dangerous to its neighbors if it were able to build a bomb.

"Even if a nuclear deal is reached, our concerns about Iran's behavior in the region and around the world will endure," White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told the J Street policy conference last week, slamming Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, a proliferator and a gross violator of human rights that seeks to destabilize its neighbors.

Several U.S. allies in the region, watching Iran's growing influence, worry that whatever berth the United States is giving Iran, it goes well beyond the nuclear talks and the fight against ISIS.

Instead, they fear the beginning of a wider détente with Iran that some are calling a "Persian pivot."

Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir told CNN that Riyadh was "concerned about the interference by Iran in the affairs of other countries in the region, whether it is in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen."

Obama's domestic foes are less diplomatic.

"I heard repeatedly from leaders in the region that they believe we are forming some kind of Faustian bargain with the Iranians which would then lead to great danger to those countries," Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said last week.

"They believe that we are siding with Iran."

The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, warned on Fox News on Sunday that Iran was "on the march" across the Middle East and that the administration response was one of "willful ignorance."

But a senior Obama administration official on Monday denied that Washington wanted the wider accommodation with Iran that its allies fear.

"The critics look at this as some part of a grand détente or reconciliation -- that by getting this deal we will turn another cheek or grant them carte blanche," said the official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the nuclear talks.

"We have been and we remain just as concerned."

And at the same time that it holds marathon talks with Iran, Washington is backing its ally Saudi Arabia and a Sunni coalition that is bombarding Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi militias in Yemen.

In Syria, the United States wants close Iranian ally President Bashar al-Assad gone after his murderous rampage against his own people.

But many Washington observers believe the United States has stepped back from the region and interpret the increasingly assertive military actions of Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a sign that they feel Iran already has the upper hand. They see the Saudi coalition's assault on the Houthis as a signal, not just to Iran, but to Washington.

"Our traditional Arab allies are apoplectic. We are involved against ISIS in Syria but essentially did nothing in the past three years as the Houthis took over Yemen," said David Schenker, a former Bush administration official now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Saudis are using Yemen to send messages "to Iran and to a lesser extent to us about their lack of confidence in the American security blanket being able to protect them from Iran's machinations in the region," said Stephen Seche, a former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen.

The White House said it has no illusions on Iran's motives, but argued that the painful lessons of the last decade show a huge U.S. military operation in the Middle East is unlikely to reshape its politics.

"It's definitely a regional power struggle," said the senior administration official, stressing that Iran's strategy dates from well before either the Arab Spring or the Iraq war, all the way back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself.

"It's a geostrategic play to use these groups as pressure points, in some cases playing on Shiite grievances but also just to increase pressure on the Saudi border," said the official.

The administration insists that a large-scale reintroduction of U.S. forces to the Middle East is not the correct policy response.

"It is going to be dictated by individual countries and the particular circumstances and what is the U.S. interest there," the official said.

And the administration is not alone in believing the United States has a limited ability to influence what happens in the region.

"We can do things at the margins to help this side, reinforce that side, train another, arm another. So the U.S. position is likely to be quite modest," said Richard Haass, chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations.

And Justin Logan, a specialist in geopolitics at the Cato Institute, warned that the United States must not get involved in the "pathological politics" of the region.

"The idea that a proxy struggle between the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians can be effectively managed by the United States defies both logic and history," he said.

Housecarl · Mar 31, 2015

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-iran-nuclear-idUSKBN0MQ0HH20150331

World | Tue Mar 31, 2015 7:27am EDT
Related: World
Iran, powers push for nuclear deal as clock ticks toward deadline
By Louis Charbonneau, John Irish and Parisa Hafezi

(Reuters) - With a deadline hours away, Iran and six world powers ramped up the pace on Tuesday in negotiations over a preliminary deal on Tehran's nuclear program, while officials cautioned that any agreement would likely be fragile and incomplete.

For nearly a week, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have been trying to break an impasse in the talks, which are aimed at stopping Iran from gaining the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb in exchange for easing international sanctions that are crippling its economy.

But disagreements on enrichment research and the pace of lifting sanctions threatened to scupper a deal that could end a 12-year standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions and reduce the risk of another Middle East war.

"The two sticking points are the duration and the lifting of sanctions," an Iranian official said. "The two sides are arguing about the content of the text. Generally progress has been made."

Officials played down expectations for the talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

For days they have been trying to agree on a brief document of several pages outlining key headline numbers to form the basis of a future agreement. Officials said they hoped to be able to announce something, though one Western diplomat said it would be "incomplete and kick some issues down the road".

Negotiations among the parties on sticking points went into the night and continued on Tuesday. They were expected to run late and possibly into Wednesday. Officials said they were hoping to agree on some kind of declaration, while any actual preliminary understanding that is agreed might remain confidential.

It was also possible they would not agree on anything.

Related Coverage

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› SLIDESHOW Iran, powers push for nuclear deal as clock ticks toward deadline

"We are preparing for both scenarios," another Western diplomat said.

Officials said talks on a framework accord, intended as a prelude to a comprehensive agreement by the end of June, could yet fall apart.

"There still remain some difficult issues," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN. "We are working very hard to work those through. We are working into the night."

STICKING POINTS

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier canceled plans to go to Berlin for a French-German summit on Tuesday. "The negotiations are at a critical and difficult phase, making the presence of both ministers in Lausanne essential," a German government source said.

The real deadline in the talks, Western and Iranian officials said, is not Tuesday but June 30.

They said the main sticking points remain the removal of U.N. sanctions and Iranian demands for the right to unfettered research and development into advanced nuclear centrifuges after the first 10 years of the agreement expires.

Iran said the key issue was lifting sanctions quickly.

"There will be no agreement if the sanctions issue cannot be resolved," Majid Takhteravanchi, an Iranian negotiator, told Iran's Fars news agency. "This issue is very important for us."

The six powers want more than a 10-year suspension of Iran's most sensitive nuclear work. Tehran, which denies it is trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability, demands a swift end to sanctions in exchange for temporary limits on its atomic activities.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was due back in Lausanne in the afternoon, told reporters in Moscow he believed there was a good chance of success.

"The chances are high. They are probably not 100 percent but you can never be 100 percent certain of anything. The odds are quite 'doable' if none of the parties raise the stakes at the last minute, he said.

Both Iran and the six have floated compromise proposals, but Western officials said Tehran has recently backed away from proposals it previously indicated it could accept, such as on shipping enriched uranium stocks to Russia. Officials close to the talks said dilution of the stockpiled uranium was an option, noting that the stockpiles issue was not a dealbreaker.

The goal of the negotiations is to find a way to ensure that for at least the next 10 years Iran is at least one year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for an atomic weapon. In exchange for temporary limits on its most sensitive atomic activities, Tehran wants an end to sanctions.

Iran and the six powers have twice extended their deadline for a long-term agreement, after reaching an interim accord in November 2013.

With the U.S. Congress warning it will consider imposing new U.S. sanctions on Iran if there is no agreement this week, there is a sense of urgency in the talks.

"With Congress, the Iranian hawks and a Middle East situation where ‎nobody's exactly getting on, I'm not convinced we'll get a second chance if this fails," the Western diplomat said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any sanctions moves by the Republican-dominated Congress.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove in Moscow; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150331/as--myanmar-peace_talks-5aff06ad6a.html

Myanmar government, rebel groups sign draft cease-fire deal

Mar 31, 12:39 PM (ET)
By ESTHER HTUSAN

(AP) Myanmar President Thein Sein is seated at center while representatives of the...
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YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's government and 16 ethnic armed groups agreed Tuesday on the wording of a draft nationwide cease-fire agreement aimed at ending decades of civil unrest.

Though it was lauded as a significant step — the opposing sides have tussled over words and rights over natural resources for months — continuing fighting between the army and small rebel groups along the northern border highlights the many challenges ahead.

"I'm really happy that the two sides have finally agreed on a single draft," said President Thein Sein, who briefly attended the signing. "This opens the door for political dialogue and also further peace talks."

Minutes later, representatives from the government and 16 ethnic armed groups, including the Kachin Independence Army, signed the draft accord.

(AP) Myanmar President Thein Sein attends a signing ceremony of draft of the Nationwide...
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The specifics were not released and it remained unclear when the final cease-fire deal would be signed.

The draft will be presented to the ethnic armed groups in each of their regions, and in places where tensions remain high a National Ceasefire Coordination Team will try to convince both sides to stop fighting.

The government is hoping to have a nationwide cease-fire agreement signed in April, but there is no guarantee that is possible, said Naing Han Tha, head of the NCCT, adding that it depends on the situation on the ground.

The Myanmar Peace Center, which mediated the pact, will announce when and where the final agreement will be signed, said Aung Min, a government minister closely involved in the process.

Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. secretary-general's special adviser on Myanmar, called the agreement "a historic and significant achievement" and the first step toward a larger dialogue on settling other issues.

"The seeds of change in Myanmar are beginning to sprout," Nambiar said in a statement.

Myanmar stunned the world by opening politically and economically in 2011 following elections that most rights groups say were neither free nor fair. Though Thein Sein started steering the country toward democracy from a half-century of dictatorship, early reforms have either stalled or begun regressing.

That has upped the stakes for getting cease-fire deals with all ethnic armies, one of the president's biggest pledges. Many ethnic armies have been fighting since Myanmar gained independence from the British in 1948, and experts say continued civil unrest is slowing development in one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries.

The Kachin Independence Army has been one of the most stubborn holdouts, and its agreement to sign the draft was significant.

But fighting that started last month between rebels and the government in the Kokang region of Shan state continues. Tens of thousands of people have fled across the border into China. The Ta'ang National Liberation Army, also in Shan state, was refusing to sign as well.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://townhall.com/columnists/austinbay/2015/04/01/evaluating-the-panarab-joint-army-n1979196

Evaluating the Pan-Arab "Joint Army"
Austin Bay | Apr 01, 2015

A pan-Arab military coalition has begun waging war in Yemen, ostensibly on behalf of deposed Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Is this Arab League-approved "joint army" a credible combat force?

That depends on who emerges as the joint army's central actor and commander.

So far, Saudi Arabia has served as the coalition's most prominent public advocate and actor. The Saudis contend Iran backs the Houthi insurgents who overthrew Hadi. Strong evidence supports their contention.

Yemen's war involves sectarian sympathies. Ayatollah-led Iran, the world's great Shia Muslim power, supports the Shia Houthi movement. Saudi Arabia's Wahabi-sect leaders have concluded that Iran intends to use a Houthi-infested Yemen to harass and destabilize their Sunni kingdom.

In concept, Iran's Yemen proxies would attack the Saudis in somewhat the same way Tehran uses its Lebanon-based Hezbollah proxies to harass and distract Israel. The Arabian Peninsula, rife with tribal factions, gives the Iranians numerous volatile human targets to rile and exploit. Fracturing these often delicate tribal political arrangements would be a major step toward achieving a beloved Iranian goal: toppling the Saud family regime.

Israel, a nation state rather than tribal confederation, presents Iran's ayatollahs with a much harder and more ferocious target. Nation states vary in strength, but the Israeli nation state is a high-technology, highly trained warrior nation state. Iran needs nuclear weapons to destroy the Israeli nation state. Unfortunately, ayatollah Iran's nuclear weapons quest, thanks to feckless western governments, including the current one in Washington, appears to be on the verge of succeeding.

The sectarian analysis of Iranian ambitions stresses Shia regional hegemony as Tehran's goal. It's there, but don't buy it as a sufficient answer. A "golden age" myth of Aryan divine and ethnic right to rule, circa Persian Empire 500 BC, seduces Tehran's ayatollahs. Yes, Aryan. Iran is "Aryanistan." If you didn't know that, well, now you do. Arabs are Semitic peoples. So are Jews. If you didn't know this ethnic dimension is in play, well, it is.

Now to the pan-Arab military force.

Money talks, and the Saudis have the bankroll. The Saudis also have an air force (flying U.S.-made jets) capable of conducting a credible air campaign. On March 26, the coalition's Operation Resolute Storm began with air strikes against various Houthi targets. The question is how long can they keep it up before logistic and maintenance deficiencies emerge? They can hire private contractors to provide these services.

At the moment, naval operations are secondary, though that could change if the Iranian-Houthi coalition takes complete control. Yemen's Southwestern edge borders the strait connecting the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. However, coalition naval operations indicate the centrality of the Arab world's strongest nation state: Egypt. Egypt's Al-Ahram reported that Egyptian warships shelled Houthi fighters advancing on the Yemeni port of Aden. Egyptian officials did not comment, on the record.

Ground operations will determine Yemen's winner, and Egypt's large and comparatively capable army is the pan-Arab coalition's decisive force.

Bankrolls matter, but the quality of generals, captains, sergeants and privates matters as well. At times their quality matters more than cash. Egypt and Jordan both have fair-to-good military reputations. Every regime can field a small elite force, but the Egyptian and Jordanian armies field larger units (brigades) with comparatively higher training standards than other Arab states. Last year, Egyptian forces conducted some cursory training exercises with countries now participating in the coalition, so that coalition's formation may not be as sudden as the headlines suggest. Egyptian advisers are reportedly in Saudi Arabia, on both the Iraq and Yemen borders.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi adds credibility to the coalition. Al-Sisi has the military skills. He also understands the ideological component. He has shaped his own country's fight as one against militant Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite. If al-Sisi has the final decision in the pan-Arab army's operations against Iranian proxies and -- potentially -- Iran itself, there is a very good chance it will prevail. If the Arab force fails? The Israelis won't.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...nt-indian-ocean-naval-expansion/1/425929.html

The Indian Ocean riposte

The Modi government signals a new push into the Indian Ocean with a diplomatic offensive and naval expansion to counter China's growing presence

Sandeep Unnithan March 26, 2015 | UPDATED 11:03 IST

On February 18, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) formally cleared India's single-largest defence project: a joint Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC)-Navy project to build six nuclear-powered attack submarines or SSNs for roughly $12 billion (Rs.74,400 crore). This mammoth 'Make in India' project, nearly the size of the budget allotted this year to the three services to buy hardware ($15 billion), was not an isolated policy decision. Less than a month after he chaired the CCS, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Indian Ocean littoral countries of Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, vital to India's maritime security framework. Here he gifted patrol aircraft, commissioned a warship and secured long-term access to the southern Indian Ocean (see box).

A senior naval official says India's ramped-up Indian Ocean push is a direct response to the expansion in China's naval capabilities including submarine deployments in the Indian Ocean over the past year, and oceanographic surveys meant to legitimise its presence in the region.

India's response is part of a recognition of not just its maritime capabilities, a comprehensive linkage between diplomacy and power projection capability and the fact that China's game plan has huge security implications. "We look at capabilities, not intentions. Intentions can change overnight. If the Chinese have the capability to base their ships in the Indian Ocean Region, it has huge security implications for us," the senior naval officer adds.

THE CHINA GAMBIT

China's increased Indian Ocean presence is part of a $40-billion Maritime Silk Road unveiled by Xi Jingping in 2013. "Shorn of all the commercial hype, the Maritime Silk Road is a proprietary set of Sea Lines of Communication that will accelerate its drive to draw Africa and the Indian Ocean littorals into its resource access network," says Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar, former chief of the Indian Strategic Forces Command. "Intrinsic and yet left unsaid to the establishment of such a proprietary maritime web is the ability to secure and control it. This would place in perspective the modernisation and growth trajectory of China's navy."

Yet, even until 2012, China's entry into the Indian Ocean was confined to anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.

Beijing remained preoccupied with acquiring dominance in the Yellow Sea, the Taiwan Straits, the East China Sea and the South China Sea around it. A 2012 study, 'Non Alignment 2.0', by a group of scholars including former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, recommended that India use a window of opportunity to build up its naval capabilities in the Indian Ocean.

But China's rapid-fire deployments of three submarines-two SSNs and a conventional submarine-in just a year indicated that this window was rapidly closing. China has a force of more than 60 submarines, including a dozen nuclear-powered platforms. Its sustained Indian Ocean deployments have signalled its ability to undertake long-range missions off India's coast. China's deployments coincided with a critical decline in India's submarine arm-it has 13 conventional diesel-electric submarines, although 24 are required. The navy currently operates a single SSN, the 12,000-tonne Akula-II submarine INS Chakra, on a decade-long lease from Russia since 2012. A project to indigenously assemble six French Scorpene submarines is five years behind schedule. Contracts to build six more conventional Project 75I submarines are yet to be awarded.

Late last year, the NDA government dusted out a 2008 naval proposal for six SSNs, thereby joining a group of Asian nations-Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines-that are rushing to acquire submarines to protect their territorial waters in the face of a rising China.

THE ATTACK SUBMARINE

The Indian Navy's Maritime Capability Perspective Plan unveiled in 2005 envisages a 160-ship navy with 90 capital ships such as frigates and destroyers. Besides seven P17A frigates for $7 billion (Rs.45,000 crore), the government has cleared projects for five fleet support ships, approved a third aircraft carrier and four landing platform dock ships that will project power in the Indian Ocean. Yet, it will be the six SSNs that will form the lynchpin of India's response to the Chinese navy.

The navy envisaged multiple roles for a future nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet: two SSNs each to escort each of the three Carrier Battle Groups, protect the "bastion areas", or bases of the Arihant-class SSBNs, and hunt enemy submarines in the Indian Ocean Region. In the event of a Chinese offensive in the Himalayas, the SSNs will form the backbone of a future Indian riposte. They will run interdiction missions at vital choke points and conduct operations in enemy waters.

All of these tasks are presently carried out by a solitary INS Chakra, which is to be supplemented by a second SSN, possibly the Kashalot to be leased from Russia for $2.7 billion in 2018. "SSN's utility in denial operations, raising the cost of hostile military intervention and shadowing high-value units such as carrier groups and SSBNs, is unparalleled," says Shankar.

The SSN project comes at a time when India's three-decade-old nuclear submarine project is finally coming up to speed. The INS Arihant or the S2, the first of a class of four 6,000-tonne ballistic missile submarines, recently began her sea trials in Visakhapatnam.

The submarine's performance in surface trials has enthused naval officials to plan for its commissioning in December this year. The INS Arihant cost around Rs.6,000 crore to build and can carry either 12 short-range B0-5 missiles or four K4 nucleartipped ballistic missiles with a range of 3,500 km. The DRDO has set up an SSN cell headed by a retired vice admiral in its nuclear submarine building hub, the Ship Building Centre (SBC) in Visakhapatnam. The navy's Delhibased Submarine Design Group is now working to complete a design for these undersea vessels in the next two years. The shipyard to build the vessels is yet to be decided but officials say this programme will run parallel to the seven strategic submarines of the Advanced Technology Vessel Project (ATV).

THE TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

At roughly Rs.12,000 crore a unit, one SSN would equal the cost of two 7,500-tonne Project 15A Kolkata-class destroyers. Cost, however, has never been a hurdle. The belief in the need for a nuclear navy has led a series of PMs from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi to ensure generous budgetary support.

The ATV programme has spent over Rs.30,000 crore, most of it in secret funds which do not form part of the defence budget. Politicians have occasionally questioned if they were getting value for money. In 2005, then finance minister P. Chidambaram, a member of the apex political committee steering the classified project, wondered why the Arihant, costing over a billion dollars (Rs.6,200 crore), carried only four missiles. The project team doubled the missile load on three subsequent vessels. The only challenges in the project have been technological. The CCS approval marks the start of a new challenge for scientists and nuclear engineers.

Nuclear submarines are powered by compact reactors that produce heat from fission to run a steam turbine. Unlike conventional submarines, a nuclear sub does not have to surface periodically for air to run its diesel engines. Yet, the technical challenge of designing and fitting a compact reactor inside a space the size of a two-storeyed building is insurmountable for all but the P5 countries which build such vessels.

India's ATV project started as a troika of agencies. Steered by the DRDO which also developed the vessel's long-range ballistic missiles, it was staffed by naval project teams that brought in design expertise and BARC that built and developed the reactor. By the late 1990s, it had spent over Rs.2,000 crore on its classified ATV programme without results. The failure to produce a submarine had in 1998 piqued then navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat to call for a technical audit. Considerable Russian design assistance that followed the May 1998 nuclear tests breathed new life into the project. Even so, it took the Arihant 15 years from the start of construction to begin sea trials. The navy fought a pitched but unsuccessful battle to wrest the project away from DRDO control five years back.

A former DRDO chief is optimistic about the next line of submarines. "We are on schedule with the SSNs and we have the capability to design the submarine and build the reactor," he says.

The six SSNs will be a spin-off from a project that is building four Arihantclass SSBNs or ballistic missile-firing nuclear submarines. The downstream effect of this Make in India project will be tremendous. One private sector official says the $12-billion project will have a force multiplier effect of $40 billion on the Indian economy, generating over a million skilled jobs and sustaining the ecosystem that has grown around the ATV project.

One admiral points out that while the SSN will be Arihant's size, designing and building it will be far more challenging as both platforms have different tasks. An SSBN like the Arihant is a stealth underwater bomber ready to launch nuclear-tipped missiles at an adversary. Its reactor needs to deliver steady speeds as it prowls undetected.

An SSN, on the other hand, is like a fighter jet. It needs a high-performance nuclear reactor which delivers tremendous speed with rapid acceleration and deceleration. It needs a reactor that can perform multiple tasks such as pursuing enemy warships and striking land targets. Opinion seems to be divided regarding the type of reactor that will power the SSN.

BARC wants the Arihant's 83 MW reactor to lead the way. "It's better to build on a proven design. The SSN should have a compact version of the same reactor," says Anil Anand, former head of the BARC reactor design team. A former admiral, also part of the project, differs and calls for a new 190 MW reactor such as the one on the Chakra to be designed.

The new SSN programme, experts say, is an opportunity to learn from past mistakes. Admiral Arun Kumar Singh, former eastern naval commander, calls for stringent supervision to ensure the project stays the course. "The Prime Minister must monitor its progress every year and the defence minister every three months. Otherwise what happens is that the DRDO gives us ambitious projections which it fails to meet," he says. Clearly, old ghosts will continue to haunt the project.

Also Read : India's string of flowers

Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/03/31/explained_irans_nuclear_calculus.html

March 31, 2015
Explained: Iran's Nuclear Calculus
By James R. Holmes

Imagine this possible newsclip that could be coming very soon: the U.S. and Iran governments have reportedly struck a deal whereby Tehran promises to rein in uranium enrichment while Washington promises to ease sanctions. Enrichment yields a crucial building block for operable nuclear weapon—hence the West’s fixation on slowing or stopping the process. Take away the enriched uranium and you eradicate the Islamic Republic’s bombmaking capacity. Simple!

Or not. Nuclear diplomacy vis-à-vis Iran has dominated headlines in recent weeks, especially since firebrand Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Writing over at the New York Times, for instance, ex-UN ambassador John Bolton clamored for the Obama administration to bombard Iranian nuclear sites from the air. Bolton’s goal: to damage important nodes, delaying the program to gain time:

"An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran."

Bolton’s plea elicited the sort of response you might expect. Both camps, though, seem to have something in common, namely the idea that replacing Iran’s Islamic regime will temper its behavior, bolstering prospects for a nonnuclear Middle East. I’m not so sure. Who rules in Tehran may influence Iranian nuclear behavior less than we might think. If that’s true, it may make little difference whether an accord successfully postpones a nuclear bomb for a decade or Washington tries to oust the regime through military action. The end result: atomic Iran.

Think about it. The Islamic regime didn’t initiate Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran maintained nuclear ambiguity starting during the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, unseated by the Islamic regime during the 1979 revolution. That is, the shah’s regime pursued covert nuclear research while making every effort at concealment. The Iranian nuclear program, then, has endured for four decades spanning two radically dissimilar regimes.

It’s telling that both the shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic forged ahead with a nuclear program entailing military applications. A universal logic of nuclear proliferation may govern states’ actions regardless of regime type. The decision to go nuclear, the type of regime that makes the decision, and the kind of strategy officialdom puts in place to harness nuclear weapons for political gain appears tenuous. If so, strategies aiming at regime change—forcible or pacific—may do little to reverse proliferation.

What accounts for the logic of nuclear strategy? Basic human motives. As we peer into the second nuclear age—an age not of symmetrical arms races like the Cold War, but of a multitude of nuclear actors at various stages of nuclear development—who better to consult than a long-dead Greek historian? Thucydides, the chronicler of the 5th-century-B.C. Peloponnesian War, proclaims that “three of the strongest motives” impelling human deeds are “fear, honor, and interest.”

States that disregard elemental motives, says the father of history, flout “the law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger.” That hardscrabble law applies to all societies, no matter who rules them. Societies must arm or face the consequences.

Consider Thucydides’ motives in turn. The third, interest, is ostensibly tangible and quantifiable. By applying raw intellect, representatives of different societies and cultures will probably come up with the same list of interests and options for similar situations. Interests, resources, time—all these are part of the cost/benefit calculus. In the second nuclear age, interests seem to nudge new entrants into the nuclear club toward minimal deterrence. That’s a posture whereby governments construct the fewest bombs necessary to deter attack—and create maneuver space for themselves.

If so, that helps explain the continuity in Iranian nuclear strategy since the days of the shah. In the second nuclear age as in the first, cost/benefit logic exempts neither secular nor religious rulers. Thucydides’ other two drivers for states’ actions, honor and fear, color perceptions of interests and of the best ways to achieve them. Think about honor. Iranians across the political spectrum take pride in their nation’s grand past, for instance. Like other implements of war, nuclear weapons constitute a token of greatness. Great powers maintain nuclear arsenals, so Iran needs an arsenal to be great. QED.

Clerical rule grafts religious motives onto the pursuit of renown. Not only must Iran recover past glory, it must reinforce its claim to leadership within the Muslim world. A religious and a more secular Tehran would differ in certain respects, to be sure, but the desire for some form of modest nuclear arsenal would remain. Continuity would prevail in both calculations of interest and the thirst for dignity and prestige.

In Thucydidean terms, then, fear may act as the arbiter of future Iranian nuclear strategy. This primordial passion will shape how a clerical or a more secular Tehran sizes up the external threat environment, and in turn could beget different nuclear postures. A secular regime would presumably incline to routine power politics. It would be less prone to hype regional and global powers’ intent and capabilities. It would view a minimal nuclear posture as a buffer against rivals—and would likely content itself with a few nukes kept at fairly low readiness.

By contrast, a clerical regime that defines itself in opposition to the secular West would see hostile designs lurking everywhere. That would be doubly true should the West attempt forcible regime change—and fail.

A Tehran gripped by dread of outside menaces would obsess over the arsenal’s security. For instance, the leadership could try to make a nuclear reversal impossible. Fielding a sizable arsenal rather than just a few score weapons would be one option. It’s hard to take out lots of weapons from the air. Dispersing these weapons to hardened sites in rugged terrain, far inland, and thus away from seaborne air strikes would constitute another obvious step.

Cultivating ambiguity about the leadership’s redlines for using nuclear weapons would constitute yet another stratagem for Tehran. Deterrence would remain minimal, but fielding a robust force while keeping prospective opponents wondering would suit Tehran’s aims. As strategist Thomas Schelling notes, in power politics it’s sometimes an advantage for enemies to doubt whether you’re fully rational. You think twice before kicking a mad dog with big fangs.

Nuclear weapons, then, advance dual purposes—and will do so whoever rules in Tehran. They burnish national prestige while supplying top cover under which the regime can pursue its diplomatic, economic, and conventional military goals. These are compelling motives for mullahs and secular rulers alike. Thucydides would nod knowingly. If a nuclear pact delays the nuclear program for a decade, well and good. But we’d better use that respite to think ahead about how to live with an atomic Iran.

Containment, anyone?

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010. He is RCD’s new national security columnist. The views voiced here are his alone.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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World | Wed Apr 1, 2015 5:26am EDT
Related: World, Iraq

Iraq's interior minister says most of Tikrit is liberated, fight goes on

TIKRIT, Iraq

(Reuters) - Iraqi troops and Shi'ite paramilitary fighters were battling Islamic State on Wednesday in northern Tikrit, which officials described as the Sunni Muslim militant group's last stronghold in the city.

With officials touting victory in a month-long battle, state television said Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was visiting the city, which the Islamist militants captured last June as they seized most of Iraq's Sunni territories.

Security forces were fighting to clear the last Islamic State stronghold, the northern neighborhood of Qadissiyah, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban told reporters in the city.

"Most of Tikrit today is liberated, only small parts remain (outside our control). We will give you the good news in the next few hours after eliminating the pockets that are still in the city," Ghabban said.

The city's streets were completely abandoned, and buildings scarred by gunfire.

Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia groups had returned to the battle on Tuesday after suspending their operations last Thursday, when Abadi requested U.S.-led air strikes.

The militias had opposed U.S.-led strikes, insisting that they could retake the city.

The U.S. government, which deeply mistrusts the Shi'ite militias, has sought ways to participate in the Tikrit battle without acknowledging working with forces backed by Tehran.

U.S. officials insisted on an Iraqi government military command for the battle, even though the Shi'ite militia forces were the largest presence on the ground.

(Reporting By Ahmed Rasheed, Saif Hameed and Ned Parker; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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World | Wed Apr 1, 2015 5:25am EDT
Related: World

Two armed people enter Turkish ruling party office in Istanbul: media

ISTANBUL

(Reuters) - Two armed people entered an office of Turkey's ruling AK Party in an Istanbul suburb on Wednesday, the Dogan news agency reported, a day after leftist militants took a prosecutor hostage in a courthouse in the city.

The intruders smashed windows on the top floor of the building in the Kartal district on Istanbul's Asian side and hung out a Turkish flag with a white sword motif added to it, footage on the private agency's website showed.

One of the two, a man, occasionally shouted from the window to a crowd below but his words were inaudible.

Police cars gathered outside the building.

The incident occurred as judges and lawyers congregated in a courthouse on the European side of the city to mourn the prosecutor who was killed during an attempt by police special forces to rescue him on Tuesday.

The two hostage-takers - members of the banned far-leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) - were also killed in the rescue effort.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and John Stonestreet)

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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Experts: Iran Housing Nuke Materials in North Korea, Syria

Secret Iranian-North Korean nuke cooperation could gut nuke deal

BY: Adam Kredo
March 31, 2015 11:10 am

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — A top State Department official on Monday dismissed reports that Iran may be hiding key nuclear-related assets in North Korea and implied that she was unaware of the possibility, despite the publication this weekend of several articles by top analysts expressing alarm at the extent of nuclear cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang.

Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, dismissed as “bizarre” the reports, which described the transfer of enriched uranium and ballistic missile technology back and forth between the two rogue regimes.

The existence of an illicit Iranian nuclear infrastructure outside of the Islamic Republic’s borders would gut a nuclear deal that the administration has vowed to advance by Tuesday, according to these experts and others.

If Iran is not forced to disclose the full extent and nature of its outside nuclear work to the United States, there is virtually no avenue to guarantee that it is living up to its promises made in the negotiating room, according to multiple experts and sources in Europe apprised of the ongoing talks.

Gordon Chang, a North Korea expert who has written in recent days about Iran’s possible “secret program” there, described the State Department’s dismissal of these reports as naïve.

“Let me see if I get this straight: The country with the world’s most highly developed technical intelligence capabilities does not know what has been in open sources for years?” Chang said. “No wonder North Korea transfers nuclear weapons technology to Iran and others with impunity.”

“The North Koreans could go on CNN and say, ‘Hey, Secretary Kerry, we’re selling the bomb to Iran,’ and the State Department would still say they know nothing about it,” Chang said. “No wonder we’re in such trouble.”

Other Iranian experts specializing in the country’s military workings also have raised recent questions about Tehran’s collaboration with North Korea.

Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, both senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), have revealed that a nuclear reactor destroyed in Syria in 2007 by Israel was likely a North Korean-backed Iranian project.

Gerecht told the Free Beacon in a follow-up interview that key issues regarding Iran’s past military work and outside collaboration are being ignored in the negotiating room as diplomats rush to secure a tentative deal by Tuesday night.

“It certainly appears that the administration has backed away from [previous military dimensions] questions,” Gerecht said. “The plan appears to be to let the [International Atomic Energy Agency] continue its so far fruitless effort to gain access to sensitive sites, personnel, and paperwork, but to keep these questions out of the talks.”

“The administration is doing this because it fears the Iranians would walk out,” he added. “Any military work revealed by the Iranians would prove the Supreme Leader and [President] Rouhani liars.

Despite concerns from countries such a France over the issue, the United States has attempted to accommodate Iran, Gerecht said.

“The White House wants to believe that monitoring of known sites will be sufficient. It’s a bit mystifying given the Iranian track record and the CIA’s longstanding inability to penetrate the nuclear-weapons program (it’s just too hard of a target to do this reliably),” he explained. “But since they fear a breakdown, they bend their credulity in Iran’s favor. This has been the story of the negotiations from the beginning.”

Alfoneh also told the Free Beacon that Iran should be pressed by the United States to disclose the full extent of its nuclear relationship with North Korea.

“I certainly think the Islamic Republic should come clean concerning its past record of nuclear activities: Did the Islamic Republic ever try to build a nuclear weapon? If not, how are we to understand the opaque references to Tehran-Pyongyang nuclear cooperation in the 1990s?” Alfoneh said.

“As long as the Islamic Republic does not provide a clear record of its nuclear activities in the 1980s and 1990s, and as long as we do not know the full scope of Tehran-Pyongyang nuclear cooperation, there is always the risk of the two states renewing that cooperation, which in turn would jeopardize any agreement the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 Group may reach,” he said.

Another potential complication includes the ability of international inspectors to discern the extent of Iran’s nuclear work in Syria.

“Syria’s current chaos makes it virtually impossible for inspectors to do their job even if the Syrians were compliant,” according to Emanuele Ottolenghi, a onetime advisor to foreign ministries in Europe.

There is no way to determine whether Syria is housing any other nuclear sites on behalf of the Iranian, according to Ottolenghi, another senior fellow at FDD.

“Syria has covered up its nuclear activities after the 2007 [Israeli Air Force] raid on Deir al-Azour,” he said. “After four years of inconclusive efforts, the [International Atomic Energy Agency] ended up deferring the issue to the [United Nations Security Council] after declaring Syria in non-compliance.”

Adam Kredo Email Adam | Full Bio | RSS
Adam Kredo is senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Formerly an award-winning political reporter for the Washington Jewish Week, where he frequently broke national news, Kredo’s work has been featured in outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and Politico, among others. He lives in Maryland with his comic books. His Twitter handle is @Kredo0. His email address is kredo@freebeacon.com.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/barack-obamas-iran-muddle-116561.html?hp=t1_r

The price of Barack Obama’s Iran muddle

His hopes for a transformational foreign policy are on the line.

By Edward-Isaac Dovere
3/31/15 7:43 PM EDT
Updated 3/31/15 9:38 PM EDT

President Barack Obama needs a win in the Middle East.

Instead, he’s getting a muddle.

International negotiators in Switzerland ran up against their deadline for the Iran nuclear talks — and then kept on running, insisting that there’s enough reason to believe that maybe they’ll get far enough on Wednesday, or maybe a couple of days after that. How many, they won’t say. What happens if that’s not enough, no one seems to fully know.

Obama’s been talking about getting an Iran deal since he first ran for president in 2008 and taking heat for it from the beginning. In year seven of his presidency, it has emerged as a key lingering piece of the transformational foreign policy he wants as his legacy and become central to dealings across a region where every week brings a new crumbling country, each with a new kaleidoscope of shifting alliances to deal with.

Obama’s decision to back down from the threat of strikes on Syria in 2013 is still seen as revealing Obama’s unwillingness to fight by many of the same regional leaders who fear he’s willing to give away too much to get an agreement now.

An Iran deal, in the White House’s view, simultaneously has no direct connection to the rest of the trouble in the Middle East and is inextricably tied to everything the administration is facing. That includes a fractured relationship with the Israeli prime minister who, along with the Saudis, is strongly opposed to the Iran talks; the United States and Saudi Arabia backing the rebels in Syria while Iran backs Bashar Assad; the Houthis in Yemen against Al Qaeda while the Saudis attack; all while Americans and Iranians align to fight off Islamic State in Iraq.

“If a deal happens, even in overtime, that is a meaningful contribution to Middle East security. Period. There is uncertainty about Iran’s long-term trajectory and its interests in places like Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The region as a whole is concerned about Iran, and rightfully so. But like it or not, Iran gets a vote in what happens,” said former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “The negotiations have established a credible channel for the U.S. and Iran to manage areas of overlapping interests and areas of conflicting interests.”

Obama was briefed late Tuesday by the negotiating team via video conference, the White House said.

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that discussions have stalled only over issues related to the nuclear program, not other disputes in the region.

Before the West Wing gets to sorting out what happens next, Obama and his aides are trying to sort out where they are now — and how long they’ll be in this limbo. Going a couple of days past the deadline, goes the thinking, would be a lot different than going two weeks, and not just because Congress will be back in session by then.

The broader narrative of instability in the region is already problematic, the White House knows, and failing to get an agreement after all this buildup would make that worse.

They also know that it’ll be hard to claim a win even if they somehow squeak out a deal that Obama considers a good one. Any excitement will be drowned out by all other instability in the region and by the people in Congress and around the world who will attack any agreement.

It’s not like Obama was ever planning an Iran talks victory tour. The best case that the administration was expecting was for Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to be cautious downers while the Europeans popped the corks on another uncertain win for international diplomacy.

But beyond repeating their cliché that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” there’s no sense of what getting no Iran deal would mean, or what Obama’s prepared to do if there isn’t one.

All of this comes as the administration is grappling with the reality of Tehran asserting itself in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, on top of its long-held presence in Lebanon through Hezbollah. Just Tuesday, the White House announced the lifting of the yearold hold on military aid to Egypt.

“The administration’s in the incongruous position, in a way, of trying to very sensibly see if we can keep them away from a nuclear weapon,” said Nicholas Burns, an undersecretary of state under President George W. Bush, who said he still believes a deal will happen. “At the same time, the U.S. is going to have to push back on Iran by becoming a more overt leader in the region.”

The military option, many believe, is only “on the table,” as Obama and his aides keep promising, in the loosest, most metaphysical sense. There is a military, and technically Obama does have the option of using it, but he’s not going to start a war.

Obama has kept threatening to walk away, with Earnest saying Tuesday that the president is prepared to quit talks before the June 30 deadline (which is really, really a hard deadline, he insisted). But the president has invested too much of his credibility, time and energy over too many years to make many believe he actually would.

Obama’s “very interested in these serious talks, he recognizes the stakes here, but what’s also true is that it’s time for Iran to make some serious decisions,” Earnest said Tuesday at the White House.

Republicans didn’t wait for midnight in Lausanne to begin piling on.

“Another Obama red line comes and goes,” came the hit from the Republican National Committee.

“It’s time for the United States to regain the upper hand and quit negotiating out of weakness,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has positioned himself as a chief antagonist of the administration on Iran.

“I have no doubt that the Iranian negotiating team in Lausanne wants to get a deal. What we of course never quite know is what the internal politics back in Tehran look like,” said British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond late last week, on a visit to Washington before joining the final stage of talks. “We have to respect that and understand that in our negotiating stance, just as the Iranians have to understand that the U.S. administration and the U.S. Congress are not necessarily the same thing.”

Earnest tried repeatedly to convince skeptical reporters at the White House that the president is making a hard demand for progress despite letting the deadline come and go.

“I think it’s fair to say that we’ve reached our limit right now, in as far as these conversations have been going for a year,” he said. “At the same time, it also doesn’t make sense if we are getting serious engagement from the other side to just abruptly end the talks based on this deadline. If we are making progress toward the finish line, then we should keep going.”

Obama does need a win on Iran, Burns said, but a win isn’t necessarily an agreement. Among the other options would be using the failed talks to persuade the Europeans to join in new, stricter sanctions.

“If the result is that we can constrain the Iranians and keep them contained, and keep them away from a nuclear weapon and keep the sanctions regime in place, I think that’s a good result for the United States,” Burns said. “If the talks fall apart, it means the administration has been hardheaded where it should be.”

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.realclearworld.com/artic..._eastern_balance_of_power_matures_111087.html

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April 1, 2015
The Middle Eastern Balance of Power Matures
By George Friedman

Last week, a coalition of predominantly Sunni Arab countries, primarily from the Arabian Peninsula and organized by Saudi Arabia, launched airstrikes in Yemen that have continued into this week. The airstrikes target Yemeni al-Houthis, a Shiite sect supported by Iran, and their Sunni partners, which include the majority of military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. What made the strikes particularly interesting was what was lacking: U.S. aircraft. Although the United States provided intelligence and other support, it was a coalition of Arab states that launched the extended air campaign against the al-Houthis.

Three things make this important. First, it shows the United States' new regional strategy in operation. Washington is moving away from the strategy it has followed since the early 2000s - of being the prime military force in regional conflicts - and is shifting the primary burden of fighting to regional powers while playing a secondary role. Second, after years of buying advanced weaponry, the Saudis and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are capable of carrying out a fairly sophisticated campaign, at least in Yemen. The campaign began by suppressing enemy air defenses - the al-Houthis had acquired surface-to-air missiles from the Yemeni military - and moved on to attacking al-Houthi command-and-control systems. This means that while the regional powers have long been happy to shift the burden of combat to the United States, they are also able to assume the burden if the United States refuses to engage.

Most important, the attacks on the al-Houthis shine the spotlight on a growing situation in the region: a war between the Sunnis and Shiites. In Iraq and Syria, a full-scale war is underway. A battle rages in Tikrit with the Sunni Islamic State and its allies on one side, and a complex combination of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army, Shiite militias, Sunni Arab tribal groups and Sunni Kurdish forces on the other. In Syria, the battle is between the secular government of President Bashar al Assad - nevertheless dominated by Alawites, a Shiite sect - and Sunni groups. However, Sunnis, Druze and Christians have sided with the regime as well. It is not reasonable to refer to the Syrian opposition as a coalition because there is significant internal hostility. Indeed, there is tension not only between the Shiites and Sunnis, but also within the Shiite and Sunni groups. In Yemen, a local power struggle among warring factions has been branded and elevated into a sectarian conflict for the benefit of the regional players. It is much more complex than simply a Shiite-Sunni war. At the same time, it cannot be understood without the Sunni-Shiite component.

Iran's Strategy and the Saudis' Response

One reason this is so important is that it represents a move by Iran to gain a major sphere of influence in the Arab world. This is not a new strategy. Iran has sought greater influence on the Arabian Peninsula since the rule of the Shah. More recently, it has struggled to create a sphere of influence stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea. The survival of the al Assad government in Syria and the success of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq would create that Iranian sphere of influence, given the strength of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the ability of al Assad's Syria to project its power.

For a while, it appeared that this strategy had been blocked by the near collapse of the al Assad government in 2012 and the creation of an Iraqi government that appeared to be relatively successful and was far from being an Iranian puppet. These developments, coupled with Western sanctions, placed Iran on the defensive, and the idea of an Iranian sphere of influence appeared to have become merely a dream.

However, paradoxically, the rise of the Islamic State has reinvigorated Iranian power in two ways. First, while the propaganda of the Islamic State is horrific and designed to make the group look not only terrifying, but also enormously powerful, the truth is that, although it is not weak, the Islamic State represents merely a fraction of Iraq's Sunni community, and the Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. At the same time, the propaganda has mobilized the Shiite community to resist the Islamic State, allowed Iranian advisers to effectively manage the Shiite militias in Iraq and (to some extent) the Iraqi army, and forced the United States to use its airpower in tandem with Iranian-led ground forces. Given the American strategy of blocking the Islamic State - even if doing so requires cooperation with Iran - while not putting forces on the ground, this means that as the Islamic State's underlying weakness becomes more of a factor, the default winner in Iraq will be Iran.

A somewhat similar situation exists in Syria, though with a different demographic. Iran and Russia have historically supported the al Assad government. The Iranians have been the more important supporters, particularly because they committed their ally, Hezbollah, to the battle. What once appeared to be a lost cause is now far from it. The United States was extremely hostile toward al Assad, but given the current alternatives in Syria, Washington has become at least neutral toward the Syrian government. Al Assad would undoubtedly like to have U.S. neutrality translate into a direct dialogue with Washington. Regardless of the outcome, Iran has the means to maintain its influence in Syria.

When you look at a map and think of the situation in Yemen, you get a sense of why the Saudis and Gulf Cooperation Council countries had to do something. Given what is happing along the northern border of the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis have to calculate the possibility of an al-Houthi victory establishing a pro-Iranian, Shiite state to its south as well. The Saudis and the Gulf countries would be facing the possibility of a Shiite or Iranian encirclement. These are not the same thing, but they are linked in complex ways. Working in the Saudis' favor is the fact that the al-Houthis are not Shiite proxies like Hezbollah, and Saudi money combined with military operations designed to cut off Iranian supply lines to the al-Houthis could mitigate the threat overall. Either way, the Saudis had to act.

During the Arab Spring, one of the nearly successful attempts to topple a government occurred in Bahrain. The uprising failed primarily because Saudi Arabia intervened and imposed its will on the country. The Saudis showed themselves to be extremely sensitive to the rise of Shiite regimes with close relations with the Iranians on the Arabian Peninsula. The result was unilateral intervention and suppression. Whatever the moral issues, it is clear that the Saudis are frightened by rising Iranian and Shiite power and are willing to use their strength. That is what they have done in Yemen.

In a way, the issue is simple for the Saudis. They represent the center of gravity of the religious Sunni world. As such, they and their allies have embarked on a strategy that is strategically defensive and tactically offensive. Their goal is to block Iranian and Shiite influence, and the means they are implementing is coalition warfare that uses air power to support local forces on the ground. Unless there is a full invasion of Yemen, the Saudis are following the American strategy of the 2000s on a smaller scale.

The U.S. Stance

The American strategy is more complex. As I've written before, the United Sates has undertaken a strategy focused on maintaining the balance of power. This kind of approach is always messy because the goal is not to support any particular power, but to maintain a balance between multiple powers. Therefore, the United States is providing intelligence and mission planning for the Saudi coalition against the al-Houthis and their Iranian allies. In Iraq, the United States is providing support to Shiites - and by extension, their allies - by bombing Islamic State installations. In Syria, U.S. strategy is so complex that it defies clear explanation. That is the nature of refusing large-scale intervention but being committed to a balance of power. The United States can oppose Iran in one theater and support it in another. The more simplistic models of the Cold War are not relevant here.

All of this is happening at the same time that nuclear negotiations appear to be coming to some sort of closure. The United States is not really concerned about Iran's nuclear weapons. As I have said many times, we have heard since the mid-2000s that Iran was a year or two away from nuclear weapons. Each year, the fateful date was pushed back. Building deliverable nuclear weapons is difficult, and the Iranians have not even carried out a nuclear test, an essential step before a deliverable weapon is created. What was a major issue a few years ago is now part of a constellation of issues where U.S.-Iranian relations interact, support and contradict. Deal or no deal, the United States will bomb the Islamic State, which will help Iran, and support the Saudis in Yemen, which will not.

The real issue now is what it was a few years ago: Iran appears to be building a sphere of influence to the Mediterranean Sea, but this time, that sphere of influence potentially includes Yemen. That, in turn, creates a threat to the Arabian Peninsula from two directions. The Iranians are trying to place a vise around it. The Saudis must react, but the question is whether airstrikes are capable of stopping the al-Houthis. They are a relatively low-cost way to wage war, but they fail frequently. The first question is what the Saudis will do then. The second question is what the Americans will do. The current doctrine requires a balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with the United States tilting back and forth. Under this doctrine - and in this military reality - the United States cannot afford full-scale engagement on the ground in Iraq.

Turkey's Role

Relatively silent but absolutely vital to this tale is Turkey. It has the largest economy in the region and has the largest army, although just how good its army is can be debated. Turkey is watching chaos along its southern border, rising tension in the Caucasus, and conflict across the Black Sea. Of all these, Syria and Iraq and the potential rise of Iranian power is the most disturbing. Turkey has said little about Iran of late, but last week Ankara suddenly criticized Tehran and accused Iran of trying to dominate the region. Turkey frequently says things without doing anything, but the development is still noteworthy.

It should be remembered that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hoped to see Turkey as a regional leader and the leader of the Sunni world. With the Saudis taking an active role and the Turks doing little in Syria or Iraq, the moment is passing Turkey by. Such moments come and go, so history is not changed. But Turkey is still the major Sunni power and the third leg of the regional balance involving Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The evolution of Turkey would be the critical step in the emergence of a regional balance of power, in which local powers, not the United Kingdom or the United States, determine the outcome. The American role, like the British role before it, would not be directly waging war in the region but providing aid designed to stabilize the balance of power. That can be seen in Yemen or Iraq. It is extremely complex and not suited for simplistic or ideological analysis. But it is here, it is unfolding and it will represent the next generation of Middle Eastern dynamics. And if the Iranians put aside their theoretical nuclear weapons and focus on this, that will draw in the Turks and round out the balance of power.

George Friedman is the CEO of Stratfor. Reprinted with permission.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/202905/iran-conquering-middle-east

Is Iran Conquering the Middle East?
Juan Cole on March 30, 2015 - 5:03 PM ET

The rise of the Houthi movement in Yemen, the militias of Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and even the Syrian Arab Army of Bashar al-Assad are being configured by many analysts as evidence of a wide-ranging Iranian Shiite incursion into the Middle East. The Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, Israel’s recent bombing of Hezbollah bases in southern Syria, and Gulf Cooperation Council unease about Iraq’s Tikrit campaign are all a result of this theory of “the Shiite Crescent,” a phrase coined by King Abdallah II of Jordan. But is Iran really the aggressor state here, and are developments on the ground in the Middle East really being plotted out or impelled from Tehran?

It is an old fallacy to interpret local politics through the lens of geopolitics, and it is a way of thinking among foreign policy elites that has led to unnecessary conflicts and even wars. Polarized analysis is only good for the military-industrial complex. The United States invaded Lebanon in 1958, ostensibly on the grounds that Druse shepherds protesting the government of Camille Chamoun were Communist agents. A retired State Department official once confessed to me that many in Washington were sure that the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini was planned out in Moscow. On the other hand, I met a Soviet diplomat at a conference in Washington, DC, in 1981 who confessed to me that his country simply could not understand the Islamic Republic of Iran and was convinced that the CIA must be behind it. I would argue that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and many Saudi and Gulf analysts have fallen victim to this “geopolitics fallacy.”

Iraqi Shiite militias can’t be read off as Iranian instruments. The Peace Brigades (formerly Mahdi Army) of Muqtada al-Sadr are mostly made up of Arab slum youth who are often suspicious of foreign, Persian influences. They became militant and were made slum-dwellers as a result of US and UN sanctions in the 1990s that destroyed the Iraqi middle classes and then of the US occupation after 2003. The ruling Dawa Party of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi does not accept Iran’s theory of clerical rule, and in the 1980s and ’90s many Dawa Party stalwarts chose to live in exile in London or Damascus rather than accept Iranian suzerainty. At the moment, Iraq’s Shiite parties and militias have been thrown into Iran’s arms by the rise of ISIL, which massacres Shiites. But the alliance is one of convenience and can’t just be read off from common Shiism.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah is strongly aligned with Iran. But it was formed around 1984 under the tutelage of the Iraqi Dawa Party in exile, and its main project was ending the Israeli occupation of 10 percent of Lebanon’s territory, which began in 1982. Its rival, the Amal Party, was more middle-class and less connected to Iran, even though it was also made up of Shiites. Exit polling suggests that some half of voters who vote for Hezbollah among Lebanese Shiites are nonreligious; they are supporting it for nationalist reasons and seeking self-defense against Israeli incursions. Lebanon is a country of only 4 million, and the Twelver Shiites are only about a third of the population, some 1.3 million, most of whom are children. The way in which Hezbollah has been built up in the Western imagination as a major force is a little bizarre, given that they have only a few thousand fighters. At the moment, they have a strong alliance with Lebanese Christians and Druze because all three generally support the government of Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. But Lebanese politics are kaleidoscopic, and that political dominance could change abruptly. Lebanese Shiites are no more cat’s paws of Iran than are Lebanese Christians, many of them now allied with the Shiites and Alawites as well.

In the case of Syria, the Baath regime of Assad is a coalition of Alawite Shiites, secular Sunnis, Christians and other religious minorities. It has no ideological affinity with Iran’s right-wing theocracy. Even religious Alawites bear little resemblance to Iranian Twelver Shiites, having no mosques or ayatollahs and holding gnostic beliefs viewed as heretical in Tehran. But the question is moot, since those high in the regime are secular-minded. Iran has sent trainers and strategists to help Damascus against hard-line Salafi Sunni rebels, and is accused of rounding up some Afghan and other mercenaries for Damascus. Syria’s geopolitical alliance with Iran came about because of Syria’s isolation in the Arab world and need for an ally against nearby threats from Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In neither Iraq nor Syria has Iran invaded or even sent infantry, rather supplying some special operations forces in aid of local Iraqi and Syrian initiatives, at government request. In both countries, Iran has Sunni clients as well as Shiite ones. In both countries, local forces reached out to Iran for patronage in the face of local challenges, not the other way around.

In Yemen, as well, the Zaydi Shiites, about a third of the population, bear no resemblance to Iran’s Twelvers. It is like assuming that Scottish Presbyterians will always support Southern Baptists because both are forms of Protestantism. The rise of the Houthi movement among Yemeni Zaydis involved a rural, tribal revolt against an authoritarian nationalist government and against the attempts by Saudi Arabia to proselytize Zaydis and make them into hard-line Sunnis, called Salafis. The Houthi family led a militant counter-reformation in favor of renewed Zaydi identity. Since the nationalist government of deposed president for life Ali Abdullah Saleh got crucial foreign aid from the Saudis, he gave the Saudis carte blanche to influence Yemeni religious culture in the direction of an intolerant form of Sunnism. The nationalist government also neglected the Zaydi Saada region in the north with regard to services and development projects. Yemeni tribes in any case do not necessarily foreground religion when making alliances; many Sunni tribes have joined the Houthis politically. While Netanyahu and the Saudis, along with deposed president number-two Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, accuse Iran of fomenting the Houthis, they are a local movement with local roots, and there is no reason to think that that their successes owe anything to Iran. Indeed, most of their success since last summer apparently derives from a decision by former president Saleh to ally with them and direct elements of the Yemeni army to support them or stand down in the face of their advances. To turn around and blame these developments on distant Iran is absurd.

The motley crew of heterodox forms of Shiite Islam, Arab socialist nationalists of the old school, rural tribal good ol’ boys and slum-dwelling youth that are shaking the Middle East status quo are not evidences of Iranian influence, or, in Netanyahu’s words, “conquest.” In each case, these local forces have reached out to Iran for patronage, and perhaps there was some broad, vague, Shiite soft power involved. As noted, however, Iran also has many Sunni clients, from the Iraqi Kurds to Hamas in Gaza.

From the 1970s forward, the Egyptian nationalist regime under Anwar El Sadat turned conservative and allied with the United States and Saudi Arabia, promoting political Islam culturally and unregulated markets economically. Thereafter, a status quo prevailed in the Arab world of nationalist presidents for life and monarchs and emirs, most of them US clients and amenable to neoliberal economic policies stressing the market and distributing wealth upward from the working classes. Either explicitly or implicitly, they gave up opposition to Israeli expansionism. They crushed formerly powerful socialist, Communist and labor movements, and used oil money to bribe the public into quiescence or deployed secret police to torture them into going along. That status quo was latently Sunni, in that most elites were drawn from that branch of Islam, including the president of Iraq and the prime minister of Lebanon—neither of which are Sunni-majority societies.

In the past decade, that cozy order has broken down, in part at the hands of a new generation of Arab millennials unwilling to put up with it, but also at the hands of working-class grassroots movements. It also broke down internally. On the one hand, the nationalists in the Arab world are increasingly suspicious of the Saudi fondness for promoting Salafi fundamentalism. Thus, the Algerian and Egyptian officers are not as enthusiastic about the rebellion in Syria as are the sheikhs. And even the Americans, big champions of anti-Communist fundamentalism from Eisenhower to Reagan, have now drawn a line at Al Qaeda and ISIL, finding even Iran preferable. On the other hand, disadvantaged insurgents have risen up from below. The most important thing about these challengers is probably not that many have a Shiite coloration but that they reject the condominium of the Egyptian officer corps and the Saudi monarchs, with their American security umbrella, their free-market policies and their complaisance toward Israeli militarism (though, not all the pro-Iran movements have all of these concerns—Syria went neoliberal in the past two decades, for example). Iran is being entrepreneurial in supporting these insurgents against the prevailing order. It hasn’t conquered anything. If it has become more influential, that is an indictment of the old Sadat status quo.

Read Next: Juan Cole on the Saudi Attack on Yemen

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...uclearization_of_the_indian_ocean_107834.html

March 31, 2015
The Coming Nuclearization of the Indian Ocean
By David Brewster

While the world focuses on the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran could present in the Middle East, a potentially more dangerous and unstable nuclear proliferation is occurring in the Indian Ocean.

In the coming years India, Pakistan, and perhaps China will likely deploy a significant number of nuclear weapons at sea in the Indian Ocean. This could further destabilize already unstable nuclear relationships, creating a real risk of a sea-based exchange of nuclear weapons.

Observers have long seen India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry as the most unstable in the world, and South Asia as the most likely location of nuclear conflict. This is not just academic speculation. Foreign diplomats have been evacuated from Islamabad on several occasions from fears of an impending nuclear exchange with India.

India has a “no first use” (NFU) nuclear-weapons policy of sorts, although it is increasingly subject to caveats and exceptions. But Islamabad refuses to adopt an NFU policy and indeed has announced a long list of actions that it claims would justify a nuclear response against India. Pakistan is also busy miniaturizing its nuclear weapons for tactical use, thus reducing the threshold for Pakistani nuclear action.

Importantly, Pakistan sees its nuclear arsenal not only as a deterrent but also as an enabler, providing an umbrella under which it can sponsor sub-conventional attacks against India. In the face of terrorist attacks such as those in Mumbai in 2008, Delhi has found its options constrained by concerns about a possible Pakistani nuclear response. But few are confident that India's restraint can be maintained in the face of another serious cross-border attack that is proved to have been sponsored by Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan are now in the process of moving their nuclear weapons capabilities into the maritime realm.

India is the furthest down this track, having launched its first indigenous nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant in 2009 (expected to be commissioned this year); it is also in the process of building two more so-called SSBNs. Further, India is developing nuclear-tipped Dhanush short range ballistic missiles for deployment on offshore patrol vessels. India has leased a nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine and has plans to construct up to six more SSNs (unlike SSBNs, SSNs are not armed with nuclear ballistic missiles). Pakistan is following India's lead, having recently established a Naval Strategic Force Command Headquarters with the declared intention of developing a sea-based deterrent. This may involve nuclear-armed conventional submarines supplied by China, rather than SSBNs.

Some nuclear weapons states have created a nuclear “triad” in order to have an assured second strike capability. While such an assured capability can help stabilize a nuclear relationship, according to a recent Carnegie report, taking the India-Pakistan nuclear dynamic into the maritime realm may in fact create greater instability.

One issue is an ambiguous mix of conventional and nuclear capabilities at sea, including the deployment of nuclear missiles on Pakistani conventional submarines and on Indian missile boats. Uncertainty over whether a platform is carrying nuclear weapons creates a risk of an inadvertent but highly escalatory attack on an opponent's nuclear capability. Another concern is that maritime nuclear capabilities could lower Pakistan's already low nuclear threshold. Islamabad may be tempted to conduct a demonstration nuclear attack at sea, believing it will not be escalated on land. A further problem is Pakistan's reported propensity to delegate nuclear authority to field commanders, which could create considerable risks if submarine communications are interrupted.

China is also a major player in the nuclearization of the Indian Ocean. China's role in creating a nuclear-armed Pakistan is a big factor in the distrust that characterizes the India-China security relationship. In the 1980s, China supplied Pakistan with weapon plans along with fissile material, and facilitated the supply of missile technology. Any further moves by China to develop Pakistan's maritime nuclear capability will only cement India's threat perceptions about China.

The India-China nuclear relationship is itself relatively unstable and is now also moving into the Indian Ocean. This is because India's land-based nuclear deterrent currently suffers from considerable geographical and technological disadvantages compared with China. China is able to deploy its nuclear missiles in sparsely populated territory close to India's border, providing it with nuclear missile coverage of the entire subcontinent. In comparison, India fields much shorter range missiles that can barely reach major population centers in eastern China.

This gives India good reason to establish an assured second strike capability on SSBNs that could potentially be forward deployed into the western Pacific. Alternatively, India may deploy its SSBNs in a well-protected “bastion” in the Bay of Bengal, although this may require further development of Indian missile technology.

There have been increasing detections of Chinese SSNs in the Indian Ocean in recent years, including the deployment of a Chinese SSN to the western Indian Ocean between last December and February, nominally as part of its anti-piracy deployment. According to Indian sources, these deployments are part of hydrographic “profiling'” of the region and will likely increase in frequency. But Beijing has less reason to deploy its SSBNs in the Indian Ocean; instead, they will likely be primarily deployed in the western Pacific, targeted at the US. This could create its own risks: the detection of an unusual transit of a Chinese SSBN into the Indian Ocean or an Indian SSBN into the Pacific could be seen as an escalation at times of tension.

The US also has a potentially significant role in facilitating nuclear stability in the Indian Ocean. In the 1980s, Washington helped construct India's only facility for communications with submerged nuclear submarines and the US might again support India's maritime nuclear capabilities. It might even be in Washington's interests to help Pakistan. The establishment of reliable communications links with Pakistan's nuclear-armed submarines could, for example, be critical in stabilizing the India-Pakistan nuclear dynamic.

Despite concerns about superpower competition in the Indian Ocean during the latter half of the Cold War, there was relatively little nuclear competition in that theatre. The three-party nuclear rivalry we will soon see in the Indian Ocean is likely to be more unstable, and potentially far more dangerous.

Dr. David Brewster is with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, where he specializes in South Asian and Indian Ocean strategic affairs. He is also a Senior Maritime Security Fellow at the Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, and a Fellow with the Australia India Institute. His previous career was as a corporate lawyer working on complex cross-border transactions and he practiced for almost two decades in the United States, England, France and Australia.

This piece first appeared in the Lowy Interpreter here.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...pe_for_a_major_middle_eastern_war_107833.html

March 31, 2015
The Conditions are Ripe for a Major Middle Eastern War
By Steven P. Bucci

For years, the great nations of Europe spent huge sums of money to build their military might. They assembled themselves into blocs, all the better to play a dangerous game of power politics. Slowly, surely, they were stumbling toward war.

In June 1914, an assassin shot the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the powder keg was lit. The results were disastrous.

The Middle East today looks frighteningly similar to the Europe of the early 20th Century.

For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have competed—Iran, as the champion of the Shia Islamic world, the House of Saud as the de facto leader of the Sunni world.

Iran has a massive military, as well as major capabilities in unconventional warfare and espionage. It influences or outright controls Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the powerful Shia militias in Iraq. Now, Tehran is encouraging—and most likely aiding—the Al Houthis rebelling in Yemen.

The Saudis, powerful in their own right, have allied with Al Sisi in Egypt, King Abdullah in Jordan, and most of the other Gulf Arab States. They are also allied with the Pakistanis, who have one of the largest militaries in the world, and nuclear weapons to boot. Additionally, there is a growing possibility that the Turks may throw in with the Sunni side.

It’s a huge amount of fire power, rivalry and armed conflict concentrated in a comparatively small region. And this tinderbox could blow up into a major conflagration, with destructive consequences unparalleled since World War Two.

But, some might say, these opposing blocs have been in place for decades, why the worry now? Quite simply, because America is no longer playing the role it has played in the region for a long, long time.

For decades, the U.S. served as security guarantor and diplomatic trouble-shooter for our friends in the region. The Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and other friendlies didn’t have to worry that Iran would gain regional hegemony. They knew a strong, assertive America would keep Iran’s ambitions in check. Meanwhile, Iran and its proxies knew they could go only so far before being slowed and stopped by the judicious use of America power. The credible threat of American hard power was enough to keep our friends calm and our enemies quiet.

That has changed. Our enemies have seen the U.S. “lead from behind” in Libya, then turn its back on our consulate in Benghazi. They’ve seen us draw a “red line” in Syria, then walk away when Assad called our bluff. They’ve seen Russia annex Crimea and bolster the separatists in eastern Ukraine while America refuses to provide military aid to Kiev. They’ve seen us flinch at the thought of putting American boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS.

Put it all together, and it’s a picture of an America that is timid, or confused, or flaccid—a nation that still talks a good hard-power game, but lacks the will to follow through.

Moreover, they see an Administration so hungry for a “legacy” deal with Iran, that the Iranians considerable negotiating skills are not even being taxed. In the G5+1 talks in Lausanne Secretary of State John Kerry has made concession after concession with no quid pro quo from Iran—to the point that France is now emerging as the hardliner on our side of the negotiating table.

Our enemies aren’t the only ones who notice these developments. Our friends do, too. What must the Saudis and the others think when they see the administration cast aside regional ally No. 1—Israel? Can their “push out the door” be far off if they get in the way of the Administration’s single-minded drive to appease the Iranian regime?

Those friends now have reason to fear that the nuclear negotiations with Iran will accelerate the U.S. withdrawal from the region or—even worse—produce an Iranian-American rapprochement at their expense. It is this fear that has led our friends to band together to defend themselves against what they know to be a growing threat: Iran. While the Obama administration may be willing to turn a blind eye to this threat in its pursuit of a nuclear deal, Iran’s neighbors do not have that luxury.

Since the U.S. has cut back on dispensing its usual antibiotics, our jittery friends in the Middle East now feel that they must counter—strongly and immediately—the local infections promoted and exploited by Iran. And they are sometimes doing so without consulting the U.S.

The result is a Middle East more explosive and unpredictable than ever. The conditions are now ripe for a major Middle Eastern war—one that could spill across the globe, wherever Sunni and Shia Muslims interact. All that remains missing is a spark.

Impossible you say? That June day in Sarajevo, no experts predicted the horrifying consequences of Garo Princip’s actions.

Today, the Saudis are massing 150,000 troops on the border with Yemen. The Pakistanis and the Egyptians have promised ground troops. These Sunnis Governments view their alliance as one of self-defense. But it’s a huge threat to Iran’s desires for hegemony, and Tehran may even view it as a threat to the survival of the mullahs’ regime.

No one wants war, big or little. But among the power blocs of the Middle East, Washington’s misbegotten policies have fueled uncertainty on one side and perceived opportunity on the other.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Americans have always dreaded a clash of the superpowers. But the lesson of the First World War is that when large regional powers—especially those driven by sectarian and apocalyptic forces—are poised to fight, any miscalculation can be equally cataclysmic.

That situation exists today in the Middle East. And the Administration, far from easing the tensions, is actively destabilizing the region through its dealings with Iran.

Steven P. Bucci is the director of the Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

Hummm......

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-master-plan-defeat-china-war-12510

Taiwan's Master Plan to Defeat China in a War[1]

China could get more than it bargained for...
J. Michael Cole [2] [3]
March 31, 2015

A consensus seems to have developed among a large number of defense analysts in recent years arguing that despite the balance of power having shifted in China’s favor, Beijing has no intention to use its military to invade Taiwan [4] and thus resolve the Taiwan “question” once and for all. Doing so would be too costly, some argue, while others contend that Beijing can accomplish unification by creating enough economic dependence and incentives to convince Taiwanese over time of the “inevitability” of a “reunited” China.

Although these factors certainly militate against the desire to go to war over the island-nation, we cannot altogether discount the probability that the Chinese military would be called into action, especially if the rationale for launching an attack were framed in terms of a defensive war—China being “forced” to take action because of changing and “untenable” circumstances in its environment.

Therefore, despite the relatively low probability of war in the Taiwan Strait in the immediate future, Taipei cannot afford to be complacent and must actively pursue an effective defense strategy.

The first component of such a strategy is for Taipei to clearly define what the mission is, and just as importantly, what “victory” would look like. Given the quantitative and qualitative differences that exist between the two militaries, it is clear by now that victory for Taiwan can no longer be defined in maximalist terms: the total destruction of enemy forces.

(Recommended: Japan's Master Plan to Defeat China in a War [5])

Moreover, Taiwan does not have the means, nor does the intent, to take the fight to China to annihilate People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces stationed on Chinese territory. Therefore, with a few—and important—exceptions that will be discussed below, the military area of operations in a war scenario would be the Taiwan Strait, and in a full invasion, the Taiwan side of the median line that divides the Strait.

Of course there are many different scenarios in which the PLA could be activated to pressure Taiwan, not all of them involving an all-out assault to invade the island. The PLA Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF), for example, can be used to blockade Taiwan, while the Second Artillery Corps could be called upon to launch decapitation missile attacks against the Taiwanese leadership and other key targets across Taiwan, such as radar sites, airstrips, naval bases, and its C4ISR architecture.

In all those scenarios, Taiwan would be forced to adopt a purely defensive posture. The hardening and dispersal of targets, as well as improved air defense capabilities, are part of that strategy and what the Taiwanese military has prepared for over the years. The key in such “limited” scenarios will be to lower the chances that China would achieve its objectives.

Under current conditions, Taiwan arguably has sufficient resources and the right strategies in place to address those limited contingencies. If true, this would mean that those options are off the table for China, therefore forcing it to either abandon the idea that force can be used to coerce Taipei, or to escalate. The logic behind ensuring that Fortress Taiwan has the wherewithal to defend itself against limited attacks is that the more Beijing has to escalate, the greater the dilemma it faces as pressures—domestic and international—against such use of force, and therefore the potential costs of unleashing it, would be much more severe.

Still, there are contexts in which the dynamics that militate against full invasion would lose momentum. Chinese military literature is replete with references to defensive war and variations on that theme. Such language would be critical if it became necessary for the Beijing leadership to rationalize a decision to use total force to achieve its objectives. In such scenarios, China would position itself not as the aggressor, but rather as the victim, “forced” by external circumstances to go on the offensive, however begrudgingly, to protect its “vital” or “core” interests.

In other words, a change in context would leave the leadership with only two choices: capitulation or battle to defend the integrity of the Chinese territory. A declaration of de jure independence by Taiwan would certainly prompt such a response, with laws—the Anti-Secession Law [6]—“forcing” Beijing to respond. China could also feel “compelled” to act if it deemed that political instability on the island were such that it threatened the safety of “Chinese compatriots”—in other words, Beijing could use its own “Crimea model” [7] to justify massive use of force (humanitarian in this case) to occupy Taiwan.

It would therefore be incautious to rule out any possibility that China would use maximum force (short of the nuclear option) to attack Taiwan, to believe that rational calculations of costs versus benefits will prevail under any and all circumstances. Even if the probability is remote, it still exists. And given the trends within Taiwanese society which make unification with China less and less appealing, it is not entirely infeasible that a decade from now the Chinese leadership could decide it has to take military action—again for purely “defensive” purposes—lest “splittists” (of course aided by the CIA and other agencies bent on subjugating China) threaten to tear apart “one China” and inspire other groups within its territory to move in a similar direction.

So what could Taiwan do to ward off a PLA invasion? Since the Taiwanese military cannot hope to defeat the PLA in a conventional battlefield, and given that Taipei has no assurances that allies such as the United States and Japan would intervene on its side, its best defense is to ensure that China does not launch such an aggression in the first place. In other words, Taiwan must substantially increase the costs of invasion—real and perceived—by promising unacceptable amounts of pain to the PLA, the leadership in Beijing, and the Chinese population. Logically, this implies building up its capabilities to counter an amphibious assault through a combination of naval and aerial assets, as well as anti-armor rockets, missile batteries, artillery, mobile special forces units, and a well-trained and equipped reserve, to saturate the beaches with lead and create a kill zone for advancing PLA forces. Ensuring the survival of its air force and navy assets following saturation bombing by the Second Artillery in the initial phase of major hostilities would also be important, as those would also be necessary to counter PLA transport vessels ferrying troops across the Taiwan Strait.

However, such a passive, or “porcupine” defense strategy would probably not be enough to deter Beijing. Consequently, a second aspect of Taiwan’s plans to inflict unacceptable pain on China must explore more offensive options. It has already begun doing so, with the production and deployment of Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM), naval suppression kits, and standoff air-to-ground missiles [8] (cluster bombs, anti-radiation) capable of disabling airfields as well as missile and radar sites in China. The deployment and dispersal of larger quantities of road-mobile or naval LACM launchers would also make it more difficult for the PLA to locate and destroy all of them and thus increase the potency of Taiwan’s counterstrike capabilities, especially if their range were increased (Taiwan should nevertheless keep the moral high ground by promising it would only use such assets against military targets). To maximize the impact of its counterforce capabilities, Taiwan would also have to improve its ability to pinpoint targets through greater investment in radar and satellite technology—and ensure redundancy, as those would also likely be targeted by the PLA in the initial phase of a conflict. Greater human intelligence assets inside China, as well as the ability to conduct sabotage against key military (and economic) sites, would complement the offensive aspect of Taiwan’s defense strategy. Other options include armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and a larger fleet of submarines with conventional LACM capability. All of this is contingent on a political decision to invest more on defense than Taiwan does at present.

Beyond kinetic strategies, several asymmetrical options are also available to Taiwan to maximize the pain of a PLA invasion, with the ultimate goal of deterring such action. On the political side, Taipei should redouble its efforts in political warfare. The first aim of this strategy should be to counter similar operations by China [9], which have succeeded in undermining morale [10] in the Taiwanese military while encouraging the perception abroad that Taiwan is an unreliable security partner, or that unification is inevitable or even desirable.

The second leg of a more active political warfare strategy would be to convince Beijing that Taiwan’s allies—the United States., and possibly Japan—would act quickly should the PLA attempt an invasion of Taiwan. In other words, Beijing should not longer be kept guessing whether the United States would enter a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, especially at a time when Washington’s commitment to the region—and to Taiwan more specifically—is in serious doubt. Strategic ambiguity, which has served as a cornerstone of Washington’s policy in the Taiwan Strait since the conclusion of the Korean War, should be abandoned and replaced by a series of well advertised tripwires or “red lines” that, if crossed, would prompt a response by the U.S. military. Tokyo is also ripe for closer cooperation with Taiwan, and as such, political warfare that plays up the possibility of joint efforts between the two countries could be of great assistance to Taiwan. The more Beijing is convinced that the United States., and possibly Japan, would intervene in the Taiwan Strait, the greater will be its reluctance to launch operations that would spark such a response, as their entry in a conflict would substantially increase the costs of an invasion while diminishing the likelihood of a quick “low-cost” resolution on Beijing’s terms.

Elsewhere, Taiwanese lobbyists and the Taiwanese diaspora could make more effective use of the island’s assets—a vibrant liberal democracy and an important economy—to encourage the international community to adopt a more vocal line in its opposition to the resolution of the Taiwan “question” by military or coercive means. Convincing Beijing that the international community would not countenance use of force—and would slap painful economic sanctions should it decide to do so—would contribute to Taipei’s deterrent. Helping visitors to Taiwan better understand the nature and preciousness of its unique society, and encouraging them to be more proactive in their home countries convincing their representatives to take a more principled stance on Taiwan could go a long way. Existing programs under Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs could serve as a basis for such efforts; increasing contact via other departments—e.g., creating more exchange programs for foreign military personnel to undergo language training in Taiwan—should also be explored.

Additionally, taishang, the Taiwanese who operate businesses in China and who played a crucial role in helping develop the Chinese economy over the decades, could also threaten to cease their operations or pull out altogether if the PLA were activated in the Strait. Though happy to make money in China, most taishang (including the many who vote for the KMT) remain proud Taiwanese who do not want to see their home country devastated by war. Their possible role as a pressure point against Beijing should not be underestimated.

One last area where Taiwan could do more to deter Beijing is in cyber warfare, or “electronic sabotage.” Using intelligence assets in China (closer contact between the two societies works both ways and doesn’t only create opportunities for China), Taiwan could identify and select civilian and military targets for retaliation, with the aim of severely disrupting China’s ability to operate normally should it launch an attack against the island. The banking and high-tech sectors would be likely targets. On the military side, promising to degrade, or perhaps even disable, China’s nuclear deterrent—even if momentarily— or knocking out its air defense systems, thus exposing China to USAF bombing runs, would be enough to make Beijing think twice about launching an invasion.

In all those efforts, Taiwan would need to strike a balance between signaling its intent and capability to launch disruptive attacks of that nature—in other words, for deterrence to work, Beijing must be convinced that the threat is real—and the need to protect itself against Chinese espionage which could undermine those efforts.

In the end, absent a U.S. and Japanese commitment to intervene in the early stages of an attempted PLA invasion of Taiwan, there is only a slim likelihood that the Taiwanese military would be able to “defeat” its opponent in the conventional sense of the term. The force disparity between the two sides has simply become too wide. As such, under prevailing circumstances, the only way that Taiwan can defeat China is to make sure that the PLA is never used to attack Taiwan. Deterrence, therefore, is its most credible asset, and one which it can put to much better use.

J. Michael Cole, a former analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is editor in chief of www.thinking-taiwan.com [11], a senior non-resident fellow at the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, and an Associate researcher at the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Taipei. He can be found on Twitter at @JMichaelCole1.

Image [12]: Wikimedia/Al Jazeera

Topics
Security [13] [3]

Source URL (retrieved on April 1, 2015): http://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-master-plan-defeat-china-war-12510

Links:
[1] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-master-plan-defeat-china-war-12510
[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/j-michael-cole
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/war-the-taiwan-strait-would-china-invade-taiwan-11120
[5] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/japans-master-plan-defeat-china-war-12338
[6] http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005lh/122724.htm
[7] http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/taiwan-watching-crimea-nervous-eye-toward-beijing-10047
[8] http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/taiwan-unveils-wan-chien-air-to-ground-cruise-missile/
[9] http://thinking-taiwan.com/the-sky-isnt-falling-over-taiwan/
[10] http://thinking-taiwan.com/two-ways-of-looking-at-a-spy/
[11] http://www.thinking-taiwan.com/
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republ..._Debate_-_Flickr_-_Al_Jazeera_English_(3).jpg
[13] http://nationalinterest.org/topic/security

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/03/heres-when-next-incursion-ukraine-could-happen/108955/

Here’s When the Next Incursion Into Ukraine Could Happen

March 31, 2015 By Patrick Tucker

The Minsk II agreement is roughly in place, but not for long, according to one former NATO supreme allied commander.
Russia / Ukraine

If you think the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russian-backed militants is fragile today, wait until next week. After Easter Sunday, pro-Moscow forces could begin a spring offensive lasting until (Russian) V-E Day, or May 9.

That’s the prediction of retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme allied commander and U.S. presidential candidate, who recently visited Ukrainian commanders and forces.

V-E Day, known as Victory Day in Russia, marks the surrender of Axis forces to the Allied forces at the end of World War II, and holds a special significance for Russians. “We see planning in Russia to celebrate this. It would be wonderful for Putin if he could wrap up his conquest and celebrate it on that day if the allies are boycotting his celebration,” said Clark.

“Why are they reporting that? Because they feel that Putin’s forces require a certain reorganization period. That period began in mid-February with the ending of the Debaltseve campaign, in eastern Ukraine. It normally takes at least a couple of months, maybe longer” for pro-Russian forces to regroup after major campaigns, Clark said Monday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

https://admin.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/ukraine_621acd.jpg

Fighting in the area of Debaltseve began in mid-January and although a ceasefire began on February 12,, Russian-backed forces took control on February 21. The Minsk II ceasefire agreement is largely holding, according to Clark. Despite the veneer of relative tranquility, all is not well in Donbass.

Pro-Russian separatist forces essentially gamed the entire ceasefire, according to Clark. First, under the auspices of the agreement they convinced the Ukrainians to pull equipment back from the front line while separatists kept heavy artillery close to battle zone but concealed. How did they pull it off? The monitoring organization charged with policing the ceasefire agreement, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, has fallen down on the job and can’t provide unbiased monitoring, according to Clark.

“More than half of OSCE are Russian military,” Clark said. The Russian monitors were “on the honor code” not to pass information on Ukrainian positions back to separatist military forces.

“The Ukrainians have pulled back their heavy weapons systems. They’re already at a disadvantage because if an attack were to occur they have to first put their weapons into position and move them forward to be able to engage, whereas the separatist equipment is there. Russian equipment is regularly coming over. Russian units are regularly coming over,” said Clark.

Other reports corroborate that statement. On Monday, Ukrainian officials reported 22 tanks rolled into the region according to Newsweek, which also reported firing in the area over the weekend. “Sunday night 15 separatist Grad missiles were fired at the Ukrainian city of Horlivka. The Donetsk administration explains that pro-Russian fighters had received 122mm Grad missiles as part of one of Russia’s so called ‘humanitarian convoys’, which continue to arrive in the rebel-held regions.”.

“Russians delivered more and more tanks and troops,” Natan Chazin, a Ukrainian battalion commander told Defense One. He also reported that shots were being fired everyday and called the ceasefire not “real.”

Clark predicted that in the next round of fighting, separatist forces will likely look to finish what they started. Clark dismissed predictions that further fighting would be limited to port city of Mariupol, calling Mariupol, “the cork in the bottle,” and adding that Putin’s ultimate goal probably lies beyond even the Ukrainian provinces, or oblasts, of Donestsk and Luhansk.

“They’ve been told to cease up the oblast boundaries but it makes sense that they would try to link up to Crimea at some point, because otherwise Crimea is economically unsustainable … In the January offensive, the Russians were given the objective … to secure the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast, up to the oblast boundaries. Apparently, this has some political significance in the Russian mindset … They launched in mid-January … they never made it to the oblast boundary and took very high losses,” said Clark. “The Minsk II agreement essentially stopped them along a 400 KM line of conflict well short of the oblast boundaries. On our recent visit, we found them there.”

Based on current positions, Clark says that the Russian-backed separatists are well placed to launch a potentially devastating offensive, noting that Russian tank forces were engaging the enemy at 7,000 meters, well beyond Ukrainian tank capabilities. Clark also discussed how effectively the separatist forces were using drones for reconnaissance and targeting, describing a situation where Ukrainian forces would spot a drone overhead and experience incoming artillery shells less than ten minutes later.

The Obama administration should prepare an aid package, including long-range counter battery radar and short-range (lethal) anti-tank weapons such as Javelins, equipped with thermal imaging said Clark. Even if the United States does not actually send the package but readies it for immediate deployment, the existence of the aid package and a firm show of willingness to send it in the event of additional Russian ceasefire violations, could offer some sort of deterrence, if only temporarily. Until then, Clark suggested the U.S. could provide the Ukrainian side with better intelligence and analysis.

“Provide joint indications and warning analysis to Ukraine to provide the missing information they need to have firm warning of a Russian offensive,” he said.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.janes.com/article/50368/pakistan-in-talks-with-china-for-eight-submarines

Pakistan in talks with China 'for eight submarines'

Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad and James Hardy, London - IHS Jane's Navy International

31 March 2015

The Pakistani government has approved the purchase of eight new submarines from China, senior Pakistan Navy officers told the National Assembly's defence committee on 31 March.

In 2011 the government revealed that the navy had begun discussions with China to buy six submarines, with the number of platforms subsequently raised to eight. Those discussions began after the Pakistan Navy stepped back from pursuing the purchase of three submarines from Germany on cost grounds.

The navy officials who spoke on 31 March neither revealed the type of boats to be ordered nor a likely price.

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry official told IHS Jane's that while he did not know which platform would be supplied to Pakistan, "in the recent past, there have been reports of discussions for the Type 041 submarines".

The Type 041 'Yuan' class is described by IHS Jane's Fighting Ships as a diesel electric attack submarine (SSK), potentially with Stirling air independent propulsion, that is armed with YJ-2 (YJ-82) anti-ship missiles and a combination of Yu-4 (SAET-50) passive homing and Yu-3 (SET-65E) active/passive homing torpedoes.

Since 2004 12 Type 041 submarines are believed to have been launched, while the US Department of Defense estimated in its May 2013 annual report to Congress on China's military that production could reach 20 ships. An export version, marketed as the S20 and unveiled in February 2013, displaces about 2,300 tonnes.

The PN is known to operate five French submarines: three Agosta 90B (Khalid-class) submarines purchased in the 1990s and two ageing Agosta 70 (Hashmat-class) boats dating from the late 1970s.

Lieutenant General Talat Masood (retd), who is now a commentator on defence affairs, told IHS Jane's it was "difficult to imagine a price of less than USD500 million per submarine, if not more". By comparison IHS Jane's DS Forecast notes that the Indian Navy is paying USD763 million per boat for six DCNS Scorpene SSKs.

Masood said that in view of the close defence collaboration that exists between China and Pakistan, Beijing was likely to extend a long-term loan, possibly at a low interest rate, to cover the cost of the Type 041s.

Want to read more? For analysis on this article and access to all our insight content, please enquire about our subscription options ihs.com/contact

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/is...refugee-camp-damascus-syria-witnesses-n333981

4 hours

ISIS Seizes Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria: Witnesses

BEIRUT, Lebanon — ISIS fighters took control of large parts of a besieged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria's capital on Wednesday, witnesses and a monitoring group said.

The Yarmouk camp, home to up to 18,000 people, has been caught between government forces and Syrian insurgent groups including ISIS's rivals including al Qaeda's Nusra Front.

"They pushed from the Hajar Aswad area and Nusra fighters have joined them. They have pledged loyalty to Daesh," one witness said, using an Arabic term for ISIS.

The witness and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes continued inside the devastated camp where food, medicine and water are scarce.

The Observatory said ISIS controlled some of the main streets in the camp.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the group is "extremely concerned" about the safety of Syrian and Palestinian civilians in the Yarmouk camp in Damascus. The agency is calling for an end to the fighting.

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/us-nigeria-election-idUSKBN0MR0VN20150401

World | Wed Apr 1, 2015 3:16pm EDT
Related: World, Africa

Nigeria's Buhari says to 'spare no effort' in squashing Boko Haram

ABUJA | By Alexis Akwagyiram

(Reuters) - A day after becoming the first politician in Nigerian history to succeed a sitting leader by ballot, president-elect Muhammadu Buhari promised on Wednesday to "spare no effort" to defeat Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

The 72-year-old general, who first came to power three decades ago via a military coup and campaigned as a born-again democrat, also promised to tackle graft in Africa's largest economy.

"Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will. We should spare no effort," Buhari said in his first formal speech since winning the election. "In tackling the insurgency, we have a tough and urgent job to do."

The group has killed thousands in its push to carve out a caliphate in northeastern Nigeria.

Despite the killing of more than a dozen voters by Boko Haram gunmen - who had pledged to derail the poll - the election was one of the most orderly in Nigeria's history.

Buhari won the election with 15.4 million votes to outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan's 13.3 million, a margin wide enough to prevent any challenge.

In an unprecedented step, Jonathan phoned Buhari to concede defeat and urged his supporters to accept the result, a signal of deepening democracy that few had expected in Africa's most populous nation.

Buhari congratulated Jonathan for peacefully relinquishing power on Wednesday.

Related Coverage
› With Jonathan, Africa's list of good losers gets longer
› Obama commends Nigerian leaders, urges peaceful transition
› UK's Hammond says transition to new Nigeria government must stay peaceful
› SLIDESHOW Nigeria's Buhari says to 'spare no effort' in squashing Boko Haram

"President Jonathan was a worthy opponent and I extend the hand of fellowship to him," Buhari, wearing a black cap and kaftan, told reporters and supporters to loud applause.

"We have proven to the world that we are people who have embraced democracy. We have put one-party state behind us."

The rules state that Jonathan must officially hand over on May 29.

His People's Democratic Party (PDP) has been in charge since the end of army rule in 1999 but had been losing support due to oil sector corruption scandals and the government's lack of success in combating Boko Haram.

"President Jonathan has placed his country's interests first by conceding the election," U.S. President Barack Obama said.

Nigeria's main stock index soared 8.3 percent, posting its single biggest gain this year, and Nigerian dollar-denominated bonds climbed too on relief at the absence of the violence and fraud that has blighted previous elections.

"The context has changed ... There have been 16 years of democracy, there's a constitution, there are legal safeguards," British High Commissioner Andrew Pocock told BBC radio.

Investors are also cautiously optimistic that any crackdown on corruption by Buhari will stimulate investment and boost flagging growth in the oil-dominated economy.

NORTHERN CELEBRATIONS

Cities in the largely Muslim north, where Buhari's core support base lies, erupted in celebration.

Jonathan's appeal to his supporters that "nobody's political ambition is worth blood" meanwhile helped calm their frustrations, reducing the chance of post-election violence that blighted the 2011 poll when Buhari lost to Jonathan.

Buhari took power in a 1983 coup only to be thrown out 18 months later by another general. He subsequently embraced democracy, running in several elections and despite losing always bouncing back.

"I ask that we all be circumspect, respectful and peaceful ... We must begin to heal the wounds," he said.

Nigeria remains a complex ethnic mix of 170 million people, split between Muslims and Christians, with more than 500 languages. Though they mostly live side by side in peace, many harbor disputes that politicians have often used to stoke violence that has worsened over the years.

Buhari must also deal with the fallout from a dive in global oil prices in the last eight months which has hammered state revenues and forced two de facto currency devaluations.

"He's a man with a strong sense of mission and he has clear ideas about what he wants to do with Nigeria, on corruption, on restoring national discipline," Pocock said.

But analysts say cracking down on graft in a country where it is so endemic could take decades.

(Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

Hummm..........

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/blast-the-past-when-hawks-wanted-bomb-suicidal-china-12519

Blast from the Past: When Hawks Wanted to Bomb a 'Suicidal' China

Hawks once said Mao was suicidal. They're wrong about Iran, too.

Ted Galen Carpenter [2] [3]
April 1, 2015

Even before the P5 +1 negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program reach a conclusion, hawks in the United States are beating their war drums. Longtime neoconservative activist Joshua Muravchik published a piece in the Washington Post on March 13 ridiculing the notion that diplomacy might work with Tehran, insisting that war as the only prudent alternative [4]. Less than two weeks later, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton published an op-ed in the New York Times advocating air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites [5].

Two features of such proposals stand out. First, Muravchik, Bolton and other hawks are cavalier about the challenge of containing the effects of the new Middle East war that they want to initiate. In a March 25 debate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a less famous hawk, Georgetown University Associate Professor Matthew Kroenig, emphasized that he merely proposed air strikes, not putting U.S. boots on the ground. He was a tad vague, though, about what Washington’s response would be if, or more likely when, Iran retaliated against American or allied targets. Bolton and other war proponents also tend to avoid discussing that messy detail.

The second prominent feature in the hawkish case is the eerie similarity of their arguments to those made fifty years ago regarding Communist China’s nuclear program. Today’s proponents of preemptive war insist that Iran’s clerical regime is irrational and, therefore, cannot be deterred. According to that logic, a nuclear-armed Tehran would at a minimum use its arsenal to threaten and intimidate its neighbors, thereby putting the Middle East under the domination of a virulently anti-Western power. Even worse, hawks insist, Iran might well use its nukes against Israel or even U.S. forces in the region, plunging the world into the nightmare of nuclear war [6].

Yet even Israeli intelligence officials have concluded that Iran’s leaders are not irrational, much less suicidal. And suicidal they would have to be to start such a conflict against Israel—a country that has 150 to 300 nuclear weapons. The mullahs would have to be even more suicidal to initiate a nuclear war with the United States and its arsenal of several thousand nuclear weapons.

The Cold War–era predecessors of today’s advocates of preemptive air strikes used strikingly similar logic regarding China’s embryonic nuclear-weapons program. National Review, the flagship publication of the conservative movement, published two editorials in 1965 warning that China’s communist leaders could not be deterred the way that the United States had deterred the Soviet Union. The second editorial appeared with the headline “Bomb the Bang.” National Review’s editors admonished U.S. officials not to sit passively “like a man who watches and waits while the guillotine is constructed to chop his head off.”

The assumption that Maoist China was so reckless that it would turn East Asia into a pile of radioactive rubble came through clearly in those editorials. Officials in Lyndon Johnson’s administration shared those fears. Walt W. Rostow, who served as Johnson’s national-security adviser, later told me that the administration seriously considered conducting preemptive air strikes, either alone or in conjunction with an equally worried USSR, to thwart China’s nuclear ambitions.

Proponents of that course actually had more evidence than the current crop of Iranophobes to justify their fears. Some of the statements by Mao Zedong and his associates were truly alarming. In a speech to the Eighth Party Congress in May 1958, Mao urged his countrymen not to flinch from the prospect of war, even nuclear war. Noting that China had lost huge percentages—sometimes as much as one half—of its population in previous eras, Mao argued that “the best outcome” of a nuclear war might be that “only half of the population is left, and the second best may be only one third.” Either way, he predicted, the result would be the “total elimination of capitalism” and the onset of “permanent peace.” Therefore, “It is not a bad thing.”

Writing in Red Flag, the main ideological publication of the Communist Party in the 1960s, General Lo Jui-ching argued that while a nuclear war would cause “sacrifices and destruction, it will also educate people.” Therefore, he stressed, the party must give “first priority” to preparing the Chinese public psychologically for such a war. One would be hard-pressed to find comments from Iran’s clerical leaders comparable to the extraordinarily scary and inflammatory statements of Mao and his colleagues. Mao’s and Lo’s comments led prominent nuclear scientist Ralph Lapp, writing in the pages of Life Magazine, to conclude that Chinese leaders “may not be rationally deterred from starting a nuclear war.” For them, he worried, “the unthinkable may be thinkable.”

Yet when China joined the global nuclear-weapons club later in the 1960s, it did not behave in a reckless fashion. That gap between statements and behavior confirms an observation that has been valid throughout history. Although political elites may sometimes engage in apocalyptic rhetoric, their actions are almost never suicidal. Fortunately, cooler heads in the U.S. foreign-policy community prevailed regarding China’s nuclear program, and the United States never launched a preemptive war. Relations with Beijing today would likely be far different—and vastly more hostile—if the hawks of that earlier era had won the debate. American leaders face a similar choice today regarding Iran, and one hopes that they are wise enough to spurn the irresponsible advice of taking a fateful—potentially disastrous—military action.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The National Interest, is the author of nine books, the contributing editor of ten books, and the author of more than 600 articles and policy studies on international affairs.

Topics
Security [7] [3]

Source URL (retrieved on April 1, 2015): http://nationalinterest.org/feature/blast-the-past-when-hawks-wanted-bomb-suicidal-china-12519

Links:
[1] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/blast-the-past-when-hawks-wanted-bomb-suicidal-china-12519
[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/ted-galen-carpenter
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...112eb0-c725-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=1
[6] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/doomsday-stopping-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race-12511
[7] http://nationalinterest.org/topic/security

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.nationalinterest.org/blo...e-disrupts-nuclear-stability-south-asia-12495

Pakistan’s New Missile Disrupts Nuclear Stability in South Asia
[1]
The Shaheen III is dangerous to the nuclear balance in South Asia.

March 27, 2015
Arka Biswas [2] [3]

Pakistan recently test-fired a surface-to-surface ballistic missile, Shaheen III [4]. Capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the missile is estimated to have a maximum range of 2750 km. While it has been claimed to provide a boost to Pakistan’s strategic depth and to deterrence stability in South Asia, a careful examination of how Shaheen III impacts the deterrence equation between India and Pakistan captures the latest Pakistani missile to be instead counter-productive.

Shaheen III is the latest addition in the Shaheen series. The previously developed and successfully tested missile, Shaheen II, is estimated to have a range of around 2500 km. The range of Shaheen II continues to remain a rough estimate. For instance, right after Pakistan tested Shaheen II in March 2004, Pakistan’s National Engineering and Science Commission (NESCOM) chairman, Samar Mubarakmand, was quoted saying [5] that “the full range of the missile was 2,500 km although it was tested only to 2,000 km, the edge of Pakistan’s sea limits.” Another ISPR press statement issued on April 18, 2008 [6], after the second successful test of the Shaheen II missile, however, confirmed the missile to have a range of 2000 km. But leading Pakistani newspapers claim [7] Shaheen II to have a range of 1500 km. Based on an estimated range of 2000 km, a map has been made [8] by C SIS that depicts the area (marked with blue dotted lines) that Pakistan could target using Shaheen II ballistic missile. This is critical to note as we question what new capabilities Shaheen III brings to the table.

Right after the launch of Shaheen III, Shahid Latif, retired commander of Pakistan’s air force was quoted [9] as saying that “India doesn’t have its safe havens anymore.” With the ability to reach India’s extreme eastern frontiers, Director General of the Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, called [10] Shaheen III “a major step towards strengthening Pakistan’s deterrence capability” vis-à-vis India. However, despite all the claims made by strategic experts and military leaders in Pakistan, there remains question on whether Shaheen III enhances the deterrence stability or is rather counter-productive.

From India’s perspective, Shaheen III does not really change the situation much as far as the credibility of Pakistan’s deterrent is concerned. Looking purely from a strategic point of view, Pakistan has had the ability to target all of India’s major population centers with Shaheen II, whose maximum range (2500 km) is estimated to be shorter than that of Shaheen III by only 250 km. Even if we go by the estimated range of Shaheen II at 2000 km which has been successfully tested by Pakistan and confirmed by ISPR, the missile would only miss the extreme eastern tips of India. Thus, when it comes down to “deterrence capability,” Shaheen II can deliver a nuclear warhead to almost all of the strategic sites of India to make the preexisting deterrent credible.

Shaheen III could offer Pakistan the ability to target Indian naval vessels in the Bay of Bengal, but for that Pakistan would need a highly effective and accurate terminal guidance system which could help a missile trace the targeted vessel’s movement and adjust its trajectory accordingly after flying across the entire Indian mainland. Another asset which would make Shaheen III stand out could be the multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) capabilities, but Pakistan could use these payloads on Shaheen II as well, if it is able to develop or acquire them.

The purpose that Shaheen III could serve best, however, is to give Pakistan the ability to target Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal. This, as has been argued by General Khalid Kidwai, former head of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) and advisor to Pakistan’s National Command Authority in a conversation at the 2015 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference [11], is the “sole purpose for the development of Shaheen III.” However, in the same conversation, he also added that by covering the islands of Andaman and Nicobar, Pakistan aims to take away India’s second-strike capability. But that goes far off from making Shaheen III a strategic deterrent, which Pakistan claims it to be. Instead of strengthening the concept of mutually-assured destruction (MAD), which Gen. Kidwai argues to be critical for South Asia, attempts to take away India’s second-strike capability will further destabilize the deterrence equation. It will push India to further cooperate with its global partners on its Ballistic Missile Defence Programme which will definitely be counter-productive for Pakistan.

Thus, while much has been stated and claimed about Shaheen III from the Indian perspective, it really does not bring anything new to the tableas far as deterrence stability is concerned. On the other hand, if Pakistan aims to take-away India’s second-strike capability, as Gen. Kidwai argues the purpose to be, it will only push India to further enhance its BMD systems. Indian doctrine of credible minimum deterrence is solely based on having a nuclear force that is capable of surviving a nuclear first-strike and launching a second strike which can inflict massive damage to the opponent to make the deterrent credible. Retention of second-strike capability is therefore a vital for stability in South Asia and development of Shaheen III by Pakistan with the aim of taking away India’s second-strike capability will only prove to be counter-productive for the former.

Arka Biswas is a SAV Visiting Fellow at the Stimson Center. This article originally appeared on South Asian Voices, here [12].

Topics
Security [13] [3]

Source URL (retrieved on April 1, 2015): http://www.nationalinterest.org/blo...e-disrupts-nuclear-stability-south-asia-12495

Links:
[1] http://www.nationalinterest.org/blo...e-disrupts-nuclear-stability-south-asia-12495
[2] http://www.nationalinterest.org/profile/arka-biswas
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] https://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&date=2015/3/9
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/09/pakistan.kashmir
[6] https://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&id=336
[7] http://www.dawn.com/news/1144235
[8] http://southasianvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Shaheen-iii-CSIS.gif
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0f4f42-c65c-11e4-bea5-b893e7ac3fb3_story.html
[10] http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-36306-2750-km-range-Shaheen-III-missile-test-fired
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNZCw0BXKyE
[12] http://southasianvoices.org/shaheen-iii-and-deterrence-stability-in-south-asia/
[13] http://www.nationalinterest.org/topic/security

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

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http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/asias-coming-nuclear-nightmare-12513

Asia's Coming Nuclear Nightmare [1]

The nuclear race in the Indian Ocean is heating up...

David Brewster [2] [3]
March 31, 2015

While the world focuses on the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran could present in the Middle East, a potentially more dangerous and unstable nuclear proliferation is occurring in the Indian Ocean.

In the coming years India, Pakistan, and perhaps China will likely deploy a significant number of nuclear weapons at sea in the Indian Ocean. This could further destabilize already unstable nuclear relationships, creating a real risk of a sea-based exchange of nuclear weapons.

Observers have long seen India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry as the most unstable in the world, and South Asia as the most likely location of nuclear conflict. This is not just academic speculation. Foreign diplomats have been evacuated from Islamabad on several occasions from fears of an impending nuclear exchange with India.

(Recommended: The Most Dangerous Nuclear Threat No One Is Talking About [4])

India has a “no first use” (NFU) nuclear-weapons policy of sorts, although it is increasingly subject [5] to caveats and exceptions. But Islamabad refuses to adopt [6] an NFU policy and indeed has announced a long list of actions that it claims would justify a nuclear response against India. Pakistan is also busy miniaturizing its nuclear weapons for tactical use, thus reducing the threshold for Pakistani nuclear action.

Importantly, Pakistan sees its nuclear arsenal not only as a deterrent but also as an enabler, providing an umbrella under which it can sponsor sub-conventional attacks against India. In the face of terrorist attacks such as those in Mumbai in 2008, Delhi has found its options constrained by concerns about a possible Pakistani nuclear response. But few are confident that India's restraint can be maintained in the face of another serious cross-border attack that is proved to have been sponsored by Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan are now in the process of moving their nuclear weapons capabilities into the maritime realm.

India is the furthest down this track, having launched its first indigenous nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant in 2009 (expected to be commissioned this year); it is also in the process of building two more so-called SSBNs. Further, India is developing nuclear-tipped Dhanush short range ballistic missiles for deployment on offshore patrol vessels [7]. India has leased a nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine and has plans to construct up to six more SSNs [8] (unlike SSBNs, SSNs are not armed with nuclear ballistic missiles). Pakistan is following India's lead, having recently established a Naval Strategic Force Command Headquarters with the declared intention of developing a sea-based deterrent. This may involve nuclear-armed conventional submarines supplied by China, rather than SSBNs.

(Recommended: The World’s Most Dangerous Rivalry: China and Japan [9])

Some nuclear weapons states have created a nuclear “triad” in order to have an assured second strike capability. While such an assured capability can help stabilize a nuclear relationship, according to a recent Carnegie report [10], taking the India-Pakistan nuclear dynamic into the maritime realm may in fact create greater instability.

One issue is an ambiguous mix of conventional and nuclear capabilities at sea, including the deployment of nuclear missiles on Pakistani conventional submarines and on Indian missile boats. Uncertainty over whether a platform is carrying nuclear weapons creates a risk of an inadvertent but highly escalatory attack on an opponent's nuclear capability. Another concern is that maritime nuclear capabilities could lower Pakistan's already low nuclear threshold. Islamabad may be tempted to conduct a demonstration nuclear attack at sea, believing it will not be escalated on land. A further problem is Pakistan's reported propensity to delegate nuclear authority to field commanders, which could create considerable risks if submarine communications are interrupted.

(Recommended: The Real Nuclear Nightmare When It Comes to U.S.-Russian Ties [11])

China is also a major player in the nuclearization of the Indian Ocean. China's role in creating a nuclear-armed Pakistan is a big factor in the distrust that characterizes the India-China security relationship. In the 1980s, China supplied Pakistan with weapon plans along with fissile material, and facilitated the supply of missile technology. Any further moves by China to develop Pakistan's maritime nuclear capability will only cement India's threat perceptions about China.

The India-China nuclear relationship is itself relatively unstable and is now also moving into the Indian Ocean. This is because India's land-based nuclear deterrent currently suffers from considerable geographical and technological disadvantages compared with China. China is able to deploy its nuclear missiles in sparsely populated territory close to India's border, providing it with nuclear missile coverage of the entire subcontinent. In comparison, India fields much shorter range missiles that can barely reach major population centers in eastern China.

This gives India good reason to establish an assured second strike capability on SSBNs that could potentially be forward deployed into the western Pacific. Alternatively, India may deploy its SSBNs in a well-protected “bastion” in the Bay of Bengal, although this may require further development of Indian missile technology.

There have been increasing detections of Chinese SSNs in the Indian Ocean in recent years, including the deployment of a Chinese SSN to the western Indian Ocean between last December and February [12], nominally as part of its anti-piracy deployment. According to Indian sources [13], these deployments are part of hydrographic “profiling” of the region and will likely increase in frequency. But Beijing has less reason to deploy its SSBNs in the Indian Ocean; instead, they will likely be primarily deployed in the western Pacific, targeted at the United States. This could create its own risks: the detection of an unusual transit of a Chinese SSBN into the Indian Ocean or an Indian SSBN into the Pacific could be seen as an escalation at times of tension.

The United States also has a potentially significant role in facilitating nuclear stability in the Indian Ocean. In the 1980s, Washington helped construct India's only facility for communications with submerged nuclear submarines and the U.S. might again support India's maritime nuclear capabilities. It might even be in Washington's interests to help Pakistan. The establishment of reliable communications links with Pakistan's nuclear-armed submarines could, for example, be critical in stabilizing the India-Pakistan nuclear dynamic.

Despite concerns about superpower competition in the Indian Ocean during the latter half of the Cold War, there was relatively little nuclear competition in that theatre. The three-party nuclear rivalry we will soon see in the Indian Ocean is likely to be more unstable, and potentially far more dangerous.

Dr. David Brewster is with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, where he specializes in South Asian and Indian Ocean strategic affairs. He is also a Senior Maritime Security Fellow at the Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, and a Fellow with the Australia India Institute.

This article originally appeared [14] on the Lowy Interpreter.

Image: Wikimedia/Ajai Shukla

Topics
Security [15] [3]

Source URL (retrieved on April 1, 2015): http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/asias-coming-nuclear-nightmare-12513

Links:
[1] http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/asias-coming-nuclear-nightmare-12513
[2] http://www.nationalinterest.org/profile/david-brewster
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-most-dangerous-nuclear-threat-no-one-talking-about-11899
[5] http://csis.org/publication/twq-five-myths-about-indias-nuclear-posture-summer-2013
[6] http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue47/articles/a23.htm
[7] http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/sukanya-class-offshore-patrol-vessels/
[8] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ojects-gathers-steam/articleshow/38342676.cms
[9] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-world’s-most-dangerous-rivalry-china-japan-11374
[10] http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/03/09/murky-waters-naval-nuclear-dynamics-in-indian-ocean
[11] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-nuclear-nightmare-when-it-comes-us-russian-ties-12102
[12] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ocean-to-keep-china-and-its-submarines-at-bay
[13] http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150325/jsp/frontpage/story_10739.jsp#.VRiO7-HkWqi
[14] http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2015/03/31/The-coming-nuclearisation-of-the-Indian-Ocean.aspx
[15] http://www.nationalinterest.org/topic/security

Housecarl · Apr 1, 2015

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150401/lt--mexico-missing_students-ebad8de4cb.html

Lacking faith in government, Mexican parents approach cartel

Apr 1, 7:23 PM (ET)
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Some of the families of 43 college students missing in southern Mexico since September say desperation and a lack of confidence in the government drove them to appeal to the leader of a drug gang for help in locating their sons.

After months of investigation, Mexican officials concluded a different drug gang killed and incinerated the young men. But six months after the disappearance, and with only one of the missing identified through a bone fragment, parents are asking the leader of a rival gang to share what he knows.

A banner hung Tuesday near Iguala, the city where the students disappeared, asks Santiago Mazari Hernandez, the alleged leader of Los Rojos gang, to "help us find our sons." Mazari had seemingly offered assistance to the families through his own signs hung in February.

"We are desperate and wherever the information comes from we will accept it, but it has to be true, too," Epifanio Alvarez, father of missing student Jorge Alvarez Nava, said Wednesday.

Alvarez said the families have no confidence in the government and are turning to anyone for help. "It is as if there is no government," he said.

"We even put the phone number of a father there so that whoever has information can call us, pass on a tip or something," Alvarez added. As of Wednesday afternoon they had not received a call, he said.

An official at Mexico's Interior Department, which is in charge of domestic security and political affairs, declined to comment specifically on the move by the parents, but said the government does not recognize any member of a criminal organization as a valid participant in such matters. The official could not be quoted by name due to agency policy.

According to the government's account, students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa travelled to Iguala on Sept. 26 to steal buses. Before they could leave the city, Iguala police confronted them under orders from the mayor and opened fire, killing six people.

The police later turned the students over to members of the Guerreros Unidos gang, which took them to a garbage dump outside Cocula, prosecutors say. The students were killed, their bodies burned and the remains tossed into a nearby river, according to the federal investigation. Extensive forensics testing has been able to identify only one of the students.

Among the 104 people arrested and interrogated by authorities were alleged members of Guerreros Unidos, who reportedly said they believed the students had been infiltrated by members of Los Rojos, which was locked in a bloody turf war with Guerreros Unidos.

The students' families and their supporters have questioned the government's version of events and remain unconvinced that their loved ones could be reduced to ash in the way the government describes.

The invitation to the Rojos' leader was not a move coordinated among all of the families, but rather came from some especially desperate members of the group, Meliton Ortega, the father of a missing student, said Tuesday.

Parents were in the area to distribute flyers asking for anyone with knowledge of what happened to come forward, he said.

The intention was "to invite people, if they know anything about the students, to come forward with the information," Ortega said. "That is what happened today, more than asking criminal groups for help."

"That happened because of their desperation," he said of the sign appealing to Mazari.

---

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman contributed to this report.

Housecarl · Apr 2, 2015

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/pakistans-looming-disaster-yemen-12521

Pakistan's Looming Disaster in Yemen [1]

Why Pakistan should not invade Yemen.

Akhilesh Pillalamarri [2] [3]
April 1, 2015

The possibility of Pakistan, a non-Arab South Asian country becoming embroiled in Yemen’s civil war is very high, as Saudi Arabia has been leaning heavily on Pakistan to join its military coalition there.

Pakistani involvement could include the deployment of land forces. There are already hundreds [4] of Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia conducting joint exercises with Saudi forces and Pakistan has voiced support [4] for Saudi airstrikes in Yemen.

Explicit Pakistani involvement in Yemen could be dangerous for it, both militarily and politically. Although Pakistan’s population is majority Sunni, unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran, Pakistan was not founded on the basis of any particular understanding of Islam. Rather, Pakistan was founded on the more general basis of Islam as a whole, in order to serve as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, whether Sunni or Shia. Around a fifth [5] of Pakistan’s population, or some 30-40 million people, are Shia, giving it (or neighboring India [6]) the second largest Shiite population in the world outside of Iran.

(Recommended: If India and Pakistan Went to War: 5 Weapons Pakistan Should Fear [7])

If Pakistan were to get involved in Yemen, its involvement could inflame tensions between Sunni and Shia at home in Pakistan as its involvement could be interpreted as a sign of the state leaning explicitly toward Sunni Islam, despite many of its important figures, including its founder [5], Muhammad Ali Jinnah, being Shia.

As it is, the situation [8] for religious minorities in Pakistan is already getting worse and Sunni militant groups frequently carry out attacks against Shia, Ahmadis, Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians with impunity.

Furthermore, Pakistani involvement in Yemen could squarely place it in the Saudi-led Sunni camp of Muslim countries arrayed against Iran.

Although the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia originated as a contest for supremacy [9] in the Middle East, both sides have used sectarianism to their advantage. This could inflame Pakistan-Iranian tensions and get Pakistan involved in a broader Sunni-Shia conflict.

(Recommended: Pakistan’s New Missile Disrupts Nuclear Stability in South Asia [10])

Joining a coalition designed to combat Iranian influence would be against Pakistan’s interests and its traditional policy of balancing between Tehran and Riyadh [11]. After all, Pakistan shares a border with Iran and not Saudi Arabia. A prominent opposition politician in Pakistan said [12] that “given our close ties to both Saudi Arabia and Iran and our own internal sectarian terrorism, Pakistan simply cannot afford to get embroiled in any Shia-Sunni conflict in the Gulf and Middle East regions. Pakistan must stay strictly neutral.”

From a military point of view, Pakistani involvement in Yemen could also be disastrous, or it could at least bogged down in a country where it has no direct interests. Iran has said that Yemen will be a graveyard [13] for Saudi agents and certainly, its long, bloody history proves [14] that it is “near impossible to govern.” Yemen’s highlands, like those of Afghanistan, are hard to control and attempts by the Ottomans, British, and Egyptians to intervene there were all unsuccessful [15]. Pakistani involvement in Yemen could also bring it into confrontation with the Islamic State; Pakistan really doesn’t need another militant group to fight. At home, Pakistan’s military is already overstretched fighting the Taliban and being vigilant against India, which Pakistan’s military establishment delusionally thinks is out to destroy their state.

(Recommended: Pakistan Wants 'Battlefield' Nukes to Use against Indian Troops [16])

Yet despite these all these risks, Pakistan could very well still intervene in Yemen. The reason is because Pakistan is heavily—many would say unduly--influenced by Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and other senior figures headed [17] to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for consultations with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. Although Pakistan has not yet promised to intervene in Yemen, it has guaranteed Saudi Arabia’s security and territorial integrity [17] should the Houthis (or presumably the Islamic State, Iran, or whoever else) invade Saudi Arabia.

Sharif’s office said in a statement [17] on Tuesday that “Pakistan holds Saudi Arabia in very high esteem and considers the security of the holy land of utmost importance….Any violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Saudi Arabia would evoke a strong reaction from Pakistan.” Nawaz Sharif is widely believed to be beholden to Saudi Arabia, which offered him sanctuary after he was overthrown in a 1999 coup by General Pervez Musharraf.

But Saudi Arabia’s influence on Pakistan isn’t just about its power over its Prime Minister. Saudi Arabia has been cultivating Pakistan for a long time, in preparation for a time that it would need it and its military, considered one of the most professional and well-trained in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has come to Pakistan’s aid multiple times: for example, it gave oil [18] to Pakistan in 1998 to help it weather international sanctions because of its nuclear tests. Saudi Arabia also allegedly helped fund Pakistan’s nuclear program in order to have the option of buying [19] a Pakistani nuke off the shelf whenever needed. Saudi Arabia has deeply invested [11] in Pakistan’s institutions and public sphere, withholding funding and payments from parties in Pakistan that it perceived as being too Iran friendly. Saudi Arabia has also begun to influence Pakistani Islam by setting up madrassas and other Islamic educational institutions.

Despite a host of strategic reasons and domestic opposition, Pakistan may very well cast its lot with Saudi Arabia soon. Its relation with Saudi Arabia is too beneficial to snub, while Pakistan does not reap anywhere near the same level of benefits from Iran that it does from Saudi Arabia. This would make it difficult for Pakistan to remain neutral [20]for long in Yemen. Changing geopolitical arrangements [20] in the region could push Pakistan to shore up one relation it can count on. A direct Saudi intervention in Yemen, presumably with Pakistani and Egyptian military forces would plunge several of the region’s powers into all out war, after which there would be no turning back. For Pakistan, such a decision would the crossing of a Rubicon: it would be hard to turn back. Despite these risks, Pakistan is increasingly making it more likely that it will intervene in Yemen and do Saudi Arabia’s bidding, as it is already sending more troops [21] to Saudi Arabia.

Topics
Security [22] [3]
Source URL (retrieved on April 2, 2015): http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/pakistans-looming-disaster-yemen-12521

Links:
[1] http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/pakistans-looming-disaster-yemen-12521
[2] http://www.nationalinterest.org/profile/akhilesh-pillalamarri
[3] http://twitter.com/share
[4] http://www.dw.de/pakistan-may-join-saudi-military-coalition-in-yemen/a-18351286
[5] http://america.aljazeera.com/articl...-reluctant-ally-in-saudis-yemen-campaign.html
[6] http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/indias-muslims-arent-all-skeptical-of-modi-and-the-bjp/
[7] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-india-pakistan-went-war-5-weapons-pakistan-should-fear-11089
[8] http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2015/03/pakistan-west-and-religious-minorities
[9] http://www.vox.com/2015/3/30/8314513/saudi-arabia-iran
[10] http://www.nationalinterest.org/blo...e-disrupts-nuclear-stability-south-asia-12495
[11] http://www.dawn.com/news/1173023/yemen-conflict-neutrality-no-longer-an-option-for-pakistan
[12] http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/how-will-pakistan-respond-to-the-crisis-in-yemen/
[13] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archi...ian-reactions-to-operation-decisive-storm.php
[14] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/904ea8a4-d487-11e4-9bfe-00144feab7de.html#axzz3VyMq29DB
[15] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/redux-how-yemen-buries-foreign-powers-12512
[16] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...lefield-nukes-use-against-indian-troops-12200
[17] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...head-to-saudi-arabia-for-talks-on-yemen-fight
[18] http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/why-saudi-arabia-needs-pakistan/
[19] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/doomsday-stopping-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race-12511?page=2
[20] http://www.dw.de/pakistans-yemen-dilemma-being-neutral-is-not-an-option/a-18349300
[21] http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/pakistan-saudi-arabia-yemen-idINKBN0MQ1GB20150330
[22] http://www.nationalinterest.org/topic/security

WAR 03-28-2015-to-04-03-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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