WAR 04-23-2016-to-04-29-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(212) 04-02-2016-to-04-08-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...08-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(213) 04-09-2016-to-04-15-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...15-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(214) 04-16-2016-to-04-22-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...22-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-tests-hypersonic-glide-vehicle/

Russia Tests Hypersonic Glide Vehicle on Missile

High-speed weapon to match U.S. prompt strike weapons

BY: Bill Gertz
April 22, 2016 4:59 am


Russia conducted a flight test of a revolutionary hypersonic glide vehicle last week that will deliver nuclear or conventional warheads through advanced missile defenses, U.S. defense officials said.

The test firing of the hypersonic glider took place Tuesday and involved the launch of an SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile from eastern Russia, said officials familiar with details of the test.

Russia’s state-run Interfax news agency confirmed the test on Thursday.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza said: “While we have seen the reports in the media, the Department of Defense has nothing to offer on this.”

Tuesday’s test was only the second known test of a new hypersonic glider. An earlier test took place last year.

China and the United States also are developing hypersonic missiles, both gliders and jet-powered vehicles that travel at extreme speeds.

China has conducted six tests of its DF-ZF hypersonic glider.

A U.S. Army hypersonic missile blew up shortly after launch in August 2014. The Pentagon also is developing a scramjet-powered hypersonic weapon.

Hypersonic missiles are being developed to defeat increasingly sophisticated missile defenses. The weapons are designed for use in rapid, long-range strikes.

Interfax, quoting a source familiar with the Russian test, confirmed it involved a “prototype hypersonic aircraft” that will be deployed on current and future long-range missiles.

The test was carried out in the Orenberg region of Russia, located near the border with Kazakhstan.

The hypersonic glider was launched atop an SS-19 missile and the test was said to be successful, the news agency said.

Earlier, Russia’s Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that the new hypersonic glider was tested from a missile launched at the Dombarovsky missile base in Orenberg, where SS-18 missiles are deployed.

A defense official told the Washington Free Beacon preliminary indications were the test was successful. No details were provided on how fast the vehicle went or the distance it traveled.

Hypersonic speed is between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or 3,836 miles per hour to 7,673 miles per hour. Hypersonic weapons pose technological challenges for weapons developers because the speeds create high heat and pressure that make flight and precision targeting difficult.

Russia has made developing hypersonic weapons a high priority.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, stated in May 2013 that Moscow opposed further nuclear arms talks because of U.S. development of precision-guided hypersonic weapons that could be used in place of some nuclear weapons.

Gerasimov was referring to the X-37B space plane and other systems in development that could be used in what the Pentagon calls conventional Prompt Global Strike—weapons capable of hitting any target on earth within 30 minutes.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin has said that “whoever is first to achieve” mastery of hypersonic weapons would “overturn the principles” of how wars are waged. He also compared hypersonic weapons development as on par with development of nuclear arms.

U.S. intelligence officials have disclosed to Congress in testimony that China’s DF-ZF hypersonic gliders appear designed to deliver nuclear warheads through missile defenses. However, the high-speed DF-ZF also could be used with conventional warheads as part of what the Pentagon calls “anti-access, area denial” weapons China is developing to threaten U.S. forces near China’s coasts.

Last week during a congressional hearing, Missile Defense Agency Director Vice Adm. James Syring was asked whether his agency is working to counter the threats from Chinese and Russian hypersonic strike weapons.

Syring disclosed plans to build laser weapons to counter hypersonic threats. “I’ve asked for $23 million to begin a low-power laser demonstrator this year to demonstrate the feasibility by 2021,” the three-star admiral told the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chairman of subcommittee, expressed concern about the hypersonic threat.

“I’m troubled that Russia and China continue to outpace the U.S. in development of these prompt global strike capabilities, complain about our tepid development programs, and the Obama administration’s ideological reductions to the Missile Defense Agency budget have denied that agency the resources to do anything to develop defenses,” Rogers told the Washington Times.

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic forces policymaker, said if the reports of the test are confirmed “it is a major threat development.”

“Russia has an extensive program underway on hypersonic vehicles,” Schneider said. “This year the Russian state media is reporting that a hypersonic cruise missile is being developed for Russian naval vessels including the ‘5th generation’ Husky missile submarine that is now under development.”

The new anti-ship missile, known as Tsirkon, will be in operation by 2018. Russian press reporting has indicated that the new Pak DA stealth bomber under development will also be armed with air-launched hypersonic missiles.

“U.S. programs involving hypersonic vehicles are modest by comparison,” Schneider said. “I would be surprised if we actually deploy one. If we do, it will likely be conventional. Russian hypersonic vehicles will likely either be nuclear armed or nuclear capable since this is the norm for Russia.”

Jane’s Intelligence Review disclosed last year that the Russian hypersonic strike vehicle is called the Yu-71. The report said the Russians could deploy up to 24 hypersonic gliders as nuclear delivery vehicles at Dombarovsky between 2020 and 2025.

Geneva-based military analyst Pavel Podvig, who runs the blog Russianforces.org, said the program for the glider is code-named as Project 4202.

Podvig said a test flight of the glider was expected.

“Whether it was successful, as the reports allege, or not, we don’t know,” he said.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bizjournals.com/washingt...-begins-discussions-on-possibly-doubling.html

Congress begins discussions on possibly doubling future B-21 bomber purchases

Apr 21, 2016, 1:50pm EDT Updated Apr 21, 2016, 3:51pm EDT
James Bach
Staff Reporter
Washington Business Journal

Industries & Tags Banking & Financial Services, Defense

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are preparing legislation that would authorize Pentagon spending and in doing so have kicked off what is sure to be a long discussion about how many next-generation stealth bombers the U.S. Air Force buys over the life of the program.

If the language of a bill coming out of a House subcommittee is any indication, the Air Force could find itself as much as doubling its future orders of Northrop Grumman Corp.’s (NYSE: NOC) future B-21.

In a House Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces report released Tuesday— which was quickly approved Wednesday and will get a full committee hearing next week— lawmakers directed the Air Force to submit a report by next February estimating the number of B-21 bomber aircraft needed to "meet the combatant commander requirements.” In that same report, drafters noted that in independent testimony, the committee was informed the Air Force would need to procure between 174 and 205 B-21s "to meet combatant commander, training, test, back-up inventory, and attrition reserve requirements.”

To this point the magic number has been 100 — that’s what the Air Force brass has said they would need to fill the minimum requirement. Interest in Congress about possibly raising that buy is important because now these discussions are a matter of congressional record and not relegated to just think tanks.

"At the end of the day, Congress controls the purse strings,” said Mark Kiefer, an aerospace and defense consultant based in Boston. "Even in a circumstance where they are in violent agreement with the services about what the requirement is or ought to be, they don’t build any until the Congress pays for them.”

The National Defense Authorization Act process is a long one and we’re still at the beginning. To this point this is only draft language. And the prospect of buying 200 B-21s at a $564 million-per-plane price tag in the face of future anticipated budget challenges is a daunting one.

"The department is trying to buy a lot of very high-end capabilities more or less all at the same time,” said Doug Berenson, a managing director at D.C.-based government industry consultant Avascent.

In November 2015, I wrote that the Air Force was gearing up for a funding clash in the years to come as it looks to buy next-generation bombers, fighters, tankers and trainers all at the same time. But even beyond that, Berenson pointed out that the Pentagon will also be buying a replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine program, the long-range standoff weapon set to replace the advanced cruise missile, and the ground-based strategic deterrent replacing the intercontinental ballistic missile program.

If the B-21 purchases were to double, there’s little chance the Air Force would buy more of the planes per year.

"To increase the annual volume is a budgetary undertaking that will simply be really, really hard to accommodate,” Berenson said. “The most likely avenue" for increasing purchases "essentially would be to extend the production run further in time.”

This is the very beginning of this conversation. The B-21s are still in a development phase and aren’t set for initial operating capability until well into the mid-2020s. And the fleet of last-generation B-1 and B-52s the B-21 will replace aren't set to be retired until 2040, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

Ultimately, Congress’s decision to increase orders will come down to two considerations, according to Kiefer.

"Does the national security situation evolve to the point where the threats are perceived to be more urgent on the one hand?" he said. And "will there be enough political support in the Congress, particularly among the members that represent the districts where these aircraft are made to ... push something like this through?"

James Bach covers federal contracting.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://defense360.csis.org/army-modernization-challenge-historical-perspective-2/

Defense360

The Army Modernization Challenge: A Historical Perspective

During the most recent defense drawdown, the Army elected to prioritize funding for readiness and limit reductions in force structure, and it has been willing to trade off modernization funding in favor of these other priorities. As shown in Figure 1, since 2008, Army modernization ([1] Procurement; and [2] Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation (RDT&E) accounts) funding has fallen precipitously. Since 2008, Army modernization total obligation authority (TOA) has fallen by 74 percent in real terms. As a result of both declining obligations for the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and the cancellation of several Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPs) prior to entering the production phase, Army procurement has fallen 78 percent since 2008. Simultaneously, Army RDT&E funding has fallen 52 percent as a result of the winding down of Future Combat System R&D efforts, as well as the Army’s inability to start or sustain new development programs, “either due to budgetary pressures or to programmatic difficulties.”[1]

Figure 1: Army Modernization Total Obligation Authority, 2008–2015

http://defense360.csis.org/wp-conte...tion-Total-Obligation-Authority-2008–2015.png

In absolute terms, this decline seems substantial, but how does the current Army modernization trajectory compare to the challenges faced in previous defense drawdowns? Following the end of previous conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War), the U.S. defense budget has shrunk to historically similar levels, as has happened since 2008 with the withdrawal and drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are the trends seen in Army modernization today similar in nature to trends of the previous drawdowns, or is this time different?

Figure 2: Army Modernization Total Obligation Authority, 1948–2020

http://defense360.csis.org/wp-conte...tion-Total-Obligation-Authority-1948–2020.png

Figure 2 shows that the recent sharp decline in Army modernization is not a new phenomenon. Just as in previous defense drawdowns, Army modernization funding historically falls in response to declining defense budgets. Historically, the decline in army modernization follows the same general pattern: After a period of growth, Army modernization TOA peaks between 27 percent and 31 percent of overall Army TOA. After hitting that peak, the Army modernization budget rapidly declines for the next few years, before leveling off. The Army modernization budget then generally holds relatively steady for a few years at that new budget level, before once again increasing.

Army Modernization Decline 1: 1969–1975

Figure 3: Army Modernization Total Obligation Authority, 1969–1975

http://defense360.csis.org/wp-conte...tion-Total-Obligation-Authority-1969–1975.png

The first major Army drawdown occurred between 1969 and 1975, following the Vietnam War and the shift in U.S. policy from massive nuclear retaliation to flexible response. During this period, Army modernization TOA fell 64 percent in absolute terms. As a share of overall Army TOA, modernization fell from 24 percent in 1969 to 16 percent in 1975.

Army procurement TOA fell from $35.23 billion in 1969 to $9.32 billion in 1975, a 74 percent decline.

RDT&E funding saw smaller, but still significant cuts over this six-year period, falling from $9.58 billion to $6.82 billion, a 29 percent decline.

Army Modernization Decline 2: 1985–1998

Figure 4: Army Modernization Total Obligation Authority, 1985–1998

http://defense360.csis.org/wp-conte...tion-Total-Obligation-Authority-1985–1998.png

The second Army drawdown occurred between 1985 and 1998 in the shadows of the Reagan defense buildup and end of the Cold War era. Over those 14 years, Army modernization TOA fell 59 percent from $42.53 billion in 1985 to $17.31 billion in 1998. As a share of Army TOA, modernization was just 18 percent in 1998 as compared to 26 percent in 1985.

During this second drawdown, Army procurement TOA fell 70 percent from $33.90 billion in 1985 to $10.11 billion in 1998.

As compared to the first Army modernization drawdown, Army RDT&E TOA fell much more slowly during this drawdown. In 1985, Army RDT&E TOA totaled $8.63 billion; by 1998, Army RDT&E TOA had fallen to $7.20 billion, a 17 percent decline.

Why This Drawdown Is Different: The Army’s Triple Whammy Problem

Table 1: Comparison of Army Modernization Drawdowns

http://defense360.csis.org/wp-conte...mparison-of-Army-Modernization-Drawdowns-.png

While the Army did field new platforms such as the MRAP, Stryker, and Gray Eagle, it did not complete the large-scale procurement of new weapon systems as in previous drawdowns. Moreover, these acquisition programs were suited for meeting immediate wartime demands, not necessarily the future strategic operating environment. Since producing more than 27,000 MRAPs to counter the improvised explosive device (IED) threat in Iraq and Afghanistan, a significant portion of that inventory has since been sold to international partners, sold for scrap metal, or given to U.S. law enforcement. The Stryker, originally procured in the early 2000s as an interim armored vehicle until Future Combat Systems (FCS) delivered additional capabilities, has been enhanced with up-gunning to meet operational needs today.[2]This most recent Army modernization drawdown is a triple whammy for the Army; not only have they taken a larger percentage cut than previous cuts, but those two previous drawdowns came after the Army had already modernized much of the force. In the 1960s, the Army modernized the force to meet the requirements of the new flexible response doctrine; in the 1980s, the Army largely completed production of the “Big Five”—M1 Abrams, M2 Bradley, Apache AH-64 Helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopter, and the MIM-104 Patriot Missile System. The 2000s however constituted a largely “lost decade” in Army acquisition as billions of dollars were spent on MDAPs, which were ultimately cancelled before they ever reached the war fighter. Notable cancelled programs included, but were not limited to: Future Combat System, the Ground Combat Vehicle, the RAH-66 Comanche Armed Reconnaissance and Attack Helicopter, the XM 2001 Crusader Self-Propelled Howitzer, and the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH-70 Arapaho).

The third whammy confounding those issues is the historically large decline in RDT&E funding accounts, as shown in Table 1 above. Whereas in previous drawdowns RDT&E TOA did decline, it did not do so at the sharp rates seen in this most recent drawdown. Additionally, the most recent decline in RDT&E differs from the previous drawdowns in the rate at which the decline occurred. During the first two drawdowns, RDT&E TOA held relatively steady at the start of the period and only began to notably decline near the end of the drawdown period. In this most period, the decline in RDT&E TOA was immediate.

Conclusion: The Challenge Today and Into the Future

Barring a radical shift in priorities, the modernization challenge will not get any easier for the Army in the future. Army leaders have repeatedly made clear that modernization remains a distant third priority behind rebuilding readiness and maintaining force structure at the Army’s current target levels. As the debate begins on halting the Army’s current end-strength drawdown, modernization will only face increasing competition for resources.[3]

The Army should not count on defense budget increases as the solution to its modernization problem. As noted by CSIS expert Todd Harrison, the Department of Defense (DoD) currently faces a MDAP modernization bow wave at the end of the current Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). Funding this modernization bow wave requires an additional $130 billion beyond the 2011 Budget Control Act caps by 2022. While Army modernization funding for MDAPs is projected to increase by 28 percent during this bow wave, not a single Army program makes the list of DoD’s Top Ten Acquisition programs by projected funding.[4]

The implications for Army modernization are twofold: First, even if the defense budget increases in the coming years, the Army will face stiff competition for that increase from the Air Force and Navy to fund the acquisition programs driving the modernization bow wave. Second, the “hollow” buildup of 2000–2008 and the unusually large reduction in R&D in this drawdown means that the Army’s recovery will be much more difficult than in previous drawdowns.

Army modernization today sits at a precipice. Continued failure to fund modernization will leave the United States with an army unsuited to handle the future geostrategic environment. Yet, budgetary relief to modernization accounts remains unlikely for at least the near future. Given these realities, maximizing the utility of the Army’s modernization efforts in an era of limited budgets is critical for its future. The Army can ill afford to repeat the acquisition experiences of the past 20 years.

Over the next year, CSIS will continue to explore this issue in more depth in order to formulate recommendations for the future of Army modernization.

[1] Jesse Ellman, Andrew P. Hunter, Rhys McCormick, and Gregory Sanders, Defense Acquisition Trends, 2015: Acquisition in the Era of Budgetary Constraints (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2016), http://csis.org/files/publication/160126_Ellman_DefenseAcquisitionTrends_Web.pdf.

[2] Sydney Freedberg, “Russia Threats Boosts Stryker Upgrade Budget To $371 Million,” Breaking Defense, June 5, 2015, http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/russia-threat-boosts-stryker-upgrade-budget-to-371-million/.

[3] Joe Gould and Jen Judson, “House Bill Would Halt US Army, Marine Drawdowns,” Defense News, February 11, 2016, http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...ll-would-halt-army-marine-drawdowns/80206898/.

[4] Todd Harrison, Defense Modernization Plans through the 2020s: Addressing the Bow Wave (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2016), https://csis.org/files/publication/160126_Harrison_DefenseModernization_Web.pdf.

Acknowledgments

This report is made possible by the generous support of General Dynamic and DRS Technologies.

Rhys McCormick is a research assistant with the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the CSIS.

 

[Codeno]

“I’m troubled that Russia and China continue to outpace the U.S. in development of these prompt global strike capabilities, complain about our tepid development programs, and the Obama administration’s ideological reductions to the Missile Defense Agency budget have denied that agency the resources to do anything to develop defenses,” Rogers told the Washington Times.

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic forces policymaker, said if the reports of the test are confirmed “it is a major threat development.”

“U.S. programs involving hypersonic vehicles are modest by comparison,” Schneider said. “I would be surprised if we actually deploy one. If we do, it will likely be conventional. Russian hypersonic vehicles will likely either be nuclear armed or nuclear capable since this is the norm for Russia.”

The selection of Barry Soetoro as the unquestioning lackey by the powers behind the throne could not have been more brilliant. Because he is not one of us, and because he literally has no shame, they have used him to finalize decades of preparation designed specifically to destroy this nation, and he has carried out their orders to the letter, one phone call at a time. In his shallow eyes, none of this will cost any skin off of his nose. This punk could surrender to our enemies this afternoon, waltz off to some multi-million dollar resort that we have purchased for him, and never feel an ounce of regret. He's perfect.

 

[Housecarl]

Yeah, it's rather obvious that I'm playing catch-up here this morning/afternoon. I had a late night last night, not the one I'd have liked, but a late one none the less.....

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...rine-launched-ballistic-missile-23-April-2016

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36119159

North Korea 'fires submarine-launched ballistic missile'

3 hours ago
From the section Asia

North Korea appears to have fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast, South Korea says.

It is not clear whether the test was authentic, and if it was, whether it will be considered a success by the North.

A successful test would be significant because submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are hard to detect.

It comes as North Korea gears up for a rare and significant party congress next month.

North Korea is banned from nuclear tests and activities that use ballistic missile technology under UN sanctions dating back to 2006.

'Fabricated'

"North Korea launched a projectile which was believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile around 6:30 pm (0930 GMT) in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) near the north-eastern port of Sinpo," a South Korea defence ministry spokesman said.

"We are keeping close tabs on the North Korean military and maintaining a full defence posture," he said.

North Korea has yet to report the test in its own official media. The secretive state has claimed to have carried out similar tests before but some doubt those claims.

Can South Korea defend itself?
Dealing with the North: Carrots or sticks?
How advanced is North Korea's nuclear programme?
How potent are the threats?

The US says photographs supposedly showing one launch in December were manipulated and others think the North has fired missiles from submerged platforms, but not submarines.

Regarding this latest test, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile travelled about 30km (19 miles), whereas a typical SLBM can travel at least 300km (186 miles).

North Korea has so far conducted four nuclear tests - the first one in October 2006 and the latest in January this year.

The UN Security Council responded to the latter by imposing its strongest sanctions to date over the North's nuclear weapons programme.

Last month North Korea said it had developed nuclear warheads small enough to fit on ballistic missiles, although experts cast doubt on the claims.

Analysts believe the North may be gearing up for a fifth test as a show of strength ahead of the North Korean Workers' Party Congress, the first since 1980.


More on this story:

North Korea 'has miniature nuclear warhead', says Kim Jong-un
9 March 2016

What impact will S Korea's expanded missile defence system have?
5 March 2016

North Korea's nuclear programme: How advanced is it?
10 February 2016

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...hed-offshore-ballistic-missile-says-the-south

North Korea launched offshore ballistic missile, says the South

The device reportedly flew for nearly 20 miles and was deployed from a submarine, in clear breach of UN sanctions

Reuters
Saturday 23 April 2016 13.20 EDT

North Korea has fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile off its east coast, South Korea has said.

The north fired the missile to the north-east from an area off its east coast at about 6.30pm (09.30 GMT) on Saturday, the south’s office of the joint chiefs of staff said.

The announcement comes during concerns that the isolated state might conduct a nuclear test or a missile launch ahead of a ruling party meeting in May.

North Korea will hold a congress of its ruling Workers’ party in early May for the first time in 36 years, at which its leader, Kim Jong-un, is expected to say the country is a strong military power and a nuclear state.

The missile flew for about 30 km (18 miles), a South Korean defence ministry official said, adding its military was trying to determine whether the launch may have been a failure for unspecified reasons.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the missile flew “for a few minutes”, citing a government source.

The US State Department in Washington said it was aware of reports the north had launched what appeared to be a ballistic missile.

“Launches using ballistic missile technology are a clear violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

It first attempted a launch of the submarine-based missile last year and was seen to be in the early stages of developing such a weapons system, which could pose a new threat to its neighbours and the United States if it is perfected.

However, follow-up test launches were believed to have fallen short of the north’s expectations as its state media footage appeared to have been edited to fake success, according experts who have seen the visuals.

South Korea’s military has said it is on high alert over the possibility that the isolated North could conduct its fifth nuclear test “at any time” in defiance of UN sanctions after setting off what it said was a hydrogen device in January.

Satellite images show that North Korea may have resumed tunnel excavation at its main nuclear test site, which is similar to activity seen before the January test, a US North Korea monitoring website reported on Wednesday.

South Korea and the US, as well as experts, believe the north is working to develop a submarine-launched ballistic missile system and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) putting the mainland United States within range.

North Korea is banned from nuclear tests and activities that use ballistic missile technology under UN sanctions dating back to 2006 and most recently adopted in March but it has pushed ahead with work to miniaturise a nuclear warhead and develop an ICBM.

A senior US official said this week that North Korea should take a lesson from Iran, which has agreed to roll back its nuclear programme in an agreement with western powers in return for lifting of major sanctions but the north has shown no sign of entering into such a pact.

 

[tiger13]

"This punk could surrender to our enemies this afternoon, waltz off to some multi-million dollar resort that we have purchased for him"
I could assure you, that would never be allowed to happen.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thebulletin.org/fuzzy-math-indian-nuclear-weapons9343?platform=hootsuite

Fuzzy math on Indian nuclear weapons

19 April 2016
Elizabeth Whitfield
Comments 2

How many nuclear weapons can India make with its existing fissile material stockpile? Recently, two different sources have produced wildly divergent estimates. In September 2015, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that India possessed “enough fissile material … for more than 2,000 warheads.” In contrast, a report released by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in November 2015 concluded that India’s stockpile of fissile material was only sufficient to make approximately 100 nuclear weapons. What accounts for the order-of-magnitude difference between these estimates?

Estimates of fissile material have significant real-world policy implications. Pakistan, for example, seems to base requirements for its own nuclear weapons program in no small part on the projected size and composition of India’s nuclear arsenal, as well as perceptions of Indian conventional military superiority. At a time when both India and Pakistan seem increasingly at risk of sliding into an arms race, in spite of their efforts and protestations to the contrary, inflated nuclear weapons projections run the risk of inflaming the public discourse and heightening this competition unnecessarily.

Estimating stockpiles. The estimate reported by Dawn that India has enough fissile material to produce 2,000 nuclear weapons can be traced back to a 2014 assessment by Mansoor Ahmed, a Pakistani nuclear analyst. He estimated that at the end of 2013, India’s fissile material stockpile included 800 to 1,000 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, 2 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU), and 15 metric tons of reactor-grade plutonium. Assuming that 4 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, 50 kilograms of HEU, or 8 kilograms of reactor-grade plutonium would be necessary to make one nuclear warhead of each type, Ahmed estimated that India could produce 250 warheads from weapons-grade plutonium, 40 from HEU (gun-type implosion devices, not thermonuclear weapons), and 1,875 from reactor-grade plutonium—for a total arsenal of 2,165 nuclear weapons.

In contrast, the recent report from ISIS concluded that at the end of 2014, India likely possessed about 550 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, 100 to 200 kilograms of HEU intended for use in thermonuclear weapons, and 2.9 metric tons of separated reactor-grade plutonium. The study assessed that this fissile material was sufficient to produce about 75 to 125 nuclear warheads, with 100 nuclear weapons as the median estimate. ISIS arrived at this number mainly through an appraisal of India’s weapons-grade plutonium stockpile; the authors assume that India would not use reactor-grade plutonium in nuclear warheads, and that HEU would only be used to produce a handful of thermonuclear weapons at most. ISIS also considered that some plutonium is in weapons production pipelines or held in reserve, meaning that only about 70 percent of India’s stockpile is available to be made into weapons. Consequently, assuming that it would take 3 to 5 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium for each warhead, ISIS calculations yielded an arsenal that could range from 75 to 125 nuclear weapons.

Reactor-grade plutonium. The biggest difference between these two estimates comes from their assessments of, and assumptions about, reactor-grade plutonium. Not only does the ISIS study discount the possibility that India would use reactor-grade plutonium in its nuclear weapons, but its estimate of India’s reactor-grade plutonium stockpile is also significantly lower than Ahmed’s: 2.9 metric tons as opposed to 15 metric tons.

Interestingly, Ahmed himself has given much lower estimates of India’s reactor-grade plutonium stockpile in other instances. In a post on the Stimson Center’s South Asian Voices blog, also from 2014, Ahmed cited India’s reactor-grade plutonium stockpile as just 5 metric tons rather than the 15 metric tons that he posits in the Defense News article. In a private email communication with me, Ahmed explained that this disparity is due to the distinction between separated plutonium and plutonium found in spent fuel. Ahmed clarified that he estimates India possesses 5 metric tons of reactor-grade plutonium that has already been separated, and an additional 10 metric tons in spent fuel that has not yet been separated. The estimate of 2,000 nuclear warheads reported by Dawn included both of these types of reactor-grade plutonium, whereas Ahmed’s lower estimate included only the 5 metric tons of plutonium that he estimates has already been separated.

Other estimates of fissile material stockpiles typically do not include plutonium in spent fuel that has not been reprocessed, for the good reason that such fissile material is not available for use in nuclear weapons. Reprocessing is complicated and expensive, and India in particular has historically had trouble achieving consistent operations in its reprocessing facilities. One of the most highly respected sources on fissile material stockpiles, the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), recently released a report that sheds useful light on this question. In its Global Fissile Material Report 2015, the IPFM does not include unseparated plutonium as part of its estimate of India’s fissile material stockpile, citing the historically poor performance of India’s reprocessing plants at Tarapur and Kalpakkam.

The report notes that India’s reactor-grade plutonium stockpile is most likely intended as fuel for the country’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor—not for nuclear weapons, as Ahmed assumes—but that the reactor’s start date has been pushed back several times. This is likely due to difficulty that India has reportedly experienced in separating sufficient plutonium to fuel the reactor. Considering this historically low rate of separation and the problems it has caused for India’s fast breeder reactor program, it seems difficult to imagine that the country’s reprocessing plants will support a future sprint to rapidly separate its remaining stockpile of reactor-grade plutonium from the spent fuel and turn that fissile material into an exponentially larger nuclear arsenal.

Assessing motivation. Setting aside the question of capability, would India decide to make nuclear weapons from reactor-grade plutonium? As the name would suggest, reactor-grade plutonium is not as suitable for nuclear warheads as weapons-grade plutonium. Weapons-grade plutonium is irradiated for a shorter period of time in order to maximize the proportion of the more desirable plutonium 239 isotope. In contrast, reactor-grade plutonium is irradiated much longer to maximize its energy potential, and consequently contains a lower level of plutonium 239 and a higher concentration of plutonium 240. Weapons made from material that contains a higher amount of plutonium 240 are much more likely to fizzle (to produce a much smaller explosive yield than expected) and require a larger amount of fissile material for critical mass. Although it is possible to make nuclear warheads from reactor-grade plutonium, experts consider it more complicated and risky than using weapons-grade plutonium.

Nuclear weapons tend to be viewed in India more as political symbols than as usable weapons, and they occupy a less salient place in India’s national security strategy than is the case for many other nuclear weapons states. Given that, it seems unlikely that India’s leaders would feel the need to use reactor-grade plutonium that is otherwise intended for fast breeder reactors in order to make lower-quality warheads when they already have the capacity to make 100 or more from superior weapons-grade plutonium alone. India has committed to a doctrine of both “No First Use” and of credible minimum deterrence, and accordingly seems to place much more importance on developing a secure second-strike capability than on the size of its arsenal.

India values its international reputation surrounding nuclear weapons—it has reaped dividends from being perceived internationally as a responsible nuclear power. India’s leaders seem unlikely to risk this carefully maintained image by engaging in a rapid nuclear weapons build-up that might alarm the international community, particularly when substantially greater numbers of warheads are not viewed in India as strategically necessary or even beneficial. In light of these attitudes, it seems doubtful that New Delhi would feel the need to manufacture large numbers of weapons using reactor-grade plutonium.

Revising the math. What is the most plausible estimate of India’s fissile material stockpile and the number of nuclear weapons that it could build? After discounting unseparated plutonium in spent fuel as a source of proliferation in the near future, even Ahmed’s generous estimate from the South Asian Voices blog post is only equivalent to a potential Indian arsenal of 844 nuclear warheads—a significant number to be sure, but nowhere near 2,000 weapons.

If one discounts reactor-grade plutonium entirely, that estimate drops even further to an arsenal of just 219 weapons. In addition, it is likely that much, or even most, of India’s HEU is intended for use in naval reactors rather than in nuclear warheads. It is also clear that some of India’s weapons-grade plutonium was already used in nuclear tests or is contained in process waste. Taking into account those factors, the estimate quickly begins to drop to something much more along the lines of the ISIS estimate of roughly 100 nuclear warheads. This estimate is in the same ballpark as the September 2015 estimate by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris in the Bulletin, of 110 to 120 nuclear warheads.

The implications of estimates. Fissile material estimation, particularly when based on open-source information, is an inexact science. The uncertainty in such estimates must be properly contextualized in order to make sound projections of an adversary’s future arsenal. Because nuclear arsenals are the result of political decisions as well as scientific ones, it is important to consider a country’s strategic calculus rather than focusing on technical capabilities alone.

Much like the imaginary missile gap fueled public fears and heightened the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, improperly contextualized estimates of India’s fissile material stockpile risk skewing the public discourse and pushing South Asia toward a competition that both countries wish to avoid. The stakes are high: nothing less than a nuclear arms race on the subcontinent could hang in the balance.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...cked-to-death-in-islamic-state-claimed-attack

Bangladeshi Professor Hacked To Death In Islamic State-Claimed Attack

April 23, 2016·3:55 PM ET
Merrit Kennedy

A university professor has been hacked to death in northwestern Bangladesh, and police said it resembled other recent militant attacks in the country.

Deputy police Commissioner Nahidul Islam said Rezaul Karim Siddique "was attacked on his way to the state-run university in the city of Rajshahi, where he taught English," according to The Associated Press. He added that "the attackers used sharp weapons and fled the scene immediately."

The Islamic State-linked Aamaq news agency said ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites. NPR could not independently verify the claim.


"IS has claimed responsibility for other attacks in Bangladesh, but the government has dismissed those claims, saying the Sunni extremist group has no presence in Bangladesh," the AP reported.

The ISIS claim said that Siddique was killed for "calling for atheism," SITE reports. However, according to The New York Times, Siddique "was not, like most of the previous victims, an avowed atheist or anti-religious campaigner."

As The Two-Way has reported, Bangladesh has seen a string of attacks against outspoken atheists and secularists. Earlier this month, a 28-year-old law student who sharply criticized radical Islam was hacked to death in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. Here's more from our earlier story:



"Last year, at least four secular bloggers were hacked to death in Bangladesh and a publisher who worked with one of those bloggers was stabbed to death.

"The government of Bangladesh — which is officially secular — has been criticized for failing to protect prominent secularists."

According to the Dhaka Tribune, Siddique is now the fourth professor from Rajshahi University to be hacked to death in the last 12 years.

The newspaper described him as a quiet man who had positive relationships with other members of his community. It added that he "used to play the flute and tamura."

According to The New York Times, he had recently started a music school and "was focused on introducing students to traditional Bangladeshi music and the poetry of literary figures like Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam."

Speaking to the BBC, Siddique's brother Sajidul said, "So far as we know, he did not have any known enemies and we never found him worried. ... We don't know why it happened to him."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nkorea-ready-halt-nuke-tests-us-stops-skorea-38623223

NKorea to AP: Will Halt Nuke Tests If US Stops SKorea Drills

By Eric Talmadge, Associated Press · NEW YORK — Apr 23, 2016, 5:58 PM ET

North Korea's foreign minister said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea.

He also defended the country's right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that North Korea won't be cowed by international sanctions. And for those waiting for the North's regime to collapse, he had this to say: Don't hold your breath.

Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, in his first interview with a Western news organization, held firm to Pyongyang's longstanding position that the U.S. drove his country to develop nuclear weapons as an act of self-defense. At the same time, he suggested that suspending the military exercises with Seoul could open the door to talks and reduced tensions.

"If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well," he said, speaking in Korean through an interpreter. "It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise." He used the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Ri, who spoke calmly and in measured words, a contrast to the often bombastic verbiage used by the North's media, claimed the North's proposal was "very logical."

"Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests," he said, during the interview, conducted in the country's diplomatic mission to the United Nations. He spoke beneath portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il, North Korea's two previous leaders — the grandfather and father of current leader Kim Jong Un.

If the exercises are halted "for some period, for some years," he added, "new opportunities may arise for the two countries and for the whole entire world as well."

It is extremely rare for top North Korean officials to give interviews to foreign media, and particularly with Western news organizations.

Ri's proposal, which he said he hoped U.S. policymakers would heed, may well fall on deaf ears. North Korea, which sees the U.S.-South Korean exercises as a rehearsal for invasion, has floated similar proposals to Washington in the past but the U.S. has insisted the North give up its nuclear weapons program first before any negotiations. The result has been a stalemate between the two countries that Ri said has put the peninsula at the crossroads of a thermonuclear war.

In an initial response to Ri's remarks, a U.S. official defended the military exercises as demonstrating the U.S. commitment to its alliance with the South and said they enhance the combat readiness, flexibility and capabilities of the alliance.

"We call again on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its international commitments and obligations," said the official, who requested anonymity because he said he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Sanctions, Ri said, won't sway the North.

"If they believe they can actually frustrate us with sanctions, they are totally mistaken," he said. "The more pressure you put on to something, the more emotionally you react to stand up against it. And this is important for the American policymakers to be aware of."

Ri, in New York to attend a United Nations' meeting on sustainable development, said the possibility of conflict has increased significantly this year because the exercises have taken on what Pyongyang sees as a more aggressive and threatening tone — including training to conduct precision "decapitation" strikes on North Korea's leadership.

This year's exercises are the biggest ever, involving about 300,000 troops. Washington and Seoul say they beefed up the maneuvers after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test, in January, which also brought a new round of tough sanctions by the U.N. down on Pyongyang's head. The exercises are set to continue through the end of the month.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has responded with a series of missile launches and statements in its media that the country has developed its long-range ballistic missile and nuclear warhead technologies to the point that they now present a credible deterrent and could even be used against targets on the U.S. mainland, though not all foreign analysts accept that claim.

Ri's comments to the AP came just hours after North Korea launched what was believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile in its latest show of defiance as the U.S.-South Korea exercises wind down.

Ri also used his presence at the U.N. conference as a forum to denounce Washington, saying in a brief statement that while North Korea is contributing to the objectives of global sustainable development by taking measures to double its production of grains to solve its food problem by 2030 and by reforesting 1.67 million hectares (4.13 million acres) of mountainous areas, it is doing so under "the most adverse conditions due to outside forces."

In the interview, he stated that the United States has used its power to get other countries to join in pressure on North Korea.

"A country as small as the DPRK cannot actually be a threat to the U.S. or to the world," he told the AP. "How great would it be if the world were to say to the United States and the American government not to conduct any more military exercises in the Korean Peninsula ... But there is not a single country that says this to the U.S."

"These big countries alone or together are telling us that we should calm down," he said. "For us this is like a sentence, that we should accept our death and refuse our right to sovereignty."

Ri said North Korea is not encouraged by the thawing of relations between Washington and Cuba or Iran.

"We're happy for the Cuban people and the Iranian people that they have reached successes on their path to pursuing their own goals and interests," he said. But he added that those cases "differ totally" from the U.S.-North Korea relationship.

———

Associated Press writer Kathleen Hennessey in London contributed to this report.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://warisboring.com/one-death-w...n-the-south-china-sea-60809118ed6c#.p1mz6e41i

One Death Won’t End This Mock War in the South China Sea

The United States and The Philippines rehearse a future conflict — clearly because of China

by GARRETT MCKINNEY SAMPLES
War Is Boring
yesterday·4 min read

On April 7, a Filipino paratrooper jumped out of an aircraft so large that it sometimes ferries tanks. The parachute on his back was up to the task of slowing him down enough to survive meeting ground. Unfortunately, a wind gust blew him into the waters just off Subic Bay. He later passed away from his injuries in a hospital.

The unnamed trooper died taking part in the Balikatan military exercise, a joint U.S.-Philippine war game and one of the largest to have taken place in recent years. More than 5,000 American and 3,000 Filipino soldiers took part in the exercise, which included simulated seizures of offshore oil rigs, airborne parachute drops and mock amphibious assaults of contested beaches.

On the surface, these drills fit within a still morphing relationship borne out of joint U.S.-Philippine shadow wars with the country’s myriad insurgents. They also, however, more closely align with growing unease borne out of Chinese expansionism in the heavily contested South China Sea.

The Philippines has reason to worry. The South China Sea, long claimed by China, is increasingly being viewed as Chinese property not just in name, but in fact. The country has, through dredging, audacity and will, turned half-submerged reefs into island complexes sometimes dubbed, however controversially, as “unsinkable aircraft carriers.”

Beijing has planted J-11 fighter jets and HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile launchers on the nearby Woody Island, and maintains the ability to base similar military hardware on islands, man-made or not, elsewhere within the South China Sea. Perhaps most galling of all, to those in The Philippines at least, China has played cat and mouse games — almost exclusively as the feline — with Philippine boats ranging from military re-suppliers en route to isolated military outposts to fishermen in search of large hauls.

In response, the Philippine government has been searching for any friends it can find, with the largest and most generous being the United States. This alliance makes sense, as the two countries have fought, and largely won, a quiet war against Al Qaeda’s affiliates and associates in the dense, hilly jungles of the southern Philippines since 2002.

It’s a relationship that’s endured on to challenge the remaining insurgents that roam the southern Philippines and allow for the opening of at least five bases to American sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines. It’s a relationship that’s built the Balikatan, a word meaning “shoulder to shoulder,” where a man died alone in the cold waters of the Subic Bay.

He died training for a war that many fear, yet may never come to pass. If war does come to The Philippines, though, two things are sure. The lessons learned at Balikatan will be put to violent use, and that the man who perished on April 7 won’t be the last soldier to die in the South China Sea.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-to-cairo-as-the-sinai-militancy-intensifies/

Checkpoint

U.S. military chief pays a visit to Cairo as the Sinai militancy intensifies

By Missy Ryan
April 23 at 5:01 PM

CAIRO ¡X Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the top U.S. military officer, made his second trip to Egypt in two months this weekend, a visit that underscored growing concern about Islamic State-linked militants and ongoing efforts to address friction in the countries¡¦ military partnership.

During his overnight stay in Cairo, Dunford met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy, the country¡¦s chief of defense. It was the second time this week that a senior U.S. official met with Egyptian leaders here, following Secretary of State John F. Kerry¡¦s earlier visit. The head of U.S. Central Command also held talks in Cairo recently.

The visits underscore the difficult balance that the Obama administration is seeking to strike with Egypt, a historic anchor of U.S. efforts to establish stability in the Middle East but whose heavy-handed, authoritarian tactics have alienated Western allies.

While U.S.-Egyptian military ties have been largely shielded from the worst of the friction over Sissi¡¦s moves against political opponents, gaps have emerged over the safety of U.S. peacekeeping troops there and over Egypt¡¦s approach to managing its militant threat.

A spokesman for Dunford said the general and Sissi, himself a former general who came to power after the 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, discussed the security situation in the Sinai region as part of a conversation about regional security.

U.S. officials are concerned that Egyptian security forces may be unable to keep pace with expanding activity by militants linked to the self-proclaimed ¡§Sinai Province¡¨ of the Islamic State, one of a network of militant satellites.

The increasingly bold affiliate is the latest incarnation of a long-running insurgency in the marginalized desert region. But it has increased the scale and scope of militant activity in the Sinai, both against Egyptian security forces and foreign targets. Late last year, militants claimed responsibility for downing a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, dealing a severe blow to Egypt¡¦s tourism sector.

U.S. officials are concerned that the violence could spill over and affect more of its approximately 700 peacekeeping troops in the Sinai, part of a multinational peacekeeping effort set up following Egypt¡¦s 1979 peace deal with Israel. Last fall, four U.S. soldiers from the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) were wounded by a roadside bomb.

Already the United States has moved some troops to southern Sinai, leaving about 300 U.S. military and civilian personnel at another camp in the peninsula¡¦s more restive northern region. U.S. officials now hope to build support among Egyptian and Israeli officials for reducing the size of the U.S. contingent by replacing troops with surveillance technology. That could mean removing hundreds of troops from Egypt.

According to Zack Gold, an Atlantic Council scholar, the group, also known as Wilayat Sinai, might focus attacks on peacekeepers because of their home nations¡¦ participation in operations against the parent organization in Iraq and Syria.

¡§Of the MFO 12 contributing nations, seven are also involved in the anti-ISIL coalition, and it is quite likely Wilayat Sinai will act against the MFO as a response to coalition operations in Iraq and Syria,¡¨ he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Although Egypt already has launched military operations against militant targets in Sinai, U.S. officials believe they need a more targeted, counter-insurgency approach that would be likely to gain support of Sinai residents and prove more sustainable.

But U.S. officials say that many Egyptian leaders have resisted American efforts to prompt changes in their Sinai strategy, preferring to stick to their use of American-funded weaponry such as the F-16 and Apache attack helicopter.

¡§The Egyptian military wants U.S. arms, but it bristles [at] constructive advice as to how best to use them in its current confrontations,¡¨ Gold said.

The United States has long provided about $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt. The Obama administration temporarily suspended some military aid following the military¡¦s 2013 ouster of Morsi, and it has introduced some reforms that aim in part to tailor aid to modern challenges.

A spokeswoman for the Egyptian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

-

Missy Ryan writes about the Pentagon, military issues, and national security for The Washington Post. „J Follow @missy_ryan

 

[vestige]

North Korea launched offshore ballistic missile, says the South

When I read articles such as this I cannot help but think there are a helluva lot of people in a lot of countries looking up and seeing just how thin that old US Nuclear Umbrella has become.

bump

 

[Housecarl]

REPORT: Germany ‘Annexing’ Dutch Military As Secretive EU Army Begins To Take Shape
Started by Intestinal Fortitudeý, 04-21-2016 10:03 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ary-As-Secretive-EU-Army-Begins-To-Take-Shape

http://johnbatchelorshow.com/schedules/friday-22-april-2016

Friday 22 April 2016 / Hour 1, Block C: Francis Rose, NationalDefenseWeek.com and francisrose.com, in re: New VA Inspector General List of House-Passed Veterans Bills that the Senate Is Dithering Over (inter al.) http://veterans.house.gov/press-rel...n-senate-confirmation-of-va-inspector-general ; VA hasn't fixed wait-time problems, GAO finds http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-fixed-wait-time-problems-gao-finds/83045046/
National Defense Week, on WMAL (in Washington, D.C., every Sunday):
-- Admiral Robert Natter (USN ret.), former Commander of US Fleet Forces Command, on his testimony to a House Armed Services subcommittee on the size of the Navy’s fleet: it’s now in the upper 200s. Adm Natter advocates a 350-ship Navy. It's not the number; it's their capabilities and capacity. The Navy’s current strategy was designed a decade ago, and surely needs revision and updating.
-- Cary Russell of the Government Accountability Office on the problems with the F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System. The F35: ALIS – software for the F35 aircraft; ALIS might not be deployable. Not a happy ending to the tale. Sometimes ALIS declines to acknowledge a problem, even as it refuses to be turned off.
-- Dr. Nora Bensahel of American University and the Atlantic Council, on the concept of Unrestricted Warfare, and how militaries around the world should prepare for it. The wars we’ve fought in the past—all or any of the wars we’ve fought in the past—will not look like the war we’ll fight in the future. Noteworthy that the source of this concept is the present Chinese military.
-- Kristina Wong, defense reporter for The Hill, on the House Armed Services Committee’s markup of the fiscal year 2017 defense budget.
--Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on what the numbers in that HASC budget mark mean.

Hour Two
Friday 22 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Global Security Studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Science; in re: “ASSURED RESOLVE - Testing Possible Challenges to Baltic Security,” by Julianne Smith & Jerry Hendrix http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-BalticTTX-160331.pdf
Friday 22 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Global Security Studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Science; in re: “ASSURED RESOLVE - Testing Possible Challenges to Baltic Security,” by Julianne Smith & Jerry Hendrix http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-BalticTTX-160331.pdf
. . . NATO members by and large decline to pay the amount they're committed to; NATO is insufficiently supported. In war games, euphemistically called TTX (tabletop exercises), the hypothetical Baltics responded immediately to a sense of threat from the hypothetical Russia, whereas the others all wanted to sit and jawbone for a while to figure things out. Meanwhile, Belgium, merely as an example, has military parades featuring soup kitchens and the like but it owns no, zero, tank.
[This is a good time to mention that the overarching physical security of Europe was paid for by US taxpayers for generations, from 1945 till the end of the USSR in 1991; and absent the requisite expenditures to protect themselves, Europeans were able to build up comfortable, somewhat luxurious, welfare states. Soon thereafter, many Europeans began to castigate Americans as cowboys — gun-happy and lacking history or polish — even as the US Army, Navy and Air Force were the very powers that kept Europe safe from a distinctly expansionist Soviet empire.
[Today, in contrast, and with Europe at sixes and sevens, Washington has for a decade and a half been making a grave error, that of conspicuously disrespecting Russia: not the Soviet empire, but the eleven-time-zone heir to a thousand years of religion and culture; the authors of magnificent music, literature and art (see especially the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg for stunning paintings), a fully-developed civilization bridging Western Europe–from the Renaissance onward–and East Asia. Not surprisingly, Russians are miffed at America’s gratuitous affronts. It's perfectly possible to disagree strongly with another state and yet maintain normal care and courtesy in dealings. The United States has recently failed in both protocol and geostrategy; it's time for us to review and reorganize. –ed.]

https://audioboom.com/boos/4471611-...ep-michael-vlahos-jhuworldcrisis-john-hopkins

https://audioboom.com/boos/4466911-...-of-date-out-of-excuses-jerryhendrix11-cnasdc

NATO Tabletop Fail: Out of Date & Out of Excuses. @jerryhendrix11 @cnasdc.

04-21-2016

(Photo: ‪Ukrainian, US and Lithuanian soldiers gather for joint military exercises in Yavoriv training ground,)

http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact

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NATO Tabletop Fail: Out of Date & Out of Excuses. Jerry Hendrix, CNAS.

“Despite countless efforts since the fall of the Berlin Wall to fold Russia into both Western institutions and a community of shared values, Russia’s relationship with the West has deteriorated significantly in recent years. There were warning signs – President Vladimir Putin’s fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and, more troubling, the Russia-Georgia conflict in 2008. But there were also occasional breakthroughs, such as the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 2010 that gave the West the impression that relations with Russia were, at least in broad terms, on a positive trajectory.

The hope behind such cooperative efforts and what they might deliver in the future faded to black in 2012 when Putin returned to his position as president, a post he earlier held from 2000 to 2008. Since 2012, Putin has rolled back democratic reforms at home, used force to illegally seize the territory of neighboring states, violated international norms and laws, and used economic coercion to advance his agenda. Across the European continent, Russia is carrying out acts of intimidation designed to divide Europe from within and divide Europe from the United States. Such acts regularly include snap exercises along neighboring borders; overflights into countries’ sovereign airspace; efforts to incite anger among Russian minorities living in Europe; aggressive disinformation campaigns; and direct support to anti-EU and anti-immigrant parties across Europe.

http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNASReport-BalticTTX-160331.pdf

https://audioboom.com/boos/4466911-...-of-date-out-of-excuses-jerryhendrix11-cnasdc

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-us-sinai-20160423-story.html

U.S. shifts troops in the Sinai Peninsula after attacks by militants

W.J. HenniganBy W.J. Hennigan•Contact Reporter
April 23, 2016, 4:13 PM |Reporting from Cairo

The Pentagon has shifted more than 100 U.S. soldiers from a desert camp near the Egypt-Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula after a barrage of attacks by militants linked to Islamic State.

The U.S. troops, part of a little-known peacekeeping force that helps maintain the 1979 treaty between Egypt and Israel, were transferred about 300 miles south to a more secure area.

The move comes as the Obama administration is considering whether to scale back the 700 U.S. troops in the Sinai and instead use remote sensors, cameras and other technology to monitor the border.

Sinai Province, a militant group that last year declared allegiance to Islamic State, has carried out multiple attacks on military outposts in the northern Sinai. Its fighters have killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers, including eight this month when militants fired a rocket at their armored vehicle.

The extremist group claimed responsibility after a bomb exploded aboard a Russian-chartered passenger jet over the Sinai on Oct. 31 and killed all 224 passengers and crew. In July, the group hit an Egyptian frigate in the Mediterranean Sea with a shoulder-fired missile.

The Multinational Force of Observers, or MFO, has 1,680 troops from a dozen countries. The Americans, who live behind blast walls and travel in armored vehicles, have increasingly found themselves at risk in the insurgency.

Four were injured when their convoy hit two roadside bombs in September. Several weeks earlier, an American soldier was shot in the arm when gunmen targeted the camp, near the northern Sinai village of Al-Joura.

The Pentagon responded last summer by sending 75 more troops plus counter-mortar radars and new communication equipment.

As peacekeepers, the U.S. troops aren’t authorized to fire at the militants — only the Egyptians are allowed do that.

The recent attacks were among the topics that Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed Saturday in a closed-door meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi on Saturday in Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb.

Any major change in the peacekeeping force must be approved by all signatories to the accord, which followed the wars between Egypt and Israel and in 1967 and 1973.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter formally notified Israel and Egypt this month that the U.S. is reviewing its role in the force. U.S. defense officials say the review involves reducing the number of U.S. troops, not a full withdrawal.

Many of the troops, including staff headquarters, already have moved from El Gorah in the northern Sinai to a smaller installation near Sharm el Sheik on the southern tip of the peninsula.

“The Pentagon has valid concerns about troop safety,” said Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But the U.S. tinkering with its force numbers, even if slightly, can give the appearance that it is second-guessing the mission, which is worrisome for the Egyptian government and provides a propaganda tool” for Islamic State.

The U.S. government provides $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt. It has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since the 1979 peace accord with Israel.

The Obama administration briefly suspended military aid in 2013 to push Sisi, who had seized power in a military coup, to improve his government’s human rights record.

Despite continued U.S. criticism over Sisi’s jailing of political opponents and activists, Secretary of State John F. Kerry visited here Wednesday to show support for Egypt’s government.

“We talked about ways in which we can hopefully resolve some of the differences and questions that have arisen about the internal politics and choices for the people of Egypt,” Kerry said after talking with Sisi.

Kerry did not detail the “differences,” but added that Egypt is “critical to the peace and security” of the region.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-giant-problem-1461359723

Brazil’s Giant Problem

Corruption is just a symptom of Brazil’s deeper issue: a vast state apparatus that has tried to be the country’s engine of economic growth

By John Lyons and David Luhnow
Updated April 22, 2016 6:23 p.m. ET
174 Comments

But the sparkling new capital was a monument to Brazil’s past. For all its modernist appeal, it was one more expression of the country’s long and troubled attachment to the concept of a giant paternalistic state, responsible for managing the affairs of the entire society, from its biggest companies to its poorest citizens.

Founded by Portuguese monarchs who moved their court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808, Brazil has experienced almost every conceivable sort of rule over the past two centuries. Its leaders have run the gamut from emperors and dictators to democrats and former Marxists. Regardless of their politics, however, almost all of them have shared a commitment to the Leviathan state as the engine of progress.

“The problem is, from time immemorial, Brazil’s political leaders only see one way forward, the growth of the state,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former leftist intellectual who sought to reduce the size of Brazil’s government while president from 1995 to 2002. “But you need another springboard for progress, that doesn’t exclude the state but that accepts markets. This just doesn’t sink in in Brazil.”

Today, the Leviathan is sick. Brasília is embroiled in a sprawling embezzlement scandal at the state oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro SA . Investigators say that politicians, oil executives and businessmen conspired for a decade to siphon billions of dollars from the firm, channeling money to Swiss accounts and the slush funds of major political parties.

In Brazil’s Congress, where six in 10 members now face some kind of criminal investigation, lawmakers in the lower house have voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a leftist economist whom many blame for fostering corruption and ruining Brazil’s economy. One vote against her came from Congressman Tiririca, a professional clown who won office campaigning that “it can’t get any worse.”

But it might. Brazil is deep in its worst recession since the 1930s, and it may not yet have hit bottom. The country’s debt tripled to $1 trillion in nine years, and some of its states are already going bust. Government insolvency is a possibility. If Ms. Rousseff is impeached, her vice president, Michel Temer, will need to rely on lawmakers implicated in the Petrobras scandal to make unpopular decisions like spending cuts to prevent Brazil’s crisis from turning into a full-blown calamity.

While many observers of Brazil’s predicament have focused on the country’s corruption, that may miss the point. Brazil’s deeper problem lies in the failures of its Leviathan state, which has perennially reached for the utopian visions embodied in Brasília but instead has produced recurring cycles of boom and dramatic bust.

A sensation of déjà vu hangs over Brasília right now. The current downturn follows one of Brazil’s greatest booms. Just a few years ago, the country appeared to be climbing into the global club of developed nations. The economy surged 7.6% in 2010, capping a decade in which millions of the poor climbed into the middle class. Diplomats opened new embassies and lobbied for a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Brazil was selected to host the 2014 World Cup and this year’s Olympic Games.

But the country has been here before. With 10% annual growth in the 1970s, some declared a “Brazilian Miracle,” only to see the 1980s become the “Lost Decade”: Inflation surged to four digits, and workers rushed out on payday to spend their wages, knowing that their money would be worthless by morning.

“It really begs the question: Is all this cyclical, is our economy and politics like a chicken trying to take flight, rising a few feet and then settling back down again?” said Marcos Troyjo, a former Brazilian diplomat who now teaches at Columbia University. “We seem to have returned to a spot in the past where inflation is a real threat, where debt is rising exponentially, where the president must act or the scenario deteriorates further.”

Brazil inspires optimism because it has a lot going for it. The South American nation has qualities that Americans would find familiar. It is a continent-sized nation with fertile land, abundant natural resources and a deeply ingrained sense of national destiny. Its population of 200 million is mixed, including descendants from a dark past of slavery (Brazil imported more slaves than the U.S.) and waves of European and Japanese immigration. But Brazil remained underdeveloped as the U.S. became a superpower.

“Brazil has yet to find a way to combine an enormous economic potential with the political leadership needed to sustain the needed enabling reforms,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz. “As such, the economy ends up behaving like a thoroughbred horse that can run really fast on smooth ground but stumbles and falls when it gets bumpy.”

One explanation for Brazil’s stop-and-start development path is reliance on commodities. The country is even named for one: Brazilwood, used to make red dye in the 16th century. Brazil’s history can be told through commodities cycles, from sugar in the mid-1500s to coffee and rubber in the 1800s. In the early 2000s, iron, oil and soy positioned Brazil to soar as Chinese demand for the goods surged.

While commodities exports represent a small part of Brazil’s largely closed economy, they are a direct driver of growth. No other country in Latin America has a tighter correlation between commodity prices and growth, according to a survey by Morgan Stanley.

Brazil’s leaders spent much of the 20th century attempting to diversify away from natural resources, but their approach almost always relied on state banks and state companies—and it failed time and again. Juscelino Kubitschek, who built Brasília, promised “50 years of progress in five.” He created a state company to build the capital, called Novacap, and put a rival political party in charge to ensure stability. The cost of the city is still a matter of debate in Brazil, but the central bank printed so much paper money that inflation surged.

As a leftist militant in the 1960s, Ms. Rousseff was tortured by the military dictatorship, which itself tried to drive growth by creating state factories and Pharaonic projects such as giant dams. As an energy minister and later president of a left-leaning democracy, Ms. Rousseff helped to implement the same sort of industrial strategies.

Why does Brazil’s Leviathan state endure? One reason is a strong current of nationalism running through Brazilian life. Another is that it has delivered just enough on its grand promises to win the loyalty of key segments of the population.

Brazil has modernized significantly since World War II, when half the population was illiterate and much of it hungry. The government also created national health and educational systems that, though of poor quality, reach even into the country’s remote Amazon jungles.

Research by the government-backed Embrapa agricultural institute helped Brazil to expand soy and cattle ranching to the harsh soils of its West, and the country became a farming power. State initiative turned Brazil into a leader in ethanol, and the oil firm Petrobras was known as a pioneer in deep-water drilling before the corruption scandal overwhelmed it.

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected in 2002, he set the Leviathan in motion to lift the poor. A massive expansion of a welfare program called Bolsa Familia fed families while encouraging children to attend school. Birth-weights in the poor northeast rose. Other programs expanded the electricity grid to regions without light and provided water where there was little. State-subsidized mortgages turned swaths of the working class into homeowners.

“There are vast parts of our country that are poor and without security or education. The state needs to reach these people. Brazil’s history has shown that the free market simply won’t do it,” said Luiz Torelly, a bureaucrat at the state-run Institute for National and Artistic Patrimony in Brasília who defends the size of Brazil’s state.

At the same time, there are few voices in Brazilian public life to challenge the ideas of people like Mr. Torelly. There is no major political party advocating limited government. Politicians who do are likely to be derided by nationalists as sellouts to the free-market U.S.

Unlike other nations in the New World, Brazil never had a revolution that set it in opposition to an intrusive state. The Portuguese monarchy brought an entire ship filled with royal files and documents when it relocated to Rio. Successive governments have added new layers of regulation to a state that began as a royal court. In 1979, military rulers tried to pare back the bureaucracy by creating a cabinet post, the Minister of De-bureaucratization.

The result today is a bureaucracy that spends 41% of the country’s gross domestic product—about double the rate of the U.S. The return for all that tax money is questionable: poorly built roads, ports and bridges, and second-rate education and health services. As one travelers’ cliché goes, Brazil taxes like Scandinavia but has Africa-level infrastructure. In 2013, huge and sometimes violent protests erupted across the country, with protesters upset that the country was spending billions on World Cup stadiums while patients died waiting on the floors of hospital hallways.

Brazil’s government employs millions of workers, most of whom are nearly impossible to fire because of protections written into the constitution. The sheer extent of the bureaucracy and red tape stifles job creation. Brazil ranks 174th in the world for ease of starting a business, behind Uganda and Djibouti, according to the World Bank.

During the “Lost Decade” of hyperinflation in the 1980s, the Leviathan went haywire. State banks that had made bad loans to state enterprises posted enormous losses, forcing Brazil to print money to support them, which in turn created hyperinflation. The currency changed value and even names so often that old bills started circulating with rubber stamps on them showing their new denominations.

Perhaps the most insidious legacy of Brazilian’s Leviathan state is the country’s endemic corruption. Bureaucrats with broad controls become tempted to seek bribes to issue permits, licenses and contracts. Businessmen become tempted to pay them.

Brazil’s Leviathan grew so great that it gave rise to a popular theory that corruption could be a good thing because it “greased the wheels” of otherwise paralyzed bureaucracies. The idea was outlined in a 1964 paper by the American economist Nathaniel Leff, who worked extensively in Brazil.

That view was challenged in the 1990s by economists such as Paulo Mauro, who saw that corruption directly inhibits development: Officials make investments based not on the country’s best interests but on the size of the bribes they get. Matters get worse during commodity booms, when corruption expands in a tide of easy money. “Corruption becomes a system, and the bigger the system, the harder it is to break it,” Mr. Mauro said.

Exhibit A is the Petrobras scandal. After Brazil discovered massive oil fields off Rio de Janeiro, planners sought to make Petrobras a driver of development. They required the company, for example, to source oil platforms locally, with hopes of creating a ship-building industry. Investigators now say that oil executives, businessmen and politicians conspired to skim contracts from Petrobras, channeling money back to Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and its allies, including the party of Mr. Temer, the vice president who will take over if she is impeached. Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Temer are not charged and deny involvement in the scheme.

The Petrobras scandal is also a case study in opportunities squandered by Brazil’s Leviathan state. Huge investments in refineries and other projects at the center of the scandal were largely wasted—just as Mr. Mauro had predicted. In 2006, Petrobras bought an aging refinery in Texas for $1.2 billion, 30 times what it sold for just the year before. Petrobras’s new $18.5 billion Abreu e Lima refinery is eight times over budget and still incomplete. Both deals are under investigation, and neither may ever be profitable, analysts say.

The Petrobras scandal also allegedly shows how politicians used corruption to retain control. Brazil has 35 registered political parties, some 27 of which are represented in the lower house. The variety is almost comical. Aside from the Workers’ Party, there is the Democratic Labor Party, the Brazilian Labor Party, the Christian Labor Party, the Labor Party of Brazil, the National Labor Party and the Brazilian Labor Renewal Party—and those are just the parties that mention labor or workers.

Many of these parties have no ideology: They exist to capture federal funds budgeted to political parties in the constitution. Their allegiance is for sale, political scientists say. Mostly that means swapping congressional votes for control of cabinet ministries and political appointments. Some 20,000 high-ranking posts in Brazil’s bureaucracy are political appointments, including posts at Petrobras, where investigators say that officials embezzled money for their parties and themselves.

The Workers’ Party came to power vowing to wipe out corruption but was pulled into it, some longtime members say. In 2005, the party and its founder, Mr. da Silva, were rocked by the “Mensalão” vote-buying scandal. Mr. da Silva’s chief of staff resigned and was later jailed. But the economy was booming, and Mr. da Silva was re-elected.

The 84 arrests in the Petrobras scandal—among them a senator and high-profile chief executives of big construction firms—show that Brazil’s big state has at least built a judiciary with strength and independence to go after elites. Part of the credit goes to the 1988 Constitution, which ensured lifetime jobs for judges and prosecutors and shielded their budgets from politicians.

In recent years, prosecutors also won the ability to use plea bargains to offer cooperating witnesses reduced sentences. And suspects could no longer avoid jail by endlessly appealing a guilty verdict in the country’s slow courts, as they had in the past.

“The culture of compliance is sinking in fast. Companies are all persuaded they need to change their ways,” said Rubens Ricupero, a former Brazilian finance minister.

What’s unclear yet is whether the Petrobras investigations represent a watershed for Brazil or an isolated crusade driven by a few willing to exert their power. “A big reason for the independence of the judiciary was not some high-minded separation of powers, but a happy byproduct of the lobbying of judges and prosecutors who wanted job security,” says Ivar Hartmann, a law professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation law school in Rio.

Trimming back Brazil’s Leviathan state won't be easy. As much as 85% of Brazil’s federal budget goes to spending that is guaranteed by law, from increases in retirement plans to spending on housing. Changes will require constitutional amendments.

“The trouble is, the only way to fix the politics is through the politicians,” says Mr. Ricupero. “Are they really going to vote against their own self interest?”

Write to John Lyons at john.lyons@wsj.com and David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com


Corrections & Amplifications:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the names of Juscelino Kubitschek and Rubens Ricupero. (April 24)

Related Reading

Brazil’s Rousseff: Brazilians Will Oppose Attempts to ‘Undermine Democracy’ (April 22, 2016)
Brazil’s Vice President Says He Is Ready to Take Over (April 21, 2016)
Fatal Bike Path Collapse Casts Shadow on Rio Games (April 21, 2016)
Latin America Worries About ‘Trumpismo’ (March 18, 2016)

 

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Robert Fulford: Where ISIL came from (and where it’s going next)

Robert Fulford | April 22, 2016 9:42 AM ET
More from Robert Fulford

In June, 2014, Barack Obama dismissed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as the terrorist equivalent of a junior varsity basketball team. He remarked that “If a j.v. team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” In other words, nothing there for Americans to worry about.

A few weeks later, the junior varsity overran four Iraqi divisions and captured Mosul (pop. 2.5-million), Iraq’s second biggest city. It has since become clear that ISIL’s tentacles reach into Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Today the largest of its affiliated branch offices has settled in Surt, a port in eastern Libya.

The leader and self-anointed caliph of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has sent several lieutenants there to prepare for the possibility of a major change: if ISIL is forced to retreat from Syria, Surt will be its new headquarters.

That last fact appears in ISIS: A History (Princeton University Press), by Fawaz A. Gerges. He’s an Indonesian-American professor at the London School of Economics, specializing in the Middle East. Writing with energy and clarity, and out of uncommonly extensive knowledge, he wants us to know how ISIL was born in the sectarian, corrupt, tyranny-ridden swamp of Middle East governance. It will not disappear, he believes, till that noxious swamp is drained.

Baghdadi and the other Islamic State leaders are opportunists who capitalized on the power vacuum created by the weakening of governments. The Arab Spring, beginning in 2011, was a secular attempt to displace the dictators who traditionally controlled Arab countries. The Arab Spring shook the roots of the powerful and dissolved national institutions, from the military to the garbage collectors. With those elements hollowed out in the chaos that followed, ISIL moved in.

In certain places, such as areas of Syria ravaged by civil war, ISIL established vital government services. Those in need, and able to avoid trouble with ISIL, were grateful, for at least a brief time. But, as Gerges says, “Beyond sound and fury and a cult of death,” this band of murderers has nothing positive to offer Arabs and Muslims.

As a Sunni faction, ISIL drew strength from the centuries-old Sunni-Shia conflict. It often seems that Sunnis and Shias hate each other more than they hate the Americans, or even the Israelis. Sunnis claim Shias are heretics, a dagger aimed at the heart of the Islam, the villains responsible for the decline of Islamic civilization. Many Sunnis believe Shias can be blamed even for the loss in 1683 of the Battle of Vienna, when the Ottoman Empire came close to conquering Europe. Baghdadi holds a genocidal view of Shias: they should be seen as infidels who must either convert or be exterminated.

Gerges believes the homicidal qualities of ISIL reflect the recent history of the region. He says that ISIL atrocities stem from the bitter inheritance of Baathist rule that tore apart Iraq’s social fabric, leaving wounds that still fester. Baghdadi surrounds himself with junior and senior officers of Saddam Hussein’s army and police, many of them former enforcers of Baathism’s brutal regime.

In ideology, ISIL is a Salafi-jihad movement, part of a puritan fundamentalist tendency grounded in what its adherents consider authentic Islam. In conduct it follows sharia law and regards modernity with absolute hostility.

For someone who spends his days studying the recurrent horrors of the Middle East, Gerges remains astonishingly optimistic. Although foreign recruits to ISIL continue to arrive, there are credible reports of fighters defecting from the organization. The Syria-bound flow of jihadists has partially dried up since the U.S. and Turkey have closed the Turkey-Syria border, which until recently provided a lifeline to ISIL.

If it is defeated, ISIL could mutate into its original shape, an underground, paramilitary Salafi-jihadist organization.

The optimism of Gerges reaches its height when he imagines what will come next. If ISIL or something like it is not to appear again, the Arab world will need an intellectual reformation. Mosque and state will have to be severed, so that religion can no longer swamp politics. Citizenship and the rule of law, rather than religious or ethnic affiliation, will be the basis of membership in the nation-state. Tolerance will be a foundation of religious and educational curricula.

Various Arab intellectuals have made similar proposals, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Gerges doesn’t suggest how such radical change will be introduced by populations with no experience in developing modern ideas. Instead he leaves us with his belief that this complex generational change must be fought for, and eventually won, regardless of how long it takes. Recent history suggests it will be very long indeed.

National Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

 

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Austrian law-and-order presidential candidate wins 1st round

By George Jahn | AP
April 24 at 3:11 PM
Comments 6

VIENNA — The law-and-order candidate of Austria’s right-wing party swept the first round of presidential elections on Sunday, winning over 35 percent of the vote for the party’s best ever result. Government coalition contenders were among the five losers, signaling deep voter rejection and political uncertainty ahead.

The triumph by Norbert Hofer eclipses his Freedom Party’s best previous national showing — more than 27 percent support in 1996 elections that decided Austria’s membership in the European Union.

His declared willingness to challenge the governing coalition of center-left Social Democrats and centrist People’s Party spells potential confrontation ahead — Hofer might push for new parliamentary elections should he win the May 22 runoff in hopes that his Freedom Party will triumph.

Preliminary final results with absentee ballots still to be counted gave Hofer 35.5 percent support, far ahead of Alexander Van der Bellen of the Greens party who ran as an independent. Still, with 20.4 percent backing, he will challenge Hofer in the second round.

Independent Irmgard Griss came in third. At 18.5 percent, she was still ahead of People’s Party candidate Andreas Khol and Social Democrat Rudolf Hundstorfer, both slightly above 11 percent. Political outsider Richard Lugner was last, with 2.4 percent.

With the candidates of establishment parties shut out of the office for the first time since Austria’s political landscape was reformed after World War II, Freedom Party chief Heinz-Christian Strache hailed the “historic event” that he said reflected massive “voter dissatisfaction.”

Still, Van der Bellen remained in the running. Many of those who voted for other candidates are likely to swing behind him in the runoff in hopes he will defeat Hofer and the Freedom Party.

“That was the first round,” Van der Bellen said. “The second one will decide.”

Hofer’s triumph was significant nonetheless, and in line with recent polls showing Freedom Party popularity. Driven by concerns over Europe’s migrant crisis, support for his party has surged to 32 percent compared with just over 20 percent for each of the governing parties.

But voters were unhappy with the Social Democrats and the People’s Party even before the migrant influx last year forced their coalition government to swing from open borders to tough asylum restrictions. Decades of bickering over key issues — most recently tax, pension and education reform — has fed perceptions of political stagnation.

Reflecting voter dissatisfaction, an ORF/SORA/ISA poll of 1,210 eligible voters released Sunday after balloting ended showed only 19 percent “satisfied” with the government’s work. Its margin of error was 2.8 percentage points.

Vienna Social Democratic Mayor Michael Haeupl spoke of “a catastrophic result,” but even worse could lie ahead for both his and the People’s Party. As president, Hofer has threatened to call a new national election.

That would likely result in a Freedom Party victory and could move Austria closer to the camp of anti-immigrant Eurosceptic EU nations, further complicating joint European Union attempts to solve the migrant crisis and find consensus on other divisive issues.

An Austrian president has the powers to dismiss a government. But none has since the office was newly defined after World War II. Instead, the role has been traditionally ceremonial, with presidents rarely going beyond gentle criticism of the government.

Trying to ease concerns that he would be too confrontational in office, Hofer told reporters that he would be “there for all Austrians.”

“No one need be afraid,” he told reporters.

Still, he added “that does not mean that I reject my principles.” Alluding to his threat, he said that with him as president, the present government would “face serious difficulties” if it didn’t change its course.

Political uncertainty may lie ahead, even if Hofer is defeated.

Van der Bellen has vowed not to swear in any Freedom Party politician as Austria’s chancellor if he wins Sunday’s vote.

The president has a six-year mandate. Because parliamentary elections that will decide the next chancellor must be held by 2018, possible confrontation looms between the Freedom Party and Van der Bellen, should he triumph.

___

Associated Press video journalist Philipp Jenne contributed to this report.

 

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-qaeda-idUSKCN0XL0BM

World | Sun Apr 24, 2016 4:15pm EDT
Related: World, Yemen

Yemeni, UAE troops seize Qaeda-held seaport city: residents

ADEN/KUWAIT | By Mohammed Mukhashaf and Mohammed Ghobari


Yemeni and Emirati soldiers seized Yemen's seaport of Mukalla from al Qaeda fighters on Sunday, depriving the group of the seaport that enabled it to amass a fortune amid the country's civil war.

Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, local officials and residents said, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city.

There was little fighting after a mostly Gulf Arab alliance and Yemeni forces mobilised their forces at Mukalla's suburbs, and the militants may have chosen to leave peacefully.

Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had been in talks with the group earlier in the day to exit quietly and that fighters withdrew westward to neighbouring Shabwa province.

Mukalla has been the centre of a rich mini-state that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) built up over the past year as it took control of an almost 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline.

The group that has masterminded several foiled bomb plots on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year was pocketing around $2 million a day in customs revenues from the port.

"Coalition armoured vehicles and the army entered Mukalla and al Qaeda fighters are departing," one resident told Reuters.

Fighter jets from the mostly Gulf Arab alliance pounded the city on Sunday and killed 30 militants, residents said, as the military coalition ramped up its offensive to wrest swathes of southern Yemen from al Qaeda.

Sunday's air strikes on al Qaeda in Mukalla were carried out in coordination with a ground offensive in militant-controlled territory further west, a Yemeni military official said.

The push is being led by the United Arab Emirates, which has been training and arming local recruits for months, according to southern Yemeni tribal and political sources.

The UAE is part of a mostly Gulf Arab coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in March last year to support the internationally recognised government after it was forced into exile by the armed Houthi group, an ally of Iran.


WINNING BACK TERRITORY

Sunday's air strikes come as Yemen's government meets with the Houthis in Kuwait to try to find a solution to the conflict.

Around 6,200 people have died in the war, which has focused mostly around the country's Houthi-controled centre and north, while a security vacuum spread in the south.

The United States has for years used drone strikes to target AQAP. Despite the group's gains in the last year, it managed to assassinate several of its top leaders, including its leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi, blown up on Mukalla's waterfront in June.

Fearing more air strikes, residents reported that local families were bundling into cars and driving out of town.

On Saturday, Yemeni troops battled al Qaeda at al-Koud near Zinjibar, another southern city considered an al Qaeda stronghold, while an air strike from a drone killed two suspected al Qaeda fighters south of the city of Marib.

In a statement on its official Twitter account, AQAP said it carried out a suicide bombing attack against the government troops pushing into al-Koud.

The Houthis control the capital Sanaa in the north while the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has tried to re-establish itself in the southern port city of Aden. Only in the last month has its fledgling army begun to make gains against the militants and organise to take back lost territory.


(Additional reporting and writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

 

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Kurdish PKK Ready To Intensify Fight Against Turkey, Leader Blames Erdogan For ‘Escalating This War’

By Suman Varandani @suman09 On 04/25/16 AT 3:22 AM

Cemil Bayik, co-founder and a senior leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), told the BBC that the party is ready to intensify its fight against Turkey. Bayik reportedly said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "escalating this war," which has turned parts of the southeast into war zones.

"The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach — of course the PKK will escalate the war," Bayik reportedly said, adding that "we don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state."

Tensions between Turkey and PKK escalated starting July 2015 when a 2-year-old ceasefire — announced in March 2013 — between the rival sides broke down. Since 1984, when the PKK reportedly began fighting for Kurdistan, over 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died in the violence. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by the local government, the U.S., and the European Union.

Separately, one of Erdogan's aides told BBC that there were no negotiations with the PKK.

Turkish presidential adviser Ilnur Cevik reportedly said that the PKK was "trying to create a separate state in Turkey - this is outright secession."

Bayik, however, said: "We don't want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted."

Bayik also reportedly said that the PKK was ready to escalate the conflict "not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well," because of Ankara's inflexibilities.

Turkey has continued to wage the decades-long war with separatist forces seeking an independent Kurdistan in the country's southeast.

The Turkish Human Rights Foundation had said in January that the escalation of a violent conflict between Turkish government troops and Kurdish forces has resulted in the death of at least 162 civilians since August 2015, the Associated Press reported at the time.

Last year, Bayik had also accused Turkey of plotting with the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, by attacking Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria.

 

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The Advantage of Being the Weaker, Nuclear-Armed State

by Michael Krepon | April 24, 2016 | No Comments

Doyens of nuclear deterrence strategy during the first nuclear age were convinced that size mattered. The nuclear-armed state with a bigger arsenal, or greater missile throw-weight, or sharper missile accuracy, or more tactical nuclear weapons, or [fill in the blank] would be better off in leveraging outcomes, before and after the balloon went up.

In the second nuclear age, it’s striking how this presumption of leveraging has been turned on its head. There is now abundant evidence that the strong preference of a major nuclear power has scant influence on the decision-making of a state with a smaller nuclear arsenal.

For starters:
•China, with the most economic leverage on North Korea, has been notably unsuccessful in persuading Kim Jong-un to refrain from testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. So have the United States, Great Britain, and France.
•The United States has been unable to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, pursue a two-state solution, and not try to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal. Mr. Netanyahu went so far as to stick his finger in Mr. Obama’s eye before a Joint Session of Congress – while pocketing unprecedented levels of U.S. military assistance.
•The Government of Pakistan continues to exercise a veto over the start of Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty negotiations. The Pakistan Army and Air Force continue to prosecute bad actors on a selective basis, placing the groups that carry out explosions in India and attacks on US forces in Afghanistan at the back of the queue. The Obama Administration, like its predecessor, continues generous military assistance and coalition support funding.
•The Bush Administration agreed to a civil-nuclear deal with India and acceded to New Delhi’s rejection of compensatory steps that would shore up the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Obama administration appears interested in going one step farther, helping India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, without any evident quid pro quo.

All of these cases are different. North Korea isn’t just an outlier; it’s an outcast. Its weakness is its strength. Kim Jong-un has perfected Richard Nixon’s madman theory of international relations. The young Kim threatens to bring down the temple to get his way – or at least not to be attacked. The only nuclear numbers that count are his, not someone else’s. Benjamin Netanyahu is the ultimate free rider: he can stiff Barack Obama and still be protected by U.S. vetoes in the UN Security Council. He knows that Washington will not turn its back on Israel. Pakistan’s military leaders have perfected the art of translating post 9/11 nuclear nightmares and worries about the future of Afghanistan (of all places) into big paydays. Indian political leaders have leveraged their market and their potential to serve as a counterweight to China into displacing Pakistan as America’s most important non-NATO ally on the subcontinent. Except that these words cannot be spoken because they would offend India’s sense of strategic autonomy, which makes market access and cooperation against China difficult.

What do these diverse cases have in common? The exact opposite of deterrence theology rooted in the more-is-better school of nuclear weapons. Instead, countries with smaller nuclear arsenals are more than holding their own with countries having larger nuclear arsenals. North Korea, the state with the smallest inventory of nuclear warheads, is holding off the largest number of nuclear-armed states. Advantages in nuclear war-fighting capabilities don’t amount to much if you don’t want to fight a nuclear war. And advantages in nuclear war-fighting capabilities don’t translate into diplomatic suasion when the point of having nuclear weapons is not to use them.

Stockpile size doesn’t matter when the Bigger Boys have a higher priority to advance or protect – one that overrides the application of serious economic and military muscle over nuclear-related issues. Beijing doesn’t want North Korea to crack up, spilling countless refugees across the border. Besides, nobody wants to start a war against the DPRK to denuclearize the Peninsula. The United States is not going to undermine Israeli security even though its Prime Minister acts intransigently. Rawalpindi can always rely on nuclear nightmare scenarios and the decline and fall of the Afghan government to keep Washington from completely going off the reservation. And New Delhi can count on the prospect of strategic convergence to solicit help from Washington, notwithstanding its domestic imperative of maintaining strategic autonomy.

States with small or mid-sized nuclear arsenals are doing quite well, thank you, in fending off pressure from states with bigger stockpiles. Size doesn’t matter when seeking attention and deference to security concerns. In India’s case, it can be the ticket to a seat at the high table. The Bomb helps Pakistan gain an “out-sized” profile, to use Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s unfortunate phrase when plugging for Great Britain to recapitalize its Trident boats. The Bomb also doesn’t hurt Pakistan when dealing with the International Monetary Fund, getting Chinese help and inflows of cash from the United States. The only state that isn’t cashing in is North Korea. Being an outcast might keep the wolves at bay, but it doesn’t help with cash flow.

The takeaways from this aren’t entirely bad. All of the good things that a small nuclear arsenal can provide come with all of hard things that can be expected when trying to join the nuclear club; otherwise, there would be far more members. The good news (for those in search of silver linings) is that size doesn’t matter, and that competition in the usual metrics of nuclear weapon capabilities is a con game. Spread the word.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.janes.com/article/59701/uk-and-france-activate-joint-expeditionary-force

Military Capabilities

UK and France activate joint expeditionary force

Tim Ripley, RAF Leeming - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
22 April 2016

France and the United Kingdom validated their Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF) on 21 April as part of Exercise 'Griffin Strike'.

The UK Secretary of Defence Michael Fallon and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian jointly announced the Full Validation of Concept (FVOC) for the CJEF during a visit to the exercise, that took place on the Salisbury Plain Training Area in southern England.

A series of joint unit-level exercises involving UK and French military forces are to follow-on from the validation.

Senior UK and French officers are already working on the next phase of Anglo-French military co-operation to follow-on from the five year-long effort to establish the CJEF.

Speaking to IHS Jane's at RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire on 18 April, Air Commodore Johnny Stringer, Chief of Staff Operations at the RAF's Headquarters Air Command, said Anglo-French co-operation would evolve in new ways. "There is a temptation to look at big exercises but you often miss the opportunity for richer types of engagement," said Air Cdre Stringer. "In future you will see lower level exercises to keep Anglo-French engagement going."

Air Cdre Stinger pointed to December 2015's "trilateral" exercise involving British Eurofighter Typhoons, French Dassault Rafale and US Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft in the United States as the way forward. "This caught people's attention and we are looking to repeat it over the next 12 months," he said. When asked if this would take place in Europe, Stinger replied: "Watch this space."

Général de Brigade Aérienne Gilles Perrone, Chief of Staff of the Armée de l'air Air Defence and Air Operations Command (CDAOA), said Exercise 'Griffon Strike' was "not the beginning and not the end of [Anglo]-French co-operation". "We are working together day-after-day", he told IHS Jane's . "With the CJET we have an operational tool that is ready.

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

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(325 of 680 words)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/india-vietnam-can-rescue-asias-balance-power-15902

India and Vietnam Can Rescue Asia's Balance of Power

New Delhi and Hanoi must work together to stand up to Beijing.

Sylvia Mishra
April 25, 2016
Comments 80

India no longer hides its aspirations of playing an active political and security role in the Asia-Pacific. For political and commercial reasons, the region is critical to India’s strategic thinking. But India’s may not be able to deftly integrate itself in the region, due to lack of consistent political will, steady military modernization and the galloping pace of the regional economy. However, New Delhi has been slowly expanding its strategic and economic heft through its Act East policy, blue-water navy and multilateral diplomacy.

In the evolving security context of the Asia-Pacific, one country that is key to India’s sustained presence and role is Vietnam. In the last few years, Hanoi’s diplomatic profile has grown in New Delhi’s strategic calculus. At the intersection of India’s Act East policy and Vietnam’s Look West policy, both countries have a historic opportunity to shape Asia’s balance of power.

Under the Modi government, a new maturation of India’s Asian strategy has included intensive high-level engagement with Vietnam. However, both countries can do much more to forge bolder diplomatic and military coordination, in view of the strategic rationale of closer ties. The brittle sense of anxiety about China’s territorial expansion and open disregard for international norms mandates that India and Vietnam improve their relations. Moving beyond the robust historical foundation of ties laid by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, the two countries should adopt politico-military mechanisms to adapt to an evolving Asian order. The landscape is wide for greater collaboration in terms of expanding defense cooperation, naval diplomacy and trade and investments.

During the official visit of Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to New Delhi in October 2014, both countries’ leaders vowed to strengthen defense ties through security dialogue, enhanced service-to-service cooperation, capacity building and humanitarian mine action under ADMM-Plus. The two countries also signed an MOU in which India provided a concessional line of credit of $100 million for the procurement of defense equipment. This extension of credit and the provision of four offshore patrol vessels are the first of their kind, signaling India’s preparedness to become an arms exporter as well as its willingness to bolster Vietnam’s defense capabilities. New Delhi’s assistance in modernizing Hanoi’s military forces, however, is not a new development. There have been talks going on to sell the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile since the preceding United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Although little progress was made, due to the UPA’s hesitancy to export defense hardware, the Modi government has also failed to expedite the process in the last two years.

Vietnam has sought India’s cooperation in the maritime domain. Both countries have engaged in frequent vessel exchange, while Indian officers have imparted training to Vietnamese submarine forces. Interlocked in a territorial dispute with China and its expansive claims on the South China Sea, Vietnam has struggled to hold its ground amid China’s aggressive land reclamation and construction projects on reefs. A new report from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) highlights that the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 46 percent of global arms imports over the past five years. This arms race in the Asia-Pacific underlines the region’s fraught security vulnerabilities, as China treats its smaller neighbors with impunity. India has historically been cautious in taking sides on territorial disputes. But a gradual policy change is evident under the Modi administration, as New Delhi approaches the issue with pragmatism, increasingly uninhibited by concerns of antagonizing China. India’s joint regional “Strategic Vision” with the United States, supporting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (SCS), is one indicator of such a policy shift. Even though India has dismissed talks of joint patrols in the SCS with the United States, India is slowly warming up to the idea that it must undertake a greater security role to restore rule-based order in the region.

India’s partnership with Vietnam also first into the larger context of India’s evolving response to the U.S. “rebalance.” India, the United States and Vietnam share a common interest in preventing China from dominating seaborne trade routes and enforcing territorial claims through coercion. At a time when China is deploying advanced surface-to-air missiles on disputed islands in SCS, Vietnam sees the U.S. presence as a hedge against Beijing’s rising military power. Certainly, the U.S. military buildup in the region will have a significant impact on the regional balance of power. However, staunch diplomatic and security support from regional actors like India, Japan and Australia would be a reinforcing credible deterrent. And New Delhi’s economic commitment to Vietnam and the region is another factor that will shape how other states view India as a regional balancer.

Consistent failure at economic strides has led India’s commercial partnership with Vietnam to remain underdeveloped. Without the economy at the forefront of bilateral ties, prospects for greater India-Vietnam strategic collaboration remain feeble. While India’s trade with Vietnam is at a staggering low of $8.03 billion (2014), despite centuries of territorial disputes China and Vietnam still enjoy two-way trade of $66 billion (2015). According to a report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency, 1,346 Chinese projects are in operation in Vietnam with total registered capital of $10.4 billion, making China the ninth-largest investor of the 112 nations and territories investing in Vietnam. The Foreign Investment Agency reported that Chinese businesses had sharply increased their investment capital from $312 million in 2012 to $2.3 billion in 2013 and $7.9 billion in 2014. As a signatory of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Vietnam intends to take advantage of Chinese investments to ramp up its transport infrastructure sector. In light of these economic compulsions, Vietnam’s business class steadily makes efforts to temper anti-Chinese violence and rhetoric. In 2014, Forbes reported that Vietnam regrets anti-China violence, and pledges to stop any outbreaks so that supply lines stay open to the flow of textiles and smartphone parts from China.

A realist Indian approach to Vietnam would involve lubricating strategic and defense ties along with promoting vibrant trade and investment policy in the textile, agriculture, pharmaceutical, energy, oil and gas sectors. It is crucial for India to get its Vietnam policy right—a multifarious relationship rooted in history and shaped by the evolving geopolitical imperatives of the Asian century. Efforts to embellish this bilateral partnership not only hold the keys to the Asian balance of power, but also pave the path for India’s truly engaged role in the Asia-Pacific.

Sylvia Mishra is a researcher at the Observer Research Foundation, working on U.S. policy in the Asia-Pacific and India-U.S. relations.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://38north.org/2016/04/jschilling042516/

A New Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile for North Korea

By John Schilling
25 April 2016
Comments 3

Summary

North Korea has revealed images of a submarine-launched ballistic missile test indicating that it has abandoned the liquid-fuel design that has consistently failed in the past and switched to a more robust solid-propellant system that will have a better chance of actually working in an operational environment. The new design is still in the earliest stages of testing, and much work, including development of a full-scale motor, needs to be done. Nevertheless, the simpler design is likely to be less troublesome to develop and could be ready by 2020. The solid-propellant missile would have reduced performance, with a range of 900 km compared to 1600 km for a liquid-propellant version, but is still likely to meet North Korean requirement to pose a challenging threat to US allied defenses, primarily in Northeast Asia.

The New SLBM Test

On April 23, North Korea tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) for probably the fifth time and shown us pictures for the third time. They’re clearly learning from their mistakes. Unfortunately, part of what they are learning is to carefully frame the pictures they release so that we can’t be sure what they might have been hiding. The last time the North showed the world an SLBM test, it accidentally let slip a few frames of video that suggested the test was from a submerged barge rather than a submarine, and a few more showing that the missile had exploded shortly after launch. Pyongyang then made a clumsy cut to stock footage of a completely different missile flying into the heavens. This time, the pictures show what seems to have been a successful launch, but without enough detail to verify more than a few basic facts.

The US Strategic Command has confirmed that it detected a launch on April 23, with South Korean sources indicating that the missile had achieved a range of only 30 km. If all three governments say the missile was launched, we can conclude that a missile was launched. Almost certainly the US would detect and track such a launch by satellite, and it is possible that the South Korean Navy would have had a ship in place to track it by radar. But what are we to make of the short range?

In order to fly even 30 km, a ballistic missile has to not only launch successfully but accelerate well past the speed of sound. For a single-stage missile, those are the hard parts—once accomplished, the safe bet is that the missile will continue to accelerate until it runs out of fuel, and coast on a ballistic arc to its maximum range. There’s still the matter of arranging for the warhead to come down intact and close to the intended target, which isn’t trivial. But if the missile flew 30 km, there is a good chance it was only carrying fuel for 30 km. To be fair, after four failed test launches, one can understand the test crew not wanting to have a full 10 to 20 tons of rocket fuel falling on their heads, expensive barges or submarines.

Left: SLBM launch from May 8, 2015 (Photo: KCNA); right: SLBM launch from April 23, 2016. (Photo: Rodong Sinmun)
Left: SLBM launch from May 8, 2015 (Photo: KCNA); right: SLBM launch from April 23, 2016. (Photo: Rodong Sinmun)

Looking at the pictures we have, in last year’s test, the exhaust plume emerges from the nozzle in a narrow and almost translucent state that only 2 to 3 meters downstream develops into the classic yellow-orange streak of fire. The plume never expands much wider than the missile’s body, and dissipates about 20 meters downstream. This is a classic liquid-rocket plume, probably from an engine burning kerosene, and from the size, very likely North Korea’s Nodong engine.

The most recent test shows an almost incandescent white plume emerging fully-formed from the missile’s base, expanding significantly, and ultimately leaving a trail of light grey smoke. This looks like the same missile, but they clearly are not the same engines. It is very much like a classic solid rocket motor exhaust plume. And guess what? Just last month, North Korea showed the world a ground test of a solid-fuel rocket motor. Note the similar shape and color of the plume.

Solid-fuel engine testing on March 24, 2016. (Photo: Rodong Sinmun)
Solid-fuel engine testing on March 24, 2016. (Photo: Rodong Sinmun)

The motor from last month’s test, about 1.25 meters in diameter and 3 meters long, is too small for this missile. The KN-11 SLBM is 1.5 meters in diameter and a bit over 9 meters long, probably weighing almost 15 tonnes. This motor, as far as we know, the largest solid-fuel rocket motor North Korea has ever built, would probably get the KN-11 into the air, but it wouldn’t get it very far. A quick calculation suggests that such a combination would have a maximum range of about 30 km.

So why the switch, and what is the point of testing a missile with such a short range? To begin with, let’s note that the original configuration with the Nodong engine was perhaps the worst possible way to build an SLBM. It is what North Korea had when they began this program. If the North Koreans had kept at it, they would have probably found a way to make it work. The Russians, eventually made something similar work back in the 1960s, and we know the North Koreans hired some of the Russian engineers who did that. But liquid-fuel rockets and submarines are a bad mix, and the Nodong was never designed for that application.

In particular, when a missile is ejected from a submarine launch tube, any liquid propellant is going to slosh violently in the tanks, possibly with enough force to tumble the missile or rupture the tanks. And if the fuel inlet is uncovered for even an instant, the high-performance fuel pump of a typical liquid-fuel rocket will overspeed and destroy itself trying to suck air. Very likely, the rocket will explode shortly after igniting the engine. We have seen that at least once in the case of North Korea and it may have happened several other times we haven’t seen.

It is possible to overcome these challenges, as the Russians did with their R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile. There is evidence that the North Koreans obtained this technology, and maybe even surplus missiles, from Russia. Earlier this month, the North displayed footage of a ground test of what appeared to be a pair of R-27 missile engines clustered together. And the R-27 missile was almost exactly the right size to fit in the launch tubes of North Korea’s GORAE-class missile submarine. So why not just use that missile the way it was meant to be used?

The obvious answer is that the last of those missiles were built over 30 years ago, and any that might have reached North Korea have probably endured some rough handling and careless storage along the way. While Pyongyang has never successfully flown a missile based on the R-27., there were reports of a failed launch earlier this month, which may have been a North Korean derivative called the Musudan. So, even if the North Koreans can make the engines work in a test stand, there’s still a lot of engineering to be done before the missiles can fly. There may also be a limited supply of ex-Soviet hardware to work with. And Kim Jong Un may want to show his submarine launching missiles this year, not 5 or 10 years from now.

Which brings us to what sensible engineers have been doing for years—if you want to launch ballistic missiles from submarines, it is almost certainly best to use solid-propellant motors. And not just because of the propellant slosh problem. Storable liquid rocket propellants are intensely corrosive, and if they leak, the fumes are extremely toxic—not a good combination in an enclosed space. Only the Russians ever made liquids work in that context and even they are now using solid propellant on their latest submarine-launched missiles.

North Korea presumably started down the path of making liquid-propellant submarine-launched ballistic missiles because, at the time, it couldn’t make solid-propellant motors big enough for the job but it did have Russian technical expertise in liquid-propellant missiles. But the North hasn’t had much success with the liquid-propellant option, and over in another corner of the DRPK’s arms industry, other scientists seem to have been making real progress in solid-fuel motors. So the North made the sensible engineering decision to cut its losses, stop trying to do things the hard way and go back to the drawing board with a new propulsion system, if not an entirely new missile.

What does this mean in terms of capabilities? First, if the North is switching from liquid to solid propellant, the missile is pretty entirely new even if it looks the same from the outside. Therefore, much of the progress the North has made so far will have been wasted effort. And second, the North Koreans probably still don’t have a motor that is really suitable for this missile. But they have likely already been working towards such a motor, because the one tested last month was clearly meant to be part of a two-stage system. So North Korea will lose some ground redesigning the missile, and may have to wait a year or two for a full-sized motor. But if it is already at the point of using the small motor to test the launch system, Pyongyang will probably be able to catch up pretty quickly. Last time I looked at North Korea’s SLBM program, I estimated they might have an operational system by 2020. If they’ve gone back to the drawing board, but settled on a simpler configuration and are already in early testing, that’s probably still a reasonable estimate.

In terms of performance, they probably will lose a bit. Liquid-propellant rocket engines, when they work, are lighter and more efficient than solids. And the KN-11 is probably not long enough to incorporate a second stage to make up the lost performance. In short, a liquid-propellant KN-11 missile would have probably flown 1600 km with a 650 kg warhead. A single-stage solid-propellant version will probably be good for only 900 km.

This range is still enough to reach all of South Korea and parts of Japan from North Korean territorial waters. If the boat ventures even a little ways into the Sea of Japan, it can reach targets anywhere in Japan. And the ability of North Korea’s submarine force to reach targets further afield has always depended on the ability of the submarines to reach the open sea, not on the range of the missiles. If a North Korean submarine can escape the Sea of Japan and come within 1600 km of Guam, or Hawaii, it can almost certainly cover an extra 700 km.

As with some of the other new technologies and systems North Korea has been introducing, a solid-propellant KN-11 SLBM is more likely to work reliably in an operational environment. Today, North Korea has an experimental testbed that reliably launched to a range of 30 km, maybe from a submarine or a submerged barge. We don’t know. But it is increasingly clear a real, albeit limited, submarine missile threat from North Korea will probably emerge by the year 2020.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-tuz-idUSKCN0XM1YV

World | Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:14pm EDT
Related: World, Iraq

Kurds and Shi'ites clash in northern Iraq despite ceasefire


Clashes between Kurdish and Shi'ite Turkmen fighters in an Iraqi town late on Monday cut the main road from Baghdad to the north for the second day in a row and threatened to undermine a ceasefire agreement reached by military leaders a day earlier.

The violence in Tuz Khurmatu, 175 km (110 miles) north of the capital, is the latest and most severe flare-up of tensions that have been brewing since Islamic State militants were driven back from the town in 2014.

Shi'ite paramilitary leaders and Kurdish peshmerga commanders had brokered a truce on Sunday to end fighting that killed at least 12 people on both sides, but it broke down before sunset on Monday.

Police sources in the town said shops were closed and the streets deserted. No casualties were reported at area hospitals, likely because the roads were considered too dangerous for travel.

Peshmerga tanks shelled Shi'ite Turkmen districts, while Shi'ite fighters launched mortar fire and sniped at predominately Kurdish areas, the police said. Five buildings in Shi'ite neighborhoods had been burned.

A Kurdish peshmerga fighter in Tuz Khurmato told Reuters his forces had been instructed to observe the ceasefire, but that armed Kurdish residents of the town were attacking Shi'ite Turkmen positions.

"Now you can hear the sound of RPG (rocket-propelled grenades) and rockets," he said, the sound of small arms fire audible in the background.

The clashes began late on Saturday when members of a Shi'ite militia hurled a grenade into the house of a Kurdish commander and his guards responded by firing RPGs, security sources said.

The tensions in Tuz Khurmatu risk further fragmenting Iraq, a major OPEC oil exporter, as it struggles to contain Islamic State, the gravest security threat since a U.S.-led invasion toppled autocrat Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Efforts to push back the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents have been complicated by sectarian and ethnic rivalries, including a contest for territory which the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad claims but the Kurds want as part of their autonomous region in the north of the country.


(Reporting by Ghazwan Hassan and Isabel Coles in Erbil)

 

[Housecarl]

Cartels Help Terrorists in Mexico Target US; ISIS Militant Shaykh Khabir Among Them
Started by Shacknasty Shagrat‎, Today 12:14 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...get-US-ISIS-Militant-Shaykh-Khabir-Among-Them

Islamic State operating in Mexico just 8 miles from U.S. border: Report
Started by alchemike‎, 04-20-2016 01:29 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...n-Mexico-just-8-miles-from-U.S.-border-Report

Los Zetas Cartel Used Network of Ovens to Hide Mass Extermination in Mexico’s Coahuila
Started by Intestinal Fortitude‎, 02-08-2016 01:24 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Hide-Mass-Extermination-in-Mexico’s-Coahuila
___


Remember that early episode of "Madmen" when they were putting together an ad campaign for vacation resorts in South Vietnam?....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://news.vice.com/article/night...nd-heavily-armed-cartels-face-off-in-acapulco

Americas

Night of Terror: Mexican Police and Heavily Armed Cartels Face Off in Acapulco

By Alan Hernández
April 25, 2016 | 1:30 pm

The governor of Mexico's beleaguered southern state of Guerrero has promised to step up efforts to contain local drug cartels. The pledge came in response to a night of intense violence in the coastal city of Acapulco involving multiple clashes between heavily armed men and federal police.

"We have to accept that criminal groups, especially in Acapulco, are both present and organized and out to attack the institutions," Héctor Astudillo told Radio Imagen on Monday. "This should compel us to do more to confront these criminal groups, and do it with more determination."

Astudillo went on to cite the need to modernize surveillance, improve intelligence, and work more closely with federal forces.

Such pledges have become almost routine in the coastal city, which was once the playground of Hollywood stars and honeymooning US presidents but in recent years has seen numerous special security operations. While these have sometimes temporarily calmed the situation, they have never brought anything approaching a lasting peace.

Last Sunday's violence began at around 9.30pm when armed men attacked a hotel near the famed Caleta beach that was housing federal police officers sent to reinforce security in the latest offensive launched in October.

After the security forces repelled the aggression, the hitmen fled, starting a chase along the Miguel Alemán coastal avenue, the main tourist area in Acapulco.

Panic on social media fueled rumors about more than 10 simultaneous shootouts, though it appears that only three have been fully confirmed, including an attack on another building used by the federal police.

The intense bouts of shooting lasted for about an hour, and were recorded by tourists and locals who found themselves locked inside malls, casinos, and hotels.

One of the videos, uploaded to YouTube, shows police vehicles coming under a rain of heavy fire. Another shows a woman forced to the ground by the shooting, before she begins crying out for help.

Astudillo said calm returned by midnight. He also said the violence had left one suspected gang member dead, and one officer injured. He said no arrests were made.

The governor added that he believed Sunday's violence was a response to last week's arrest of Fredy del Valle Berdel, in the northern state of Baja California Sur.

Berdel — alias El Burro or The Donkey — was said to be one of the main leaders of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco. The relatively small cartel is just one of many such groups fighting to control territory in the state since the once-dominant Beltrán Leyva cartel started to fall apart about six years ago.

According to government figures, there were 902 murders in Acapulco last year, with the bloodiest months registered during the summer. The murder rate waned a little after that but appears to be picking up again in 2016 with 139 homicides reported in the first two months.

Sunday's gunfights came just three weeks after the governor appealed to local journalists to "speak well of Acapulco, speak well of Acapulco, speak well of Acapulco." His plea came just a week before the US State Department banned all US government employees from traveling to Guerrero, including Acapulco.

While violence in Acapulco tends to receive particular attention because of the tourism industry, there is almost nowhere in the state that can be classified as violence-free.

Related: 'Say Nice Things About Acapulco': Mexican Governor Urges Media Silence on Violence

The mountainous areas that occupy much of the state serve as bastions to a plethora of relatively small cartels with a foothold in opium poppy production, most of it designed to feed the booming heroin market in the US. These include the Guerreros Unidos cartel that, together with municipal police, has been blamed for the attack on student teachers in September 2014 that left 43 missing.

Local journalists have also come under fire. Newspaper reporter Francisco Pacheco was shot dead when he was returning home on Monday morning in the city of Taxco, which is also in Guerrero.


Follow Alan Hernández on Twitter: @alanpasten

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missile-usa-state-idUSKCN0XN2I2

World | Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:33pm EDT
Related: World, United Nations

U.S. to eye 'other' options if North Korea continues nuclear activity: State Department

The U.S. State Department urged North Korea on Tuesday to refrain from actions that destabilize the region and said it would consider "other" options if Pyongyang continued its nuclear and ballistic missile testing.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner made the comment at a briefing after being asked about reports that North Korea may be planning more nuclear or missile tests.

Toner noted the United Nations had recently imposed some of its toughest sanctions on Pyongyang over its testing.

"We're going to look at other options as we move forward if North Korea continues with this kind of behavior," he said, declining to elaborate on what other steps Washington may be considering.


(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and David Alexander; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...for-possible-IS-attack-in-capital-local-media

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-security-idUSKCN0XN1OX

World | Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:32pm EDT
Related: World

Sweden on alert for possible IS attack in capital: local media


Sweden has received intelligence about a possible attack on the capital by Islamic State militants, local media reported on Tuesday, and security services said they were investigating undisclosed information.

Newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen as well as public broadcaster Swedish Radio, citing unnamed sources, said the information related to the threat of an attack, possibly in the capital Stockholm.

Expressen reported Swedish security police (SAPO) had received intelligence from Iraq that seven or eight Islamic State fighters had entered Sweden with the intention of attacking civilian targets.

A security police spokeswoman said she would not comment on any specific details of a threat, but said it was working with regular police as well as national and international partners.

"Security police are working intensively to assess received information, and it is of such a nature that our judgment is that we can not dismiss it," she said.

An Iraqi security source said six Iraqis had left Iraq in February 2015 and entered Sweden via Turkey.

The ringleader is a veteran insurgent who was close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of IS forerunner al Qaeda, and current IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the source said. He was imprisoned multiple times by U.S. forces in Iraq during their occupation.

"They want to conduct special operations to force Sweden to withdraw from the international military coalition (against Islamic State)," the source said, referencing recent attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale militant attack, but a man is currently is awaiting a verdict for allegedly building a suicide bomb with the intent of staging an attack in Sweden. In 2010 a suicide bomber died when his bomb belt went off prematurely in central Stockholm.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported Norwegian police were assessing whether or not the Norwegian royal family should proceed with a planned trip to Stockholm this weekend to celebrate the Swedish king's 70th birthday, given the supposed threat.

(Reporting by Helena Soderpalm and Daniel Dickson, additional reporting by Terje Solsvik and Stephen Kalin in Baghdad; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jeremy Gaunt)

 

[Housecarl]

Man things are jumping today.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
Business | Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:33pm EDT
Related: World, South Korea, North Korea, Aerospace & Defense

North Korea reportedly readies another missile test launch


North Korea appears to be preparing a test-launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Tuesday, after what the United States described as the "fiery, catastrophic" failure of the first attempt.

Separately, President Barack Obama said the United States is working on defending itself and its allies against potential threats from what he called an "erratic" country with an "irresponsible" leader.

On April 15, the North failed to launch what was likely a Musudan missile, with a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles), meaning it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also theoretically put the U.S. territory of Guam within range.

The Musudan missile, which can be fired from a mobile launcher, is not known to have been successfully flight-tested.

In a CBS interview that aired on Tuesday, Obama said the United States "is spending a lot more time positioning our missile development systems, so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we're also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they're posing now."

North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7, both in defiance of U.N. resolutions. On Saturday, the North conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

"There are indications that the North may fire a Musudan missile that it launched and failed on Kim Il Sung's birthday on April 15," Yonhap quoted an unnamed government official as saying. Kim Il Sung is the North's founder.

North Korea needs a "powerful nuclear deterrence" to counter U.S. hostility and threats, North Korea's foreign ministry was quoted by the state news agency KCNA as saying on Tuesday.


Related Coverage
› U.S. to eye 'other' options if North Korea continues nuclear activity: State Department

"The U.S. continued pursuance of extreme hostile policy and nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK will only make the latter make drastic progress in bolstering nuclear attack capabilities," KCNA quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.

North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a treaty. The North, whose lone major ally is neighbor China, routinely threatens to destroy South Korea and its major ally, the United States.

Obama said there "was no easy solution" to the North Korean threat, adding that while the United States "could destroy North Korea with our arsenals" there would not only be humanitarian costs but also a potential impact on South Korea.

The April 15 failure was seen as an embarrassing blow for current leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Il Sung's grandson, who has claimed several advances in weapons technology in recent months and is widely expected to conduct a fifth nuclear test soon.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun declined to confirm the Yonhap report but said the North's military would likely spend some time trying to fix the problem following the failed launch.

Experts see North Korea's Musudan test as part of an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States.

"They are erratic enough, their leader is personally irresponsible enough that we don't want them getting close" to obtaining such weapons, Obama told CBS.


Related Coverage
› White House to 'ramp up' pressure on North Korea over nuclear activity

North Korea said its nuclear test in January was a hydrogen bomb, although that claim has been disputed by foreign governments and experts given the relatively small size of the blast.

North Korea said its submarine-launched ballistic missile test on Saturday was a "great success" that provided "one more means for powerful nuclear attack".

South Korea on Tuesday described the test, which sent a missile traveling about 30 km (18 miles), as a partial success.

The United States and South Korea began talks on possible deployment of a new missile-defense system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), after the latest North Korea nuclear and rocket tests.

Expanded U.N. sanctions aimed at starving North Korea of funds for its nuclear weapons program were approved in a unanimous Security Council vote in early March on a resolution drafted by the United States and China.


(Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Dominic Evans in London; Editing by Nick Macfie and Raissa Kasolowsky)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-iran-insight-idUSKCN0XN15Z

Business | Tue Apr 26, 2016 6:37am EDT
Related: World, Russia, United Nations, Aerospace & Defense

Iran and Russia move closer but their alliance has limits

DUBAI/MOSCOW | By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Lidia Kelly


When Iran took delivery of the first parts of an advanced Russian air defense system this month, it paraded the anti-aircraft missile launchers sent by Moscow to mark Army Day.

Tehran had cause to celebrate: the Kremlin's decision a year ago to press ahead with the stalled sale of the S-300 system was the first clear evidence of a growing partnership between Russia and Iran that has since turned the tide in Syria's civil war and is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East.

But the delay in implementation of the deal also points to the limitations of a relationship that is forged from a convergence of interests rather than a shared worldview, with Iran's leadership divided over ideology and Russia showing signs of reluctance to let the alliance develop much more, according to diplomats, officials and analysts interviewed by Reuters.

Some Iranian officials want a strategic alliance, a much deeper relationship than now. But the Kremlin refers only to ongoing cooperation with a new dimension because of the conflict in Syria, in which both back Damascus.

"We are continuously developing friendly relations with Iran, but we cannot really talk about a new paradigm in our relations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month.

Russia agreed to sell the S-300 system to Iran in 2007 but froze the deal in 2010 after sanctions were imposed on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Moscow lifted the self-imposed ban in April last year as Iran and world powers got closer to the deal that led eventually to the nuclear-related sanctions being lifted in exchange for Tehran curbing its atomic program.

Russia is now weighing the financial and diplomatic benefits of arms sales to Tehran against the risk of upsetting other countries including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, or seeing Iran become too powerful.

"There is a military-economic aspect to this alliance which is beneficial to both sides," said Maziar Behrooz, associate professor of Mideast and Islamic history at San Francisco State University, who has studied Iran's relationship with Russia.

"But on a geopolitical level, Iran and Russia can only form a tactical short-term alliance, not a strategic one. I think the ideological differences between the two are just too deep."


BACKING FOR DAMASCUS

The relationship, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention in Syria in support of Iran's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Iran had already deployed its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), who had rallied Assad's troops to check the opposition's momentum. But it took Russian air power to break the stalemate and give Assad the upper hand.

Militarily, the two powers proved complementary. Iran brought disciplined ground troops who worked well with their local allies, while Russia provided the first-rate air power that Iran and Assad lack.

Diplomatically, the joint operations have made Tehran and Moscow central to any discussion about the regional security architecture.

That is important for Putin as he has sought to shore up alliances in the region and increase Moscow's influence since Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a Russian ally, was killed.

How well Moscow will fare when it comes to winning lucrative business contracts now the nuclear-related sanctions have been lifted is less clear. There is little sign so far of Russian companies making new inroads into Iran.

This is partly for ideological reasons. The Iranian establishment is divided, with President Hassan Rouhani's faction more interested in trading with the West than struggling against it, even if many U.S. policies are still condemned.

Russia has little incentive to join the mostly Shi'ite "Axis of Resistance" to Western interests in the region which is championed by the more conservative Iranian faction as this could ruin its relationships with other Middle Eastern powers such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.


SECRET MEETINGS

Russia's first big intervention in the Middle East since the Cold War followed months of secret meetings in Moscow between Putin and Iranian officials, including IRGC commanders and Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A close and exclusive alliance with Russia would suit Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, who has blamed Western influence for Iran's troubles and pushed hard to implement his "Look East" policy.

But it runs contrary to the policy of Iran's government, led by Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who have courted Western delegations on an almost weekly basis since the nuclear deal was reached with world powers last July.

The Western-educated Rouhani is less inclined toward Russia and has an uneasy relationship with Putin. Last November, during his first visit to Tehran in eight years, Putin went straight from the airport to meet Khamenei, rather than seeing Rouhani first as most visitors do.

"Rouhani and Putin don't get along that great," an Iranian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Some Iranian officials are also wary of getting too close to Russia, which fought Britain for domination of 19th century Iran and occupied the country during both World Wars.

"Russians have always used us as a tool in their foreign policy. They never stayed committed to their alliance with any country," Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, who served as spokesman for former President Mohammad Khatami, told Reuters from Tehran.

Putin has worked hard to improve relations with Iran. During the November visit, he presented Khamenei with one of the world's oldest copies of the Koran, which Russia had obtained during its occupation of northern Iran in the 19th century.

The intervention in Syria has served as a distraction from economic problems in Russia, deepened by international sanctions on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis which have forced Moscow to seek new trade partners.

Trade with Iran was only $1.3 billion in 2015, according to Russian data, though there are signs cooperation could pick up.

Russia says it is ready to start disbursing a $5-billion loan to Tehran for financing infrastructure projects. A deal is also being discussed for Russia to send oil and gas to northern Iran, where supply is scarce, and for Iran to send oil and gas from its southern fields to Russia's customers in the Gulf.

But the prospects for cooperation may be limited, sector analysts say, as, to update its energy sector, Iran mainly needs technology and equipment which Russia is also in need of.

Russia is also in talks to help upgrade Iran's dilapidated air force by selling it Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets but the deal would need the approval of the United Nations Security Council and could further strain Moscow's relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States.


(Editing by Sam Wilkin, William Maclean and Timothy Heritage)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/26/wh-slams-talk-downsize-national-security-council/

White House slams proposal to downsize national security council

By Dave Boyer - The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Comments 1

The White House hit back Tuesday at a House Republican proposal to limit the size of the White House national security council to gain leverage in disputes with the president over military policy.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the suggestion floated by House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, Texas Republican, is hypocritical. He said Congress “doesn’t seem like they’re at all prepared to pass a budget for our military this year” and has refused for two years to consider an authorization of military force against the Islamic State terrorist group.

“All of that makes clear there are too many members of Congress that don’t take seriously their responsibility to engage in a legitimate debate about policies that are critical to our national security,” Mr. Earnest said.

Because the plan to limit the size of the NSC wouldn’t likely take effect until a new administration takes over next year, Mr. Earnest observed, “It certainly makes me think that Republicans in Congress aren’t too bullish about the prospects of a Republican succeeding President Obama.”

He also said White House national security adviser Susan E. Rice has “shrunk” the size of the NSC by about 10 percent in the past 18 months.

“That’s based on her own initiative,” he said.

Republicans are considering attaching an amendment on the NSC to a defense policy bill to gain more leverage over the White House in disputes over military policy, believing that Mr. Obama has too often ignored the advice of military planners in favor of political considerations.

 

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/japans-fighter-jets-intercepted-chinese-aircraft-571-times-in-2015/

Japan's Fighter Jets Intercepted Chinese Aircraft 571 Times in 2015

The number of sorties flown to ward off Chinese intrusions into Japan’s airspace has risen substantially.

By Franz-Stefan Gady
April 26, 2016

The Japan Air-Self Defense Force (JASDF) had to dispatch its fighter jets 571 times during fiscal year 2015 to intercept Chinese military aircraft approaching or intruding Japanese airspace, Japan’s Defense Ministry revealed, according to The Japan Times.

This number constitutes an all-time high since the defense ministry’s Joint Staff Office began to keep records in fiscal year 2001 and also marks a significant increase from 2014 with 464 sorties. Japan’s fiscal year ends in March.

The JASDF has recorded the most Chinese activity in the East China Sea around a group of uninhabited islands there, known in Japan as the Senkakus and in China as the Diaoyus and claimed by both countries. The JASDF Southwestern Composite Air Division also reported an increasing Chinese presence between the islands of Okinawa and Miyako.

As I reported in February (See: “Japan Forms New Air Wing to Fend Off Chinese Advances in East China Sea”), the JASDF recently stood up a new air wing consisting of Mitsubishi F-15J all-weather air superiority fighters at Naha Air Base, located in the capital city of Okinawa, to counter Chinese intrusions. The 9th Air Wing consists of 40 F-15J fighter jets.

I explained:

The stationing of additional fighter jets is part of Tokyo’s efforts to enhance the defenses of the Ryukyu Islands chain (known in Japanese as the Nansei islands), which stretches southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan. The push comes amidst China’s growing assertiveness and military presence in the East China Sea (…).

I also elaborated that there is a growing fear among Japanese defense officials that the F-15J aircraft is no longer adequate to address China’s growing assertiveness in the air in the region:

Japan currently fields around 215 F-15J (including the upgraded F-15DJ/F-15J Kai versions) all-weather air superiority fighters built under license by Japanese defense contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. However, despite modernization efforts, there have been concerns that the F-15J, first introduced in the JASDF in 1981, is no longer adequate to deter the PLAAF.

“The numbers of scrambles alone do not tell the whole story, but we should recognize that the increase… indicates a tougher security environment,” a Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) spokesperson said last week, according to The Japan Times. “China is modernizing its air force and is clearly aiming to improve its air combat capability in faraway skies . . . Concrete activities based on those targets are reflected in these numbers.”

Interestingly, while the number of sorties targeting Chinese aircraft has increased, the JASDF saw a decline in the number of times it had to dispatch fighter jets to intercept Russian planes. “There have been 873 overall sorties in fiscal 2015, with 288 targeting Russian aircraft. In the previous fiscal year, Japan scrambled jets 943 times, 473 of which were in response to Russian incursions,” according to Stars and Stripes.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://amti.csis.org/scarborough-shoal-red-line/

Scarborough Shoal: A Red Line?

Jay Batongbacal
April 25, 2016
Philippines

As U.S. defense secretary Ashton Carter visited the Philippines at the end of the annual Balikatan military exercises between the Philippines and the United States, anxiety was quietly building over the possibility that China would create a new artificial island on Scarborough Shoal, very close to Manila. Such an undertaking would come as the Philippines experiences a transition in political leadership via presidential elections in May. Despite hopes in Manila, Carter did not offer an official assurance of U.S. assistance in preventing Scarborough from being permanently taken over by China, though his visit, which included a trip with Philippine defense secretary Voltaire Gazmin to a U.S. aircraft carrier transiting the South China Sea, was intended to signal Washington’s commitment to the alliance.

The general U.S. policy of neutrality on questions of sovereignty over South China Sea land features was originally established in the 1930s in response to Japan’s pre-war annexation of the Paracel and Spratly islands. But Scarborough Shoal was treated separately and very differently from those island groups up until the 1990s. Unlike the Paracels and Spratlys, Scarborough was among the territories transferred by the United States to the Philippines upon the latter’s independence, though the shoal was not widely known. The 1900 Treaty of Washington between Spain and the United States clarified that any and all territories administered by Spain as part of the Philippine Islands, even if they were located outside the original 1898 Treaty of Paris lines circumscribing the Philippine archipelago, were ceded to Washington. The United States took over Spain’s administration of Scarborough for purposes of safety of navigation, fishing, research, search, rescue, and salvage activities. In 1938, upon official inquiries, the U.S. Department of State recognized that the United States acquired title to the shoal from Spain on the basis of the 1900 treaty, and subsequently allowed Scarborough’s transfer to the Philippines with concurrence of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Commerce. (See primary documents)

The Philippines took over the shoal’s administration in 1946 upon its independence. After the Philippine Navy twice destroyed smugglers’ bases on the shoal in 1963, a 20-nautical-mile Naval Operating Area was established around it, turning Scarborough into a gunnery range and extension of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The security perimeter kept out any further incursions by private parties, but seasonal fishing and occasional surveys and scientific research were allowed. The area was regularly used by Philippine and U.S. military forces openly and publicly until the U.S. bases closed in 1991. Only afterward did China actually take concrete action to assert its long-dormant paper claim to the shoal, beginning with the issuance of amateur-radio licenses to hobbyists in 1994. These later intensified into the assertion of traditional fishing rights into the early 2000s that eventually grew into a claim based on historic rights and title, and finally culminated in China’s coercive exclusion of all Philippine fishing and law enforcement activities from the shoal since 2012.

At first blush, Scarborough presents a possible red line for the Philippine-U.S. military alliance. As a former U.S. territory transferred to the Philippines, it may be covered by the Mutual Defense Treaty that obligates the United States to help defend not only the Philippine metropolitan territory, but also “island territories under its jurisdiction.” Should the Philippines decide to deploy its ships to prevent the approach of vessels intended for island-building, Manila would expect the United States to make good on assurances that it will help defend Philippine “public ships and aircraft,” (meaning not only military vessels) from armed attack in the Pacific, including the South China Sea, as required by the treaty. It could be argued that employment of the same kinds of tactics Chinese maritime law enforcement or militia vessels used against the Vietnamese in 2014 in their confrontation over the deployment of an oil rig in contested waters, which included the deliberate ramming and sinking of smaller, weaker vessels by larger though lightly armed Chinese ships, would still qualify as an armed attack. Ramming, after all, is an age-old tactic used in naval warfare.

The transformation of Scarborough into an artificial island-fortress similar to Mischief Reef would be the endgame in China’s rush to establish and consolidate administrative control over the South China Sea. Not only the Philippines, but other littoral states, the United States, Japan, and allied powers have an interest in preventing this, given how China has employed nominally-civilian assets in “grey zone” activities that push the envelope of tolerable behavior at sea. If the South China Sea were “captured” through the completion of what some view as a “strategic triangle” for monitoring and controlling maritime activities, including shipping and air traffic, these countries should be expected to do whatever was necessary to neutralize that strategic advantage. Despite their reservations over great power competition, Southeast Asian states will not quietly surrender sovereign rights guaranteed by international law. Against overwhelming power, the only logical recourse is to gravitate closer together, and join with external powers. Thus, by undertaking island-building on Scarborough, China could well create the final catalyst for its own strategic containment.


Scarborough Shoal Documents

Letter to the Secretary of State July 27, 1938

Key correspondence of the U.S. Department of State recognizing the transfer of Scarborough Shoal from Spain to...

Letter to the Secretary of the Navy October 27, 1938

Key correspondence of the Department of the Navy recognizing the transfer of Scarborough Shoal from Spain to the...

Letter to the Secretary of War October 19, 1938

Key correspondence of the Civil Aeronautics Authority and Department of Commerce recognizing the transfer of...

 

[Housecarl]

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https://geopoliticalfutures.com/north-korea-nukes-and-sanity/

North Korea, Nukes and Sanity

April 25, 2016 There is rationality behind the North Koreans’ nuclear program.

By George Friedman

The North Koreans launched a ballistic missile from a submarine on April 23. This followed what appeared to be a failed launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in March. Also over the weekend, the North Korean foreign minister, in an interview with the Associated Press, said that North Korea would halt its nuclear tests (missiles weren’t mentioned) in return for the U.S. ceasing its major annual military exercises with South Korea. These are major, combined armed exercises designed to practice halting a North Korean invasion of the south.

The offer was unofficial and, given North Korea’s prior behavior, it might be retracted. But it does give us a sense of why the North Koreans are pursuing a nuclear program. First, as it crosses the line beyond which it is likely to acquire the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles, the probability of pre-emptive strikes against North Korea – not necessarily nuclear – mounts. Given China’s recently expressed dismay at North Korea’s program, the Chinese might not object to such a pre-emption, and possibly neither would Russia. In other words, for all the effort the North Koreans are putting in to developing the system, being able to complete it requires an intelligence failure on the part of the West, especially the United States. And in this case, since technological means of gathering intelligence (satellites, intercepts of information flows and so on) are involved, an intelligence failure is somewhat less likely than if they were using only human intelligence.

Second, if North Korea succeeded in launching its weapons, and destroyed a Japanese or American city, North Korea would have to expect that it would be hit with a substantial nuclear strike. North Korea is a small country and its leadership has shown few suicidal tendencies. Therefore, from a North Korean point of view, a successful launch would mean catastrophe for the country and likely the leadership as well.

It is possible that the North Koreans are crazy. Whenever American analysts encounter someone they don’t understand, or someone who delivers messages they wouldn’t deliver, the default assumption is that the leader, and likely everyone around him, is crazy. This relieves the analyst from the obligation of trying to figure out the intention behind the leader’s actions. Crazy means unpredictable, and unpredictable means that he is beyond understanding. And that in turn means that he is capable of anything. Therefore, assuming a leader is crazy takes his file off the analyst’s desk because it means he is beyond understanding and anything is possible.

Looking at Kim Jong Un, it is certainly possible to say that he doesn’t look like a rational leader, particularly given the unconfirmed report that he executed his uncle with an anti-aircraft gun. But the fact that he doesn’t look or act like any of the American candidates for the presidency doesn’t make him crazy. And if he actually evaporated his uncle, it simply means that he is a nasty piece of work. But he can’t be said to be crazy, and the analyst can’t abandon his obligation to figure him out.

It is important to note that while the North Koreans have been developing nuclear capability, they have been careful not to cross the line of erecting a missile on a launch pad with a nuclear warhead attached. Everything they have done to date has been designed to demonstrate that they might shortly develop a deliverable nuclear weapon, but that they have not yet done so. They have developed the possibility of the threat, without crossing the line where a country, the United States in particular, would find it necessary to launch a pre-emptive attack. This means that they are aware of the line and are extremely controlled in not crossing it.

They have a rational reason for this program, not dissimilar to Iran’s: it is a negotiating tool. It is obvious to any country that the United States will give its undivided attention to a nation developing a nuclear capability. It is also obvious that the United States does not act until it is forced to. The American response to a nuclear program is obsession, anxiety and the development of contingency plans.

During the time after serious development of a nuclear weapon has begun, and before deployment, the United States is inclined to negotiate. Without a program, the U.S. is indifferent. After deployment, the United States will act. In between those two poles, the United States is constantly seeking solutions that do not involve military action. Premature action might fail to destroy the program and harden the other side’s conviction that it must have nuclear weapons. Pre-emption after deployment might require a nuclear strike, and the United States doesn’t want to reintroduce that as an option.

Therefore, a nation having developed a program is in an optimal position to achieve concessions from the United States. Thus, the North Korean foreign minister’s offer to exchange nuclear tests (not the program itself) for a halt in U.S.-South Korean exercises is a very logical, if exploratory, move. Not surprisingly, the United States rejected the idea out of hand. The Americans undoubtedly expected some sort of offer and the North Koreans undoubtedly expected the American refusal. The U.S. doesn’t want North Korea to only halt tests but to halt the program. But the North Koreans will not trade the program itself for anything as minor as annual military exercises.

The North Koreans’ problem is that they have already double-crossed the United States several times, having exchanged the program in the past for money and food. In due course, they resumed it. They have used the nuclear program as a kind of ATM, where they can withdraw valuable concessions from the United States and then fail to fully implement their promise. But that is simply dishonest, not crazy.

It is particularly not crazy because it displays an accurate North Korean read on the United States. The United States is focused on the North Korean threat, but will not act decisively. North Korea, therefore, has room for maneuver. It can in any case use the program to build its credibility at home. The unknowns of the nuclear program will deter any conventional action, regardless of how unlikely it is the program will be completed. And with care, it can kick off another round of negotiations, possibly with goodies at the end.

For North Korea, this is a rational calculus of the behavior of its major potential enemy. And talking in ways Americans regard as crazy is simply a convincing way to freeze the Americans in place. Put simply, being a jerk doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It is not a bad negotiating posture in any market. But this is also not a nuclear program that is going to deploy a target for the United States. It is a way to manage the United States.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-may-have-secretly-tested-ballistic-missile-tech-with-space-launch/

Iran may have secretly tested ballistic missile tech with ‘space launch’

Launch of rocket ostensibly designed to send satellites into orbit may have actually been cover for intercontinental missile research banned by UN

By Judah Ari Gross April 26, 2016, 5:40 pm
Comments 9

Iran test-fired an advanced rocket system in the Dasht-e Kavir desert last week, according to Russian and American officials, in what some considered a cover for intercontinental ballistic missile research.

The Simorgh, as the rocket is known, is ostensibly designed to launch satellites into orbit. However, the technology involved is “practically identical” to intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, and could be used to launch a nuclear device at targets thousands of miles away, according to Amir Toumaj, a research analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

The rocket launch was initially detected by two separate Russian radar stations at 9:33 a.m. GMT on April 19, Russian media reported, and it was later confirmed by US sources who first disclosed the test fire to the Washington Free Beacon.

Under the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed last year, ballistic missile tests are not outright forbidden, but they are “not consistent” with a United Nations Security Council resolution from July 2015, US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said.

According to the UN decision, “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology” until October 2023.

That has not stopped Iran from carrying out four tests of ballistic missile technology, including this most recent one, since the nuclear deal was adopted on October 18, 2015.

Though some US officials confirmed news of last week’s launch, the US State Department spokesperson refused to publicly acknowledge it, saying only he’d “seen these reports.”

“Certainly if it’s true, and we’re talking about a ballistic missile launch or the testing of ballistic missile technologies, that’s obviously of concern to us,” Kirby said last Wednesday, adding, “I don’t want to speculate about any future actions one way or another.”

It was not immediately clear if the launch was a success, in large part because the exact purpose of the test was not known. The rocket did not exit earth’s atmosphere, which prompted some US officials to tell Fox News that Iran had not achieved its goal.

However, if the intent of the launch was not to put a satellite into orbit, but rather to test just the first stage of the rocket, last week’s test may indeed have fulfilled its mission, which was Toumaj’s assessment of the launch.

“According to [Russian] preliminary data, this was successful and impacted in the southern parts of Iran,” Toumaj told The Times of Israel via email.

The rocket, dubbed the Simorgh after a griffin-like creature in Persian mythology, was first unveiled in 2010, but was mothballed for a few years, “possibly due to budgetary issues,” according to Toumaj, whose research focuses on Iranian issues.

It is a liquid-fueled rocket similar to the North Korean Unha, which makes sense considering “the cooperation between Tehran and Pyongong on ballistic missiles is well-documented,” Toumaj wrote about the Simorgh test in an analysis last week.

Last month, the head of Iran’s National Space Center Manouchehr Manteqi told local media the missile would be tested in three phases, the first of which would take place in the spring. The next phase would take place in the late summer or early fall of 2016, and the final test would be carried out in early 2017, Manteqi said.

Despite having stated that launches would be carried out in the near future, the Iranian government has yet to officially recognize last week’s launch, nor has the issue been covered in local media save for one website, which only attributed news of the test fire to “foreign reports.”

To Toumaj, this is not surprising, as the “Islamic Republic has no reason to announce tests until the full launch next year, assuming they proceed as planned,” he said.

Iran is on track to develop an operational ICBM by the year 2020, Admiral William Gortney of the North American Aerospace Defense Command told the US Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month.

“Iran’s continuing pursuit of long-range missile capabilities and ballistic missile and space launch programs, in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions, remains a serious concern,” Gortney added.

In late November, Iran launched a mid-range missile with a range of 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from a site near the Gulf of Oman, US officials said.

And in March, Iran test-fired two more ballistic missiles, which an Iranian news agency said had the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” written on them in Hebrew. An Iranian commander said the test was designed to demonstrate to Israel, whose destruction Iran seeks, that it is within Iranian missile range.

The March 9 launch sparked international fury as it appeared to flout the agreements made in the Iranian nuclear deal.

The US, France, Britain and Germany decried the launch as “destabilizing and provocative” and called for UN action.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif brushed off the threat of UN action last month, saying the resolution was non-binding. According to Zarif, the wording of the decision — that Iran is merely “called upon” not to test ballistic missiles — does not make it legally obligatory.

Moreover, since Iran does not yet possess nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic “[does] not design any missiles to carry things we do not have,” Zarif said during a press conference in Australia.

This is something of a fatuous argument, as “these ballistic missiles are inherently nuclear-capable,” Toumaj said, whether they are specifically designed to carry an atomic device or not.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.smh.com.au/comment/south...take-to-the-brink-of-war-20160425-goe3zi.html

South China Sea: The fight China will take to the brink of war

Date April 26, 2016 24 reading now
Comments 100
Peter Hartcher
Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

Video

The world's two greatest powers are competing for military dominance of the western Pacific Ocean and the contest is about to intensify. The US and China are each jockeying for advantage as they anticipate a quickening in a struggle that "has the potential to escalate into one of the deadliest conflicts of our time, if not history", according to Malaysia's Defence Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein.

An important ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague is expected in the weeks ahead. It will rule on a claim by a US ally, the Philippines, to sovereignty over reefs that are also claimed by China. Most experts expect the ruling, due by the end of June, will favour the Philippines. Beijing has warned it will not recognise the court's jurisdiction.

The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that, if the court ruled against it, Beijing would accelerate plans to build an artificial island around one of the reefs at the heart of the dispute, Scarborough Shoal. The shoal is 230kilometres from the Philippines coast and 1020kilometres from China's.

China recently put fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles on another island a few hundred kilometres away, Woody Island. The President of China Xi Jinping is reported to be planning to travel there soon.

The US Defence Secretary Ash Carter cancelled a visit to China, but two weeks ago went to India and the Philippines to conclude base-sharing and other agreements to strengthen co-operation out of shared worry over China.

The US position is the same as Australia's: it takes no sides over the disputed territories but urges the claimants to settle the argument through negotiation, not force.

In the same week, the top Chinese military officer, General Fan Changlong, made a visit to the Spratly Islands, also subject to rival claims by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. China has built artificial islands, runways, lighthouses and ports there, despite the objections of all the other claimants.

Then, last week, in another unmistakeable sign of hardening Chinese determination, Xi made his first public appearance in military uniform and formally claimed the title of commander in chief of China's war-fighting headquarters.

What is Xi doing? What does China hope to achieve? And where is this dispute heading? An eminent Chinese expert, Dr Shi Yinghong, provides answers.

Xi has declared the pursuit of "China's Dream", a national resurgence after centuries of foreign domination. Shi, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, says there are three international implications. First, Xi wants China to be acknowledged as a superpower equal to the US. Second, he wants China to become the co-manager of global affairs with the US, a Group of Two for world governance. Third, "China must be the preponderant power in the Western Pacific and have some advantage over the US", he told me. Shi's definition of Chinese aims supports that of the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris, who says China seeks "hegemony in East Asia".

Shi, who has been an adviser to the State Council, China's cabinet, for the past five years, says this will be "based on an arms build up and the strategic ability to go tit-for-tat with the US and to force the US finally to recognise Chinese preponderance" in China's claimed sphere.

"China," Shi explains, "must be number one in diplomatic influence and economic clout and maybe in [military] force. It wants to prevent the US military's freedom of navigation eventually, and gradually squeeze Vietnam, the Philippines and all the others out of the South China Sea." This is precisely what the region's governments fear.

Xi is a decisive leader, says Shi, who "shows that he has guts – he's not afraid of confrontation".

"He wants the support of the people and the support of the military and he wants to win glory. He believes in China's historical greatness." In this, Shi says, the president is at one with the Chinese public: "Xi is China. Chinese citizens are more nationalistic and triumphalist than ever before. In this sense, Xi represents the people."

China's claim to about 90 per cent of the South China Sea is based on "land left by our ancestors – it is sovereign and sacred and Xi's policy is not to concede even one inch".

Harvard's Ross Terrill describes today's China as an empire that "appropriates an imperial idea of China, reinventing a 2500-year-old autocracy to control its population and hector non-Chinese neighbouring peoples".

Yet Shi says there is an important qualification to Xi's ambition. Xi wants regional preponderance "without a major war".

The truth of this is illustrated by China's decision to halt advances on territory claimed by Japan in their recent territorial clash. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reinterpreted Japan's constitution, rearmed its military, reaffirmed its US alliance and prepared for full-scale war to stop China. Faced with imminent, major war, Beijing relented.

But in the South China Sea, there is no such resistance, not yet, at least. Shi describes Barack Obama's responses so far as "minimalist". The risk that the US faces is "it will lose, step by step".

China's risk? "It will make substantial gains and finally may mobilise US society and other middle powers to say 'enough is enough'," particularly if there is a more assertive US president after November.

In the past few centuries, no new great power has managed to arise without going to war with an existing one over clashing spheres of influence. We will see if humanity has learnt anything.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2016/04/catalan-cauldron

Europe
25 April 2016

The Catalan cauldron

The prospect of the break-up of Spain poses yet another challenge to Europe.

By Brendan Simms and Montserrat Guibernau

As Britain prepares to mark the centenary of the bloodiest battle in the First World War, the Somme, in July, Spain is bracing itself for an even more traumatic anniversary. In July 2016 it will be 80 years since the start of a civil war that tore the country apart and continues to divide it today. In the four decades since the return of democracy in the mid-1970s, Spaniards slowly inched towards rejecting the extreme violence of the Francoist right (and elements of the opposing left) as well as acceptance of various federal arrangements to accommodate the national sentiments of the Basques and Catalans, whose aspirations Franco had so brutally suppressed. In recent years, however, this consensus has been called fundamentally into question, with severe potential consequences not only for the unity of Spain, but the cohesion of the European Union.

On 27 October 2015, after the Catalan elections, the new parliament in Barcelona passed a declaration requesting the start of a formal secession process from Spain, to be in place in 18 months. The immediate reaction of Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was to announce that the state was entitled “to use any available judicial and political mechanism contained in the constitution and in the laws to defend the sovereignty of the Spanish people and of the general interest of Spain”. The preamble to the constitution proclaims the Spanish nation’s desire to “protect all Spaniards and the peoples of Spain in exercising their *human rights, their cultures and traditions, languages and institutions”. Probably the most disputed articles are 2 and 8, which state, respectively, that “the constitution is based upon the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation, common and indivisible patria of all Spaniards” and that “the army’s mission is to guarantee the sovereignty and independence of Spain, to defend its territorial integrity and the constitutional set-up”. Rajoy’s implication was clear: the unity of the country would be maintained, if necessary by military means.

It was Madrid, however, that broke with the federal consensus some years ago and thus boosted secessionist sentiment in Catalonia. José María Aznar’s government (1996-2004) failed to respond to demands for greater autonomy for Catalonia, at a time when secession was not even mentioned. This led to an increasing awareness among Catalans that the federal transfer system within Spain left them with an annual deficit of 8 per cent of Catalonia’s GDP because of the financial arrangements established by the Spanish state, an issue aggravated by the effect of the global financial crisis. Catalan nationalism thus became a matter of not only the heart, but also the pocket. Even more important was the Spanish legal challenge to the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia 2006 and its subsequent dilution, after it had been sanctioned by the Catalan parliament, and by both the Spanish congress of deputies and the senate, not to mention the Catalan people in a legally binding referendum.

According to the Spanish high court of justice, some of the statute’s content did not comply with the Spanish constitution. This outraged many Catalans, who could not understand how the newly approved statute – after following all the procedures and modifications requested by Spain’s political institutions and constitution – could still be challenged. Four years later, the Spanish high court finally delivered its verdict on 28 June 2010. It removed vital points from the Statute of Autonomy 2006 and declared them non-constitutional. All this led to a revival of Catalan nationalism, culminating in a symbolic, non-binding referendum in November 2014, which was boycotted by opponents and produced a majority of 80 per cent in favour of independence.

The roots of this antagonism go deep, to the civil war that broke out on 17-18 July 1936 when some sectors of the army rebelled against the legitimate government of the Second Republic. The rebels rejected democracy, the party system, separation between church and state, and the autonomy of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia. Their primary objective was to re-establish “order” by eliminating all vestiges of communism and anarchism, then quite strong in some parts of Spain.

High on the list of General Franco’s targets was Catalan nationalism, which had been growing since the late 19th century. The industrialisation of Catalonia and the Basque Country left the most economically developed parts of the Spanish state politically subject to the less prosperous Castile. By the end of the 19th century and influenced by German Romanticism, la Renaixença – a movement for national and cultural renaissance – prompted demands for Catalan autonomy, first in the form of regionalism and later in demands for a federal state.

Catalan nationalism did not emerge as a unified phenomenon. Diverse political ideologies and cultural influences gave rise to various types of nationalism, from the conservative nationalism of Jaime Balmes to the federalism of Francesc Pi i Margall, to the Catholic nationalism of Bishop Torres i Bages and the Catalan Marxism of Andreu Nin, among others. Catalonia enjoyed some autonomy under the administrative government of the Mancomunitat or “commonwealth” from 1913 onwards. This was halted by the 1923 coup d’état of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. Autonomy was granted again during the Second Spanish Republic from 1931-39 – but abolished by Francisco Franco’s decree of 5 April 1938.

Franco’s victory led to the suppression of Catalan political institutions, the banning of the Catalan language and proscription of all the symbolic elements of Catalan identity, from the national flag (the Senyera) to the national anthem (“Els Segadors”). In February 1939, the institutions of the autonomous Generalitat went into exile in France. In 1940 the Gestapo arrested the president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, and handed him over to Spanish officials. He was interrogated and tortured in Madrid, then sent to Barcelona, where he was court-martialled and executed at Montjuïc Castle on 15 October 1940. The most important representatives of the democratic parties banned by the regime went into exile, or were imprisoned or executed. The authoritarian state designed by Franco crushed dissent and used brute power to suppress the historical nations included within its territory. The regime’s aim was to annihilate the Catalans and the Basques as nations.

***

After almost 40 years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia recovered its government, the Generalitat, in 1977 – before the drafting of the Spanish constitution in 1978 – and sanctioned a new statute of autonomy in 1979. The 2006 statute was expected, at the time, to update and expand Catalans’ aspiration for further devolution within Spain: never secession.

At present, a renewed nostalgia and enthusiasm for Francoism can be found among some sections of the Spanish right. One of the main challenges of the newly democratic government from the mid-1970s onwards was to get rid of the symbols of Francoism that had divided Spaniards between “winners” and “losers” in the civil war. It was only in 2007 that the then prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, guided the Law of Historic Memory through parliament with the aim of removing hundreds of Fascist symbols reminiscent of the Franco era from public buildings. It also sought to make reparations to victims of the civil war and the ensuing dictatorship.

There still exist hundreds of other references to the Fascist regime, however, with streets, colleges and roads named after Franco and his generals. The most controversial of these is the Valle de los Caídos (“Valley of the Fallen”), near Madrid, commissioned by Franco as his final resting place. It supposedly honours the civil war dead, but is primarily a monument to the general and his regime, housing the graves of Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the fascist Falange political party. Roughly 450,000 people visit it every year, and while most of them are foreign tourists, groups of Falangists and supporters of the old regime who come to pay tribute to the dictator have frequented it. Nostalgics for Francoism, though still a small minority within modern Spain, are becoming vociferous. They find common ground with far-right-wing conservatism, particularly in their shared aversion to federalism.

On 3 August last year Artur Mas, the then president of Catalonia, called an extraordinary parliamentary election after all attempts to negotiate and agree on a legally binding referendum with the Spanish government failed. Supporters of independence immediately announced that the forthcoming Catalan elections would be regarded as a plebiscite on independence.

On a turnout of more than three-quarters of the electorate, supporters of outright independence gained 48 per cent of the vote, while those backing a unitary state secured 39 per cent. On 9 November 2015 the Catalan parliament formally declared the start of the process leading to building an independent Catalan state in the form of a republic. It also proclaimed the beginning of a participative, open, integrating and active citizens’ constituent process to lay the foundations for a future Catalan constitution. The Catalan government vowed to move forward with its secession process. Immediately, the Spanish Constitutional Court suspended the Catalan law setting out a path to independence and warned that defiance could lead to criminal charges.

Worse still for Madrid, secessionism is gaining strength not only in Catalonia but also in the Basque Country, whose premier, Iñigo Urkullu, demands a “legal consultation” on the northern region’s future in Spain. He supports a new statute for the Basque Country and defends its status as a nation in the EU. Similarly to Catalonia, the Basque Country has a distinct language and culture, and benefits from the so-called concierto económico, an advantageous financial deal with the Spanish state.

***

The Spanish government’s refusal to engage constructively with Catalan nationalism contrasts markedly with London’s more relaxed and ultimately more successful response to Scottish nationalist aspirations. The “Edinburgh Agreement” between the British Prime Minister and the then first minister of Scotland to allow a binding referendum on Scottish independence stands in sharp contrast to the Spanish government’s outright opposition to a similar vote in Catalonia. Basques and Catalans find deaf ears regarding further devolution and binding referendums on self-determination. This highlights the distance between various conceptions of democracy that coexist inside the European Union, rooted in the diverse political cultures of nations with varying historical backgrounds.

All this matters, not only to Spain but to the EU, because it is part of a broad trend across the continent. In mainland Europe, demands for self-determination are running strong in Flanders as well as parts of Spain. In turn, tensions between Italy and Austria over control of South Tyrol (Trentino Alto Adige, to the Italians) remain high, as do demands advanced by the South Tyrol*ean secessionist movement. Bavarian regionalism is critical of the present German (and European) political order. Further to that, modern Venetian nationalism and its long-standing demands for independence have prompted a renewal of Venetian as a language taught in schools and spoken by almost four million people.

Matters are now coming to a head. Catalonia and Spain are in flux following two inconclusive elections. In January, after a prolonged stand-off, the sitting Catalan president, Artur Mas, made way for a fellow nationalist, Carles Puigdemont. He was the first to take the oath of office without making the traditional oath of loyalty to the Spanish constitution and the king. Felipe VI, in turn, did not congratulate Puigdemont.

The new president has announced that he plans to draw up a constitution, to be voted on in a referendum “to constitute the Catalan Republic” at the end of an 18-month consultation process. Puigdemont’s strategy envisages not a dramatic unilateral declaration of independence, but a more gradual process of disconnection in constant dialogue with the Spanish government and Catalan political parties. Let no one be deceived by this “softly-softly” approach: it is designed to culminate, in a year and a half, perhaps sooner, in a vote on establishing a separate, sovereign state of Catalonia.

Meanwhile, Spanish politics are in flux. The elections to the Cortes on 20 December 2015 resulted in a victory for Conservatism, but also the most fragmented Spanish parliament ever and, as yet, no government. Almost the only thing the Spanish parties can agree on is opposition to Catalan independence, yet even here there are divisions over whether more autonomy should be granted and what response to make to unilateral moves by the Catalans.

The stakes are high for both sides. By pressing too hard, too early, Catalan nationalists may provoke Madrid. This would be a mistake. Strategy is important and recent events in Catalonia will weaken the Catalans’ democratic, peaceful and legitimate desire to hold a referendum on independence. Likewise, a heavy-handed response from Madrid will not only destroy the residual bonds between centre and periphery in Spain, but put the central government in the dock internationally. A confrontation will also cut across the only possible solution to this and all other national conflicts within the eurozone, which is full continental political union. Full union would render the separation of Catalonia from Spain as irrelevant to the functioning of the EU, and the inhabitants of both areas, as the separation of West Virginia from Virginia proper in the United States today.

In a nightmare scenario, radicalisation and unrest could emerge in Catalonia, with division between Catalans and memories of the Spanish Civil War coming to the fore. In this context, it might become very difficult to prevent violence.

This is the last thing that Brussels wants to hear as it grapples with the euro crisis, Russian territorial revisionism, Islamist terror, the migrant question and the prospect of Brexit. A meltdown in Catalonia will create dilemmas for Europe, starting from problems with Schengen, and raise questions about continued membership of the EU. It will also work against Catalans’ expectations of receiving EU support in their quest for independence, as turmoil in Europe will prompt nation states to close ranks. The EU will not be expected to intervene, because this scenario would – at least initially – be defined as an “internal affair of Spain”. Conflict between Barcelona and Madrid would shatter one of Europe’s biggest member states.

In that event, the peninsula will become the hottest point in an emerging “arc of crisis” across the southern flank of the EU, stretching from Portugal across Spain, an Italy struggling along with everything else to cope with the flow of migrants, the troubled Balkans, to Greece, which is perpetually perturbed. This highlights yet another flaw in the EU. It has no institutional framework for dealing with Catalan demands to become a nation within the Union, or those of other populations. Merely insisting on Spanish state sovereignty will not make the problem go away for Brussels, or for Europe as a whole. This is a potential matter of life and death not only for Spaniards and Catalans, but perhaps for the EU itself.

Brendan Simms is the director of the Forum on Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Project for Democratic Union Montserrat Guibernau is a visiting scholar in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge and a member of the Forum on Geopolitics

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...c4-11e6-bc53-db634ca94a2a-20160426-story.html

Pakistan has a China connection to nuclear trouble

By Eli Lake, (c) 2016, Bloomberg View
(c) 2016, Bloomberg View

Pakistan held its annual military day parade and displayed its new medium-range nuclear missiles last month, and it barely made a splash in Washington. But at least one analyst was paying close attention.

Richard Fisher, an expert on Chinese military technology at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, began studying the public satellite photographs of the Shaheen III missiles and came to an alarming conclusion: The transport-erector-launcher, or TEL, for the Pakistani mobile rocket matched a Chinese design that Beijing had exported in 2011 to North Korea.

Specifically, Fisher found that the Chinese, North Korean and Pakistani TELs shared the same foothold shape, the same chassis slope and the same exhaust processing system over the engine compartment.

Now, two leading Republicans in Congress are asking the Pentagon, the State Department and the director of national intelligence to look into Fisher's findings. I obtained a copy of the letter from Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism and strategic forces, and Ted Poe of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on nonproliferation and trade.

Poe and Rogers are alarmed. While China and Pakistan have cooperated on military technology for decades, and China's government announced in 2013 it would be assisting with the construction of nuclear power plants in Karachi, the extent of China's cooperation with Pakistan's nuclear weapons program has always been murky. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has had its suspicions that China assisted Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. But U.S. presidents have also certified publicly since the 1980s that China was not a nuclear proliferator.

If Fisher's research is confirmed, then it would be evidence that China has been assisting Pakistan's nuclear program and continues to do so to this day.

"We are deeply concerned that the TEL displayed in Pakistan was acquired from China," Poe and Rogers wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. "The transfer of an item as advanced and significant . . . would require the approval from the highest levels of China's government if not also the People's Liberation Army. Such cooperation between the governments of Pakistan and China would represent a threat to the national security of the United States and its allies."

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment Monday.

In a letter to Poe and Rogers summarizing his findings, Fisher wrote that if his research is confirmed, it would be grounds to seek new sanctions against China at the United Nations, and would trigger the enforcement of existing U.S. sanctions. He also said that it's a threat in and of itself if China is exporting such equipment or even the design of such technology, because it could end up in North Korea, which in turn could re-export it to Iran.

This is the kind of diplomatic problem President Barack Obama would likely want to avoid in the final months of his presidency. After all, despite his protests and promises to refocus America's defensive posture to the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese have moved ahead with plans to militarize islands it built up in the South China Sea. But the rest of the world may not be able to wait this long. The new Pakistani missiles have a range of 1,700 miles, which would cover all of India. If China helped Pakistan with the technology for these weapons, it raises the question what other nuclear programs China is willing to assist.

- - -

Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake writes about politics and foreign affairs. For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.

 

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-submarines-idUSKCN0XM2F5

World | Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:08pm EDT
Related: World

France beats rival bidders to $40 billion Australian submarine deal

SYDNEY/TOKYO | By Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly

Video

France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a A$50 billion ($40 billion) deal to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defense contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.

The victory for state-owned naval contractor DCNS Group underscored France's strengths in developing a compelling military-industrial bid, and is a blow for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to develop defense export capabilities as part of a more muscular security agenda.

Reuters earlier reported that DCNS would be announced as the winner, citing sources with knowledge of the process.

"The recommendation of our competitive evaluation process ... was unequivocal that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs," Turnbull told reporters in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide where the submarines will be built.

In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said the deal "marks a decisive step in the strategic partnership between our two countries", while Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was "cause for optimism and pride."

The French shipbuilder's share of the overall contract will amount to about 8 billion euros ($9.02 billion), according to sources with knowledge of the deal. DCNS chief Hervé Guillou said the deal would create around 4,000 French jobs, benefiting shipyards and industrial sites in Lorient, Brest, Nantes and Cherbourg.

Australia is ramping up defense spending, seeking to protect its strategic and trade interests in Asia-Pacific as the United States and its allies grapple with China's rising power.

Japan's government with its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T) boat had been seen as early frontrunners for the contract, but their inexperience in global defense deals and an initial reluctance to say they would build in Australia saw them slip behind DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG (TKAG.DE).


POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Turnbull's gamble on a July 2 general election sped up the process.

The contract will have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"The submarine project .. will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel," said Turnbull.

DCNS, which traces its roots to 1624 and is 35 percent-owned by defense electronics giant Thales SA (TCFP.PA), proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. DCNS enlisted heads of industry and top government figures to convince Australia of the merits of its offering and the benefits to the broader relationship.

"This is a great opportunity for DCNS because they will work with the Australian navy for the long run as it is a series of contracts and a huge opportunity to invest more and to develop business," French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of a trade fair in Hannover, Germany.

Thales shares initially rose more than 3 percent in Paris to a record high.

Japan had offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 metric ton Soryu submarine, a deal that would have cemented closer strategic and defense ties with two of Washington's key Asia-Pacific allies, but risked antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

Paul Burton, Defense Industry and Budgets Director at HIS Jane's said it was a surprise from a strategic standpoint that Japan didn’t win. "Japan is very keen to secure a significant piece of overseas business following the relaxation of its export legislation, and this Australian submarine deal was widely regarded as becoming a landmark trade," he said.

"The tradecraft required to convince a sophisticated domestic buyer that Japan's was superior to that offered by France was lacking."

ThyssenKrupp was proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters weighed against the German bid.

Both losing bidders said they were disappointed by the decision, but remain committed to their Australian businesses.

"Thyssenkrupp will always be willing to further contribute to Australia’s naval capabilities," said Hans Atzpodien, Chairman of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems.

Japan's Defence Minister Gen. Nakatani said the decision was "deeply regrettable," and he would ask Australia to explain why it didn't pick Japan's design.

America's Raytheon Co (RTN.N), which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet. A decision on the weapons system is due later this year.


(Reporting by Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly, with additional reporting by Matt Siegel in Sydney, Cyril Altmeyer in Paris and Andreas Framke in Hannover; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Ian Geoghegan)

http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resource...604&w=644&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC3P0GL
A Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A, designed by DCNS specifically for the Royal Australian Navy as Australia intends to buy 12 new submarines, is seen in this illustration picture released by France's DCNS to Reuters on April 26, 2016. DCNS/Handout via Reuters

 

[Housecarl]

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http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/5-ways-respond-if-north-korea-tests-another-nuke-15931

The Skeptics

5 Ways to Respond If North Korea Tests Another Nuke

Doug Bandow
April 25, 2016
Comments 12

In January North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in the face of universal international protest. Even China, Pyongyang’s one nominal ally, joined in the criticism.

With Beijing’s support the United Nations imposed new sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The U.S. and its allies warned Pyongyang of further isolation if the DPRK continued to flout the will of the international community.

Now the North appears to be preparing another nuclear test. The action might be timed for the upcoming Korean Workers’ Party congress [4], the first in three decades. Presenting North Korea as a powerful nation and Kim Jong-un as a far-seeing leader are among the conference’s most important objectives.

If the DPRK conducts another test, no further proof will be needed that the North intends to become a significant nuclear power. When the Agreed Framework [5] was negotiated two decades ago, Pyongyang might have been willing to abandon its nuclear ambitions at the right price. Those days are long past. North Korea has invested too much to drop the program. Only because of its nuclear weapons does anyone beyond its borders pay attention to the North. Nukes also reinforce military loyalty to the Kim dynasty.

Moreover, the North lives the old Henry Kissinger aphorism that even paranoids have enemies. What country does not want regime change in the DPRK? The United States, backed by the Europeans, has demonstrated its willingness to oust dictators on its “bad” list, even after making a deal with them, such as Muammar el-Qaddafi. Pyongyang does not even trust its supposed friend to the north.

Indeed, what makes the prospect of another test particularly dramatic is Kim Jong-un’s apparent willingness to proceed at any cost. He can have little doubt that the U.S. will press for additional sanctions. He knows that no other government will defend his regime. He is aware that the People’s Republic of China has no affection for its small, troublesome neighbor. Indeed, after the January test the PRC approved tougher international penalties, tightened border controls, and even allowed the embarrassing mass defection [6] of North Korean restaurant workers. Every additional DPRK provocation threatens to become the last back-breaking straw for China, leading it to target food and energy aid, which would cause Pyongyang enormous hardship.

What to do when nothing so far has worked?

First, the United States, Republic of Korea and Japan should consider how to deal with a nuclear North Korea. Two decades of pronouncements that the North must not develop nuclear weapons are for naught—and, indeed, are far more embarrassing than any busted “red line” over Syrian chemical weapons. Now what?

A refusal to acknowledge the DPRK as a nuclear power won’t stop it from being one. If North Korea continues to augment its capabilities, then what? What military, political and economic steps should be taken, and by whom? Since neither Moscow nor Beijing favors a nuclear North, how would they react? How far outward would the impact of an unstable and threatening DPRK radiate? The more likely the prospect of Pyongyang as a modest nuclear power, the more urgent serious thinking about a transformed Northeast Asia.

Second, Japan and the ROK should set aside past differences to confront a common threat. There is much blame to go around for the two nations’ poor relationship, the bulk of it resting on Tokyo. However, the colonial era ended seventy-one years ago and Japan poses no future threat to the South. These two prosperous democratic countries should prepare for problems of the future rather than reinvigorate hatreds of the past.

Third, the United States and its allies should further engage Beijing over Pyongyang. The PRC has the most leverage with the North because of the former’s energy and food assistance, but is hesitant to risk encouraging regime collapse. Thus, Washington, in particular, must address China’s concerns, including mass refugee flows, factional conflict and a reunited Korea allied with America. Lecturing the PRC about its duty to help the U.S. has never worked. The allies need to offer to share costs, acknowledge Chinese interests, and convince Beijing that they would not take geopolitical advantage of the demise of the PRC’s one East Asian ally.

Fourth, Washington should offer to defuse the perceived threat environment facing the North, backed by an offer to negotiate on issues other than nuclear weapons. This doesn’t mean blaming America, trusting Pyongyang, endorsing a nuclear North, or appeasing Kim Jong-un. Rather, it means recognizing that the current regime has reason to fear the United States. That no doubt at least contributes to its desire to be well-armed. To the extent that Kim desires a wealthier nation, he might be willing to limit his arms programs if he is less concerned about an American threat to his dynasty’s future. Maybe not, but Washington should test the possibility.

Fifth, the allies should consider the advisability of Japan and South Korea developing countervailing nuclear arsenals. America’s nuclear umbrella keeps the U.S. dangerously entangled in a potential conflict no longer critical to American security. A number of South Koreans have raised the possibility of building a bomb: the prospect horrifies nonproliferation advocates but would allow Washington to step back and might force the PRC to act.

We are approaching a time when Northeast Asia will have three nuclear powers, all potentially bad actors: China, Russia, and the North. Washington can forever remain in the middle of this unstable nuclear scrum, or America’s democratic allies can deter aggression on their own. The idea certainly is worth discussing, especially within hearing of Chinese officials.

Foreign-policy hawks ritualistically complain about the Obama administration’s failure to enforce the chemical weapons red line. If lost credibility is so important, what about the two decades of pronouncements that the DPRK would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons? North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons could significantly change the dynamic in Northeast Asia.

It’s still okay to hope for collapse, implosion, or some other deus ex machina to “solve” the problem of the North. But it is foolish to expect a miraculous rescue. The United States and its friends should start planning seriously for a nuclear DPRK. They should be prepared for when North Korea stands with India, Israel and Pakistan as a mid-level nuclear power.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire [7] (Xulon).

Image [8]: Operation Storax - Sedan test. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

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