WAR 04-25-2020-to-05-01-24-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(414) 04-04-2020-to-4-10-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****



WAR - 04-04-2020-to-4-10-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
(411) 03-14-2020-to-03-20-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** WAR - 03-14-2020-to-03-20-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (412)...

www.timebomb2000.com




(415) 04-11-2020-to-4-17-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****



WAR - 04-11-2020-to-4-17-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
(412) 03-21-2020-to-03-27-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** WAR - 03-21-2020-to-03-27-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (413)...

www.timebomb2000.com
(416) 04-18-2020-to-04-24-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
04-18-2020-to-4-24-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

-----------------

Hummm…..

Iran Commander Claims Forces Were Ready to Hit 400 U.S. Targets in January

Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the remarks amid a fresh bout of saber-rattling between Tehran and Washington over the Persian Gulf.

www.newsweek.com

World
Iran Air Commander Claims Forces Were Ready to Hit 400 U.S. Targets If Washington Retaliated After January Rocket Attack
By David Brennan On 4/24/20 at 6:54 AM EDT


The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) air arm has claimed his troops were ready to attack hundreds of additional American targets if January's limited exchange of fire escalated into a wider conflict.

IRGC Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the comments Friday when talking to reporters about the Corps' successful satellite launch earlier this week, which comes as Washington and Tehran exchange fresh military threats in the Persian Gulf.

Iran and the U.S. appeared close to war in January after President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani.

The drone strike that killed Soleimani outside Baghdad International Airport in Iraq was the culmination of weeks of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, during which Iran-backed Iraqi militias killed an American at an Iraqi base in the northern city of Kirkuk and took part in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Soleimani was the commander of the IRGC's clandestine Quds Force and widely considered the second -most powerful figure within the regime. He was responsible for Iran's foreign military operations and directing a host of proxy militias across the Middle East.

In response, Iran fired ballistic missiles at two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. troops. At the Ayn al-Assad air base in the west of the country the missiles wounded more than 100 American troops, though this was not immediately announced.

The White House chose not to retaliate after the strikes, though Trump had previously threatened to attack 52 Iranian targets—possibly including cultural sites, which would constitute a war crime—if Iran struck back against Americans.

Hajizadeh said Friday that IRGC troops were ready for a wider assault if the U.S. responded to the Ayn al-Assad bombardment.

He suggested that by killing Soleimani, the Trump administration "wanted to show that they killed a symbol of resistance, and they were sure that Iran would not respond to their attack."

Hajizadeh explained that Iranian officials thought the U.S. would respond to the Ayn al-Assad attack within 20 minutes, "so we were ready to attack 400 American targets." The commander gave no further information about what the targets were, nor how Iranian troops intended to attack them.

Read more

• Iran Warns Donald Trump It Will 'Defend Its Territory' After Navy Threat
• Iran Vows to Destroy Any Threatening U.S. Forces in the Persian Gulf
• Trump Threatens to 'Shoot Down, Destroy' Iran Ships Amid Gulf Tensions

IRGC forces were on high alert in the hours after the attack, and subsequently shot down a civilian airliner outside Tehran. All 176 people aboard Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 were killed in the incident.

The standoff between Iran and the U.S. has been largely overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic in recent months. But over the past week tensions have risen after IRGC fast-attack boats intercepted and surrounded American warships in the Persian Gulf. The incident prompted Trump to order the Navy to "shoot down and destroy" any Iranian boats harassing American vessels.

IRGC commander Hossein Salami then issued his own threat to attack any American "terrorist" forces in the Gulf.

Trump's threat came hours after the IRGC successfully launched a military satellite into orbit for the first time. The success could help advance Iran's intercontinental ballistic missile research program—a key grievance for the U.S. and one of the reasons Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018—though Tehran said the satellite launch had nothing to do with its ICBM efforts.

Discussing the satellite launch, Hajizadeh told reporters: "Today, gaining access to space and using it is not a choice. It is an inevitable necessity and we must find our place in space."

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Libya turning into 'experimental field' for arms as war heats up - U.N.

Libya is turning into "an experimental field for all kinds of new weapons systems", the United Nations' acting special envoy said, with foreign supporters of its warring parties shipping in arms and fighters in violation of an embargo. Libya's conflict escalated sharply this month, with fierce...

news.yahoo.com

Libya turning into 'experimental field' for arms as war heats up - U.N.

Reuters • April 23, 2020

TUNIS (Reuters) - Libya is turning into "an experimental field for all kinds of new weapons systems", the United Nations' acting special envoy said, with foreign supporters of its warring parties shipping in arms and fighters in violation of an embargo.

Libya's conflict escalated sharply this month, with fierce fighting on several different fronts in the west of the country despite urgent calls from the U.N. and aid agencies for a truce to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

The new wave of fighting has been fuelled by arms imported from abroad, the U.N. acting envoy Stephanie Williams said in an online news conference.

"We have something called the RPO-A flame thrower, which is some kind of thermobaric system that is being used in the southern suburbs of Tripoli. We have new UAVs (drones) that are being brought in, including a UAV that is essentially like a suicide UAV that explodes on impact," Williams said.

"These are just two examples of very frightening systems that are being deployed in an urban setting which is completely unacceptable," she added.

Concerns that the conflict may have taken a dark new turn emerged late on Wednesday when the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) said it was investigating a possible chemical weapons attack on its forces.

The Libyan National Army (LNA) of eastern-based Khalifa Haftar has been shelling the capital Tripoli, the seat of the GNA, since launching a military campaign to capture the city a year ago.

Pro-GNA forces have in recent weeks mounted their own offensives to drive back the LNA, capturing some towns in the northwest last week and moving towards Haftar's main strategic centre in the region, the town of Tarhouna.

The LNA is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Egypt, the GNA by Turkey, whose military support from January onwards has helped change the balance of power on the ground.

The GNA Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said in a message to Reuters that the reports of fighters being affected by nerve gas in the Tripoli suburb of Salahedine were based on initial reports from field hospitals.

"The GNA is currently investigating," he added. It will await a final report before informing the U.N.'s chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, the ministry said.

The LNA spokesman, Ahmed Mismari, described the report that chemical weapons may have been used, in a statement as "rumours and lies".

Williams said it was "a very, very concerning report".

"We as the UN call on all of those who are violating the arms embargo, including countries who sat down at the table in Berlin, signed up to respect the arms embargo, but yet continue to blatantly violate it. And that must stop."

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Hypersonics: DoD Wants ‘Hundreds of Weapons’ ASAP - Breaking Defense

“We want to deliver hypersonics at scale,” said R&D director Mark Lewis, from air-breathing cruise missiles to rocket-boosted gliders that fly through space.

breakingdefense.com

• Air Warfare, Land Warfare, Pentagon

Hypersonics: DoD Wants ‘Hundreds of Weapons’ ASAP
“We want to deliver hypersonics at scale,” said R&D director Mark Lewis, from air-breathing cruise missiles to rocket-boosted gliders that fly through space.

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 24, 2020 at 11:06 AM

Notional flight paths of hypersonic boost-glide missiles, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. (CSBA graphic)
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has created a “war room” to ramp up production of hypersonic weapons from a handful of prototypes over the last decade to “hundreds of weapons” in the near future, a senior official said Wednesday. Those weapons will range from huge rocket-powered boost-glide missiles, fired from Army trucks and Navy submarines at more than Mach 10, to more compact and affordable air-breathing cruise missiles, fired from aircraft at a relatively modest Mach 5-plus.

Mark Lewis
“It isn’t an either-or,” said Mark Lewis, modernization director for Pentagon R&D chief Mike Griffin. “It isn’t rocket-boost or air-breathing, we actually want both, because those systems do different things.”

Right now, however, US combat units have neither. Inconsistent focus and funding over the years means that “we had a number of programs in the department that were very solid technology development programs, but at the end of those programs, we would have prototypes and we’d have weapons in the single-digit counts,” Lewis said during a webcast with the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute. “If you’ve got a program that delivers eight missiles and then stops, well, which of the thousand targets in our target set are we going to use those eight missiles against?”

With hypersonics now a top priority for both Undersecretary Griffin and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the Pentagon is trying to improve that stop-and-go track record with a new “hypersonic acceleration plan” – no pun intended, Lewis said. Griffin likes to compare the effort to the Cold War, when the US had a massive nuclear weapons infrastructure capable of building complex components by the tens of thousands.

“We want to deliver hypersonics at scale,” Lewis said. “That means hundreds of weapons in a short period of time in the hands of the warfighter.”

Mass-production, in turn, requires production facilities – but today hypersonic prototypes are basically hand-crafted by R&D labs like Sandia. Lewis and his counterpart in the Pentagon’s acquisition & sustainment directorate, Kevin Fahey, are “co-chairing what we’re were calling a war room … looking at the hypersonic industrial base,” he said. “That’s not just the primes, but the entire industrial base” down to small, specialized suppliers.

Controlling cost is both essential to large-scale production and a huge challenge, Lewis acknowledged. “We don’t know what these things cost yet,” he said. “We’ve asked the primes to consider costs as they’re developing.”

A B-52 prepares to launch the X-51 hypersonic test vehicle in 2013

Which hypersonic weapons the Pentagon buys also makes a major difference. “There are some technology choices we can make that lead us to more cost-effective systems,” he said. “I’m especially enthusiastic about hypersonic weapons that come off the wings of airplanes and come out of bomb bays, [because] I think those are some of the keys to delivering hypersonic capabilities at scale and moderate cost.”

Likewise, “[there’s] larger investment now in the rocket boost systems,” Lewis said, “[but] one of the reasons I’m so enthusiastic about scramjet-powered systems, air-breathing systems is I think that, fundamentally, they can be lower-cost than their rocket-boosted alternatives.”

Why is that? Understanding the policy, it turns out, requires a basic understanding of the physics.

Breaking Defense graphic from DoD data

Four Types of Hypersonics

“Hypersonics isn’t a single thing,” Lewis said. “It’s a range of applications, a range of attributes, [defined by] the combination of speed and maneuverability and trajectory.”

To put it in simple terms – and I’ll beg the forgiveness of any aerospace engineers reading this – there are two kinds of hypersonic projectile, based on how they fly: one is an air-breathing engine flying through the atmosphere, like a jet plane or cruise missile; the other is a rocket booster arcing to the edge of space, like an ICBM. There are also two kinds of platform you can launch from: an aircraft in flight high and fast above the earth, or a relatively slow-moving vehicle on or below the surface, like an Army truck, Navy warship or submarine.

Combine these and you get four types. Lewis thinks all four could be worth pursuing, although the Pentagon currently has programs – that we know about – for only three:

• Air-launched boost-glide: Air Force ARRW (Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon). The Air Force also had another program in this category, HCSW (Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon), but they canceled it to focus on ARRW, which the service considers more innovative and promising.
• Surface-launched boost-glide: Army LRHW (Long Range Hypersonic Weapon) and Navy CPS (Conventional Prompt Strike). Both weapons share the same rocket booster, built by the Navy, and the same Common Hypersonic Glide Body, built by the Army, but one tailors the package to launch from a wheeled vehicle and the other from a submarine.
• Air-launched air-breathing: HAWC (Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept) and HSW-ab (Hypersonic Strike Weapon-air breathing). Arguably the most challenging and cutting-edge technology, these programs are both currently run by DARPA, which specializes in high-risk, high-return research, but they’ll be handed over to the Air Force when they mature.
• Surface-launched air-breathing: This is the one category not in development – at least not in the unclassified world. But Lewis said, “eventually, you could see some ground-launched air breathers as well. I personally think those are very promising.”

Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages, Lewis explained.

Rocket boosters are proven technology, offering tremendous speed and range. The Minuteman III ICBM, introduced in 1970, can travel over 6,000 miles at Mach 23. Their one drawback is that ICBMs can’t steer. Once launched, they follow a predictable course like a cannon ball, which is why they’re called ballistic missiles. The big innovation of boost-glide weaponry is that it replaces the traditional warhead with an agile glider. Once the rocket booster burns out, the glide body detaches and coasts the rest of the way, skipping nimbly across the upper layers of the atmosphere like a stone across the pond.

Launch of Army-Navy Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) in Hawaii on March 19, 2020.

But boost-glide has some big limitations. First, once the rocket booster detaches, the glide body has no engine of its own so it just coasts, losing speed throughout its flight. Second, precisely because the rocket launch is so powerful, it puts tremendous strain on the weapon, whose delicate electronics must be hardened against shock and heat. Third, the booster is big, because a rocket not only has to carry fuel, it has to carry tanks of oxygen to burn the fuel.

Breaking Defense graphic from DoD data

An air-breathing engine, by contrast, can be significantly smaller. It just has to carry the fuel, because it can scoop up all the oxygen it needs from the atmosphere. That means the whole weapon can be smaller, making it much easier to fit on an aircraft, and that it can accelerate freely during flight instead of just coasting, making it more maneuverable.

But while conventional jet engines are well-proven technology, they don’t function at hypersonic speeds, because the airflow pours their intakes far too fast. So you need a sophisticated alternative such as a scramjet, a complex, costly technology so far found only on experimental vehicles, like the Air Force’s revolutionary Boeing X-51.

Even with a scramjet, you can’t fly too high because the air doesn’t provide the needed oxygen. That means air-breathing weapons can’t reach the same near-space altitudes as boost-glide missiles. They also can’t fly nearly as fast. Lewis expects air-breathers will probably top out around Mach 7, half or less the peak speed of a boost-glide weapon. (That said, remember the glider will have slowed down somewhat by the time it reaches the target).

Sandia National Laboratories glide vehicle, the ancestor of the Army-built Common Hypersonic Glide Body

The platform you launch from also has a major impact on performance. Warships, submarines, and long-bodied heavy trucks can carry bigger weapons than aircraft, but the weapons they carry need to be bigger because they have to start from low altitude and low speed and go all the way to high-altitude hypersonic flight. By contrast, an air-launched weapon doesn’t need to be as big, because it’s already flying high and fast even before it turns on its motor.

All these factors suggest that the big boost-glide weapons are probably best launched from land or sea, the smaller air-breathing ones from aircraft in flight. But since boost-gliders go farther and faster than air-breathers, you still want them as an option for your bombers for certain targets. On the flipside, while a naval vessel or ground vehicle has plenty of room to carry boost-glide weapons for ultra-long-range strikes, it can also use the same space to carry a larger number of the smaller air-breathers for closer targets.

“We’re interested in basically the full range,” Lewis said. “We’ve got some ideas of things we want to put into play quickly, but we’re also extremely open-minded about future applications, future technologies.”

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

In a Paris banlieue, coronavirus amplifies years of inequality

Seine-Saint-Denis has long been one of France’s poorest areas, but the pandemic has laid bare social rifts as never before

www.theguardian.com

The Observer
Paris

In a Paris banlieue, coronavirus amplifies years of inequality
Seine-Saint-Denis has long been one of France’s poorest areas, but the pandemic has laid bare social rifts as never before

• See all our coronavirus coverage
• Coronavirus – latest updates

Kim Willsher and Caroline Harrap in Paris
Sat 25 Apr 2020 08.00 EDT Last modified on Sat 25 Apr 2020 16.57 EDT

Shares
124


Volunteers put together food parcels in Clichy-sous-Bois, in le neuf-trois. Photograph: Adrien Vautier/Rex

In his small apartment in Paris’s outer suburbs , the 85-year-old’s food cupboards were bare. When volunteers arrived, the man was down to a crust of old baguette and a few dry biscuits. Living alone and with no family, the pensioner, who had come from Morocco to France after the war to help rebuild the railways, was too afraid to leave his home.

“He was trapped there with nothing to eat and hadn’t seen his doctor in weeks,” said Abdelaali El Badaoui, founder of charity Banlieues Santé.

“He hadn’t eaten for days and was frightened and confused. We were able to give him supplies for a week and call his doctor to arrange a remote consultation. Since then we’ve been doing weekly follow-up visits and dropping off his medicine. He’s doing well.”

France has now been in coronavirus lockdown for six weeks, and has seen more than 21,000 deaths from the virus. But social distancing in the neuf-trois, the deprived Seine-Saint-Denis département north of Paris, looks very different to that of Saint-Tropez, where billionaires in a gated compound were reported last week to be paying for private Covid-19 tests.

“We are locked down in our inequality,” said the Seine-Saint-Denis MP Alexis Corbière. “The virus has just amplified the problems the banlieue has had for a long time. It has revealed how wide and deep the social fracture really is.”

For decades le neuf-trois has broken records: the poorest area of mainland France, with more than 28% of residents – a large number of them immigrants – living below the breadline; the highest unemployment – up to 40% in some districts; the most social housing – 10% of which is sub-standard; and inadequate public services. Even before the pandemic it was a grim symbol of France’s inequalities in wealth, opportunity and living standards.

Now, as the virus hits the most vulnerable, those rifts are clear as never before. In March, the national statistics institute, Insee, found the death rate in Seine-Saint-Denis up 62% on the previous year. Undertakers said they were overwhelmed.

With 1.6 million inhabitants, making it one of France’s most densely populated departments, Seine-Saint-Denis has the lowest number of doctors per head, but the highest rates of obesity and diseases including cancer, diabetes and asthma.

“Many arrive at hospital already in a critical condition because they tend not to have regular care or contact with the health system,” said Corbière, a member of the hard-left La France Insoumise. “And a lot of people here have jobs that can’t be done from home: underpaid frontline jobs like cleaners, builders, refuse collectors – people who have to use public transport and so are more exposed.”




Facebook Twitter
Pinterest
Charity workers from the Banlieues Santé team check on a vulnerable resident. Photograph: Samir El Badaoui, Banlieues Santé
Mehdi Bigaderne, 37, co-founder of Aclefeu, a collective set up in 2005 after rioting in the mostly north African Clichy-sous-Bois neighbourhood, said problems had all been exacerbated by the virus.

“It has exploded the myth that we are all equal because clearly we’re not. People are trying to respect the lockdown, but what do you do if you’re a family of five or more in a small apartment on the 15th floor? How do you keep children in? How do you feed them when the markets where you buy cheap fruit and vegetables have closed and you can’t afford supermarkets? How can families whose children normally eat in school canteens now make three meals a day?


“It’s not new that Seine-Saint-Denis is a place of inequality, discrimination and social problems, but coronavirus has crystallised this.”

As well as distributing “lockdown packages” of food, toiletries and a mask, Banlieues Santé has recruited doctors to make multilingual videos explaining how people can protect themselves and has translated the document that all French people needed to carry to leave their homes into around 20 languages.

Among those it has helped is Yvette Maurice, 85, who lives alone in a 12-storey block. Suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, she was worried about buying food. “I received food packages for the last three weeks and it was a huge relief as it meant I could stay at home,” said Maurice.

Badaoui, a hospital cleaner who trained as a nurse, recalls a single mother of four who had symptoms of Covid-19 but was threatened with the sack if she didn’t turn up for her cleaning job: “We were able to advise her of her rights – that she could self-isolate at home without losing her job. In so many cases, social problems have to be resolved before medical issues.”

Not all his stories have happy endings. On a visit to one housing estate, volunteers found an elderly Algerian man, a former caretaker who had lived in France since the 1940s, dead in his home.

Share your story

Share your stories
If you have been affected or have any information, we'd like to hear from you. You can get in touch by filling in the form below, anonymously if you wish or contact us via WhatsApp by clicking here or adding the contact +44(0)7867825056. Only the Guardian can see your contributions and one of our journalists may contact you to discuss further.
Tell us
“It’s like nothing we have experienced,” Badaoui said. “We are the very last chance for many people. We act as a bridge between the health service and those most in need, some of whom are no longer in contact with health services or never were.”

Seine-Saint-Denis saw clashes last week between youths and police, sparked by a motorcyclist hitting a police car and being thrown from his bike, suffering a broken leg. There were accusations of heavy-handed policing of the lockdown.

“The banlieue is not aflame,” said Corbière. “We’re talking about a few fireworks, not riots. We’ve seen worse.”

Bigaderne agreed: “Those involved in recent events are a very small minority and a lot of it is down to frustration.”

The government and local authorities have pledged emergency payments to struggling families, but many in Seine-Saint-Denis will see little benefit .

“Not everyone, including the homeless and those without official papers, has the same access to rights,” Bigaderne said. “If you don’t reduce the social inequalities in these areas, there will always be problems. We’ve been saying this for 15 years. We cannot keep putting plasters over serious wounds.”

Corbière added that the crisis had also shown the depth of human solidarity within the banlieue’s many communities: “The virus has rocked society. Will it change things? We can but hope.”

----------

Posted for fair use.....

Man Arrested for Selling Molotov Cocktails During French Riots | ABC 14 News

A 26-yr-outdated person has been arrested by police in France for providing and delivering pre-built Molotov cocktails to rioters in the Haut-de-Seine section. The suspect was arrested along with two other alleged accomplices and is claimed to have driven all-around the place, which has been...

abc14news.com

Man Arrested for Selling Molotov Cocktails During French Riots
News
By Brandon G. Jones On Apr 25, 2020

A 26-yr-outdated person has been arrested by police in France for providing and delivering pre-built Molotov cocktails to rioters in the Haut-de-Seine section.
The suspect was arrested along with two other alleged accomplices and is claimed to have driven all-around the place, which has been plagued by riots every evening because Sunday, promoting beer bottles loaded with petrol and fabric wicks to rioters in the commune of Gennevilliers.
Police say that they found proof that the 26-year-previous had made the Molotov cocktails from images saved to his cellular cellphone. He is said to do the job as a deliveryman and is previously known to neighborhood police for minimal crimes, Le Parisien experiences.

Regardless of Lockdown: France Rocked by Four Straight Nights of Riots Despite Lockdown: France Rocked by Four Straight Nights of Riots
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 24, 2020

Investigators extra that the suspect was providing the Molotov cocktails on social media, working with the Snapchat mobile app to promote and charging 5 euros for three Moltovs and ten euros for 10.
The suspect’s telephone is also being examined to figure out the identities of all those who acquired the incendiary products from him and his accomplices. Identical Molotov cocktails were being discovered in numerous areas of Gennevilliers by police.
The commune is located following to the commune of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, scene of the motorbike crash involving nearby law enforcement which sparked the problem.
Due to the fact riots commenced in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, violence distribute across the Hauts-de-Seine section, the notorious no-go Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, and various other towns and towns throughout the nation.

At Least 25 French Towns and Towns Erupt in Riots as ‘Youths’ Assault Police At Least 25 French Cities Erupt in Riots as 'Youths' Attack Police
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 21, 2020

Aside from various assaults on police with fireworks, rocks and other projectiles, there have been two arson tries in current days.
The initial took location in Strasbourg and saw neighborhood youths try to mild a law enforcement station building on hearth with Molotov cocktails.
The second arson attack observed the Paul-Langevin elementary school in Gennevilliers set on fire with destruction claimed in the office of the principal, two classrooms and a workers place.

Police in French Division Attacked Nearly Every day for Last Two Months Police in French Department Attacked Almost Daily for Last Two Weeks
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 21, 2020

Abide by Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Libya’s GNA receives limitless Turkish supplies but faces locals’ hostility | Michel Cousins | AW

Flushed with the success in mid-April of capturing a string of towns west of Tripoli from the Libyan National Army (LNA), forces supporting the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) have turned their attention to Tarhuna.

thearabweekly.com

Libya’s GNA receives limitless Turkish supplies but faces locals’ hostility

Reports speak of Ankara sending even more equipment and fighters to help the GNA.

Saturday 25/04/2020

Hydra effect. Fighters with Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) gather at a position near the town of Garabulli, some 70km east of the capital Tripoli. (AFP)

TUNIS - Flushed with the success in mid-April of capturing a string of towns west of Tripoli from the Libyan National Army (LNA), forces supporting the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) have turned their attention to Tarhuna, the LNA’s main operations base some 60 kilometres south-east of the capital.

The first attempt to take the town from April 18-19 failed although the offensive, which included shelling, is said to have resulted in some 3,000 residents there and in parts of neighbouring Garabulli municipality fleeing their homes. But after an initial advance on several sides, GNA forces were forced to pull back.

Taking Tarhuna is likely to prove quite difficult for the GNA. There is deep animosity in the town towards outsiders in general and towards the Tripoli-based GNA in particular, as well as resentment over the 2011 revolution.

With a significant number of locals having served in the old Libyan army, support for the former Qaddafi regime remains strong and has transferred itself to the LNA, led by Field-Marshal Khalifa Haftar. The town is firmly united against the GNA and, although increasingly under siege, it is also well stocked with arms and other military supplies.

Privately, senior GNA officials have admitted that taking Tarhuna will be a challenge.

The big difference, though, is the support for the GNA from Turkey.

The Misratan units that make up the bulk of the attacking forces have experience from the 2016 campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Sirte, but without the presence of Turkish military technicians, the supply of arms and equipment and, most importantly, a now seemingly limitless supply of drones to give air cover, any offensive would have been unthinkable.

Moreover, reports speak of Ankara sending even more equipment and fighters to help the GNA. The LNA have shot down Turkish-supplied drones in

southern Tripoli, in the Tarhuna area and in the other main front at Abu Grein, south of Misrata but, like a hydra’s head, the more they are brought down the more drones are provided.

Unlike early on during the Tripoli offensive, when only a handful of drones were dispatched to the GNA, the supply now seems limitless — a sign of the massive expansion of the Turkish arms industry on the back of the conflict in Libya.

During the past week and in a bid to sap the LNA’s strength, the GNA also launched fresh attacks in the southern Tripoli suburb of Ain Zara, which has been one of the main frontlines over the past year.
Hoping to stop the GNA drones, the LNA has continued intermittent bombardment of Tripoli’s Mitiga airport. With Turkish drones and offshore Turkish frigates armed with surface-to-air missiles, the GNA has air superiority, at least for the moment.

The GNA’s Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha has meanwhile floated the notion that Russian mercenaries previously in Syria have started using chemical weapons in southern Tripoli but there is no independent evidence of it.

The coronavirus outbreak, however, has a greater impact on people’s lives. It continues to spread, albeit slowly. By April 25, there were 61 confirmed cases, including two deaths. The slower than expected growth in numbers resulted in authorities in both east and west relaxing the curfew. In LNA-controlled areas, it was reduced from 2pm-7am to 6pm-6am.

In GNA areas where there has been a 24-hour curfew and people were being allowed out for shopping only on foot before noon, it will go to the same 6pm-6am as of April 28. The GNA has also opened the Ras Jedir border crossing to allow food and other imports from Tunisia.

The changes may ease some of the restrictions, but the continuing clashes, combined with the outbreak and the lockdown, are making for one of the most difficult Ramadans Libyans have ever known.

Written By Michel Cousins

Michel Cousins is a frequent contributor to The Arab Weekly on Libyan issues.

 

[jward]

When It Comes To The Demise Of Kim Jong Un, Be Careful What You Wish For
Reports that Kim is either dead or is in very poor health are increasing, but what comes after his demise is far from certain and could be horrific.
By Tyler RogowayApril 25, 2020


Today we have gotten another round of reports that Kim Jong Un has died. This time they have emanated from a Japanese news magazine, which lends more credibility to the possibility that they are true. The North Korean leader hasn't been seen in weeks and supposedly had undergone surgery on his heart that may have gone awry. A top Chinese medical team was reported to have been dispatched from Beijing to help the ailing dictator. The reality is that all or none of it could be true. Kim has disappeared before amid reports of his death, just to reappear weeks later. Regardless, there is a lot of sentiment that seems to celebrate his demise. Be careful what you wish for in this regard, here's why.
Kim is a maniacal dictator who treats human life like trash. He oversees a military dictatorship that is the most repressive of any in the world. His regime is involved with a dizzying array of criminal activities focused on raising hard cash to support itself. His people starve while he builds empty resort towns and high-rise business districts. The state kidnaps people and it mass incarcerates entire family lines under the worst of gulag conditions. Kim is a brutal leader who has consolidated power via the business end of anti-aircraft cannons.



Here Are The Photos Of Kim Jong Un Riding A White Steed You Never Asked ForBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
North Korea Shows Zero Signs It Is Willing To Consider DenuclearizationBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
North Korea's Kim Jong Un Has A New Luxury Missile Launch Viewing VanBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
Air Force General Says His Planes Are Keeping An Eye Out For North Korea's "Christmas Gift"By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Here's How North Korea Got Kim Jong Un His New Armored S600 Mercedes Maybach Limos By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
He also presides over a nuclear arsenal and a massive conventional military force that could lay waste to large portions of South Korea and bombard American interests and its allies in the region with ballistic missiles.

If Kim goes, it is far from clear what we will get in his place. Instability at the very highest levels via the death of a god-like ruling family dictator in a country that is already starving and experiencing a global pandemic with little resources to fight it wouldn't just be troubling, it could be terrifying.
Command and control over Kim's young nuclear arsenal is already murky. If he is incapacitated, the risk goes up substantially. If he is dead, the question over who controls North Korea's nuclear enterprise rises is a whole other level concern.

KCNA
Kim Jong Un inspects a thermonuclear warhead design in 2017.
It's not just about who takes Kim's place if he goes. It's a question of factions within North Korea's ruling elite that may diverge in opinion as to who that successor is and what their true level of power and influence may be.
The old military guard that surrounds Kim has one business—perpetual conflict with the United States, South Korea, and their allies. It underpins the entire North Korean power structure. It's what defines it. Peace could be great for the North Korean people, but it would probably mean a power and control bankruptcy for those at the tip of the pyramid that benefit so heavily from an enduring adversary and scapegoat.

KCNA
Kim got as far as he did with engaging with South Korea and the United States because he had proven himself to be a cunning geopolitical player and had consolidated power with ruthless abandon. Who knows just how far he could have taken it if he wished, although there was never any real indications he would give up anything substantial to achieve any sort of lasting peace.
Many of those that surround him and below likely opposed substantive detente with the United States and any meaningful reforms that would result from it. This is especially the case when it comes to turning over any of the nuclear weapons capabilities that elevated the country to a position of negotiation and into the international spotlight in the first place.
As such, we are likely to get someone far less predictable then Kim, at least initially, to take his place—one that will have to satisfy many competing interests to preserve their own foothold on power in order to survive—until they, like Kim, can consolidate additional power and prove themselves to be a capable manipulator of foreign interests.
That is if we even get a durable successor at all. It is very possible that nothing but a puppet of sorts is installed to continue with the Kim family myth. Even that could prove to be impossible, with factions within the top levels of power in Pyongyang and among the ruling military cadre digging in for a fight for control over North Korea's future. Yes, I am talking about the possibility of a series of successive coups or even outright civil war.

KCNA
Kim Jong Un rides on a horse alongside his wife, Ri Sol Ju. Being expert horsemen is important part of the Kim dynasty's cult of personality.
Any of this is highly troubling for a country that has dozens of nuclear weapons and that is in dire need of cash. Kim may never have had an interest in exporting a nuclear warhead or two because it would likely ensure his own demise, but in a power struggle, where lower-level actors with access to these weapons and the materials that make them up find themselves in a free-for-all, it is not outside the realm of possibility.

Not only would chaos in the Hermit Kingdom be highly troubling for the United States, South Korea, Japan, other regional players, as well as the free word overall, but it would be especially concerning for China, North Korea's closest ally and neighbor. The idea of massive numbers of starving North Koreans fleeing across the border into China during a period of chaos in their country is an all too real possibility for Beijing, one that the Communist Party there has no interest in entertaining.
That being said, an outright civil war in North Korea would be absolutely unconscionable embarrassment for China, especially when they are already under international fire over their handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. North Korea has long been their junkyard dog—a state that exists largely at the will of the Communist Party of China. Seeing it all fall apart and endanger the entire world in the process is hardly a look that an aspiring global superpower wants to wear.

KCNA
Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Still, the reality is that China is the only real backstop in place from the worst of all possible fears coming to pass. The idea is that China would directly intervene to stabilize North Korea if the situation became dire. This could be done by politically and economically backing one faction if a fracture occurs, or supporting the initial successor so that those fractures don't happen in the first place. How this will be possible under the current international sanction regime in place on North Korea is unclear, but where there is a will there is a way and sanctions could even be relaxed so that a complete power vacuum doesn't come to pass.

Could China use its military might to occupy North Korea? That's very unlikely, but these are unprecedented times, so anything is possible. Doing so would only work if direct opposition to such a move wasn't widespread within the North Korean military machine and it would be a highly troubling trade-off between total instability and expanding China's direct territorial control to the demilitarized zone, something South Korea and the United States would have a very hard time coming to terms with.

So, with all this in mind, if Kim dies and a successor is named without a rash of instability and violence, the best we can likely hope for is a ruler that has to satisfy the hardline ruling elite and consolidate power by acting tough and dangerous, like their predecessors. Considering where North Korea is with its nuclear weapons and delivery systems programs, this would be quite troubling. On the other hand, we could enter into an unprecedented era of instability on the Korean Peninsula, where the nuclear weapons themselves could become trophies of sorts that signify who holds the real power—truly a terrifying situation to comprehend.

Pyeongyang Press Corps/Kyodo via AP
Kim Jong Un with his sister, Kim Yo Jong, who has been a close confidant and personal assistant to the North Korean leader. She is also seen as one of Kim Jong Un's potential successors.
Such a situation would very well push the U.S. and its allies to act to destroy as much of that arsenal, its delivery systems, and the infrastructure that supports the entire North Korean nuclear enterprise as possible, which would open up a whole other pandora's box—open war on the Korean Peninsula.
So, with all this in mind, don't be too quick to cheer Kim Jong Un off to the gates of hell. What comes after his demise could be far worse than anything we have previously seen or even imagined.

KCNA
Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

posted for fair use

When It Comes To The Demise Of Kim Jong Un, Be Careful What You Wish For

Reports that Kim is either dead or is in very poor health are increasing, but what comes after his demise is far from certain and could be horrific.

www.thedrive.com

 

[jward]

Islamic State In Somalia
21 Apr, 2020 in Africa / Crisis Index / Somalia / United States / Yemen by The Organization for World Peace (updated on April 21, 2020)
Overview

The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has complicated issues for jihadist groups operating throughout Somalia. Throughout 2015, ISIS sent communications to al-Shabaab, the leading jihadist group operating in Somalia with the capability of striking the neighbouring countries of Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, proposing to ally itself with the Caliphate. Unsurprisingly, the leader of al-Shabaab, Ahmed Umar Abu Ubaidah, rejected the offer, stating long-standing allegiance to al-Qaida, and threatened death for those who sought to defy the fatwa. However, in October 2015, a small faction, under the leadership of Abduqadir Mumin, broke off from al-Shabaab’s ranks and pledged allegiance to then-ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Henceforth, the group was known as the Islamic State in Somalia (ISS). At the time of inception, ISS had 20 fighters, including its leader. Mumin kept ISS’ operational basis in the Golis Mountains, Puntland regional state, in northeast Somalia.

Since becoming a fully-fledged group, ISS has three main objectives: 1) extend its reach outside the Golis Mountains, 2) obtain new sources of revenue, 3) counter Al-Shabaab’s presence in its sphere of influence. Following the footsteps of al-Shabaab, ISS manoeuvred through clan politics to get recruits. The leader appealed to his clan, as well as those clans and sub-clans that felt marginalised by Puntland local government and the federal government. So far, between 300-400 have pledged allegiance to ISS, though recruitment beyond the Golis Mountains has been unsuccessful. In Puntland, the group has seized sparsely populated towns, but their short-lived successes came crumbling down following confrontations with the Puntland security forces.

As a means for revenue to pay its fighters and to buy ready-made bombs or materials to make homemade bombs, ISS extorts businesses, threatening violence and often assassinations when business do not pay ‘taxes’ to the group. The group claims to have conducted 81 assassinations between February 2017 and July 2018 successfully, but local sources and the UN Monitoring group could not verify most of the claims. However, with limited resources, the group is incapable of conducting sophisticated attacks such as those undertaken by al-Shabaab.

The Puntland Security Forces (PSF) have been tasked with eliminating ISS in Puntland regional state. The PSF conducts military operations in the Golis Mountains and within cities in Puntland state like Garowe and Bosasso where ISS has conducted attacks. The Puntland police have also been making headway against ISS with raids on their warehouses and hideouts. In those operations, they have managed to recover IEDs and other weapons, as well as arrest ISS members and sympathisers. The military courts have convicted many of the ISS members, most of whom were sentenced to death by firing squad.

To support the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) carry out airstrikes targeting both Islamic State in Somalia and al-Shabaab, whom both operate on the Golis mountains. Though most of the airstrikes have killed foot soldiers, the deputy head of ISS, Abdulhakim Dhuqub was also killed. The combined efforts by PSF and AFRICOM has significantly limited ISS activities mainly in Puntland, as well as their inability to attract recruits. Currently, there is a periodic conflict between ISS and al-Shabaab, with al-Shabaab’s military wing – Amniyat, being utilised to kill ISS members and sympathisers.

Facts
Where: Northeast Somalia
Active base: The Golis Mountains, Puntland regional state. There are independent clandestine chapters of ISS operating in Southern Somalia, but not much is known
Founded: End of 2015
Goal: The general goal of ISS is to create an Islamic Caliphate in Somalia.
Target: ISS target government and military officials
Type of attacks: Close quarter assassinations and improvised explosive device (IEDs)
Fighters: 300 – 400 fighters (2019 figures); Currently, it is estimated that the group has between 300 and 400-foot-soldiers. The number of foreign fighters, if any, is unknown.
People killed: Estimated 30 people – mostly government and military officials; The group claims the number of people killed is much higher
Current situation: Currently, ISS is actively conducting a terror campaign against military officials though planting IEDs and close-quarter assassination. In February 2020, 15 al-Shabaab fighters, including one foreign fighter, defected to the ISS.
Key Actors
Islamic State in Somalia (ISS)
Abdul Qadir Mumin
Puntland Security Forces
The United States

Timeline

October 2015: Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) breaks away from al-Shabaab and pledges allegiance to al-Baghdadi
22 November 2015: Al-Shabaab assassinates commander who defected to the Islamic State in Somalia
5 December 2015: 7 militants linked to Islamic State in Somalia clash with government forces
25 December 2015: Al-Shabaab fighters attack an IS-Somalia base in Northern Somalia
14 April 2016: Islamic State in Somalia highlights its first training camp
6 May 2016: "Islamic State is growing," says top Somali intelligence officer
26 October 2016: Islamic State in Somalia claims to have taken Qandala town, Puntland state
7 December 2016: Puntland Security Forces retake Qandala from Islamic State in Somalia
19 December 2016: Puntland Security Forces 'destroy' IS-Somalia base
1 February 2017: Islamic State in Somalia decapitates 3 abducted civilians
9 February 2017: Islamic State in Somalia claims hotel attack in Northern Somalia
28 March 2017: Suspected IS-Somalia roadside bombing kills one
23 April 2017: A suspected Islamic State in Somalia roadside bombing in Galgala killing 8 Puntland soldiers
24 May 2017: Islamic State in Somalia claims suicide bombing in Puntland region, Somalia,
6 June 2017: Islamic State in Somalia fighter surrenders to Puntland Security Forces
24 October 2017: Islamic State in Somalia claims attack in Bosaso, Northern Somalia
06 November 2017: Islamic State leader survives US airstrike
8 November 2017: UN raises alarm over the Islamic State's footprint in Northern Somalia
3 November 2017: AFRICOM conducts first airstrike against Islamic State in Somalia
25 December 2017: Islamic State in Somalia featured in an official ISIS video calling for increased attacks
9 February 2018: US Office of Foreign Assets Control lists Somali businessman as an ISIS-affiliated terrorist
27 February 2018: IS-Somalia and its deputy head placed US State Department sanction’s list
22 April 2018: IS-Somalia member arrested in Afgoye, Southern Somalia
23 May 2018: IS-Somalia claims to have assassinated a Somali intelligence officer
24 May 2018: Two IS-Somalia members arrested in Mogadishu
29 June 2018: Islamic State in Somalia assassinates three in Mogadishu
15 August 2018: IS-Somalia makes $72,000 in monthly revenue from taxation in Bosaso town, Northern Somalia
4 October 2018: Islamic State in Somalia claims Bosaso attack, Northern Somalia
November 2018: Islamic State warns al-Shabaab of impending battle in Somalia
3 December 2018: Somali businesses face ‘taxation’ by IS-Somalia and Al-Shabaab
16 December 2018: Islamic State clashes with al-Shabaab fighters in Northern Somalia
28 December 2018: Suspected Islamic State bombing injures two
14 April 2019: AFRICOM confirms that Abdulhakim Dhuqub, the Deputy leader of Islamic State in Somalia, has been killed in an airstrike
8 May - 27 July 2019: AFRICOM conducts airstrikes against al-Shabaab and IS-Somalia
1 August 2019: ISIS terrorist sentenced to death
22 September 2019: Islamic State in Somalia publishes photos detailing new recruits, basic training
4 November 2019: Islamic State swears allegiance to new ISIS leader
7 November 2019: 5 ISIS and Al-Shabaab militants executed in northern Somalia
26 February 2020: Two dozen al-Shabaab fighters defect to Islamic State in Somalia

Post navigation

• ← COVID’s Hit On Ecuador
• Al-Shabaab Insurgency In The East And The Horn Of Africa →

posted for fair use

Islamic State In Somalia

Overview The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has complicated issues for jihadist groups operating throughout Somalia. Throughout 2015, ISIS sent communication to al-Shabaab, the …

theowp.org

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....
Virus lockdown raises tensions in France’s poorest areas

By ELAINE GANLEY and NICOLAS GARRIGA
today

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France (AP) — Joining more than 1,000 others, Djemba Diatite stood for hours in line to feed her growing family, grateful for handouts of fruits, vegetables and soap. It was her first time accepting charity, but she had no choice. The coronavirus pandemic has turned her world upside down.

With open air markets closed around Paris, supermarket prices skyrocketing, an out-of-work husband, two children to feed and another on the way, Diatite said even tomatoes were now too expensive.
“This is my only solution,” she said, relieved that a local group in her Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois stepped in with help.

Clichy-sous-Bois — where fiery nationwide riots started in 2005 — is just 23 kilometers (14 miles) northeast of the French capital, but with its rows of housing projects, restless youth and residents teetering on the poverty line, it feels light years away.

The town mayor, seeing a looming crisis triggered by food shortages, sounded the alarm, and with scattered unrest simmering in impoverished suburbs, the French government announced 39 million euros (nearly $42.1 million) for communities in need.

Providing food aid might be the most fixable of the longstanding problems in the heavily immigrant housing projects ringing France’s large cities. Leader after leader has tried and failed to find remedies for often-dilapidated and cramped housing, chronic delinquency, a thriving drug trade and, above all, the entrenched discrimination against minorities that limits their job prospects in France.

Some residents say they felt confined years before France imposed strict coronavirus lockdown measures on March 17.

“I feel the social crisis is growing with confinement,” said Clichy-Sous-Bois Mayor Olivier Klein.

“We see numerous people in need, urgently, in a way we’ve never seen,” he told France Info radio. “In these tense neighborhoods, the smallest spark can trigger still more tension.”

Alongside the food crisis, there has been scattered violence, with youths targeting French police in confrontations that end in clouds of tear gas, including in Clichy-sous-Bois. The town is where filmmaker Ladj Ly shot his Oscar-nominated modern police drama “Les Misérables.”

A call for calm came from an unlikely person, a 30-year-old man with a long criminal record who crashed his motorcycle into the open door of a police car in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, northwest of Paris. As claims that police were at fault spread across the internet, the man from his hospital bed implored gangs to “go home,” in a video released by his lawyer.

Clichy-sous-Bois was the spark for nationwide rioting 15 years ago. Nightly TV images of the destruction awakened many in France to large swaths of a population they barely knew existed.

The lockdown is again shining a spotlight on those who struggle even in the best of times.

The town is in the poorest region of mainland France, Seine-Saint-Denis, where the overall mortality rate has more than doubled since March 1, when the country began counting virus deaths, according to national statistics agency Insee.

Experts have blamed the density of the population, the difficulty of social distancing in large families and the fact that those in poorer areas often have jobs with a higher risk of infection.

“This crisis is simply making (the problems) much more visible,” said Mohamed Mechmache, who heads the group ACLeFeu, or Enough Fire, which grew out of the riots and is distributing food in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Thousands now line up twice a week for the distribution, organized after the coronavirus lockdown began.

Diatite is typical of many. Her husband drives a bus at Paris’ Orly Airport, which closed last month due to the lull in air traffic, putting him out of work. Their growing family lives in a 26-square-meter (less than 280-square foot) apartment.

“There is a very large accumulation of inequalities that often increase” in a crisis, said sociologist Marie-Helene Bacque. “We’re moving toward a large social crisis.”

About 70% of Clichy-sous-Bois is of immigrant origin, she noted, typical of similar suburban towns.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said since the start of the lockdown, police have carried out checks on 220,000 people in Seine-Saint-Denis to ensure confinement rules are respected, more than double the national average.

Some police attribute scattered violence to the squeeze on drug dealers during the lockdown.
“Traffickers want to eliminate all police presence,” tweeted Linda Kebbab, an official with the police union SGP-FO.

Bachir Ghouinem, who helps ACLeFeu distribute food, dismissed the violence as just “another problem” among the many facing France’s poor suburbs. But he predicted a worst-case scenario should the food distributions stop.

“Rioting and pillaging. We’re afraid of that,” he said. “If it happens here, it happens everywhere.”
Mechmache, the leader of the ACLeFeu, took a longer view.

“I dare to hope that there will be an awareness at the end of this lockdown to tackle the problems of inequality, which have existed for more than 30 years,” he told The Associated Press.

For Bacque, the sociologist, “it’s the moment to return to the fundamental challenge, more equality.”

But she says she doubts that kind of political investment will happen, adding that “an explosion is not to be excluded.”

A tram that allows Clichy-sous-Bois residents to connect more easily with Paris — and jobs — opened in December. In the nearby housing project known as Les Bosquets, dilapidated high rises used by drug dealers were razed several years ago, fulfilling a government promise after the 2005 riots.

“But you don’t transform the social dimension by fixing ... architectural problems,” Bacque said.
___

Ganley reported from Paris.

 

[Housecarl]

Well this ought to get interesting......

Posted for fair use.....

Netanyahu 'confident' U.S. will allow West Bank annexation in two months

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced confidence on Sunday that Washington would give Israel the nod within two months to move ahead with de facto annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.

www.reuters.com

World News
April 26, 2020 / 10:12 AM / Updated 3 hours ago
Netanyahu 'confident' U.S. will allow West Bank annexation in two months

2 Min Read

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced confidence on Sunday that Washington would give Israel the nod within two months to move ahead with de facto annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians have expressed outrage at Israel’s plans to cement its hold further on land it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, territory they are seeking for a state.

Netanyahu, in announcing a deal with his centrist rival Benny Gantz last week to form a unity government, set July 1 for the start of cabinet discussions on extending Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and annexing outright the area’s Jordan Valley.

Such a move would need to be agreed with Washington, according to the Netanyahu-Gantz agreement.

In a video address on Sunday to a pro-Israeli Christian group in Europe, Netanyahu described a U.S. peace proposal announced by President Donald Trump in January as a promise to recognise Israel’s authority over West Bank settlement land.

“A couple of months from now I am confident that that pledge will be honoured,” Netanyahu told the European Commission for Israel.

Palestinian officials offered no immediate comment on Netanyahu’s remarks.

Palestinians have flatly rejected the Trump peace proposal, partly because it awards Israel most of what it has sought during decades of conflict, including nearly all the occupied land on which it has built settlements.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday it was up to Israel whether to annex parts of the West Bank and said that Washington would offer its views privately to its new government.

The Palestinians and many countries regard Israel’s settlements in the West Bank as illegal under the Geneva Conventions that bar settling on land captured in war.

Israel disputes this, citing security needs and biblical, historical and political connections to the land.

Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Hugh Lawson

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Yemen separatists announce self-rule in south, complicating peace efforts

Yemen's main southern separatist group announced early on Sunday it would establish self-rule in areas under its control, which the Saudi-backed government warned would have "catastrophic consequences".

www.reuters.com

World News
April 25, 2020 / 5:08 PM / Updated 14 hours ago
Yemen separatists announce self-rule in south, complicating peace efforts

Mohammed Ghobari, Mohammed Mokhashef
4 Min Read

ADEN (Reuters) - Yemen’s main southern separatist group announced early on Sunday it would establish self-rule in areas under its control, which the Saudi-backed government warned would have “catastrophic consequences”.

The move threatens to renew conflict between the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the Saudi-backed government, nominal allies in Yemen’s war, even as the United Nations is trying to secure a nationwide truce to confront the novel coronavirus.

The STC deployed its forces on Sunday in Aden, the southern port which is the interim seat of the government ousted from the capital, Sanaa, by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement. Reuters journalists saw STC fighters in a column of pickup trucks and military vehicles riding down a main street in Aden.

The STC is one of the main groups fighting against the Houthis as part of a coalition led by Saudi Arabia. But the separatists, long backed by Saudi coalition partner the United Arab Emirates, have clashed with government forces in the past.

In a statement, the STC announced emergency rule in Aden and all southern governorates, saying it would take control of Aden’s port and airport and other state institutions such as the central bank.

The Saudi-backed government and southern regions of Shabwa, Hadhramout and Socotra, among the few areas under coalition control, issued separate statements rejecting the declaration.

Yemen’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Al-Hadhrami said the STC announcement constituted “a resumption of its armed insurgency” and a “rejection and complete withdrawal from the Riyadh agreement”, a deal which ended a previous stand-off between the separatists and the government last year.

The STC “will bear alone the dangerous and catastrophic consequences for such an announcement”, he said in a statement.

STC Vice-President Hani Ali Brik accused the government of hampering the agreement. In a Twitter post, he reiterated accusations against Hadi’s government of mismanagement and corruption, charges it denies.

CORONAVIRUS CEASEFIRE
Yemen has been mired in violence since the Houthis ousted Hadi’s government from power in Sanaa in late 2014, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to intervene.

The conflict, seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has been in a military stalemate for years.

The Houthis still hold most major cities despite fighting that has killed more than 100,000 people. The war has choked supply lines in the poorest Arabian peninsula nation, leaving millions of people on the brink of famine and dependent on international aid.

The Saudi-led coalition has announced a unilateral ceasefire prompted by a U.N. plea to focus on the coronavirus pandemic. It extended the ceasefire on Friday for a month, but the Houthis have not accepted the truce and violence has continued.

While Yemen has reported only one confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, aid groups fear a catastrophic outbreak should it spread among a malnourished population in a country with a shattered health system and little testing.

The United Nations is trying to convene virtual talks to forge a permanent truce, coordinate coronavirus efforts and agree on humanitarian and economic confidence-building measures to restart peace negotiations stalled since late 2018.

The STC, which has said it wants to be included in any political negotiations, in January pulled out of committees implementing the Riyadh deal.

The UAE, which like the STC opposes the Islamist Islah party that forms the backbone of Hadi’s government, largely scaled down its presence in the war last year, but retains influence through the thousands of southern fighters it backs.

Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari and Mohammed Mukhashef in Yemen; Additional reporting by Nayera Abdallah in Cairo; Writing by Dahlia Nehme and Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Diane Craft, Christian Schmollinger and Peter Graff

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

DoD Tries Again on Multi-Billion Missile Interceptor - Breaking Defense

After a failed attempt to replace the current missile killers, the Pentagon wants to hurry and get the new technology online.

breakingdefense.com

DoD Tries Again on Multi-Billion Missile Interceptor
After a failed attempt to replace the current missile killers, the Pentagon wants to hurry and get the new technology online.

By Paul McLeary on April 24, 2020 at 5:18 PM

WASHINGTON: The Missile Defense Agency issued a long-awaited request for proposal today for its next-generation missile interceptor, eight months after the surprise cancellation of its multi-billion dollar attempt to replace the current, aging system.

The Next Generation Interceptor program will replace the Redesigned Kill Vehicle effort, the Boeing and Raytheon project that failed to get off the ground.

The new competition calls for contractors to submit bids by July 31, though it will be years before anything can be built and tested.

MDA chief Vice Adm. Jon Hill said last month that he wants to field the new system as soon as possible, and a timeline of 2030, is “unacceptable from a warfighter view” and “unacceptable to me as a program manager.”

But it’s unclear when a system will be ready for testing. “We want to deliver the first round as soon as possible,” Hill continued. “That also means we can’t take shortcuts in the design or in the requirements or in the flight testing regime, because if you want to go save time that is what most programs will do, so we can’t afford that, but I will tell you that timeline will be driven by who we award to.”

The RKV program was part of an ambitious technology effort helmed by Boeing — though Raytheon was building the Kill Vehicles — to replace the current Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle. Both are ground-based interceptors designed to defend the US against long-range ballistic missile attacks. The companies won’t have to pay back any of the billion-plus dollars the government awarded them to do the work, as Pentagon officials have said some of the effort can be salvaged and used on the new program.

Problems had been mounting in the program’s development for years. The Missile Defense Agency said back in 2016 it expected the first RKV flight test by 2019, with fielding in 2020. The last estimate, released with the fiscal 2020 budget request, pushed the fielding date back to 2025.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

The Rhymes of History: Beijing’s Nightmare Strategic Scenarios

Perhaps the most challenging consequence of a non-repetitive history is that the future is mostly undetermined, a mystery revealed only by the unfolding of particular events. This uncertainty puts the onus of decision and responsibility squarely on the shoulders of political, diplomatic, and militar

thestrategybridge.org

The Rhymes of History: Beijing’s Nightmare Strategic Scenarios

Michael Colebrook

April 27, 2020

History does not repeat itself. With the exception of general platitudes about the permanence of international tension and the sporadic recurrence of violent conflict, statements about historical patterns and cycles of warfare can at best lead to historiographical confirmation bias and, at worst, can prejudice policymakers into taking counterproductive and unnecessary escalatory measures.[1] Diplomats, intelligence professionals, and politicians must tread with care when approaching history and any patterns that emerge from it, especially when trying to draw parallels with present-day events. History and policy are ultimately about particulars—particular interests, particular leaders, particular decisions, and particular crises. Specific policies matter and can go a long way towards avoiding war altogether or minimizing its impact should it occur.

History and policy are ultimately about particulars—particular interests, particular leaders, particular decisions, and particular crises.

Simplifications aside, a close study of history does have its merits. To borrow a phrase attributed to Mark Twain, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. While the circumstances that cause state and sub-state groups to engage in open conflict are unique, the geographical, ethnic, and cultural conditions leading to tensions among these groups remain at least semi-permanent. The challenge before policymakers is to accurately assess present realities, many of which have historical precedents, and act within the small but undeniable window of choice these realities offer.



Recently, few issues have received as much attention as Sino-U.S. relations, and none have invited so many historical parallels. Phrases like “Senkaku Paradox” and “Thucydides Trap” are common parlance among young strategists and military leaders.[2] Comparisons with the pre-World War I Anglo-German rivalry or Athenian-Spartan relations before the Peloponnesian wars abound. These analogies fit into a specific version of the realist outlook on international affairs. According to these theories, sovereign states exist in perpetual latent conflict—a war of all against all—in an anarchic global environment. In the end, they must rely only upon themselves and the acquisition of power to achieve security. In this framework, status-quo hegemons find themselves in unavoidable conflict with hegemonic challengers. It violates the presumed axioms of realism for two hegemonic superpowers to coexist peacefully. Conflict—both cold and hot—is preordained.

Yet the preceding reflects only one particular strand of realist analysis. It is possible to adopt a more open-ended outlook on historical development while acknowledging the semi-structural elements that govern international issues. As states pursue their national interests—a fundamental principle of realism—opportunities arise not only for de-escalation of tension but even cooperation on particular matters. Indeed, if the international situation is suitable for it, cooperation between rivals can make the most strategic sense. The Helsinki Accords and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I/II) treaties at the highpoint of the Cold War, as well as the collaboration between U.S. and Iranian negotiators during the talks that eventually led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, demonstrate the potential for cooperation between apparently hostile countries.

Assessing bilateral relations between the U.S. and China today suggests areas where cooperation is possible.[3] A future Sino-U.S. war is far from inevitable, at least if leaders manage relations delicately and with sufficient mutual appreciation for each other’s unique history, culture, and strategic ambitions. Strategists cannot emphasize the point enough: China is not Sparta or Germany; the U.S. is not England or Athens. Each has a horizon for interpreting international relations that are unique to it, and American policymakers must make a genuine effort to understand the Chinese outlook. Beijing holds a number of nightmare scenarios coloring their strategic worldview, and U.S. policymakers should keep this in mind if they want to avoid rhetoric and actions that could inadvertently trigger Chinese fears of escalation.

Strategic Nightmare Scenario #1: Strategic Encirclement
In his influential assessment of China’s history, Henry Kissinger claims China’s greatest geopolitical fear is strategic encirclement—that a single hegemonic rival or an alliance of multiple weaker ones will surround its vast territory and work to destabilize its periphery.[4] This fear is strongly rooted in geography and history. In terms of security, geography has not been kind to China. Twelve different countries share its borders, and many of them have a history of aggressive action and outright cruelty toward the Middle Kingdom. What is more, several maritime powers lie within a few hundred miles of its coastline. Fate has positioned China precariously, explaining in no small measure the mistrust that has characterized its diplomacy. While China has often been regionally ascendant, it has always remained keenly aware that national tragedy or embarrassment are close-at-hand if these surrounding nations were to band together against it.

China’s Belt and Road (Shutterstock)
China’s two most significant geopolitical initiatives over the last decade confirm this lesson. For China, The Belt and Road Initiative serves primarily as a peaceful way to buy influence with many countries on its western periphery. For instance, many Central Asian countries have secured sizeable funding for infrastructure projects in the Belt and Road. Likewise, the maritime aspects of Belt and Road aim to construct a logistical basis for sea routes whose accessibility does not rely upon the goodwill of China’s island neighbors. Furthermore, China’s gradual militarization of the South and East China seas suggests an effort to secure its eastern and southern maritime flanks. Considering this element of China’s strategic horizon, the Belt and Road as well as the militarization of the South and East China Seas take on a new meaning. They are attempts to avoid the strategic disaster encirclement entails by creating a Eurasian sphere of influence less susceptible to maritime embargo or land-based intrusion.

For China, The Belt and Road Initiative serves primarily as a peaceful way to buy influence with many countries on its western periphery.

It is thus not surprising these initiatives are experiencing significant push-back from several rivals in China’s neighborhood who fear that their room for maneuver in the region will diminish. Among these encircling states, three stand out: Russia, Japan, and the United States.[5] All have complicated economic relations with China today, with points of tension coexisting with cooperation on many fronts. All have engaged in military conflict with China at some point in its history, and Beijing holds them primarily responsible for orchestrating its “century of humiliation.”[6]

Although currently not a potent military superpower, Japan’s proximity perpetually stokes memories of its brutal occupation of Manchuria and illustrates the real and present dangers of domestic political instability and military weakness.[7] Shinzo Abe’s efforts to remilitarize the island nation of Japan have understandably provoked consternation on the continent. These efforts are one of the motivating forces behind the Belt and Road and the militarization of the South and East China Seas. The tit-for-tat steps of military buildup on both sides risk feeding into narratives that make de-escalation difficult.[8]
Russia, on the other hand, currently enjoys relatively stable and cooperative ties with Beijing. But such was not always the case and may not be in the future. Talk of a budding alliance between the two powers ignores the severe headwinds around the corner.[9] Both view the Eurasian landmass as their backyard, and both seek to develop stronger economic and military ties with Central Asian nations. Russian initiatives tied to the Eurasian Economic Union, whose objectives include creating a single market for goods, services, capital, and labor, as well as promoting deeper integration of the post-Soviet space, collide with China’s own visions for the future of the Eurasian landmass.

In the short term, China and Russia are engaged in a high level of cooperation aiming to integrate the two projects.[10] However, the long-term prospects of cooperation are less bright. If either party begins to perceive any asymmetry in influence, an increasingly hostile and mutually suspicious attitude will inevitably emerge, especially if their common enemy, the United States, follows through with President Trump’s desire to withdraw entirely from the region.[11] A hostile Russia on China’s borders would create a situation reminiscent of the 1970s, when the U.S. was able to exploit the discord to its own advantage. Looking into the future, it seems localized great power competition between Russia and China, without the U.S. as a participant, could benefit the U.S. significantly more in an area that matters very little to American vital interests.

Perceptions of Strategic Encirclement (OrientalReview.org)
Currently, the chances of a complete U.S. withdrawal from the region appear slim. In fact, the American presence only seems to be growing, with Beijing perceiving the U.S. as the most likely contender to carry out this nightmare strategic scenario. Therefore, the pervasiveness of America’s imprint along its entire periphery strikes an emotional chord with the Chinese leadership.[12] American troops and strategic partnerships in South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Taiwan, Australia, India, and the Philippines, not to mention recent efforts to gain influence among the Central Asian countries critical to the Belt and Road, represent a textbook case of hegemonic strategic encirclement that understandably worries Beijing.

One area of controversy rarely mentioned in the American press is the war in Afghanistan. Despite America’s perception of the region as the heart of the so-called War on Terror, China’s perspective on this war differs considerably. Not only does Afghanistan share a border with China, but more importantly, strong cultural ties link Afghanistan to China’s most restive region, Xinjiang.[13] China initially supported the coalition effort to overthrow the Taliban—which has, Beijing believes, trained and provided refuge for Uighur separatists in Xinjiang—and promotes initiatives aimed at stabilizing the troubled country.[14] But a growing cohort in the Chinese leadership fears the conflict is morphing into a new arena for “Great Game” competition. The Chinese believe this transformed conflict risks leading to more instability on its periphery, not less.[15]

Because China believes instability in Afghanistan means instability in Xinjiang, the Chinese leadership could perceive this conflict in one of two ways. In the first, China views this instability as a headache inadvertently caused by the U.S. presence. China will have to dedicate substantial resources—both military and financial—to dealing with a problem that it sees as indirectly rooted in a U.S. military presence. In the second, China could suspect a deliberate U.S. hand in stoking instability in Xinjiang. As implausible as this suspicion may be, Washington cannot ignore Chinese perceptions of the nineteen-year conflict. The U.S. must come to terms with the reality that it may be inadvertently feeding Chinese fears of strategic encirclement.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

Strategic Nightmare Scenario #2: Domestic Chaos
Understanding how Beijing behaves on the international stage also requires a deep appreciation of its complex domestic conditions. What often strikes western observers as an unnecessary violation of human rights represents, for the Chinese leadership, not only a matter of regime survival but also, more importantly, a matter of averting national catastrophe. Memories of the bloody civil war between 1927 and 1949—in which as many as 3 million people died—still haunt many Chinese. Illustrative of this lesson in more recent history are the 1989 Tiananmen Square anti-government protests. Western observers believed these protests were a prelude to the full democratization of the Chinese mainland. So the eventual government crackdown on the demonstrations—leading to the deaths of thousands and the arrests of even more—struck democratic societies as exceptionally cruel. For many Westerners, Tiananmen symbolized the promise of China, what it could be if only the current communist regime decided to make necessary political and economic reforms.

Protesters in Tiananmen Square, 2 Jun 1989 (CNN)
As Kissinger astutely observes, understanding the political and historical context of Tiananmen shows that this event symbolizes something much darker for the Chinese leadership. In the lead-up to the unexpected death of Hu Yaobang, whose funeral was the trigger for the Tiananmen protests, Deng Xiaoping’s political reforms and economic restructuring were beginning to expose latent fissures within Chinese society. While many in the West marveled at surging Chinese economic growth, the tens of thousands of students sent abroad, and the incredible changes in the standard of living inside the country, there emerged significant indications that new, potentially destabilizing currents were churning within.

On the economic side, attempts to make prices reflect real costs inevitably led to price increases, at least in the short term, which in turn led to a run to buy up goods before prices went even higher. This rush created a vicious cycle of hoarding and higher inflation. Also, to recast the command economy on the model of the European system, Deng Xiaoping dismantled many central institutions and streamlined the bureaucracy.[16] Reforms thus enraged many established interests. As Kissinger points out, “The relative success of economic reform produced constituencies at the core of the later discontent. And the government would face declining loyalty from the political cadres whose jobs the reforms threatened.”[17] Significantly, many of the Tiananmen protesters were not of the liberal-democratic mindset, but disgruntled communists whom liberal-democratic reforms had hit hard.[18]

On a cultural level, economic reform had raised Chinese expectations on standard of living and personal liberties, while simultaneously creating tensions and inequities that many Chinese believed could only be resolved by a more open and participatory political system. Discontent was thus growing on all sides of the political spectrum. At the same time, in the far west of the country, Tibetans and the Uiygur Muslim minority in Xinjiang were beginning to agitate. For the communist leadership and Deng Xiaoping in particular, the ubiquitous protests stirred the historical Chinese fear of chaos. Regardless of the stated goals of the demonstrators, they recalled both the civil war and the bloody Cultural Revolution.[19] Deng carried out the eventual crackdown reluctantly. In his mind, it was a necessary measure to avoid national disaster.[20]

Presently, Beijing appears more confident domestically and internationally. Over the last two decades, China has enjoyed sustained growth rates well above those of Western democracies and has managed to weather the storms of an international financial crisis in 2008-2009 and a trade war with the U.S. with only a relatively minor effect on its overall growth. Standards of living continue to rise and poverty rates are the lowest they have ever been.[21] At the parade for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 2019, this self-assurance was clearly on display, as enormous crowds gathered to admire the overwhelming might of a nation resurrected from the dustbin of history.
Nevertheless, as Matthew Goodman, Elizabeth Economy, and other commentators have suggested, all of this optimism masks a much bleaker reality for the Chinese leadership.[22] The regime’s legitimacy has come to rely almost entirely on its ability to continue to deliver high levels of economic growth, something that will become increasingly difficult as its population ages and the economy becomes more consumer-driven. Industrial production growth slowed to a 17-year low in August of 2019, and anecdotal evidence suggests that ordinary Chinese are starting to feel the effects of slower wage growth and higher prices.[23] Furthermore, many respected Chinese economists are calling attention to the fact that government efforts to spur growth in the face of these obstacles are less and less effective.[24] The marginal efficiency of capital, measured by the incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR), is declining sharply since it takes more and more units of investment to generate one additional unit of growth.[25] All of this could potentially spell disaster for a financial system already racked with increasing debt and a forecasted growing disproportion between retirees and workers.

Confrontation between the U.S. and China? (Shutterstock)
It will be necessary for Chinese leadership to cultivate other sources of legitimacy over the coming years if these economic trends continue. U.S. policymakers should be sensitive to these necessities and not overreact to any rhetoric that aims primarily at shifting the basis of legitimacy within China, even if it strikes an ostensibly anti-western or nationalistic tone outside of China. Xi Jinping’s position may require at least three levels of communication, one with other world leaders, one within the Communist Party, and another that serves primarily to protect domestic stability and the regime’s standing within China. Historical perspective shows that, in China, a weak regime means increasing domestic instability. It also shows this instability can take on a life of its own, leading to civil war, mass-murder, and vulnerability to foreign interference in its affairs. Beijing will do everything in its power to avoid this scenario, so leaders in Washington must be realistic about what it can expect from the Chinese leadership in the years ahead.

Historical perspective shows that, in China, a weak regime means increasing domestic instability.

An Uncertain Future
Current Sino-U.S. relations are a complicated affair, and though strategists should never rely on history to provide an accurate picture of future developments, it can be a useful, albeit incomplete, guide to the particular concerns, interests, and strategic outlook of their Chinese counterparts. China’s two strategic nightmare scenarios outlined above are deeply rooted in its history, culture, and geography. They by no means explain all of its domestic and international behavior, but they can provide context for much of its rhetoric and many of its geostrategic initiatives. If the U.S. wants to elude the maelstrom of unavoidable war over relatively small strategic stakes, it would do well to avoid measures that feed China’s fears about these scenarios.

Although Washington should not be naïve in its dealings with Beijing, it should also make a deliberate effort to adjust its rhetoric to appease these legitimate concerns. Above all, it should demonstrate that its economic and military endeavors in China’s neighborhood intend, not to actualize some sort of strategic strangulation, but to serve Asia’s long-term interests by providing stability and prosperity to a region that, without a U.S. presence, would be much more dangerous for everyone. The U.S. should be more honest about the fact that its future prosperity depends largely upon China’s success. What is more, Washington should make clear that, while it does stand for human rights and the gradual reform of China’s political institutions, it understands that given China’s domestic conditions, these reforms cannot be made overnight.

Perhaps the most challenging consequence of a non-repetitive history is that the future is mostly undetermined, a mystery revealed only by the unfolding of particular events. This uncertainty puts the onus of decision and responsibility squarely on the shoulders of political, diplomatic, and military leadership, who must navigate this challenging terrain with incomplete knowledge of its features. A Sino-U.S. war is not preordained, nor is it an impossibility. If it ever does happen, it will be the result of the particular choices, words, and deeds of particular leaders, not a pattern embedded in the structure of history.

Michael Colebrook is a U.S. Army officer who holds a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas. The views in this essay are his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Have a response or an idea for your own article? Follow the logo below, and you too can contribute to The Bridge:



Enjoy what you just read? Please help spread the word to new readers by sharing it on social media.
Header Image: U.S.-Chinese Relations (Getty)
Notes
[1] I have in mind a recent article published in The Strategy Bridge. See Farley, Dylan. “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear: The Oncoming Wave of Conflict.” The Strategy Bridge, October 15, 2019.
[2] See O’Hanlon, Michael. The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War over Small Stakes. (Brookings Institution Press, 2019). Also, see Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap?. (Mariner Books, 2018). It is worth mentioning that the positions outlined in these books are much more nuanced than their popular construal would suggest. Neither see a U.S.-China war as inevitable and, in fact, both provide very practical policy suggestions to help avoid war.
[3] For a summary of potential areas of cooperation, see Zakaria, Fareed. “The New China Scare: Why America Shouldn’t Panic About its Latest Challenger.” Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2020.
[4] Kissinger, Henry. On China. (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). This fear, almost completely neglected in English-language publications on Chinese Strategy, is very prevalent among the Chinese leadership today. Also see Lukin, Alexander. China and Russia: The New Rapprochement. (Medford: Polity Press, 2018).
[5] I am not forgetting India, the Philippines, and Vietnam, three other rivals in the region. However, for illustrating my point about strategic encirclement, the countries mentioned above will suffice.
[6] For a thorough analysis of China’s National Narratives and how they impact its security policy, see Kaufman, Alison. Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on “China‟s Narratives Regarding National Security Policy.” March 10, 2011. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/3.10.11Kaufman.pdf
[7] For a great overview of the history of Sino-Japanese relations, see McGregor, Richard. Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).
[8] See Motoko, Rich. “Shinzo Abe Announces Plan to Revise Japan’s Pacifist Constitution.” New York Times, May 3, 2017. Shinzo Abe Announces Plan to Revise Japan’s Pacifist Constitution
[9] Aron, Leon. “Are China and Russia Really Forming a New Alliance?” Foreign Affairs, April 4, 2019. Are Russia and China Really Forming an Alliance?
[10] Rolland, Nadège. “A China-Russia Condominium Over Asia.” International Institute for Strategic Studies, February-March, 2019. A China–Russia Condominium over Eurasia
[11] Aron, Leon. “Are Russia and China Really Forming an Alliance?” Foreign Affairs, April 4, 2019.
[12] Wong, Edward. “The U.S. Faces a Tough Great Game Against China in Central Asia and Beyond.” The New York Times, February 13th, 2020.
[13] See Huasheng, Zhao. “China and Afghanistan: China’s Interests, Stances, and Perspectives.” Report published by The Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2012. https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/...s/publication/120322_Zhao_ChinaAfghan_web.pdf ; Also compare Ma, Haiyun. “For Them Afghanistan Is Safer than China.” Foreign Policy, November 1, 2018. For Them, Afghanistan Is Safer Than China;
[14] Huasheng, Zhao. “China and Afghanistan: China’s Interests, Stances, and Perspectives.” Report published by The Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2012.
[15] Wong, Edward. “The U.S. Faces a Tough Great Game Against China in Central Asia and Beyond.” The New York Times, February 13th, 2020.
[16] Kissinger, Henry. On China. (New York: Penguin Books, 2012) pg. 406.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid. pg. 407.
[19] Ibid. pg. 410.
[20] Nathan, Andrew. “The New Tiananmen Papers.” Foreign Affairs, May 30, 2019. The New Tiananmen Papers
[21] Poverty Profile of the People's Republic of China
[22] See Economy, Elizabeth. “The Problem with Xi’s China Model.” Foreign Affairs. March 6, 2019. The Problem With Xi’s China Model. See also Beckley, Michael. “Stop Obsessing About China.” Foreign Affairs. September 21, 2018. Stop Obsessing About China
[23] Goodman, Matthew. “The Anxiety Behind Beijing’s Swagger.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 30, 2019. The Anxiety Behind Beijing’s Swagger
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.

Tagged: China, US-China Relations

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Carpe diem: What the US must do now to capitalize on Beijing’s mistakes

Beijing has given Washington the opportunity to unite the world against it, given its missteps during the coronavirus pandemic.

thehill.com

Carpe diem: What the US must do now to capitalize on Beijing's mistakes

By Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han, opinion contributors — 04/26/20 12:00 PM EDT 285 Comments
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

“Seize the day” is always good advice, and it applies in this moment to the United States. Given the devastating effects of the coronavirus on public health and the world’s economy, the U.S. must act expeditiously. China is rightfully, but temporarily, on the back foot because of its handling of the virus first detected in Wuhan. The world has witnessed atrocious behavior by the Chinese Community Party (CCP) since at least December, when the COVID-19 outbreak was accompanied by a sordid amalgamation of lies, suppression of the truth, effort to shift responsibility, and misrule that only a communist government could achieve.

The U.S. must seize the opportunity presented by China’s strategic missteps. Beijing has given Washington the opportunity to unite the world against it in a way that even its suppression of human rights has not — with the mistreatment of China’s Muslim minority in Xinjiang, threats against Taiwan, and the crushing of Hong Kong protests. This virus will leave lasting scars on many countries, millions of people, and the world economic order.

For that reason, the U.S. must take four measures:
First, recognize that China is no longer just a rival. It is the most serious threat to our national security and the existing world order. The U.S. must call the world’s attention to what should be obvious — that China enabled this pandemic — despite the CCP’s efforts to deceive the world about the virus’s origin. As part of its propaganda campaign, Beijing has emphasized its efforts to place a Band-Aid on a gaping head wound by providing defective medical equipment to other countries. The U.S. and its allies must demand a reckoning for the CCP’s actions and draw attention to the regime’s true nature and misrule.

Second, reverse China’s penetration of international institutions. The performance of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the pandemic, for example, augmented China’s deception. Reversing China’s infiltration means examining the behavior of the leadership of nongovernmental organizations, many of the world’s governments, financial markets, media organizations and industries that Beijing has worked to capture.

Third, Washington must declare where it stands. This means advancing the U.S. conception of world order — a free, egalitarian political system that protects the rights of individuals — and ending dependence on the CCP for medicines, medical equipment, 5G technologies and other sinews of modern economies. The present order was under tremendous strain even before the pandemic, and now it must evolve. The U.S. must make itself a leading producer of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment once again, so that the world has a safe, reliable and secure supply when another pandemic happens.

But that is only the start. The U.S. also must strengthen its defenses. It needs Project Bioshield and related shields involving information technology (IT) and space. The goal is to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army cannot take command of this new “strategic commanding heights” of biowarfare, as Guo Jiwei described in his 2010 book, “War for Biological Dominance.” In short, we must prevent planned, accidental or natural biological destruction. Americans must employ the ingenuity, spirit and production capacity that our forebears displayed during World War II to keep the world free. It’s equally important to shield IT design and production so that the world will not be held hostage by IT viruses and malware from China, which has worked to gain supremacy in artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing.
At the same time, the U.S. must ensure that it provides investment and infrastructure for economic development in other countries. This means working with Wall Street to aid developing countries as readily as Wall Street did China’s development, and ensuring that Wall Street polices its capital so that the CCP cannot tap into it.

All of these measures entail a sharp break with decades-old ideas and behavior — a break that is long overdue. Any attempts to secure a restoration should fail as long as the CCP holds its power.

Fourth, the U.S. must contrast its vision with China’s. Beijing seeks to exploit the world’s resources and populations for its benefit. Certainly with the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCP’s behavior and unwillingness to acknowledge its mistakes have cost the world dearly. It acted out of fear that the coronavirus outbreak would further Xi Jinping’s loss of legitimacy and destabilize the CCP. A major implication of the pandemic for Chinese politics is more suppression within the party and of the larger population. If the U.S. demonstrates the contrast between its ideology and China’s, people all over the world might see which vision is better for the global population.

To not seize this opportunity may condemn the world to complacency once the immediate health crisis from the pandemic subsides. The virus has given the U.S. a chance to save itself from the CCP’s objectives and the perverse ideas advanced by its courtiers on Wall Street and K Street, in Silicon Valley, and at some Western think tanks, universities and media organizations.

It is up to the U.S. to “seize the day” to establish a better, more secure global economy, but also to defeat the CCP.

Bradley A. Thayer is professor of political science at the University of Texas-San Antonio and the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”
Lianchao Han is vice president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, he was one of the founders of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars. He worked in the U.S. Senate for 12 years, as legislative counsel and policy director for three senators.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Pompeo has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons | KXan 36 Daily News

U.S. Secretary of state Michael Pompeo has tied the recent launch of the Iranian satellite…

www.kxan36news.com

Pompeo has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons

By RAMBLER
April 27, 2020

U.S. Secretary of state Michael Pompeo has tied the recent launch of the Iranian satellite development in the country of nuclear weapons.

The Secretary of state has compared the technology used in the creation of the Iranian carrier rocket, with a similar intended for Intercontinental missiles. According to Pompeo, no country had ever developed the technology for Intercontinental ballistic missiles unless the target was not involved in the delivery of nuclear weapons

For years, Iran has declared that its space program is purely peaceful and civilian character. The administration trump never believed in this fiction, Pompeo quotes “Interfax”.

He also added that the launch of a military satellite of the Islamic revolution guards Corps, listed in the list of foreign terrorist organizations, confirms that the Iranian space program is not peaceful.

Earlier NEWS.ru reported that the launch of Iran to orbit the Earth the first military satellite was held under the leadership of the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps and in honor of the anniversary of the structure. According to the commander of IRGC Hossein salami, it opens a new page in the history of the country. However, despite the optimism of the captain, to full presence in space, the Republic is still far.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

How to lose a war without firing a shot? Ignore our enemies’ arms-control violations

A new State Department report focuses on arms control violations by Russia, China, Iran and other US adversaries.

thehill.com

How to lose a war without firing a shot? Ignore our enemies' arms-control violations
By Peter Pry, opinion contributor — 04/27/20 12:00 PM EDT 129 Comments
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

31

The State Department has released the unclassified executive summary of its new report — Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments — an annual report focused on arms control violations and noncompliance by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and others.

The State Department finds Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Burma in violation or noncompliance with various arms control commitments, including the nuclear Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT), unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Presidential Nuclear Initiative (PNI), Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Biological Weapons Convention (CWC), Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), and the Open Skies Treaty (OST).

Every year for decades, the State Department has reported significant arms control violations and noncompliance by Russia and other potential adversaries of the United States.

Dangerously — with rare exceptions — the White House, Congress and Washington foreign policy and defense establishments regard U.S. unilateral compliance with arms control agreements, while Russia and others routinely violate agreements, with complacency. It’s “business as usual.”

The State Department’s Compliance Reports, so-called in shorthand, do not assess the threat to the United States from unilateral U.S. compliance with all arms control agreements while Russia, China and others are cheating.

Perhaps the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Net Assessment should begin supplementing State’s reports with a National Security Impact Report for U.S. unilateral compliance while our adversaries cheat on arms control.
Some examples:

• Russia’s violation of the INF Treaty, by deploying new-generation nuclear missiles threatening Europe, undermines security of NATO and credibility of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. Fortunately, President Trump and his administration understand this, which is why they withdrew the U.S. from the treaty.
  
  
• Russia’s violation of the PNI to dismantle tactical nuclear weapons, while the U.S. proceeded to deeply cut such weapons, has resulted in giving Moscow at least a 10-to-1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, and superiority in the overall nuclear balance.
  
  
• Violations of the NPT increase the nuclear threat to the United States from fanatical and unpredictable actors such as Iran and North Korea.
  
  
• Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and others violating the BWC and CWC potentially risks exposing U.S. troops and the American people to “bugs and gas,” against which we have no defenses. We could lose a war.
  
  
• Russian violation of the CFE, which Moscow has openly abrogated, could enable Russian tanks, mobilized under the guise of a big exercise, to overrun NATO front-line states in 72 hours. DOD and RAND Corporation have warned about this.
  
  
• Russian violation of OST further diminishes the United States’s already grossly inadequate capabilities to verify compliance with arms control agreements.

The big news in the 2020 Compliance Report is that Russia and China have been violating the TTBT and CTBT by conducting nuclear tests, while the U.S. has complied with the agreements and conducted no tests since 1992. “Russia has conducted nuclear weapons experiments that have created nuclear yield and are not consistent with the U.S. ‘zero yield’ standard,” the report cautions.

The report further states that China’s “possible preparation to operate its Lop Nur test site year-round, its use of explosive containment chambers, extensive excavation activities at Lop Nur, and lack of transparency on its nuclear testing activities — which has included frequently blocking the flow of data from its international monitoring system (IMS) to the international data center operated by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization — raise concerns regarding China’s adherence to the ‘zero yield’ standard.”

Thus, the U.S. is probably 28 years behind Russia and China in developing advanced nuclear weapons based on new designs and technology.

Russia openly writes about having new-generation nuclear weapons based on “new physical principles” such as Super-EMP, neutron and X-ray warheads; “clean” warheads that produce no radioactive fallout; “dirty” super-high-yield (100 megatons) doomsday warheads; and ultra-low-yield warheads “useable” by land, air and naval forces.

What all this means is that the U.S. could lose a nuclear war.

Knowing this, would the U.S. dare risk war with Russia or China? Will U.S. allies trust our security guarantees and continue to be allies? Is the U.S. already losing the “new cold war” because of arms control? Worse, the violations of arms control agreements by Russia, China and others almost certainly are far worse than the Compliance Reports acknowledge.

The State Department’s bread and butter is arms control. Historically, State has been reluctant to acknowledge violations of arms control agreements; the department and the intelligence community covered up Russia’s violations of the INF Treaty for years during the Obama administration.

Both the State Department and the intelligence community are unreformed from the Obama years, still preferring to “see no evil” when it comes to violations of arms control sacred cows. They still have not declassified President Reagan’s General Advisory Committee report, “A Quarter-Century of Soviet Compliance Practices Under Arms Control Commitments, 1958-1983” that exposed the long history of failed arms control.

Predictably, many left-leaning organizations — such as the Arms Control Association, the Federation of American Scientists, Union of Concerned Scientists, and former Obama administration officials — will defend Russia and China, claiming that they are not really cheating.

It seems we still have not learned the Latin adage, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” — If you want peace, prepare for war.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry was chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission and served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA. He is the author of several books, including “The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War To Save America 2001-2020” (2020).

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Would China Use Nuclear Weapons First in a War With the United States?

Recent American statements on Chinese nuclear weapons policy merit closer scrutiny.

thediplomat.com

Flashpoints | Security | East Asia
Would China Use Nuclear Weapons First in a War With the United States?

Recent American statements on Chinese nuclear weapons policy merit closer scrutiny.

By Gregory Kulacki

April 27, 2020

Credit: YouTube screen capture via CCTV

Admiral Charles A. Richard, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command, recently told the Senate Armed Service Committee he “could drive a truck” through the holes in China’s no first use policy. But when Senator John Hawley (R-MO) asked him why he said that, Commander Richard backtracked, described China’s policy as “very opaque” and said his assessment was based on “very little” information.

That’s surprising. China has been exceptionally clear about its intentions on the possible first use of nuclear weapons. On the day of its first nuclear test on October 16, 1964, China declared it “will never at any time or under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons.” That unambiguous statement has been a cornerstone of Chinese nuclear weapons policy for 56 years and has been repeated frequently in authoritative Chinese publications for domestic and international audiences, including a highly classified training manual for the operators of China’s nuclear forces.

Richard should know about those publications, particularly the training manual. A U.S. Department of Defense translation has been circulating within the U.S. nuclear weapons policy community for more than a decade. The commander’s comments to the committee indicate a familiarity with the most controversial section of the manual, which, in the eyes of some U.S. analysts, indicates there may be some circumstances where China would use nuclear weapons first in a war with the United States.

This U.S. misperception is understandable, especially given the difficulties the Defense Department encountered translating the text into English. The language, carefully considered in the context of the entire book, articulates a strong reaffirmation of China’s no first use policy. But it also reveals Chinese military planners are struggling with crisis management and considering steps that could create ambiguity with disastrous consequences.

Lowering the Threshold
Towards the end of the 405-page text on the operations of China’s strategic rocket forces, in a chapter entitled, “Second Artillery Deterrence Operations,” the authors explain what China’s nuclear forces train to do if “a strong military power possessing nuclear‐armed missiles and an absolute advantage in high‐tech conventional weapons is carrying out intense and continuous attacks against our major strategic targets and we have no good military strategy to resist the enemy.” The military power they’re talking about is the United States.

The authors indicate China’s nuclear missile forces train to take specific steps, including increasing readiness and conducting launch exercises, to “dissuade the continuation of the strong enemy’s conventional attacks.” The manual refers to these steps as an “adjustment” to China’s nuclear policy and a “lowering” of China’s threshold for brandishing its nuclear forces.

Chinese leaders would only take these steps in extreme circumstances. The text highlights several triggers such as U.S. conventional bombing of China’s nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, heavy conventional bombing of large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, or other acts of conventional warfare that “seriously threatened” the “safety and survival” of the nation.

U.S. Misunderstanding
Richard seems to believe this planned adjustment in China’s nuclear posture means China is preparing to use nuclear weapons first under these circumstances. He told Hawley that there are a “number of situations where they may conclude that first use has occurred that do not meet our definition of first use.” The head of the U.S. Strategic Command appears to assume, as do other U.S. analysts, that the Chinese would interpret these types of U.S. conventional attacks as equivalent to a U.S. first use of nuclear weapons against China.

But that’s not what the text says. “Lowering the threshold” refers to China putting its nuclear weapons on alert — it does not indicate Chinese leaders might lower their threshold for deciding to use nuclear weapons in a crisis. Nor does the text indicate Chinese nuclear forces are training to launch nuclear weapons first in a war with the United States.

China, unlike the United States, keeps its nuclear forces off-alert. Its warheads are not mated to its missiles. China’s nuclear-armed submarines are not continuously at sea on armed patrols. The manual describes how China’s nuclear warheads and the missiles that deliver them are controlled by two separate chains of command. Chinese missileers train to bring them together and launch them after China has been attacked with nuclear weapons.

All of these behaviors are consistent with a no first use policy. The “adjustment” Chinese nuclear forces are preparing to make if the United States is bombing China with impunity is to place China’s nuclear forces in a state of readiness similar to the state the nuclear forces of the United States are in all the time. This step is intended not only to end the bombing, but also to convince U.S. decision-makers they cannot expect to destroy China’s nuclear retaliatory capability if the crisis escalates.

Chinese Miscalculation
Unfortunately, alerting Chinese nuclear forces at such a moment could have terrifying consequences. Given the relatively small size of China’s nuclear force, a U.S. president might be tempted to try to limit the possible damage from a Chinese nuclear attack by destroying as many of China’s nuclear weapons as possible before they’re launched, especially if the head of the U.S. Strategic Command told the president China was preparing to strike first. One study concluded that if the United States used nuclear weapons to attempt to knock out a small fraction of the Chinese ICBMs that could reach the United States it may kill tens of millions of Chinese civilians.

The authors of the text assume alerting China’s nuclear forces would “create a great shock in the enemy’s psyche.” That’s a fair assumption. But they also assume this shock could “dissuade the continuation of the strong enemy’s conventional attacks against our major strategic targets.” That’s highly questionable. There is a substantial risk the United States would respond to this implicit Chinese threat to use nuclear weapons by escalating, rather than halting, its conventional attacks. If China’s nuclear forces were targeted, it would put even greater strain on the operators of China’s nuclear forces.

A Slippery Slope to Nuclear War
Chinese military planners are aware that attempting to coerce the United States into halting conventional bombardment by alerting their nuclear forces could fail. They also know it might trigger a nuclear war. But if it does, they are equally clear China won’t be the one to start it.

Nuclear attack is often preceded by nuclear coercion. Because of this, in the midst of the process of a high, strong degree of nuclear coercion we should prepare well for a nuclear retaliatory attack. The more complete the preparation, the higher the credibility of nuclear coercion, the easier it is to accomplish the objective of nuclear coercion, and the lower the possibility that the nuclear missile forces will be used in actual fighting.

They assume if China demonstrates it is well prepared to retaliate the United States would not risk a damage limitation strike using nuclear weapons. And even if the United States were to attack China’s nuclear forces with conventional weapons, China still would not strike first. In the opening section of the next chapter on “nuclear retaliatory attack operations” the manual instructs, as it does on numerous occasions throughout the entire text:

According to our country’s principle, its stand of no first use of nuclear weapons, the Second Artillery will carry out a nuclear missile attack against the enemy’s important strategic targets, according to the combat orders of the Supreme Command, only after the enemy has carried out a nuclear attack against our country.

Richard is wrong. There are no holes in China’s no first use policy. But the worse-case planning articulated in this highly classified military text is a significant and deeply troubling departure from China’s traditional thinking about the role of nuclear weapons.

Mao Zedong famously called nuclear weapons “a paper tiger.” Many assumed he was being cavalier about the consequences of nuclear war. But what he meant is that they would not be used to fight and win wars. U.S. nuclear threats during the Korean War and the Taiwan Strait Crisis in the 1950s – threats not followed by an actual nuclear attack – validated Mao’s intuition that nuclear weapons were primarily psychological weapons.

Chinese leaders decided to acquire nuclear weapons to free their minds from what Mao’s generation called “nuclear blackmail.” A former director of China’s nuclear weapons laboratories told me China developed them so its leaders could “sit up with a straight spine.” Countering nuclear blackmail – along with compelling other nuclear weapons states to negotiate their elimination – were the only two purposes Chinese nuclear weapons were meant to serve.

Contemporary Chinese military planners appear to have added a new purpose: compelling the United States to halt a conventional attack. Even though it only applies in extreme circumstances, it increases the risk that a war between the United States and China will end in a nuclear exchange with unpredictable and catastrophic consequences.

Adding this new purpose could also be the first step on a slippery slope to an incremental broadening the role of nuclear weapons in Chinese national security policy. Americans would be a lot safer if we could avoid that. The United States government should applaud China’s no first use policy instead of repeatedly calling it into question. And it would be wise to adopt the same policy for the United States. If both countries declared they would never use nuclear weapons first it may not guarantee they can avoid a nuclear exchange during a military crisis, but it would make one far less likely.

Dr. Gregory Kulacki focuses on cross-cultural communication between the United States and China on nuclear and space arms control and is the China Project Manager for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Follow him on Twitter @gkucs.

 

[Housecarl]

Decoding Iran's New 'Qased' Rocket and the 'Noor' Satellite
182,126 views
•Apr 26, 2020


8.8K 106 Share

Run time 10:23

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPTz7Ig9RQE

Scott Manley
1.04M subscribers



Earlier this week Iran made their first successful satellite launch in a long time using a new rocket design named 'Qased'. What's most striking is that this is a miliatry launch vehicle using new solid propellent motor which is more advanced than any they've flow before, and it might just be the first of many developments of the technology.

1,429 Comments

 

[jward]

Editors' Pick|22,872 views|Apr 27, 2020,12:43am EDT
Boris Johnson Faces A Gibraltar Crisis On His First Day Back At Work
Craig Hooper Senior Contributor

I evaluate national security threats and propose solutions.

Spanish Incursions into British Administered [+]
Getty Images

While the coronavirus forced Spain into a strict lockdown, Spanish military incursions into British waters around Gibraltar have ramped up. Spain has taken full advantage while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was sidelined for most of April by a serious case of COVID-19.
Tension is extremely high. The rate of aggressive Spanish incursions into British territory raises the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the two NATO allies.
Gibraltar, a strategic territory perched on the strait between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under British administration since 1713. Spain has long contested the arrangement; over the past decade, Spain has staged over 4,000 incursions into Gibraltar territory, coupling the incursions with border disruptions and a range of other harassment.

Spain Is Forcing A Crisis:
While Spain has made no secret of wanting Gibraltar back, most of the overt incursions into British waters and airspace have occurred over the past few years. As Brexit fuels Spanish adventurism, barely-contested incursions into British territorial waters and airspace have become more frequent and increasingly brazen.
It is approaching a crisis. As England’s Prime Minister enjoyed his last day of sick leave, Spain coupled four maritime incursions with aggressive over-flights by a marine patrol aircraft. When the British Prime Minister returns to work on Monday, the still-recovering leader, distracted by illness, a pandemic response, Brexit and a crumbling economy, will also be facing a Falklands-like crisis. It is a daunting load for even the most fit of leaders—and not something that will likely to be managed well.

While Britain has remained almost supine in the face of relentless provocation—responding more aggressively to routine Russian Channel transits than to the relentless daily grind of Spanish incursions—Britain cannot keep turning a blind eye. British maritime forces in the region are simply too weak; Britain’s two tiny sovereignty patrol vessels (the 52-ft long HMS Sabre and HMS Scimitar) and a few rigid hull inflatable motorboats are poor deterrent.
With diplomatic protests proving to be ineffective, a larger marine presence and the deployment of air defense missiles may be Britain’s only prudent option to keep Spanish adventurism from getting out of hand.

Spain moves very aggressively when Morocco stages [+]
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued Confrontation Will Degrade U.S. Security:
Tension over Gibraltar risks ensnaring the United States.
When American submarines visit Gibraltar, Spanish vessels regularly interfere to the point where escorting British guardships fire warning shots. A few days ago, Spanish Air Traffic Control interfered with a U.S. KC-130 that was flying out of Gibraltar.
The tensions are so high that any U.S. asset calling upon Gibraltar cannot transit directly to Spain—a NATO ally—but must either stop at a second port or fly to another country.
U.S. ties to Britain are deep. But with the U.S. Navy developing a large presence at Naval Station Rota—a Spanish Base, and with the big U.S.-based General Dynamics Corporation GD building a strong relationship with the Spanish state-owned shipbuilding company, Navantia, Spain may sense that the costs for the United States are too high to intervene in the event of a Spanish/UK conflict.

But America can help keep the NATO-dominated Mediterranean from spinning apart. Spain holds several strategic points off the coast of Morocco, and a frank discussion regarding the fate of Spain’s extraterritorial holdings may prove to be quite interesting. Another option is for the United States is to immediately deepen ongoing operational activities on the “Rock”, basing ships or other units there.
Or, instead, America can sit back, and do nothing as Spanish adventurism rips NATO apart and sends the already fractious Mediterranean into chaos.

posted for fair use.....

Boris Johnson Faces A Gibraltar Crisis On His First Day Back At Work

Spain has taken full advantage while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been sidelined by a serious case of COVID-19. With Spanish provocations off Gibraltar growing more frequent and more brazen by the day, how will the UK respond to the growing crisis?

www.forbes.com

 

[jward]

Russia’s Latest Intervention In Mozambique Exemplifies Kremlin’s Ruthless Approach To Geopolitics
24 Apr, 2020 in Africa / Central African Republic / Current Events / Libya / Russia / United States by Sam Peters (updated on April 24, 2020)

As uncertainty reigns across the globe, Russian geopolitical scheming appears to remain as one of few inevitable certainties. In Mozambique, as in Sudan and the C.A.R. before it, Kremlin affiliated PMC ‘Wagner’ has embedded itself within an intra-state conflict in the hope of advancing Moscow’s strategic international agenda. Combining boots on the ground with its own cyber-division aimed at spreading disinformation, Wagner has fought in support of incumbent Mozambican premier Filipe Nyusi since September last year, typifying the Russian Federation’s ruthless approach to spreading its influence overseas.

A fractious partnership with Mozambique’s armed forces (FADM) has led to several chastising encounters for Wagner against Salafist guerrillas fighting out of the country’s north-eastern Cabo Delgado province. Reinforced by fighters from across East Africa, including Somalia, Wagner’s latest sub-Saharan venture has foundered in the face of well-organised and increasingly successful guerrilla resistance. Having sustained numerous casualties, Wagner mercenaries have apparently withdrawn more than 250 miles away from the Tanzanian border region, returning southwards to regroup and lick their wounds. According to Jasmine Opperman, a South African terrorism expert, this latest Russian venture bears all the hallmarks of prior unsuccessful interventions abroad. “The Russians don’t understand the local culture, don’t trust the soldiers [FADM] and have to fight in horrible conditions against an enemy that is gaining more and more momentum. They are in over their heads.”

The growing deployment of Russian troops on African soil has come largely as a response to the gradual retreat of U.S. influence from the region. Stemming from a refocusing of American priorities away from counterterrorism – and towards confrontation with Russia and China – the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Africa has been a key part of Donald Trump’s military agenda. The irony of this policy, that it invites America’s most erstwhile rivals to manifest themselves more prominently on the continent, is perhaps lost only on the President himself. With the bulwark of AFRICOM diminishing in significance, Vladimir Putin has been able to increase Russian influence exponentially, winning concessions for natural resources, alongside political amenability across a variety of African states. Both Mozambique and Libya have been targeted for their vas oil and gas reserves. Meanwhile, Russian contractors in C.A.R. have secured profitable diamond mining sites, amongst other mineral related holdings. In total, Moscow has signed over twenty defence-for-access agreements with African states since 2018, culminating in a summit of forty-three African leaders at Sochi in October 2019.

Thus, although Wagner has so far been unable to implement the style of Kalashnikov diplomacy it has so infamously deployed on Putin’s behalf in Syria and Ukraine, there is little to suggest a slowing of Russian encroachment in Africa. And whilever sanctions against Russia remain as inconsequential as many perceive them to be, grave human rights violations remain a distinct possibility wherever Moscow seeks to extend its reach. Although Wagner appears to have deployed only conventional weaponry in Mozambique, recent reports from Libya have suggested the outfit’s complicity in supplying either Sarin or white Phosphorus gas to General Haftar’s LNA forces. Exemplifying the Russian federation’s readiness to operate with impunity in foreign conflicts, ‘hidden’ behind the facade of PMC Wagner, such gross violations must be held to account. More forceful sanctions, which involve the U.N. and regional bodies such as the African Union, must be imposed to stem the Kremlin’s ruthless disregard for state sovereignty and human rights. At the moment there is little to prevent all theatres of Russian involvement from becoming laboratories of indiscriminate human slaughter. If this remains the case, the notion of a Russo-centric ‘‘evil empire’’ articulated during the Cold War may soon become a far more tangible reality.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Sam Peters
posted for fair use

Russia’s Latest Intervention In Mozambique Exemplifies Kremlin’s Ruthless Approach To Geopolitics

As uncertainty reigns across the globe, Russian geopolitical scheming appears to remain as one of few inevitable certainties. In Mozambique, as in Sudan and the C.A.R. before it, Kremlin affiliated…

theowp.org

 

[jward]

Five Ways the U.S. Military Will Change After the Pandemic
David Barno and Nora Bensahel

April 28, 2020
Special Series - Strategic Outpost

The global pandemic is about to profoundly change the U.S. military’s role in defending the United States — even if Pentagon leaders don’t know it yet. As we noted in our last column, many Americans will look at the immeasurable damage wrought by the pandemic and conclude that defending the homeland from catastrophic threats is far more urgent than defending against foreign threats far from American shores. That fundamental shift is rapidly ushering in a new era for the Department of Defense, which will upend some of its bedrock assumptions about when, where, and how the U.S. military contributes to national security.
The Department of Defense has been operating under a broad national security strategy that has remained remarkably unchanged since the end of World War II. The United States has maintained a large standing military that has been forward deployed around the world to prevent direct attacks on the United States and to secure the global commons. Though the Trump administration has challenged some parts of this strategy (especially its emphasis on global allies and partners), the most recent versions of the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy nevertheless reaffirmed most of its core principles.


Yet the pandemic has now suddenly and vividly demonstrated that a large, forward deployed military cannot effectively protect Americans from nontraditional threats to their personal security and the American way of life. In a deeply interconnected world, geography matters far less, and the security afforded by America’s far-flung military forces has been entirely irrelevant in this disastrous crisis. The number of Americans killed by the virus is about to exceed the number of U.S. troops killed in Vietnam, unemployment is higher than it has been since the Great Depression, and the social and human toll is simply incalculable. The ultimate damage will be so great that after the pandemic, the urgent need to defend the American people from devastating threats inside the homeland will quickly displace foreign threats atop the hierarchy of national security concerns.

The inevitable national security reckoning after the pandemic will pose tremendous challenges for the Department of Defense. Since the vast majority of its efforts and its enormous budget focus on deterring and defending against external threats as far away from the homeland as possible, it will need to adapt to a deeply changed environment where serious threats inside the homeland matter far more to most Americans. There are at least five key changes that will shape the choices and decisions that lie ahead for Pentagon leaders: cyber and space will be higher priorities than land, sea, and air; reliance on forward presence will diminish; the reserve component will become much more important; legacy programs and end strength will be cut — by a lot; and the prestige of the U.S. military will be dimmed.

Cyber and Space Will Be Higher Priorities Than Land, Sea, and Air
The U.S. military currently recognizes five warfighting domains: land, sea, air, cyber, and space. After the pandemic, external threats to the United States from the land, sea, and air will become much lower national security priorities than protecting against threats to the homeland from newly emerging and unconventional dangers. For the Department of Defense, that means a much greater emphasis on the cyber and space domains. Protecting the United States from a large-scale cyber attack on the nation’s critical infrastructure will become an extremely high priority, since it could harm the American people, economy, heath care system, and way of life at least as much (if not more than) COVID-19 already has. As horrible as this crisis is, food, water, power, and basic medical care are still largely available throughout the country and enabled by a fully functioning internet. A concerted cyber attack could upend distribution networks, disrupt power supplies and online access, and wreak havoc on a vast range of essential services from banking to telecommunications. Helping to defend the nation against this will almost certainly require the Pentagon to significantly expand the Cyber Mission Force. In particular, many more Cyber Protection Teams will be needed, and their mission should expand beyond their primary focus on .mil networks so they can provide much greater support to civil authorities and the private sector when requested. The newly created Space Force will also need to invest significant amounts of time and effort to protect U.S. civilian as well as military space assets, since they undergird every aspect of modern American life and are therefore tempting targets as well.

Reliance on Forward Defense Will Diminish
Forward defense has long been the cornerstone of U.S. defense strategy, but it will become less important as the focus grows on countering catastrophic threats against the homeland. In a post-pandemic world characterized by huge deficits, massive debt, and economic recession, the United States will continue to defend its most vital interests overseas: keeping NATO alive, protecting Eastern Europe from Russia, supporting Israel, and deterring conflict in Asia. But U.S. forces across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa, and even in some parts of the Pacific are likely to be drawn down if not withdrawn completely.
The economic crisis may also require changes to U.S. force posture in the places where military forces remain, since the sprawling network of overseas bases remains expensive. The United States spends about $10 billion a year to operate these bases, a figure that would be far higher without the very substantial amount of host nation support (which includes cash payments as well as various forms of in-kind support). Yet the global recession and rising debt levels spawned by the pandemic may make it harder for allies and partners hosting U.S. troops to continue providing such high levels of support. And here at home, the economic crisis will make members of Congress even more likely to support shuttering overseas bases in order to forestall any discussion of domestic base closures, since preserving jobs in their districts becomes even more critical at a time of such staggering unemployment levels.

The Reserve Component Will Become Much More Important
The increasing primacy of homeland defense means that the reserve component of the U.S. military may become equally if not more important to the nation than the active component, which would completely invert the traditional relationship between them. The vast majority of the military capabilities that have been used to respond to the pandemic, and that will be needed for future homeland crises, reside in the reserve component (which includes the National Guard and the reserve forces of the individual military services). The National Guard has been an especially valuable Swiss Army knife for governors and presidents, taking on a wide range of missions that have included ensuring public safety, moving critical supplies, and augmenting medical capabilities. The reserves also contain a disproportionate amount of support capabilities (such as engineering and medical units), which provide indispensable augmentation for civil authorities during domestic crises as well as reinforcements for large combat operations. By contrast, the warfighting units that comprise most of the active component have been largely irrelevant in this crisis. The active component has provided some field hospitals, and the (mostly civilian) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has constructed some important health care facilities, but these contributions nevertheless remain quite limited. And, unlike the active component, the reserve component simultaneously provides critical capabilities for both homeland crisis response and overseas military missions, which provides a vital hedge against foreign conventional threats.

Legacy Programs and End Strength Will Be Cut — By a Lot
As we’ve argued, the massive economic crisis and growing political pressures for greater domestic spending mean that the defense budget will likely plummet — and may even make the sequestration-era cuts look rosy by comparison. The combination of sharply declining budgets, less emphasis on the land, sea, and air domains, and diminishing forward presence means that expensive conventional platforms like aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, and manned fighters will likely face severe cuts. Major legacy modernization programs that were already reaching unaffordable levels (like the F-35 fighter and the Ford-class aircraft carrier) will inevitably have to be significantly scaled back, and some may be canceled outright.
The services must also accept that major cuts to end strength are inevitable, and that they will probably fall heavily on the active component. The average cost of compensating an active servicemember has grown by 64 percent during the past two decades (adjusted for inflation), and active forces require substantial training and other readiness investments so they can respond rapidly to international crises. Because personnel are so expensive, budget cuts always force down end strength numbers, as happened during the first years of sequestration. But this time around, there will also be a lot of pressure to maintain, or possibly even to increase, reserve component end strength instead of spreading the cuts evenly between the two components. The reserve component offers a tremendous amount of bang for the defense buck. It provides essential capabilities for both domestic and international crises, and it is cheaper to maintain since its personnel serve on a part-time basis and are called up only when needed. As shrinking defense budgets force tough tradeoffs, the nation may have to rely more heavily on its reserve component to preserve important warfighting and homeland defense capabilities.

The Prestige of the U.S. Military Will Be Dimmed
The U.S. military will also face a profound cultural challenge after the pandemic, as its place in American society inevitably shifts. Since September 2001, the United States armed forces have been uncritically revered by the American people. The amount of deference and praise heaped on the all-volunteer force fighting overseas for almost two decades has been enormous, and largely warranted. But it has grown so excessive that even some in uniform now find it a source of embarrassment. Every year has brought new pay raises, more benefits, and greater visibility, which has sometimes raised expectations of ever more prestige and perquisites. Yet most of that same military, as we noted last month, has been largely on the sidelines during the coronavirus crisis. Doctors, nurses, truck drivers, and grocery store clerks are among the many types of people whose usually invisible role in making the nation function has now become blindingly obvious. Many of them are now risking their lives to keep doing their jobs, in a different but no less important way than U.S. military personnel have always done.
After the pandemic, the U.S. military may receive less unchecked adulation by ordinary Americans, who have seen that there are other heroes among us every day — some of whom have sacrificed their lives during this crisis in order to keep their fellow citizens safe. Furthermore, the U.S. military may seem far less relevant to the concerns of most Americans, especially as they demand much stronger security at home, and as a military no longer conducting large-scale combat operations recedes from public visibility. This may come as an unpleasant shock for the many U.S. servicemembers who have known nothing but extraordinary accolades since 2001. It may also harm military recruiting and retention over the long term and exacerbate the already gaping chasm between the military and the society it serves. This shift may remind servicemembers that strong public support for the military is not automatic, and that they are not the only Americans who are willing to risk their lives in times of crisis in order to protect the nation.
These five changes, and others that emerge after this calamitous disruption to the nation and its way of life, will all dramatically change ways in which the U.S. military approaches its core mission of defending the country. We will one day look back upon this pandemic as a major inflection point in U.S. history. In the same way that the end of the Cold War ushered in a decade of peacekeeping operations, and the Sept. 11 attacks led to the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the pandemic will lead to a new era focused more on domestic rebuilding and resilience than external threats. Pentagon leaders need to start thinking now, even while the pandemic continues to tear through the fabric of the country, about how to adapt to these trends so they can best position the U.S. military for the very different environment of the years to come.


Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, U.S. Army (ret.) and Dr. Nora Bensahel are visiting professors of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellows at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. They are also contributing editors at War on the Rocks, where their column appears monthly. Sign up for Barno and Bensahel’s Strategic Outpost newsletter to track their articles as well as their public events.
Image: U.S. Army Reserve (Photo by Spc. Jeffery J. Harris)


Special Series, Strategic Outpost
posted for fair use.....

Five Ways the U.S. Military Will Change After the Pandemic - War on the Rocks

The global pandemic is about to profoundly change the U.S. military’s role in defending the United States — even if Pentagon leaders don’t know it yet. As

warontherocks.com

 

[jward]

UN finds ‘disturbing increase in violence’ following U.S.-Taliban deal

By Thomas Joscelyn | April 27, 2020 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn

There was a “disturbing increase in violence” in Afghanistan following the signing of a withdrawal agreement between the U.S. and Taliban on Feb. 29, according to a new report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Overall, the number of civilian casualties was 29 per cent lower during the first quarter of 2020, as compared to the same timeframe last year. But this dip in casualties, caused in part by a brief “reduction in violence” before the U.S.-Taliban withdrawal accord was signed in Doha in late February, didn’t hold throughout March. The fighting intensified in the weeks that followed the deal.

UNAMA found that “[m]ore than 500 civilians, including more than 150 children, were killed due to the fighting in Afghanistan during the first quarter of 2020.” This is the lowest figure for the first quarter of any year since 2012.
More than half of the civilian casualties were attributed to “Anti-Government Elements (AGEs),” meaning mainly the Taliban and the Islamic State’s Khorasan province (ISIS-K). UNAMA attributes 55 per cent of the civilian casualties to these actors, with 710 people killed (282) or wounded (428). The lion’s share of these casualties is attributed to the Taliban, with 39 percent, followed by ISIS-K (13 per cent) and the remainder caused by “undetermined AGEs.”
Although the total number of casualties (killed and wounded) in the first quarter was lower than last year, there was an uptick in the number of civilians killed by the jihadists. “The number of civilian deaths attributed to AGEs – particularly the Taliban – increased by 22 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019, mainly due to an increase in targeted killings and summary executions,” UNAMA reports.

Actions taken by the Afghan government and its allies accounted “for 32 per cent of all civilian casualties during the first quarter of 2020, causing 412 civilian casualties (198 killed and 214 injured).” Afghan national security forces caused more civilian casualties (21 per cent) than any other Pro-Government Element (PGE), with the U.S. and its NATO allies accounting for far less (8 per cent). UNAMA is especially concerned about the impact of airstrikes and “indirect fire,” as both types of tactics led to a disproportionate number of casualties among children.
UNAMA has been investigating civilian casualties in the Afghan war since 2009. With few exceptions, the Taliban is regularly identified as the actor most responsible for killing and injuring Afghan civilians.
Unsurprisingly, the Taliban quickly denounced UNAMA’s findings.

“We reject the figures published by UNAMA,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement earlier today. “The Islamic Emirate employs a special commission for the prevention of civilian casualties which has managed to bring down civilian casualties in Jihadi ranks to near zero.”
The Taliban consistently refers to itself as the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” and is fighting to resurrect this totalitarian regime, which ruled most the country prior to the U.S.-led invasion in Oct. 2001. Mujahid claims that the Islamic Emirate’s “Commission for the Prevention of Civilian Casualties” will deal with any “perpetrators” of violence against civilians and they “will be presented to the courts.” This is a reference to the Taliban’s shadow system of governance, which is present throughout the country.
The U.S., Afghan government, and others have repeatedly called on the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire. But the Taliban has never agreed to a lasting ceasefire. The Taliban rejected one while negotiating with the U.S. State Department, only agreeing to a short-lived “reduction in violence” in February.

As the coronavirus has spread across the globe, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani again urged the Taliban to temporarily lay down its arms. The jihadists rejected his plea.
“This is the umpteenth time that Ashraf Ghani has asked for a ceasefire from the Islamic Emirate but at the same time, he continues to remain an obstacle for the implementation of the agreement through which all sides could have ended the occupation, begun intra-Afghan negotiations and finally attained a ceasefire and dispute resolution,” an Apr. 25 statement attributed to Mujahid reads.

The “agreement” Mujahid mentioned is the Feb. 29 withdrawal accord between the U.S. and the Taliban in Doha. The Afghan government was not a party to the deal, or the negotiations leading up to it. The agreement is lopsided in the Taliban’s favor, with the State Department granting concessions to the Taliban in exchange for the group’s mere participation in eventual intra-Afghan talks. However, the Taliban continues to promote its Islamic Emirate as the only legitimate ruling party in the conflict. This has been a consistent theme in the Taliban’s messaging since 2001, and there is no real evidence that the group is willing to compromise on its longstanding political goals. The Afghan government initially objected to some of the State Department’s concessions, including an uneven prisoner swap, which would see up to 5,000 Taliban fighters and members freed in exchange for 1,000 men held by the group.
As part of the Doha accord, the U.S. also endorsed the Taliban as de facto counterterrorism partner — a notion that is contradicted by more than two decades of evidence.

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

posted for fair use

UN finds ‘disturbing increase in violence’ following U.S.-Taliban deal | FDD's Long War Journal

According to UNAMA, civilian casualties decreased during the first quarter of the year, as compared to similar timeframes in previous years. However, there was a "disturbing increase in violence" in Afghanistan following the U.S. agreement with the Taliban on Feb. 29. And the Taliban is the...

www.longwarjournal.org

 

[jward]

Argument
5 Things to Know If Kim Jong Un Dies
Hereditary dictatorships rarely last past three generations, and collapse may be in the cards for North Korea.
By Oriana Skylar Mastro | April 27, 2020, 11:35 AM

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi on March 2, 2019. Dien Bien/Getty Images


North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, was reported to have had a cardiovascular procedure on April 12, treating a health condition allegedly stemming from “excessive smoking, obesity, and overwork,” according to one South Korean publication. Since then, Kim has not made any public appearances; he was absent from April 15 celebrations of North Korea’s most important holiday, the birthday of his grandfather and founder of the regime, Kim Il Sung. On Saturday, April 25, he even missed the annual parade celebrating the founding of the armed forces. Panic has reportedly broken out in North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang, where residents are buying up necessities in preparation for the worst.

As a result, there is much speculation that the North Korean leader is gravely ill. U.S. officials and the intelligence community have received reports about Kim’s troubled health, but, given the closed nature of North Korea, it is impossible to accurately assess the severity of Kim’s condition.
If Kim dies, or is even incapacitated, it poses a serious threat to the regime. The hereditary nature of North Korea’s government means that internal stability is heavily reliant on the smooth succession to a new leader—which likely means one of Kim’s family members. But, as I found in my recent study of all hereditary autocracies since World War II, passing power is particularly difficult in family dictatorships, where the ability to find an individual who is both competent and enjoys elites’ support is relatively low, due to the small pool of candidates. As in medieval monarchies, succession crises become the norm, and obscure figures or new dynasties rise as a result: Since World War II, no family dictatorship has ever managed to pass power for a third time.
The situation is dire in North Korea, where there is no clear successor to Kim. Instability in North Korea would have immediate and long-term implications for the region and U.S.-China competition. Here are five things you need to know as speculation about Kim’s health continues.

1. If the regime collapses, it will happen quickly.
A common characteristic of family dictatorships is rapid and often unexpected collapse. Most failed regimes disintegrate completely in less than a year from the first signs of crisis: Experts have speculated about the potential collapse of the North Korean regime for decades, for example, during Kim’s monthlong absence from the public eye in 2014. The rumors about Kim’s health are of great interest, because the expectation of a power transition can be enough to spark such a crisis.
The durability of the Kim regime is a historical anomaly. Twelve out of 18 family dictatorships in place since World War II have collapsed, with the average lasting 32 years. In contrast, the North Korean regime has endured for over seven decades, despite famine, economic crisis, international sanctions, and restrictions on foreign trade, as well as two transitions of power. There is currently no formidable outside challenge to the Kim dynasty, neither by the military nor by the North Korean people.
However, this past resiliency tells us little about the future, because a common characteristic of family dictatorships is rapid and often unexpected collapse. It doesn’t help that Kim hasn’t designated a successor, and the most likely candidate is a woman—Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong—which would be unprecedented for authoritarian hereditary regimes.

2. The United States is prepared, kind of.
The U.S. military plans for two main scenarios: a North Korean attack on South Korea and the collapse of North Korea. The United States conducts a number of annual joint exercises with South Korea to test and hone their preparedness in these contingencies. The alliance is strong, with both countries continually improving their joint operational effectiveness. For example, the Combined Forces Command, established in 1978, comprises equal numbers of U.S. and South Korean officers. The command’s structures and processes have allowed the two countries to build strong operational integration, enabling military decision-making that is faster and more efficient than if the United States and South Korea had two separate commands.
But transfer of wartime operational control from the United States to South Korea remains unresolved. The two sides are still in the process of making such a command change a viable option, although it will be years before South Korea meets the agreed-upon conditions for that transfer.
Also, the best response to instability in North Korea would depend on an unpredictable variable, the cause of the instability, and there are many possible triggers: refugee problems caused by food shortages, political instability due to fighting factions, a civil war caused by regime change, or a coup. Another big unknown is the dynamics an incapacitated Kim would spark.
It does not help readiness that the United States has put off or scaled back major joint exercises with South Korea since 2018, and both its aircraft carriers dedicated to the region are battling the coronavirus.

3. North Korean nukes would need to be secured quickly.
The United States would face many challenges, alongside South Korea, in the event of collapse in the North. But securing and destroying nuclear weapons and associated facilities would be the top priority. A key part of the strategy to counter North Korean weapons of mass destruction is to prevent the proliferation of material, weapons, and know-how beyond the peninsula to new actors. In a North Korea collapse scenario, the United States would likely seek to establish a cordon sanitaire around the country to prevent nuclear materials from getting out and into the hands of other rogue actors, or even terrorist organizations.
North Korea is currently estimated to have between 20 and 60 nuclear weapons, a stockpile of 75 to 320 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, 39 relevant nuclear sites, and 49 missile sites. Given advancements in its missile technology, North Korea can hit South Korea, Japan, and even potentially the United States with nuclear weapons and has threatened to do so on multiple occasions. Kim or a successor may use nuclear weapons as a last-ditch effort to deter outside intervention that could ensure and accelerate the collapse of the regime.

4. China would take the lead militarily, whether the United States likes it or not.
One big problem is that U.S. contingency planning does not adequately account for the role of Chinese forces in a collapse contingency. The conventional wisdom is that Chinese intervention would largely be limited to dealing with refugees along its border, and any actions taken would be in support of North Korea.
But changes in Chinese military capabilities, heightened concerns about nuclear security, and prioritization of geopolitical competition with the United States have encouraged China to broaden its thinking in recent years. Specifically, China would likely undertake an extensive military intervention with an eye on expanding regional influence if a major conflict broke out on the Korean Peninsula. Recent Chinese statements and military training exercises also point to heightened preparations for intervention.
Moreover, it is likely that the Chinese military would reach North Korean nuclear facilities sooner than U.S. or South Korean troops, thanks to China’s geographical proximity to North Korea, the vicinity of its troops, and the possibility that North Korean troops would exhibit relatively low resistance to Chinese forces. China might also enjoy early warning, allowing for advanced preparation, because the shared border provides China with unique opportunities to collect intelligence. All of this points to the need for the United States to change its planning assumptions to account for the presence of Chinese troops on the peninsula following any credible signs of instability in Pyongyang.

5. The collapse of the Kim regime would likely set back America’s position in Asia.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of the U.S. role in Asia, and thus the status of its competition with China for power and influence, rides on how the United States responds to instability on the Korean Peninsula. Unlike China, the United States is not a resident Asian power; it relies on a network of alliance relationships for military access. The unpredictability of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on North Korea, vacillating between “fire and fury” and dramatic praise for Kim, may create uncertainty among U.S. allies as to how the country would behave in a confrontation. Similarly, if the United States does not follow through completely on its alliance commitments to South Korea, this could encourage allies to pursue alternative arrangements and seek greater accommodation of China, weakening the U.S. position.
Instability caused by the collapse of the Kim regime would most certainly lead to a civil war that would involve the United States as South Korea’s ally. Hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed for stability and WMD elimination operations in North Korea. Such a war would then likely involve deaths in the order of tens of thousands of people, even millions, and the choice to detonate any U.S. nuclear weapons within North Korea would bring “hellish results,” as the security studies expert Barry Posen has argued. The drain of a major war on the Korean Peninsula would be cataclysmic for U.S. resourcing of the great-power competition with China in other areas and arenas.
In short, while many may cheer at the sign of political troubles in North Korea, the situation is complicated. U.S. policymakers would almost certainly face a deck stacked against them if regime instability hits Pyongyang. It would take once-in-a-generation leadership to create the U.S. statecraft that would navigate the United States safely through a potential crisis.
Read More


The Curious Case of the Maybe Dead Dictator
A story with a single source sent Twitter into a frenzy: Is Kim Jong Un brain-dead, or is he resting after a successful operation? Once again, no one really knows what’s happening in the elusive country of North Korea.
Dispatch | Morten Soendergaard Larsen







Oriana Skylar Mastro is an Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

posted for fair use
5 Things to Know If Kim Jong Un Dies

 

[jward]

Chinese military lashes out at American warship’s ‘intrusion’ in South China Sea

• PLA scrambles air and sea patrols near Paracel Islands in response to what it says is violation of Chinese sovereignty
• Tensions rise in region, with both countries at odds over handling of the coronavirus pandemic

Minnie Chan
Published: 10:09pm, 28 Apr, 2020
Updated: 10:09pm, 28 Apr, 2020

The USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday. Photo: Getty Images

The Chinese military has accused an American guided-missile destroyer of “intruding into Chinese territory waters” near the Beijing-controlled Paracel Islands, saying the “provocative act” violated Chinese sovereignty.
The People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theatre Command, which oversees
the South China Sea
, said the USS Barry destroyer intruded into “waters around the Paracel Islands without permission” on Tuesday, prompting the command to scramble air and sea patrols to “track, monitor, verify, identify and expel” it.
The warning came as Taiwanese media reported that the American vessel sailed through the Taiwan Strait twice in this month, followed both times by PLA warships.
“These provocative acts by the US side … have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security interests, deliberately increased regional security risks and could easily trigger an unexpected incident,” a statement posted on the military unit’s WeChat social media account quoted Li Huamin, a command spokesman, as saying.


“[The acts] were incompatible with the current atmosphere as the international community is fighting pandemic … as well as the regional peace and stability.”
Beijing seeks boost for armed police, coastguard as tensions rise in South China Sea
27 Apr 2020

The Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China and the Hoang Sa Archipelago in Vietnam, are a group of more than 30 islands in the South China Sea located between the coastlines of Vietnam and China. They are controlled by Beijing but also claimed by Taipei and Hanoi.

In January, Li also lashed out at the US for “deliberate provocations” during the Lunar New Year holiday after the USS Montgomery littoral combat ship passed by the Spratly Islands, also in the South China Sea.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, waters where Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia also have claims.

Tensions in the region have worsened in the last month with a war of words between Beijing and Washington over
the coronavirus pandemic.
In the exchanges, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper criticised Beijing of failing to share information about the pandemic while Beijing accused Washington of dismissing China’s efforts to control the contagion.

Rather than joining forces to contain the pandemic, both sides have increased their military presence in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the South and East China seas.
On April 22, the Yokosuka-based USS Barry transited the Taiwan Strait before heading to the South China Sea. A day later, the PLA’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, led its strike group through the strait.




Comments



Minnie Chan
Minnie Chan is an award-winning journalist, specialising in reporting on defence and diplomacy in China. Her coverage of the US EP-3 spy plane crash with a PLA J-8 in 2001 near the South China Sea opened her door to the military world. Since then, she has had several scoops relating to China's military development. She has been at the Post since 2005 and has a master's in international public affairs from The University of Hong Kong.

posted for fair use

China military lashes out at US warship’s ‘intrusion’ in South China Sea

PLA scrambles air and sea patrols near Paracel Islands in response to what it says is violation of Chinese sovereignty.

www.scmp.com

 

[jward]

America’s Afghan Mission Has Been Overtaken by Pandemic
Martin Skold

April 28, 2020

The hill at Gandamak, where the British 44th East Essex Regiment formed a ragged square and died with its boots on after the “security situation” collapsed in 1842, is still littered with British bones. It is a lesson for would-be rulers in Afghanistan: Take nothing for granted, don’t get tied to internal politics, and be able to get out if things come apart.
Barnett Rubin and Sultan Barakat have made a heartfelt plea in these pages to save the U.S. deal for a settlement in Afghanistan, echoing Rubin’s suggestions for a peace settlement in Foreign Policy. Unwittingly, however, these articles make a compelling argument against further involvement.

Since the deal, the Taliban have already resumed attacks, U.S. forces slated for withdrawal are sheltering in place from COVID-19 even as more troop rotations are contemplated, and the security and political situations have deteriorated. Whether or not the deal is still meaningful, the pandemic and recession mean the United States is going to have to make good on its withdrawal from Afghanistan, both militarily and in its political involvement. It must conserve its resources for its domestic situation and geopolitical competition yet to come, and safeguard its forces from increased risk and threat.

It’s Not Afghanistan’s Year
COVID-19 is only going to throw gasoline on an already raging fire. At present, Afghanistan’s legitimate government is on the verge of infighting: President Ashraf Ghani and his opponent in the last election, Abdullah Abdullah, are disputing its result in the midst of a pandemic, with Taliban attacks escalating and Afghan forces attrited, defecting, and in retreat. Meanwhile, insider attacks against Afghans and Americans are spiking among Afghan security forces. Ironically, Afghan refugees in COVID-devastated Iran are now re-entering an unprepared Afghanistan en masse. Afghanistan has few recorded COVID-19 cases, but this is due to poor testing; half the country may already be infected. The Taliban have exploited the situation for political purposes, blaming the Afghan government while offering medical aid to civilians and accelerating attacks in hard-hit provinces. Their refusal to adopt a Ramadan ceasefire offers further discouragement.
Barakat and Rubin focus on Afghanistan’s ongoing internal peace process and take a neutral approach. In an effort to show the way forward, they attempt to move each side’s pieces in at least a three-way chess game. Thus, “Ghani and Abdullah could show leadership by setting aside the issues between them;” the United States will then resume currently reduced aid; the Taliban will drop reservations about starting negotiations; the Taliban should stop killing Afghan forces (!) — all in the name of stopping the war to fight the pandemic.

This is wishful thinking. There is no track record of the Taliban honoring long-term ceasefires, let alone this past month, and their exploitation of the pandemic and unwillingness to consider a Ramadan truce speaks for itself. There is, in fact, no track record at all of negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, despite more than a decade of calls for it. The last time the Taliban negotiated with other Afghans, as opposed to an outside power, was Ahmad Shah Massoud’s overture to them in 1995. The Taliban were famously intransigent and won control of the country on the battlefield a year later. It is telling that the recent prisoner exchange, which the Taliban had demanded as a precursor for talks, did not result in a Taliban commitment to come to the table. Though there are signs that at least a short-term power-sharing deal may be reached, making it last will require sustained involvement. The last time the United States had to knock heads between Abdullah and Ghani was in 2014, and reaching agreement required a sustained highest-level effort by a U.S. Secretary of State during a period when spare time and resources existed.

As to resources, it is time to examine Rubin’s argument in Foreign Policy.
Rubin’s argument entails essentially four points. First, Afghanistan is dependent on aid for the survival of its regime. Second, the withdrawal of U.S. aid in response to infighting between Ghani and Abdullah can force some sanity on its opposing factions. Third, Russia and China are already competing with the United States for influence in Afghanistan, necessitating U.S. engagement. And finally, cooperation between Russia, China, the United States, Iran, and Pakistan stands a chance of resolving Afghanistan’s internal conflict and engendering further cooperation among them.
Creative though this reasoning is, it fails to make the case. To the first two points: where Afghanistan’s need for aid is concerned, the United States might increase aid to Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons, even while withdrawing – but withdrawal of aid is no more likely to instill long-term sanity than any other failed measure. In particular, the ‘Abdullah-Ghani split reflects a longstanding Tajik-Pashtun divide with roots in the structure of Afghanistan’s violent politics and history itself; it may be plastered over but will always be there.

As for the remaining points, attention to Afghanistan expends scarce political capital amidst a dire domestic situation. A Twitter comment that the United States can get a missile on target in Afghanistan but cannot deliver a ventilator to an American hospital sums up the situation well. When competing for political and media attention, Afghanistan loses out to almost any other possible agenda item. A little aid is one thing, but sustained involvement in Afghanistan’s peace process is another.

Outdated Reasoning
Afghanistan has very little intrinsic value for U.S. interests. Its perceived importance stems from an outdated strategic view of America’s battle with Sunni jihadism, a moral plea to justify American sacrifices there, and a belief that U.S. credibility would be damaged by withdrawal.
Regarding strategy, it is often said that the United States must remain in Afghanistan to prevent it from reverting to a base for Sunni jihadists. This thinking is a decade out of date. As a potential terrorist haven, Afghanistan will scarcely be different from Iraq, Syria, or Libya, each of which is — by geography — more strategically vital for fighting Salafi jihadism.
The moral problem is tragic, but can no longer be changed. Veterans tend to regard the war as a mistake. Whatever the case, there is little left to do after two decades of war, and patriotic American servicemembers are better served by a change of priorities.

Where U.S. credibility is concerned, a story from World War II, recounted by Brian Farrell in The Defence and Fall of Singapore, comes to mind: following the Japanese invasion of Malaya after Pearl Harbor, the British forces there were pushed back to Singapore and besieged. With water and ammunition running out, their commander, Gen. Sir Arthur Percival, held a council of war to consider surrendering. When urged to do so, he objected, “There are other things to consider. I have my honor to consider!” His disgusted subordinate, Lt. Gen. Sir Lewis Heath, replied, “You need not bother about your honor — you lost that a long time ago.”
In Afghanistan, the United States need not bother about its honor; it lost that years ago. The credibility damage that the United States would take from leaving Afghanistan is already “priced in” to others’ assessments. By contrast, ending a fruitless war demonstrates that the United States takes its foreign policy seriously and is cognizant of the bigger challenges it faces. As David Fromkin wrote regarding the withdrawal of great powers from wars in his commentary on Kosovo, Kosovo Crossing, “ n warfare and in politics as in life, if you find that you are doing the wrong thing, it is best to stop doing it. You may receive credit for perseverance…but little credit for intelligence.”
This is particularly true if, as above, U.S. allies — in the midst of a resource-sapping pandemic — begin to wonder if the United States has anything left for them in a crisis, particularly given how strung-out Afghanistan actually leaves the United States, particularly as China funds them and offers them aid. Priorities matter, and are seen to matter.

 

[jward]

continued.....

Overtaken By Geopolitics
In view of this, Rubin’s contention that Russian and Chinese involvement in Afghanistan entails the need for U.S. engagement is darkly comical. It is as if the United States were asked to forget the old adage that if one’s friends jump off a bridge, one need not follow. It also ignores the possibility that regional powers’ interests in Afghanistan may be uniquely theirs; the U.S. is not a regional power and has options and other needs that regional powers lack. Quite apart from this, Rubin flip-flops on the core issue: If the United States must involve itself further in a Groundhog Day-esque peace process because its geopolitical competitors are doing so, it should not expect — as Rubin suggests — that this, of all issues, will lead to deeper collaboration between what are now sworn adversaries. The idea that Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and the United States will closely cooperate to bring about peace in Afghanistan is tragically far-fetched. Both the broader picture and the regional interplay between the United States, India, Pakistan, and China (let alone Iran or Russia) argue for reduced involvement, not more.
In broad terms, getting out of Afghanistan would refocus U.S. allies’ policies. In the face of alarming Russian military modernization, including the stand-up of enormous Russian armored formations, there is a crying need for U.S. allies to reshape their militaries away from peacekeeping and towards conventional deterrence. Not only does a withdrawal from Afghanistan allow European militaries to reprogram (very) scarce defense resources, but the withdrawal of the United States signals, in essence, that their top alliance partner is necessarily resetting the policy agenda.

In region, meanwhile, the United States is engaged in overdue outreach to India as a counterweight to the Chinese challenge in the Indian Ocean. This necessitates that the United States has a freer hand with Pakistan — India’s main security threat and a collaborator with China — than it currently does, given the need to cooperate with Pakistan in Afghanistan. This is particularly the case given Pakistan’s toleration of, and sometimes support for, Sunni jihadists in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This problem does not entirely disappear upon U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Certain requirements, such as whatever counter-terrorism cooperation can be achieved, remain. However, in general, it is better that the United States need less from Pakistan on any given day.
Iran — with which the United States is close to a shooting war, and which it will not offer relief from sanctions even amidst a pandemic — probably does not bear further discussion. Even if the United States somehow changed its relationship with Iran, which has some uses in fighting Sunni jihadists, it should not expect favors from Iran in Afghanistan, or waste political capital trying to get them.
China, meanwhile, has long sought to exploit U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. While the United States has provided security in Afghanistan, China has acquired mineral rights there. Thus far, most of these projects have stalled due to poor security and infrastructure. Even so, it makes sense to end a de facto subsidy to a U.S. geopolitical rival, particularly one that would actually grow if the United States somehow achieved its aims. Essentially, all that has prevented China from exploiting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth has been the U.S. failure to secure it. Meanwhile, China benefits from the diversion of the U.S. military’s attention away from the Pacific and conventional warfare preparation. A U.S. withdrawal is regarded as a potential net negative for China, which may of itself argue in favor.

Worse, though, is the potential for escalating proxy warfare with Russia or even China via Pakistan. With China and Pakistan closely cooperating, and with Pakistan remaining a historical backer of the Taliban, in the absence of the usefulness of Afghan mineral concessions, other, more disturbing, potential policies for their relationship to U.S. forces in Afghanistan open up. With no prospect of an improved security situation, the United States has arguably outlived its usefulness to China where Afghanistan is concerned. It may be far-fetched, but one hopes the Chinese equivalent of the famous Senator Charlie Wilson is currently otherwise occupied. Russia may already have ideas: Its engagement with the Taliban extends to accusations of arms distribution. Far from cooperating with Eurasian powers to bring peace to Afghanistan, the United States is at risk of getting caught in a crossfire — or in someone’s sights.

U.S. Forces At Risk
The risk of American forces being cut off by escalating insurgent activity is becoming real because of the inherent problems of the Afghanistan deployment. Afghanistan is among the hardest places in the world for the United States to deploy forces: It is a landlocked country on the opposite side of the world, with forbidding geography and primitive transportation infrastructure. There is a reason the war is so expensive even relative to the small number of troops (about 13,000, to go to 8600 under the deal if it is followed) that the United States has had there.
Those troops are at the end of a perilously thin, patched-together supply line, so fragile that allegations surfaced around 2010 of bribes being paid to the Taliban to allow free passage of supply contractors who otherwise could not operate. If the line is cut — in particular if Afghan security forces defect or come apart — American forces are stranded. Getting help to them in such a crisis, which would require the United States to reinforce its forces or withdraw them under fire, would be a nightmare given everything the United States is currently dealing with. The risks of something going wrong increase, rather than decrease, with so few American forces in theater and a deteriorating political situation.
Worse, the main supply route for U.S. forces in Afghanistan runs through Pakistan, with which the United States must, for that reason, maintain good relations — a problem for all the aforementioned reasons. On at least one occasion, Pakistan has shut off logistics to make a point; notably, when it closed its border to U.S. logistics in 2011 after a border dust-up in which the United States mistakenly killed Pakistani forces. Pakistan has U.S. logistics by the jugular at a time when it has effectively teamed up with China.

Historically, the back-up supply route for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, opened during the 2011 border closure, was the so-called Northern Distribution Network. It ran via Russia and Russian-influenced territory, and Russia closed it in 2015, as U.S.-Russian relations soured over Ukraine. A future Pakistan logistics crisis would put the United States in a position of having to renegotiate for the reopening of the Northern Distribution Network, if it were even possible. For obvious reasons, it is better not to have to worry about this.
The advent of COVID-19 and substantial state restrictions worldwide on movement and transport — and especially on large gatherings — increases the risk that some key link in the logistics chain will be disrupted by policy. U.S. forces are currently sheltering in place from COVID-19, but even that might have to change if they can no longer rely on their supply lines. At most, it means the withdrawal timetable is complicated, not that the imperative does not exist.
It is time to go.
Williamson Murray has noted that the global environment for a great power can change in five- or ten-year increments. Ten years, at the dawn of the 20th century, was enough time for Britain to go from an opponent of France to an ally of France against Germany, and from an unchallenged hegemon to a beleaguered competitor. A similar timeframe spanned America’s transformation from isolationist bystander to World War II-victor and leader of the free world. Twenty years, then, is an impossibly long time for the United States to be involved in the same project. It is time to find a new one. There are many to choose from.
Martin Skold holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of St. Andrews, where his thesis focused on the strategy of great power competition. He most recently served as campaign manager and chief policy adviser to former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld’s presidential primary campaign. Previously, he was legislative assistant for foreign policy to Rep. Paul Ryan in 2011, at the height of the Arab Spring and the U.S. fiscal crisis. These are his own views, and not those of anybody he has ever worked for — though he’d be grateful for some overlap.

posted for fair use

America’s Afghan Mission Has Been Overtaken by Pandemic - War on the Rocks

The hill at Gandamak, where the British 44th East Essex Regiment formed a ragged square and died with its boots on after the “security situation”

warontherocks.com

 

[jward]

North Korea’s Interesting Defense Moves

Some recent defense moves have been revealing.


By Atsuhito Isozaki

April 24, 2020

Credit: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

As the world confronts the novel coronavirus, North Korea has been steadily moving forward with efforts to “strengthen its national defense.” Looking back on recent reporting on Chairman Kim Jong-un by North Korean media, much of it has been about “firepower strike drills,” “bombardment drills,” and other military inspections.

When inspecting the “test firing of a tactical ballistic missile” on March 21, Kim stated that “the new weapons system and the tactical and strategic weapons system under development” is a “most trustworthy war deterrent.” These comments are worth noting. In the past, North Korea claimed that it had secured an American deterrent with the six nuclear tests and three ICBM tests, but it might be that it is now considering the possibility of having to find an alternative.

In other words, it would appear that Pyongyang is starting to think that a true deterrent following any future progress in negotiations with the United States would be the capability to reliably strike at South Korea and Japan with their U.S. military bases. The “most trustworthy war deterrent” would thus represent a new threat to Japan and other neighboring countries.

North Korea’s Politburo meeting and Supreme People’s Assembly (the parliament) on April 11 and 12 produced a change in diplomatic leadership at. Ri Su-yong, director of the party’s International Relations Department, took a step back, while Kim Hyung Jun, the newly appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Ri Son-gwon, who became foreign minister in January, joined the Politburo and the State Affairs Commission. Not only has North Korea’s all-important relations with the U.S. entered a stalemate, but the coronavirus issue is hindering any diplomatic headway, so the regime appears to be making preparations for the future, while keeping a watchful eye on developments with regard to the U.S. presidential elections this year.

The U.S. and North Korea have not spoken with each other since last fall, but there have been intermittent exchanges of personal letters between the two heads of state. Chairman Kim Jong-un’s younger sister Kim Yo-jung responded to a letter sent by U.S. President Donald J. Trump to the North Korean leader in March in a personal statement. Although she expressed gratitude over the letter, she cautioned that U.S.–North Korean relations should not be viewed in terms of “personal relations.”

.

With an eye on reelection, Trump is hoping that North Korea abstain from further “provocations.” Should Pyongyang conduct an ICBM test or something similar, Trump’s North Korea diplomacy will be seen as having failed. North Korea is well-aware of this, and so is sizing up the U.S. while resolutely avoiding any concessions itself.

One week after Kim Yo-jong’s comments, a statement attributed to the “new department director general for negotiations with the U.S.” was announced. This was the first mention of the department in North Korean media and it is thought to have been only recently formed. The statement criticized U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement of continued economic sanctions, saying that “no matter how excellent and firm the relationship between the top leaders of the two countries is, it cannot reverse the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK, and the resumption of dialogue much touted by the U.S. is nothing but a decoy to keep us from going our own way.” They even called it “a decoy to buy time and create the environment favorable for [the U.S. president]” that involved putting up “false propaganda for dialogue,” and warned that “If the U.S. bothers us, it will be hurt.”

However, not only was neither statement reported inside North Korea, but since the name of the “director general” criticizing the U.S. was not publicized, we can interpret this as merely a bargaining move.

But for all of the attempts that experts make at scholarly analysis, actual world history and international politics have always been swayed by unpredictable “random factors,” such as the sudden death of a leader or a natural disaster. In recent years, U.S.–North Korean relations underwent a rapid rapprochement and cooling due to the Trump factor, but now we also have a new factor in the form of the COVID-19 coronavirus. What effect it will have on diplomacy with North Korea is as yet unknown.

Atsuhito Isozaki is an associate professor at Keio University.

North Korea’s Interesting Defense Moves

Some recent defense moves have been revealing.

thediplomat.com

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

China Says PLA Scrambled Aircraft, Ships to ‘Expel’ U.S. Warship from South China Sea Island Chain - USNI News

Chinese authorities said they sortied ships and aircraft to “track, monitor, verify, identify and expel” a U.S. warship from the Paracel Island chain in the South China Sea on Tuesday, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officials said on Chinese social media. Navy officials confirmed to USNI News...

news.usni.org

China Says PLA Scrambled Aircraft, Ships to ‘Expel’ U.S. Warship from South China Sea Island Chain

By: Sam LaGrone
April 28, 2020 1:09 PM

Chinese authorities said they sortied ships and aircraft to “track, monitor, verify, identify and expel” a U.S. warship from the Paracel Island chain in the South China Sea on Tuesday, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officials said on Chinese social media.

Navy officials confirmed to USNI News that guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the vicinity of the island chain off Vietnam.

“These provocative acts by the U.S. side … have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security interests, deliberately increased regional security risks and could easily trigger an unexpected incident,” reads a statement from PLA Southern Theatre Command spokesman Li Huamin, reported the South China Morning Post.
Barry’s FONOP was “incompatible with the current atmosphere as the international community is fighting pandemic … as well as the regional peace and stability.”

While the statement claimed that the PLA forced Barry out of the island chain, a Navy official told USNI News that the operation proceeded as planned without encountering any unsafe or unprofessional behavior from Chinese military aircraft or warships. The PLA did not detail the assets used.

While the official didn’t provide details of the FONOP, previous operations in the vicinity of the Paracels have tested Beijing’s claim to a territorial straight baseline around the island chain in conflict with international maritime law. China views the water between their island holdings not as open international water but as territorial Chinese sea – a view that the U.S. disputes. The chain is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

Both Washington and Beijing have accused the other side of using the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a distraction to exercise more military control in the South China Sea.

The FONOP from the Japan-based Barry closely follows the destroyer transiting the Taiwan Strait twice this month, drawing similar reactions from Beijing.

A day after Barry’s April 22 transit, the Chinese Liaoning Carrier Strike Group also transited the Taiwan Strait.

In addition to the presence operations, the destroyer has been active in the South China Sea operating with guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) and amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) off the coast of Malaysia near an ongoing dispute over mineral exploration between Malaysia and China.

_______________

Posted for fair use.....

USS Bunker Hill Conducts 2nd South China Sea Freedom of Navigation Operation This Week - USNI News

This post has been updated with additional details of Bunker Hill’s freedom of navigation operation. Guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) conducted a freedom of navigation operation through the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea, U.S. 7th Fleet announced on Wednesday...

news.usni.org

USS Bunker Hill Conducts 2nd South China Sea Freedom of Navigation Operation This Week

By: Sam LaGrone
April 29, 2020 7:17 AM • Updated: April 29, 2020 10:19 AM


USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) transits the Philippine Sea, on March 24, 2020. US Navy Photo

This post has been updated with additional details of Bunker Hill’s freedom of navigation operation.

Guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) conducted a freedom of navigation operation through the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea, U.S. 7th Fleet announced on Wednesday.

According to a statement from the Navy, the cruiser tested excessive maritime claims of China, Vietnam and Taiwan. All three countries have overlapping claims in the contested island chain.

Bunker Hill, without prior notification, conducted an innocent passage past an unspecified feature in the Spratly chain. Under international maritime law, a warship can move through a country’s territorial sea without notification as long as it doesn’t conduct any military operations.

“Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight and the right of innocent passage of all ships,” reads the statement from 7th Fleet.

“This freedom of navigation operation upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging the restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan.”

A Navy official told USNI News the transit was in the vicinity of Gaven Reef, home to a Chinese military supply installation. Under international maritime law, the feature commands its own territorial sea that would require a warship to make an innocent passage within 12 nautical miles without prior notification.


The Bunker Hill FONOP follows a Tuesday operation in which guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) tested Chinese and Vietnamese claims in the Paracel Islands, also in the South China Sea.

The Tuesday operation drew a swift rebuke from the Chinese government.

“These provocative acts by the U.S. side … have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security interests, deliberately increased regional security risks and could easily trigger an unexpected incident,” reads a statement from PLA Southern Theatre Command spokesman Li Huamin.

Barry’s FONOP was “incompatible with the current atmosphere as the international community is fighting pandemic … as well as the regional peace and stability.”

The Japan-based destroyer has also made two Taiwan Strait transits this month, drawing negative reactions from Beijing.

In addition to the freedom of navigation operations, the U.S. has been active in the South China Sea. Bunker Hill, Barry and amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) had been operating off the coast of Malaysia near an ongoing dispute over mineral exploration between Malaysia and China earlier this month.


Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), front, and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) transit the South China Sea April 18, 2020. US Navy Photo

The following is the April 29, 2020 statement from U.S. 7th Fleet.

On April 29 (local date), USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the Spratly Islands, consistent with international law. This freedom of navigation operation (“FONOP”) upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging the restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China, Vietnam, and Taiwan.

Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight and the right of innocent passage of all ships.

The U.S. position on the South China Sea is no different than that of any other area around the world where the international law of the sea as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention provides for certain rights and freedoms and other lawful uses of the sea to all nations. The international community has an enduring role in preserving the freedom of the seas, which is critical to global security, stability, and prosperity.

As long as some countries continue to claim and assert limits on rights that exceed what is provided for under international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention, the United States will continue to demonstrate its resolve to uphold these rights and freedoms for all. No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms.

China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines each claim sovereignty over some or all of the Spratly Islands. China, Vietnam, and Taiwan purport to require either permission or advance notification before a military vessel or warship engages in “innocent passage” through the territorial sea. Under international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention, the ships of all States – including their warships – enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea. The unilateral imposition of any authorization or advance-notification requirement for innocent passage is not permitted by international law, so the United States challenged those requirements. By engaging in innocent passage without giving prior notification to or asking permission from any of the claimants, the United States challenged the unlawful restrictions imposed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The United States demonstrated that innocent passage may not be subject to such restrictions.

U.S. forces operate in the South China Sea on a daily basis, as they have for more than a century. All of our operations are designed to be conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows – regardless of the location of excessive maritime claims and regardless of current events.

The United States upholds freedom of navigation as a principle. The Freedom of Navigation Program’s missions are conducted peacefully and without bias for or against any particular country. These missions are based in the rule of law and demonstrate our commitment to upholding the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all nations.

Related
USS Montgomery Conducts First 2020 FONOP in South China Sea
January 28, 2020
In "China"
U.S. Destroyer Passes Near Chinese Artificial Island in South China Sea Freedom of Navigation Operation
May 10, 2016
In "Budget Industry"
UPDATED: USS Stethem Conducts Freedom of Navigation Operation Past Triton Island in South China Sea
July 2, 2017
In "Budget Industry"

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

With Kim Jong Un Mysteriously Gone, China Is Likely to Make a Power Move

There are many ways Beijing could use the mystery surrounding Kim Jong Un’s disappearance to its advantage. None of them are good for the United…

foreignpolicy.com

Argument
With Kim Jong Un Mysteriously Gone, China Is Likely to Make a Power Move
There are many ways Beijing could use the mystery surrounding Kim Jong Un’s disappearance to its advantage. None of them are good for the United States or Japan.

By Michael Auslin | April 28, 2020, 2:21 PM

Reports of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s death or permanent incapacitation may be greatly exaggerated, but the mystery of his whereabouts and condition forces the world to consider what a North Korean succession crisis might look like. From the outside, the Kim family regime appears unassailable, but whatever is happening to the leader raises the specter of an uncertain transfer of power with no clear heir in sight. If factions face off, a vicious internal conflict is certain, and a civil war not unthinkable. With North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile sites potentially falling into the hands of whoever acts most quickly, Asia could face an unprecedented nuclear crisis.

Of these known unknowns, one stands out above all: Could any weakness in the Kim regime induce China to try to assert control over Pyongyang? If crisis equals opportunity, then it is only prudent to consider how Chinese President Xi Jinping might view making a bold move to reshape the regional balance of power. A successful intervention by Beijing would permanently alter the geopolitical map of East Asia, isolating Japan and reducing U.S. power in the region.

This is the most dangerous moment for the three-generation Kim regime in decades. Some reports claim that Kim Jong Un either had emergency heart surgery or is in a vegetative state, and that Beijing has already sent a team of medical experts to help. The dictator has not been seen in public for weeks and missed several high-profile events, including the country’s main national holiday, which celebrates the birth of his grandfather and founder of the regime, Kim Il Sung.

Kim is only 36 years old, but has hardly been the picture of good health. Obese, often photographed smoking cigarettes, and likely to enjoy the same sybaritic lifestyle of his father, he has been a prime candidate for a health crisis. And while the North Korean state media insists the country has no coronavirus cases, it cannot be ruled out that the supreme leader is a victim of the pandemic.

Coming to power in late 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, Kim ruthlessly consolidated his position. Named heir only the year before the elder Kim died, the little-known successor executed his powerful pro-Beijing uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and later reportedly had a half-brother murdered in Malaysia. His own children are still young, leaving a gap in who would take over as ruler or regent. If he is indeed incapacitated, it may be taking weeks for the regime to acknowledge the fact precisely because of behind-the-scenes machinations.

A power struggle is thus an entirely possible scenario, whether Kim is dead or weakened. His sister, Kim Yo Jong, has been raised to near second-in-command status, but she is only 32 years old—and whether North Korea’s patriarchal system would accept a woman as supreme leader is unknown. Top military officers might decide to install a puppet or fight among themselves for dominance. Outsiders’ lack of knowledge about the dynamics of power in North Korea makes assessing any of this difficult.

Kim’s apparent medical crisis offers Beijing the first real opportunity in decades to strengthen its hand over Pyongyang.

Kim’s apparent medical crisis offers Beijing the first real opportunity in decades to strengthen its hand over Pyongyang.

Even if Kim reappears tomorrow, the questions over his health and the regime’s cohesion will certainly make the Chinese Communist Party consider if it might be an opportune time to move in.

Kim has had a fraught relationship with Xi, reportedly spurning multiple requests to meet until acceding in March 2018, a few months before his pathbreaking summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. Pyongyang’s independence is legendary; its successful nuclear and ballistic missile programs make the rogue state even more resistant to external pressure.

The opportunity to bind North Korea more tightly to China and maintain it as a buffer state facing U.S. allies South Korea and Japan would be a geopolitical gift to Xi. Regaining the influence Beijing lost in Pyongyang with the execution of Jang would be another reason to make a move. Moreover, South Korea’s political left is ascendant after legislative victories this month, and President Moon Jae-in has deepened his country’s ties with Beijing. In short, the trends have been more auspicious for a dramatic expansion of Chinese power on the Korean Peninsula.

Exerting political control through economic power is one route for Beijing. Another, more difficult path would be an actual physical move into North Korea. In a world distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing might well make a bold gamble to intervene in North Korea in the name of peace and order, supposedly to prevent a government collapse and humanitarian crisis. Suborning North Korean military leaders based near the Chinese border would ease passage toward Pyongyang, along with making deals with regime insiders beforehand. Securing nuclear and missile sites, ostensibly to ensure stability, would cement Beijing’s control over the Kim regime. A pliant client state, perhaps even headed by Kim’s sister, would naturally follow.

The geopolitical implications of Beijing’s control over North Korea would be enormous. Given the likelihood that Chinese naval and air force units could be present in North Korea, Chinese and American forces would face each other across the Demilitarized Zone. That would make the U.S. alliance with South Korea much more difficult. With both pressure and inducements from Beijing, Seoul could even decide to throw in its lot with China. With both pressure and inducements from Beijing, Seoul could even decide to throw in its lot with China; given Moon’s leanings and an endemic anti-Americanism in South Korea, that should not be inconceivable. Beijing could neutralize any Southern opposition to reduced or severed ties with Washington by promising to help Seoul enforce its control over the Liancourt Rocks, a group of small islets held by South Korea, which refers to them as Dokdo, and also claimed by Japan, which refers to them as Takeshima. The Chinese navy would thereby gain access to the strategic Korea Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea, helping Beijing dominate Asia’s vital inner waters.

That, in turn, would leave Japan isolated in Northeast Asia, facing a Chinese-dominated Korean Peninsula and with little choice but to dramatically increase its military budget, perhaps including the nuclear option. Tokyo would also put enormous pressure on Washington to maintain a credible military capability in the region.

Read More


3 Scenarios for Kim Jong Un’s Mysterious Absence
The United States and South Korea should be ready to cooperate whether Kim is dead, sick, or about to reappear.
Argument | Duyeon Kim, Leif-Eric Easley


5 Things to Know If Kim Jong Un Dies
Hereditary dictatorships rarely last past three generations, and collapse may be in the cards for North Korea.
Argument | Oriana Skylar Mastro

With U.S. and Chinese naval and air forces vastly closer to each other, the potential for an accident or a miscalculation leading to an armed encounter would increase exponentially. Washington would either have to accept much greater risk or decide to reduce its presence. Calls would grow at home to reduce tensions with Beijing, which would be accomplished most easily by adopting a so-called offshore balancing strategy, which would maintaining readiness but pull back U.S. forces in the region.

None of this may come to pass this time. However, political life in Pyongyang will remain uncertain even if Kim reappears. If a succession crisis did occur, options for the United States would be limited, but Washington will nonetheless need a plan to counter any possible moves by China into North Korea.

Enhanced intelligence is required to give advance notice of China’s military activity or political machinations in Pyongyang; working with South Korean intelligence will be vital. Close political consultation with Seoul is also needed to keep Moon committed to the U.S.-South Korean alliance, as is a campaign aimed at public opinion in the South, which is as concerned about Chinese power as it is about the United States’. Not for nothing do the South Koreans often describe themselves as “minnows among whales.”

Beyond the peninsula, deeper planning with Japan for defense and deterrence is just as important, in order to reassure Tokyo about the United States’ continuing presence. Ensuring there is no drawdown of combat-ready U.S. forces in the region, and that they are equipped with the most advanced U.S. weapons systems, is a prerequisite. Above all, U.S. diplomats must make clear to their Chinese counterparts that the United States’ resolve to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific remains unaltered, even if Kim were to rule for another half-century.

Michael Auslin is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

What China's army reforms mean for the world - Asia Times

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu once said, "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak." Looking at the Chinese

asiatimes.com

Analysis
What China’s army reforms mean for the world

The PLA is steadily increasing its ability tor project power globally

by Bates Gill and Adam Ni April 28, 2020

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu once said, “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Looking at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) today, it’s hard to say which of these tactics is most germane.

Getting the answer right will have enormous consequences for the United States and the future of the Indo-Pacific region. Underestimating the PLA breeds complacency and risks costly overreach. Overestimating the Chinese military grants it unwarranted advantage.

Similarly, for the Chinese leadership, miscalculating its military capability could lead to disaster.

As such, any serious appraisal of Chinese military power has to take the PLA’s progress – as well as its problems – into account. This was the focus of a recent study we undertook, along with retired US Army lieutenant colonel Dennis Blasko, for the Australian Department of Defence.

The PLA’s new-found might

By all appearances, the PLA has become a more formidable force over the past decade. The massive military parade in Beijing last October to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China showed off more than 700 pieces of modern military hardware.

One of these weapons, displayed publicly for the first time, was the DF-41, China’s most powerful nuclear-armed ballistic missile. It is capable of hitting targets anywhere in the US.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has also expanded its military footprint in the South China Sea. Military experts say China has used the global distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to shore up its position even further, drawing rebukes from neighbors. Tensions have heightened in recent days as the US and Australia have sent warships into the sea for drills.

In the past few years, China has also stepped up its military exercises around Taiwan and disputed waters near Japan, and last December, commissioned its second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, into service with the PLA Navy.

The most recent annual assessment of the PLA by the Pentagon acknowledges China’s armed forces are developing the capability to dissuade, deter or, if ordered, defeat third-party armed forces (such as the US) seeking to intervene in “a large-scale, theatre campaign” in the region.

The report also expects the PLA to steadily improve its ability to project power into the Pacific and beyond.
A recent study commissioned by the US Congress goes further, saying China’s strategy aims to “disrupt, disable or destroy the critical systems that enable US military advantage.“

The report called for a “new American way of war.”

All of these highlight the increasing capabilities of the PLA and underscore the challenges China’s rising hard power pose to the United States and its regional allies. But what of the challenges the PLA itself faces?

A Chinese destroyer takies part in a naval parade off the eastern port city of Qingdao last year. Photo: Jason Lee/Reuters



Overcoming the ‘peace disease’


Interestingly, many of these problems are openly discussed in official Chinese publications aimed at a Chinese audience, but are curiously absent when speaking to a foreign audience.

Often, pithy formulaic sayings of a few characters summarise PLA shortcomings. For example, the “two inabilities” (两个能力不够), a term that has appeared hundreds of times in official Chinese media, makes reference to two shortcomings:

• the PLA’s current ability to fight a modern war is insufficient, and
• the current military commanders are also not up to the task.

Another frequent self-criticism highlights the “peace disease” (和平病), “peacetime habits” (和平积习) and “long-standing peace problems” (和平积弊).

The PLA was last at war in the mid-1980s, some 35 years ago. Today’s Chinese military has very little combat experience.

Put more pointedly, far more soldiers serving in the PLA today have paraded down Chang’an Avenue in Beijing than have actually operated in combat.

Owing to these and many other acknowledged deficiencies, Xi launched the most ambitious and potentially far-reaching reforms in the PLA’s history in late 2015.

This massive structural overhaul aims to transform the PLA from a bloated, corrupt and degraded military to one increasingly capable of fighting and winning relatively short, but intensive, conflicts against technologically sophisticated adversaries, such as the United States.

But, recognizing how difficult this transformation will be, the Chinese political and military leadership has set out a decades-long timeline to achieve it.

DF-17 ballistic missiles on parade in Tiananmen Square last year. Photo: Xinhua News Agency handout/EPA


In Xi’s estimations, by 2020, the PLA’s mechanization will be “basically achieved” and strategic capabilities will have seen major improvements; by 2035, national defense modernization will be “basically completed”; and by mid-century, the PLA will be a “world-class military.”

In other words, this transformation – if successful – will take time.

At this relatively early point in the process, authoritative writings by PLA leaders and strategic analysts make clear that much more work is needed, especially more realistic training in joint operations, as well as improved leadership and greater communications integration across the services.

PLA modernization depends more on “software” — human talent development, new war-fighting concepts and organizational transformation – than on the “hardware” of new weapons systems. This underscores the lengthy and difficult nature of reform.


‘Know the enemy and know yourself’


The many challenges facing the PLA’s reform effort suggest the Chinese leadership may lack confidence in its current ability to achieve victory against a strong adversary on the battlefield.

However, none of this means we should dismiss the PLA as a paper tiger. The recent indictment of PLA personnel for the 2017 hack of Equifax is a cautionary reminder of the Chinese military’s expansive capabilities.

Better hardware is not what China needs at the moment – it needs to improve its software. Photo: ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA


Rather, it means a prudent assessment of the PLA must take its strengths and weaknesses into account, neither overestimating nor underestimating either one. Should strategic competition between the US and China continue to escalate, getting this right will be more important than ever.

So, is China appearing weak when it is strong, or appearing strong when it is weak? Much current evidence points to the latter.

But this situation will change and demands constant reassessment. Another quotation from Sun Tzu is instructive: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

He added, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Bates Gill, professor of Asia-Pacific security studies, Macquarie University and Adam Ni, China researcher, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a creative commons license. Read the original article.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use....

For These Two Countries, the Strategic Calculus in the Indian Ocean Region Remains Unchanged

Back on April 14, the International Monetary Fund announced the expected when it noted that the global economy is in a tailspin as entire economies are brought to a standstill due to the novel coro…

dsm.forecastinternational.com

For These Two Countries, the Strategic Calculus in the Indian Ocean Region Remains Unchanged

April 28, 2020 - by Daniel Darling


Back on April 14, the International Monetary Fund announced the expected when it noted that the global economy is in a tailspin as entire economies are brought to a standstill due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The IMF expects the world economy to contract by 3 percent in 2020, a severe shock when compared to the 0.1 percent reduction in the worst year of the last global downturn, 2009.

Advanced economies such as those in the European Union, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States are set to experience outright contractions, while emerging ones such as China and India are expected to see weak growth.

Economic headwinds are often accompanied by reduced year-on-year growth in discretionary spending at the national level. Drilling down to select earmarks within said discretionary spending, defense generally stands to suffer in countries with advanced economies. In many cases, major defense procurement projects are deferred, downsized or scrapped altogether, coupled with implantation of force restructurings that involve shrinking personnel numbers.

While forecasts anticipate flat or declining topline defense budget trajectories among many countries stemming from COVID-19 relief measures, the same cannot be said for two peer rival states angling for strategic leverage in the Indian Ocean Region: China and India. Though defense-related spending may slow this year and possibly next, the investment paths in the two nations are unlikely to remain flat beyond 2021 as both continue to modernize their respective militaries.

The two nations each seek to assert economic and geopolitical influence and naval clout across the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the world’s third-largest oceanic area. Economic slowdown and deficit concerns notwithstanding, each country’s strategic goals remain unchanged.

The vital shipping lane stretching from the Persian Gulf into the Arabian Sea and across the Indian Ocean represents a lifeline for both nations. About 60 percent of Chinese oil travels this route. More crucially, some 84 percent of China’s imported energy passes through the heavily pirated maritime choke-point Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean. As for India, it conducts 75 percent of its foreign trade (by value) and imports 75 percent of its oil – with nearly all of that coming from the Middle East – by sea.

Beijing has slowly but steadily been trying to build a military logistics chain stretching from national borders out to Djibouti and beyond to protect its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure program that stretches from East Asia into Europe. Currently China lacks sufficient capabilities to support large-scale military expeditionary operations in distant locales, but continued progress would likely enable People’s Liberation Army forces to conduct a high-level overseas combat operation by 2035 or shortly thereafter.

This naturally raises concerns in New Delhi, where, due to the nation’s multitude of threats, security awareness spans 360 degrees like a rotating light from a lighthouse.

Foremost of these relates to neighboring Pakistan, India’s fiercest regional rival. Already alarmed by the increasing geopolitical alignment between China and Pakistan, India is nervously watching Beijing’s investments in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (part of the BRI) involving a network of roads, railways and pipelines connecting China’s western Xinjiang Province with the Pakistani port of Gwadar.

Then there is Beijing’s steady progress in achieving access to maritime basing rights, the so-called String of Pearls theory, whereby construction of, and access to, overseas commercial port infrastructure would de facto serve a dual civil-military role, with the commercial element providing cover for stockpiling munitions, etc., to support combat operations.

Meanwhile, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has remained active during the COVID-19 pandemic, going so far as to ramp up its activities across the East and South China seas while increasing its presence in the IOR. The pause in military war-gaming exercises between the U.S. and its regional partners in Asia has presented an opportunity to exploit a vacuum.

Beijing’s end-goal is to circumvent what would prove a crucial vulnerability in time of conflict, that being the need for secure shipping lanes to ensure its vital energy supplies from the Middle East are not disrupted.

Attacking and disrupting China’s long and vulnerable sea lines of communication therefore represents an opportunity for India in the event of an outbreak of hostilities between the two nations.

But to do so, India must continue modernizing its navy, strengthening its presence in the outlaying Andaman and Nicobar islands, and deepening relationships with like-minded countries throughout the region as well as its international consultation partners in the Quadrilateral group, the so-called Quad involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

Modernizing the Navy represents a tricky aspect, as lingering budgetary pressures were already forcing difficult choices upon Indian Navy brass.

As a result, the naval chiefs are opting to de-scale some projects such as the crucial procurement of mine countermeasures vessels (MCMVs) and additional Kamov Ka-31 early-warning helicopters, while abandoning others – including a project for four landing platform docks (LPDs) – altogether. A long-standing goal of having 200 warships in service by 2027 is now pruned to a more realistic 175.

Some relief appears on the horizon, however, as the first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, is expected to reach Full Operational Capability status in 2022, thereby bringing the number of carriers available to the Navy to two.

By 2027 the Navy should be fielding all five of its Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), as well as its full complement of six French Scorpene-design diesel-electric attack submarines. Other surface combatant capabilities – including four additional Project 15 destroyers, seven new Project 17A frigates, and four Advanced Talwar frigates – should also arrive by then to supplement the existing warship inventory.

Meanwhile U.S.-sourced platforms, including 24 new multimission Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky MH-60R Romeo Seahawk naval helicopters and 12 Boeing Poseidon P-8I maritime patrol aircraft (with at least six more expected to be ordered), will provide additional airborne capabilities for the Indian Navy to utilize.

Yet other key projects – such as a second indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-2), six diesel-electric attack submarines (SSKs) featuring air-independent propulsion (Project 75I), and a $10 billion bundled naval helicopter procurement initiative involving 123 naval multirole helicopters (NMRHs) and 111 armed naval light utility helicopters (NUHs) – are unlikely to be anywhere close to the finish line by 2027.

Against this, the Indian Navy will confront a PLAN with ever-expanding surface and submarine capacity and improved fleet auxiliary arm and operational sustainability, plus mushrooming naval logistics bases. With the PLAN also improving and increasing its ties to the Pakistan Navy, the threat of a collaborative challenge also enters the strategic equation.

Though geography favors India in a Sino-Indian struggle for IOR influence, the challenge presented by China only continues to grow. Addressing how best to meet that challenge is the calculation weighing on New Delhi with every debt-trap diplomatic advance Beijing makes in the region.

About Daniel Darling

Dan Darling is a senior analyst covering both the Europe and Asia-Pacific regions for Forecast International's International Military Markets group.

View all posts by Daniel Darling →

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

[Ticker] EU wants to expand Africa Sahel force

The EU is asking more countries join its efforts to "support security, peace, stability" throughout the Sahel, the African region south of the Sahara, equivalent to the size of Europe. "We have also considered that its important to try to convince other i...

euobserver.com

Ticker
EU wants to expand Africa Sahel force

By EUobserver

Today, 06:59
The EU is asking more countries join its efforts to "support security, peace, stability" throughout the Sahel, the African region south of the Sahara, equivalent to the size of Europe. "We have also considered that its important to try to convince other international partners to join the coalition for Sahel," said Charles Michel, EU Council president. The impoverished region is pocketed with terrorist groups.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Generation Jihad Ep. 7 – Jihad in the Time of Coronavirus | FDD's Long War Journal

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross joins hosts Bill Roggio and Tom Joscelyn to discuss how jihadists are adapting to the coronavirus pandemic.

www.longwarjournal.org

Generation Jihad Ep. 7 – Jihad in the Time of Coronavirus

By Thomas Joscelyn & Bill Roggio | April 28, 2020 | billroggio@gmail.com |


Daveed Gartenstein-Ross joins hosts Bill Roggio and Tom Joscelyn to discuss how jihadists are adapting to the coronavirus pandemic. The three colleagues discuss their years working in the counterterrorism field and how some erroneous ideas just won’t die. They also offer some advice for new analysts entering the field.



Powered by RedCircle
Subscribe:



Take a look around the globe today and you’ll see jihadists fighting everywhere from West Africa to Southeast Asia. They aren’t the dominant force in all of those areas, or even most of them. But jihadism has mushroomed into a worldwide movement, with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS and other groups waging guerrilla warfare and launching terrorist attacks on a regular basis.
Each week Generation Jihad brings you a new story focusing on jihadism around the globe. These stories will focus not only on Sunni jihadism, but also Shiite extremist groups. We will also host guests who can provide their own unique perspectives on current events.

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

 

[Housecarl]

#ThirtyYearsWar: Repurposing alliances like NATO to confront predatory PRC. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs

An Audioboom post by The John Batchelor Show

audioboom.com

#ThirtyYearsWar: Repurposing alliances like NATO to confront predatory PRC. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs

Apr 28, 8:19 PM

Related Episodes


#ThirtyYearsWar: PRC threatens Australia & What is to be done? Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs
by The John Batchelor Show

 

[jward]

Russia threatens US of 'nuclear response' in case of ballistic missile attack
by Anadolu Agency
Apr 29, 2020 6:29 pm GMT+3





This Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019 file photo, shows the 9M729 land-based cruise missile in Kubinka outside Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo)






Russia on Wednesday warned that a low-yield U.S. ballistic missile strike would be seen as a nuclear attack by Moscow and would be responded to accordingly.
Speaking at a video conference in the capital Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a recent report by the U.S. Department of Defense on deploying low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads did not go unnoticed by Russia.
She slammed the U.S. move as "dangerous," an "element of destabilization" and a "purposeful blurring between non-strategic and strategic weapons," warning that it would lead to a "lower threshold and an increase in the threat of nuclear conflict."
"I would like to stress that any attack using a U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile, regardless of its characteristics, will be perceived as a nuclear-weapon attack. Those who want to speculate about the flexibility of the American nuclear potential should understand that according to the Russian military doctrine, such actions will be considered a foundation for retaliatory use of nuclear weapons by Russia," she said.
On April 24, the U.S. Pentagon announced that the U.S. Navy had fielded the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warhead to deter Russia's and China's nuclear power.


posted for fair use

Russia threatens US of 'nuclear response' in case of ballistic missile attack

Russia on Wednesday warned that a low-yield U.S. ballistic missile strike would be seen as a nuclear attack by Moscow and would be responded to...

www.dailysabah.com

• nuclear weapons
• USA
• russia

 

[jward]

Hmm. Intriguing. I want.

Pakistan’s New Midget Submarine: Emerging Challenge to India in the Arabian Sea

What will Pakistan’s new indigenous midget submarine bring to its naval capabilities?


By Prakash Panneerselvam

April 29, 2020
This article is presented by
Diplomat Risk Intelligence, The Diplomat’s consulting and analysis division. Learn more here

Credit: Pakistan Navy Official Website (via Wikimedia Commons)
Pakistan’s submarine force is undergoing major modernization. In the last five years, Pakistan has inked two major submarine deals with China and Turkey to upgrade its submarine force.
In 2015, Pakistan approved the purchase of eight Hangor (Type 042 Yuan-class) submarines with a provision to construct four at Karachi Shipyard with a possible Transfer of Technology (ToT) from China.
Subsequently, in 2016, Pakistan awarded the Agosta 90B Submarine Modernization Project worth $350 million to Turkey-based weapon manufacturer STM. Interestingly, this was the first time Pakistan has selected a Turkish company as the prime contractor for a submarine project. Under this project, STM will be exporting design and engineering services to the Pakistan Navy.

The submarine deals with China and Turkey are expected to be a major game changer for the Pakistan Navy. Along with that, Pakistan is now focusing on building new midget submarines for its Navy.
Pakistan’s Special Service Group (Navy) has been using the Cosmos MG110 midget for overt and covert operations. These submarines have been in service from the early 1990s and are nearing the end of their service lives.
In order to replace these aging submarines, Pakistan has proposed to build a new midget submarine. In the Ministry of Defense Production (MoDP) Year Book 2015–2016, Pakistan listed the development and construction of a midget submarine as a target for 2017–2018. The MoDP documents have also mentioned that midget submarine project will be based on indigenous design and production.

Notably, a recent satellite image (Figure 1) confirms that Pakistan might have indigenously developed a new midget submarine as it proposed in the MoDP 2015–2016.
From 2016 on, one can see the submarine partially covered in a tent in. Since 2019, the submarine can be seen in open view, suggesting that the construction is near completion and that sea trials may have commenced.
The new midget submarine, which is compact in size, is leading to speculation regarding its possible role in the Arabian Sea and in combat.

Figure 1 –Satellite imagery shows an MG 110 Submarine docked in Karachi Port along with a domestically built new midget submarine. Source: Google Earth, DOI: 18/12/2019 (24°50’3.74″N, 66°58’14.23″E)

Figure 2 – The image shows the fully constructed hull of a new midget submarine at Karachi Port Source: Google Earth, DOI: 2/11/2018 (24°50’3.74″N, 66°58’14.23″E)


The midget submarine as seen from the satellite images has a length of around 55 feet (16.7 m) and a beam measurement of around 8 feet (2.43 m). The vessel’s displacement is currently unknown.
The prominent vertical rudder, propeller, and the round-shaped nose are visible from the shadow of the midget submarine. The snorkel is not visible in the image. But it is clear from the image that the submarine appears to be larger than the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV) and slightly smaller than the MG110 midget submarines.
The compact size of the submarine with simple hull constructions suggests that it is easy to operate and maintain. The vessel can likely be transported over land due to its size. The defense expert H. I. Sutton writes in Forbes that the submarine design is new and doesn’t appear to be an imported one.

Given the present level of cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey, one cannot rule out the possibility of a Turkish firm’s involvement in the development of new midget submarines. In an interview in 2019, Murat İkinci, the general manager of STM, confirmed that the “Pakistan Navy and STM are currently discussing new projects, including serious and dedicated works for midget submarines.” However, there are no official sources to confirm that the new midget submarine has been codeveloped with Turkey.

A Role for the Midget Submarine
The Pakistan has been using new midget submarines for many years now. The development of a new midget submarine not only showcases its indigenous capability, but also shows that Pakistan is prepping its underwater warfare capability.
As Pakistan continues to lay emphasis on a sea denial strategy there is a possibility that it may use the midget submarine in an offensive role during any conflict with India in the coming months and years.
The seaward defense of Karachi has been one of the major challenges for the Pakistan Navy since the 1971 war with India. The midget submarine would fill a gap in protecting Karachi Port from sea-based attack. Most importantly, it would replace the current MG110s in service with the SSG (Navy) for operations such as frogmen operations, laying mines, and so on.
Also, with the Agosta 90B submarines undergoing midlife upgrades and modernization, scheduled to join the Pakistan Navy in 2020, and first four Hangor submarines stated to be delivered in 2023, the Pakistan Navy would find a significant increase in its ability to execute an anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) posture in the Indian Ocean. Along with that, the new midget submarine would upgrade Pakistan’s underwater warfare capabilities in a significant way.
In short, the changeover in the Pakistan submarine force could pose a real security threat to India in the Arabian Sea. Given India’s preparedness to develop a credible anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, Pakistan’s new midget submarine can challenge India’s maritime operations in the Arabian Sea.
Besides, Pakistan might use the new midget submarine to expand its clandestine operations off the western Coast of India, particularly around Gujarat’s Sir Creek area and Mumbai.
Hence, it’s essential that India strengthen its subsurface detection and track capability to thwart any Pakistan anti-access capability in the Arabian Sea and to protect India’s maritime security interests in the region.
Prakash Panneerselvam, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Benagluru, India.
DRI — Intelligence, on Demand.
posted for fair use

Pakistan’s New Midget Submarine: Emerging Challenge to India in the Arabian Sea

What will Pakistan’s new indigenous midget submarine bring to its naval capabilities?

thediplomat.com

 

[jward]

How Counterinsurgency Campaigns Are Fueling Human Rights Abuses in the Sahel
Peter Tinti Thursday, April 30, 2020

State security forces in Burkina Faso summarily executed 31 unarmed people in the northern town of Djibo earlier this month, just hours after they were taken into custody, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch. It described the killings as a “brutal mockery of a counterterrorism operation that may amount to a war crime.” The victims were suspected of collaborating with jihadist groups that have been operating in the area.
Shocking as the massacre may be, it is by no means an anomaly in northern Burkina Faso and the neighboring region of central Mali, which have become epicenters of violence in recent years. Jihadist groups have inserted themselves into local political, social and economic fissures, tapping into local grievances and intimidating those who defy them. The Malian and Burkinabe governments have responded with a blunt-force military campaign that silently condones or even encourages human rights abuses against civilians. The result, according to a recent research report from the French Institute of International Relations, is a cycle of violence in which “self-defense, rebellion and jihadism feed off of each other.”
Once an afterthought in international security circles, the western Sahel region of Africa burst onto the global agenda in 2012 when Mali’s government was overthrown by a haphazardly planned but ultimately successful military coup. The chaos in the capital, Bamako, provided an opportunity for jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaida to take over much of the country’s north. The following year, in response to fears that Mali would become the “Afghanistan of West Africa,” a French-led military intervention succeeded in driving jihadist groups from their northern strongholds.

At the time, international observers hoped that a broken and dysfunctional Malian state could be put back together through a mix of development aid and a patchwork of security assistance. U.N. peacekeepers arrived in 2013, while France began a region-wide military operation known as Operation Barkhane in 2014.
As a result of the initial focus on northern Mali, few regional security experts anticipated that central Mali and northern Burkina Faso would become the hotspots that they are today. A 2015 peace agreement between the Malian government and various armed groups, for example, focused almost exclusively on the country’s north. For its part, Burkina Faso had largely been spared from the violence plaguing its neighbor to the north until January 2016, when jihadist gunmen aligned with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the group’s regional affiliate, carried out a large-scale attack on a popular restaurant and hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou, killing 30 people and injuring dozens more. All told, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by conflict in both countries since 2013.

The unprecedented levels of violence have left both governments scrambling for answers. Yet many of the measures they are pursuing have proved counterproductive, swelling the jihadists’ ranks and leading to atrocities like this month’s massacre in Djibo. Both governments have pushed “scores, if not hundreds of young men into the hands of jihadists” through state policies that “fail to rein in abusive security forces or sub-contract security responsibilities to extremely abusive militias,” Corinne Dufka, Sahel director at Human Rights Watch, told WPR.
In Mali, for example, Dan Na Ambassagou, an ethnic Dogon vigilante militia, has operated with near total impunity. The group is responsible for large-scale massacres against ethnic Fulani communities, including women and children, who they accuse of collaborating with local jihadist groups. In one notorious incident last year, Dan Na Ambassagou killed 160 Fulani herders in the village of Ogossagou.

And in Burkina Faso, the parliament in January passed a “Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland” law that will provide weapons and two weeks of training to local volunteers. The move has raised alarm among human rights groups that fear that unaccountable militias will likely exacerbate the problem. A predominantly ethnic Mossi militia, known as the Koglweogo, has already carried out attacks on Fulani civilians.
These state-sponsored policies are “exponentially increasing the vicious cycle of violence and reprisals” and “complicating the response to the terrorist problem for the countries involved,” Dufka said. Two jihadist groups in particular, Katibat Macina and Ansarul Islam, whose ranks are largely, though not exclusively, comprised of ethnic Fulani, have proven particularly adept at inserting themselves into local sociopolitical dynamics.

Breaking the cycle of violence in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali will require a multifaceted approach that involves development initiatives as much as it does a military response.

“It is important to recognize that these countries have a really serious problem on their hands with a very clever, armed Islamist insurgency which has proven themselves to be extremely clever at exploiting local grievances and the weaknesses of the state,” Dufka said. “In certain places, they have actually replaced the state, are delivering services, and winning the morality war,” she added. “In other places, they have just outpaced the state strategically in controlling the narrative. And as a result, their message has resonated in certain communities.”
The government responses also come at a time when the jihadist groups operating in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali are demonstrating increased military capacity. Whereas jihadist groups in the area had previously relied on asymmetrical tactics such as hit-and-run ambushes on military personnel, the past two years have seen an increase in ambitious, coordinated attacks on military bases. “The jihadists have gained confidence in their ability to frontally assault military barracks,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, a senior analyst for the Sahel at the International Crisis Group. “And that is something that is quite new.”

According to Ibrahim, there has been a push for national armies, at the behest of increasingly frustrated domestic populations and external actors like former colonial power France, to root out the jihadists from territories that they have occupied. But these military campaigns are ripe for human rights abuses, since jihadist groups can always revert to asymmetrical warfare and blend in with the local population when necessary.
From the perspective of national security forces, Ibrahim said, it is as though “you know you have been attacked by people in this area. You know that the people who attacked you are in this area. And when you arrive looking for a fight, the only people you can find are civilians.”
Proving which people are actually involved with the jihadists, Ibrahim said, requires “granular investigation,” not heavy-handed military tactics. Absent a more fine-tuned approach, local populations are in an impossible position, where jihadists are carrying out targeted assassinations against people accused of collaborating with the state, and state security services accuse local communities of providing sanctuary to the jihadists. “Now you have the local traditional leaders telling the army, ‘Please, if you are going to patrol the area, don’t come to our village, because every time you come to our village, the jihadists come after and ask who talked to the army,’” Ibrahim said.

While local jihadist groups have made some inroads within certain local populations by proselytizing and providing rudimentary forms of governance, their success is not purely a product of winning hearts and minds. “They are problem-solvers and that is very much appreciated by the local population, and their ideology is gaining some traction,” Ibrahim said. “But I think we need also to be nuanced about the success that they have had. Local populations in many cases are not at ease with having them around. They just put up with it.”
Experts say there is widespread recognition among international observers that breaking the cycle of violence in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali will require a multifaceted approach that involves development initiatives as much as it does a military response.
Yet the overwhelming need for immediate humanitarian assistance makes development projects nearly impossible to implement. “When they have literally hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people in the last year or so, the longer-term development projects aimed at improving public services and strengthening rule of law institutions are being put on the back burner,” Dufka said.

Amid border closures and increased economic insecurity in the region due to the coronavirus pandemic, urgent humanitarian necessities are likely to preclude sustainable development projects for the foreseeable future, which is why experts say holding human rights violators accountable is more urgent than ever.
“There is a need to put the abuse by militias and security forces way higher on the agenda, both nationally and in the international community” Dufka said. “Because again, these are the biggest factors driving recruitment.”
Peter Tinti is an independent journalist and senior research fellow with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

posted for fair use

How Counterterrorism Campaigns Are Fueling Human Rights Abuses in the Sahel

State security forces in Burkina Faso summarily executed 31 unarmed people in the northern town of Djibo earlier this month, just hours after they were taken into custody, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch. It described the killings as a “brutal mockery of a counterterrorism...

www.worldpoliticsreview.com

 

[jward]

China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy CapabilitiesCongressional Research Service 1IntroductionIssue for CongressThis report provides background information and issues for Congress on China’s naval modernization effort and its implications for U.S. Navy capabilities.(For an overview of China’s military as a whole, see CRS Report R44196, The Chinese Military: Overview and Issues for Congress, by Ian E. Rinehart.)In an eraof renewed great power competition,1China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has become thetop focus of U.S. defense planning and budgeting.2The issue for Congress for this CRS report is whether the U.S. Navy is responding appropriately to China’s naval modernization effort. Decisions that Congress reaches on this issue could affect U.S. and allied security, Navy capabilities and funding requirements,and the defense industrial base.

posted for fair use......
Rest of report, pictures, charts, notes & references found at the pdf

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf

https://fas.org/irp/agency/oni/plan-trends.pdf

 

[jward]

“The Gerasimov Doctrine”
Berlin Policy JournalMay/June 2020

Mark Galeotti April 28, 2020


It’s tempting to see a nefarious and belligerent Russia behind every threat. But has the West created a convenient bogey man?

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann
It could be the title of the latest blockbuster action movie, but instead it has become the rallying cry of Russia hawks across the West. What is the latest fiendishly complex, ruthlessly cunning threat we face from the Kremlin?'

Why, of course it’s the “Gerasimov Doctrine.”
Named for Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, this is a supposed plan for combined psychological, political, subversive, and military operations to destabilize the West. Or perhaps just covert operations and disinformation, without the shooting. Or maybe the aim is to destroy the whole architecture of the global order. The very confusion about what exactly this “doctrine” entails for betrays the basic point: it doesn’t exist.

A Foolish Indulgence
I really ought to know, as I was the one who incautiously and unintentionally launched the “Gerasimov Doctrine.” Back in 2013, a speech Gerasimov delivered to a Russian military conference was published in the obscure journal called the Military-Industrial Courier. It made some interesting points, and so I published a translation by Robert Coulson of RFE/RL on my blog, In Moscow’s Shadows, along with my own thoughts and annotations.
In a bid to make it eye-catching, I gave the article the tongue-in-cheek title “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War.” It was a mistake I will regret forevermore, because even though in the text I explicitly stated that it wasn’t a doctrine and wasn’t even necessarily Gerasimov’s thinking, it turned out that a snappy headline is much more influential that the actual detail written beneath it.
Before I knew it, the “Gerasimov Doctrine” was being hailed as the Russian blueprint for future war. For the Financial Times, Gerasimov was “the general with a doctrine for Russia,” while Politico warned that “Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare” was “probably being used on you.” It was even cropping up in official Western military documents.
Yet the text was in no way framed as a new Russian war plan. Instead, when Gerasimov talked of a “blurring of the lines between the states of war and peace” in which “the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness,” he was explicitly addressing what he felt was a new Western way of war. To the Russians, the risings of the Arab Spring and the post-Soviet Eurasia’s Color Revolutions were not simply popular responses to corrupt and authoritarian regimes, but the result of cunning Western—American—campaigns of covert destabilization.

A Tempting Meme
So why did an article in an obscure defense magazine shape Western perspectives on Russian military thinking and, by extension, political ambitions?
The first answer is Crimea. The seizure of the peninsula in February 2014 by the so-called “little green men” was efficient in its execution but not especially novel in its means. Deploying troops without clearly identifiable insignia? Breaking the enemy’s lines of command and communications? Lying about what you’re doing? None of these were really ground-breaking.
Nonetheless, coupled with the subsequent incursion into Ukraine’s Donbass region (a more plausible case of unusual, asymmetric tactics, with its reliance on thugs, gangsters, mercenaries, and nationalists as proxies), it crystallized the notion that somehow Moscow had imagined and adopted a brand-new style of warfare.
More than anything else, this mythical doctrine was the sum of all fears held in the West about a modern world that once had seemed so comfortable—history had ended, remember? —and now was chaotic and threatening. The transatlantic relationship was under pressure, first as Barack Obama “pivoted to Asia” and then when Trump introduced a confrontational new transactionalism. Challengers from Beijing to Tehran were questioning the international order. Even the foundations of Western democracy and the European project were coming under pressure.

Such Perfect Villains
In such a climate, how comforting to have someone to blame. From Trump to Brexit, the rise of ultra-right anti-migrant movements to ultra-left climate activists, the West could affect to spy the sinister hand of Moscow—or its trolls and tweets—at work. How convenient to be able to portray these processes as the products of foreign interference rather than of domestic shortcomings.
And the Russians made such good villains. Consider Putin’s triumphalism over his Crimean land-grab and the stone-faced and cold-hearted denials of any blame for the shooting down of the MH17 airliner over the Donbass by Russian-backed forces using a Russian-supplied missile. Consider the string of Russian-linked assassination plots. Gerasimov himself even looks like a stock figure from Hollywood, the habitually-impassive, slab-faced Russian heavy.
The irony is, that even while railing against the “Gerasimov Doctrine” meme, Moscow itself helped it spread. A second-rank power trying to present itself as a global player—and given that politics are about perceptions, this means scaring or seducing other countries to treat it as such—Putin’s Russia actively seeks to look more formidable and threatening than it is. Hence the bomber patrols willfully straying into NATO airspace, the inflammatory rhetoric, the adventures in Syria and Libya.

A Dangerous Myth
Gerasimov is a decorated tank commander and a tough and competent manager of the Russian high command. His career has shown no evidence that he is a ground-breaking military theorist—or even that interested in the scholarship of war. He probably didn’t even write that famous speech himself. Nor is what people claim to see a “doctrine” in the Russian sense, which is a foundational notion of the wars Russia expects to fight and how it plans to win, driving everything from what weapons to buy to how many soldiers to recruit.
So what, though? Given that it is hard to deny that Russia is deploying propaganda, covert influence operations, threats, and “black cash” (untraceable, corrupt money) to divide, distract, and demoralize the West, and given that it has shown a willingness to back its political ambitions with military force, what’s in a name?

The academic pedant in me replies that it matters in its own right. Yet from a wider policy perspective, this myth also has several serious dangers. First, it mistakenly makes Russian policy somehow new and distinctive, whereas actually it simply reflects how inter-state conflict is changing in a modern age characterized by deep interconnections of our economic, information, and cultural spaces—and by the increasingly prohibitive cost of military conflict.
Second, by allowing the West to blame Russia for everything from political disaffection to football hooliganism, we get distracted us from addressing their root causes. Groups and individuals who have their own motivations are disenfranchised. Labelling them Moscow’s “useful idiots” only pushes them further into opposition.
Third, it misrepresents Russia’s approach in such a way as to distort Western policy. Central to the “Gerasimov Doctrine” notion is that there is a single Russian strategy, and—as in Crimea and the Donbass—all the political and social disruption is simply a prelude to war. In fact, the Kremlin is fundamentally risk-averse, with no signs of further territorial ambition, and a keen awareness of its relative weaknesses compared with the West. A European focus on when and where the “little green men” will appear next is a distraction, at best.

More to the point, Moscow’s approach is opportunistic, fragmented, and often contradictory. There is a broad vision from the Kremlin, but most of its interference in the West is driven by the interests and imaginations of individual actors and agents. If we truly want to resist Putin’s “political war,” we need to address the weaknesses they exploit in Europe, not look for some sinister grand plan in Moscow.


Tags: Russia, Words Don't Come Easy


posted for fair use

“The Gerasimov Doctrine” - Berlin Policy Journal - Blog

It’s tempting to see a nefarious and belligerent Russia behind every threat. But has the West created a convenient bogey man?

berlinpolicyjournal.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

China on ‘high alert’ as ‘troublemaker’ US patrols South China Sea

Chinese military takes aim at operations by American warships near the Spratly and Paracel islands.

www.scmp.com

China / Military
China on ‘high alert’ as ‘troublemaker’ US patrols South China Sea

• Chinese military takes aim at operations by American warships near the Spratly and Paracel islands
• US says sweeping maritime claims in the area pose a threat to freedom of the seas

Catherine Wong
Published: 10:00pm, 30 Apr, 2020

The Chinese military called the United States a “troublemaker” in
the disputed South China Sea on Thursday, stressing that China was on “high alert” to safeguard its interests in the contested waters.

The two powers, already mired in a dispute over the
handling of the coronavirus pandemic

, have engaged in tense stand-offs over the South China Sea, with two back-to-back operations by the US to challenge China’s expansive claims in the region in the last few days.
The US’ guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill conducted a “freedom of navigation operation” in the Spratly Islands on Wednesday, a day after the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry conducted a similar operation near the Paracel Islands.

The US 7th Fleet said the operations were in response to “unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea [that] pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight and the right of innocent passage of all ships”.

And last week, an Australian frigate joined US warships in a joint exercise in the South China Sea after the Chinese research ship Haiyang Dizhi 8, accompanied by a Chinese coastguard vessel, tailed a Malaysian state oil company ship conducting exploration in the area.

China’s defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said China had been “closely watching and on high alert” against the activities by the US and Australian militaries.

“The frequent military operations in the South China Sea by extra-regional countries like the US and Australia are not conducive to the peace and stability in the South China Sea and we resolutely oppose them,” Wu said.

“Time and again, the US has proven itself to be the biggest force in pushing militarisation in the South China Sea and a troublemaker in preventing peace and stability in the region.”

China military lashes out at US warship’s ‘intrusion’ in South China Sea
29 Apr 2020

On Tuesday, the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theatre Command said the
USS Barry’s mission near the Beijing-controlled Paracels was an “intrusion into Chinese territorial waters”.

The command said it scrambled air and sea patrols to “track, monitor, verify, identify and expel” the American vessels.

Also on Thursday, Wu rejected a US report that China had secretly conducted an underground nuclear test.

Citing a report from the US State Department, The Wall Street Journalreported two weeks ago that Washington was concerned by an increase in activity at
China’s Lop Nur test site in the far western region of Xinjiang, including extensive excavations that raised the suspicion of an explosion.

“The report by the US is fabricated and nonsense,” Wu said. “China, unlike the US, has always kept its promise on international arms control.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: China says US stirring trouble in disputed sea