WAR 06-04-2016-to-06-10-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(218) 05-14-2016-to-05-20-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...20-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(219) 05-21-2016-to-05-27-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...27-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(220) 05-28-2016-to-06-03-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...03-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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http://in.reuters.com/article/asia-security-ash-carter-idINKCN0YQ05P

World | Sat Jun 4, 2016 1:07pm IST
Related: World

U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about S.China Sea row

SINGAPORE | By David Brunnstrom and Greg Torode


The United States stepped up pressure on China on Saturday to rein in its actions in the South China Sea, with top defence officials underlining Washington's military superiority and vowing to remain the main guarantor of Asian security for decades to come.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the U.S. approach to the Asia-Pacific remained "one of commitment, strength and inclusion", but he also warned China against provocative behaviour in the South China Sea.

Any action by China to reclaim land in the Scarborough Shoal, an outcrop in the disputed sea, would have consequences, Carter said.

"I hope that this development doesn't occur, because it will result in actions being taken by the both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions but isolating China," Carter told the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional security forum in Singapore.

"The United States will remain the most powerful military and main underwriter of security in the region for decades to come – and there should be no doubt about that."

The top U.S. military commander in the region, Admiral Harry Harris, told reporters at the forum that Washington needed to operate from a position of strength against "all outcomes".

"The bottom line is this: we want to co-operate where we can, but we just have to be ready as a military to confront them if we must," he said.

The South China Sea has become a flashpoint between the United States, which increased its focus on the Asia-Pacific under President Barack Obama's "pivot", and China, which is projecting ever greater economic, political and military power in the region.

Carter however said he would welcome China's participation in a "principled security network" for Asia.

"Forward thinking statesmen and leaders must ... come together to ensure a positive principled future," he said, adding that the network he envisaged could also help protect against "Russia's worrying actions" and the growing strategic impact of climate change.

The deputy head of China's delegation to the forum said any attempts by the United States to isolate China would fail.

"This is a time of cooperation and common security," Rear Admiral Guan Youfei told reporters. "The U.S. action to take sides is not agreed by many countries. We hope the U.S. will also listen to the other countries."


REGIONAL WORRIES

Other Asian leaders said the situation in the South China Sea was viewed with concern across the region.

"All countries in the region need to recognise that our shared prosperities and the enviable rate of growth that this region enjoys over past decades will be put at risk by aggressive behaviour or actions by any one of us," Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told the forum.

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said his country would help Southeast Asian nations build their security capabilities to deal with what he called unilateral, dangerous and coercive actions in the South China Sea.

"In the South China Sea, we have been witnessing large-scale and rapid land reclamation, building of outposts and utilization of them for military purposes," Nakatani said. "No countries can be an outsider of this issue."

Trillions of dollars of trade a year passes through the South China Sea, which is home to rich oil, gas and fishing resources. Besides China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have claims in the area, and rising tensions have been fuelling increasing security spending in the region.

"The uncertainty of China's future trajectory is arguably the main driving concern about possible military competition now and in the future," Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

Carter said that for decades some critics had been predicting an impending U.S. withdrawal from the region, but this would not happen.

"That’s because this region, which is home to nearly half the world’s population and nearly half the global economy, remains the most consequential for America’s own security and prosperity."


TRUMP COUNTER

In an apparent counter to "America-first" policies expounded by prospective Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, including suggestions that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Asia, Carter stressed bipartisan support for continued engagement.

"Regardless of what else was going on at home or in other parts of the world – during Democratic and Republican administrations, in times of surplus and deficit, war and peace – the United States has remained economically, politically, and militarily engaged, as well as geographically located in the Asia-Pacific," he said.

The Shangri-La Dialogue is being held ahead of a significant ruling expected in coming weeks on a case filed by the Philippines in the International Court of Arbitration challenging China's South China Sea claims, which Beijing has vowed to ignore.

The United States has been lobbying Asian and other countries to back the judges' statement that their ruling must be binding, a call echoed by Japan on Saturday.

China has lobbied on the other side for support for its position that the court lacks jurisdiction in the case.


(Additional reporting by Marius Zaharia, Masayuki Kitano, Lee Chyen Yee and Paige Lim; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Lincoln Feast)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...t-beijing-anniversary-1989-crackdown-39604229

Security Tight in Beijing on Anniversary of 1989 Crackdown

By The Associated Press ·BEIJING — Jun 4, 2016, 3:55 AM ET

China tightened security around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Saturday on the 27th anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests, pointing to the enduring sensitivity over the events among the Communist Party leadership.

Police checked IDs and searched the bags of anyone seeking to enter the environs of the vast public space in the center of the capital where thousands of students, workers and ordinary citizens gathered in 1989 to demand political reforms. Journalists from The Associated Press were stopped, filmed and ultimately forced to leave the area, ostensibly for lacking proper permission.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed as tanks and troops converged on Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989. The topic remains taboo in China and any form of commemoration, whether public or private, is banned.

Memorials were planned in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong and on the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan, where some former student leaders have found refuge.

The Taiwanese Cabinet office responsible for ties with China issued a statement urging Beijing to "face up and heal the historical scars of June 4."

"We look forward to the Chinese mainland reevaluating the history of June 4, valuing the will of the people and creating a fair, just and harmonious society through the building of institutions," the Mainland Affairs Council said in a news release.

Ahead of the anniversary, family members of those killed in the crackdown were placed under additional restrictions, either confined to their homes or forced to leave the capital. China's government has rejected their calls for an independent accounting of the events and those killed and maimed by soldiers.

At least half a dozen people have reportedly been detained in recent days for attempting to commemorate the events, although a small group wearing T-shirts condemning the crackdown converged on the square last Sunday. Among them was former house painter Qi Zhiyong, whose leg was amputated after he was shot by troops.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department called for a "full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing and for an end to censorship of discussions about the events of June 4, 1989, as well as an end to harassment and detention of those who wish to peacefully commemorate the anniversary."

In a statement, it also urged the Chinese government to respect the rights and freedoms of all its citizens.

Asked Friday about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had "long ago reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil at the end of 1980s and other related issues."

China's explosive economic growth in the years that followed "proves that the path of socialism with Chinese characters we chose to follow ... is in line with the fundamental interests of the Chinese people, and it represents a wish shared by them all," Hua told reporters at a daily news briefing.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-dam-idUSKCN0YQ0AB

World | Sat Jun 4, 2016 4:06am EDT
Related: World, Afghanistan

Dam completion signifies growing Indian influence in Afghanistan

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Afghanistan on Saturday to mark the completion of a nearly $300 million hydroelectric dam project, the latest symbol of Indian investment in its South Asian neighbor.

The dam, originally built in western Herat province in 1976 before being damaged during the civil wars of the 1990s, was rebuilt by some 1,500 Indian and Afghan engineers, according to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.

"It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Heart and bring prosperity to the people of the region," Modi said in a social media post as he departed for Afghanistan, the first stop on a five-country trip.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has nurtured closer ties with India in the past year as relations with Pakistan have deteriorated in the face of continued insurgent attacks and border tensions.

Afghanistan has walked a fine line as it accepts Indian aid, with Pakistan historically wary of any Indian influence in Afghanistan.

"Salma Dam is another big step in deepening and broadening the relationship between Afghanistan and India," Ghani said in a post on Twitter.

At more than 100 meters (330 feet) high and 540 meters (1,770 feet) wide, the dam is designed to generate 42 megawatts of power and help irrigate 75,000 hectares of land, according to Modi.

India has poured more than $1 billion into Afghanistan reconstruction projects and humanitarian aid, making it one of the largest donors to the war-torn country.

A new national assembly building in Kabul and major power line and road construction have been among the main projects funded by India.


(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Paul Tait)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://news.antiwar.com/2016/06/03/us-officials-admit-effort-to-retrain-iraqi-army-a-failure/

US Officials Admit Effort to ‘Retrain’ Iraqi Army a Failure

17 Months Into Effort, Army Remains Weak, Heavily Dependent on Militias

by Jason Ditz, June 03, 2016

After the US-trained and armed Iraqi military collapsed in the face of ISIS offensives in 2014, the US embarked on a broad effort to retrain and reorganize the military. 17 months into this effort, US officials are increasingly admitting the effort is another failure.

Retired Lt. Gen. Mick Bednarek, who commanded the US training mission until last year, said the Iraqi Army has not improved much, saying the big problem is a lack of recruitment and retention in the Iraqi forces, saying the US officers are ready to train who shows up, but are never sure who that’s going to be.

Other US officials complained that the Iraqi military’s commanders are too cozy with the Shi’ite militias they so heavily depend on in the war, and that many of the US arms being transferred to the Iraqi military “either because of corrupt commanders or outright robbery,” end up in the hands of the militias.

Iraqi Defense Ministry officials defended this, saying the militias are an “official body” connected to the armed forces, though indeed the fact that the Iraqis are still so heavily dependent on the militias for serious combat underscores just how weak the proper military remains.

The militias have been heavily criticized by human rights groups, with many cases of “liberated” Sunni towns being left under the control of Shi’ite militias who engage in looting and violent retaliation against suspected “ISIS supporters.”


Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz•US Airdrops Weapons to Syria Rebels Resisting ISIS Offensive - June 3rd, 2016
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•Libya Unity Govt: We Can Defeat ISIS Ourselves - June 3rd, 2016
•Pentagon: Only 15 al-Qaeda Killed in Yemen Airstrikes Since February - June 3rd, 2016

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/04/us_pentagon_chief_proposes_asia_pacific_security_network/

Saturday, Jun 4, 2016 12:45 AM PDT

US Pentagon chief proposes Asia-Pacific ‘security network’

SINGAPORE (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is proposing to accelerate and deepen defense cooperation in the Asia-Pacific by expanding a “security network” of countries whose militaries would train together and eventually operate together.

Speaking to an international security conference in Singapore on Saturday, Carter said China would be welcomed in this network. But he also cited frequent American complaints about China unnerving its neighbors with expansive moves to build up reefs, islets and other land features in the disputed South China Sea.

Carter said this security network would represent “the next wave” in Asia-Pacific security.

“It is inclusive, since any nation and any military – no matter its capability, budget, or experience – can contribute. Everyone gets a voice, no one is excluded, and hopefully, no one excludes themselves,” he said, alluding to China.

A Chinese official reacted skeptically. Rear Adm. Guan Youfei, director of the foreign affairs office of China’s National Defense Ministry, said Beijing welcomes the U.S. establishing close relations with Asian countries. But he urged Washington to scale back its military exercises in the region and to reduce “provocations” such as operating military aircraft and ships in close proximity to other countries.

“I believe this will help the U.S. play a better role in the region,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

Carter emphasized possibilities for cooperating with China while stating that the U.S. will remain the pre-eminent power.

“America wants to expand military-to-military agreements with China to focus not only on risk reduction, but also on practical cooperation. Our two militaries can also work together,” he said, bilaterally or as part of a broader security network to combat global threats like terrorism and piracy.

Tom Mahnken, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, praised Carter’s emphasis on developing partnerships.

“Secretary Carter was right to emphasize multilateral approaches in the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, America’s alliances and partnerships in the region give us an enduring competitive advantage,” Mahnken said by email from Washington. “By contrast, China’s actions have increasingly isolated it.”

At a news conference later, Adm. Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command, said that while his forces are ready to confront China if necessary, there have been few significant issues with China lately in the South China Sea.

“We’ve seen positive behavior in the last several months by China,” Harris said, adding, “I’m encouraged by the activities” between the U.S. and Chinese militaries. He noted that China plans to attend the Rim of the Pacific exercise this year, with U.S. and Chinese warships operating together from Guam to Hawaii.

Adm. John Richardson, the Navy’s top admiral, said “more and more” interactions at sea with the Chinese navy are safe and professional.

In proposing a “principled security network” across Asia, Carter said it would include “nations building connections for a common cause, planning and training together, and eventually operating in a coordinated way.” He said that in September he will co-host, with his Laotian counterpart, a meeting of defense ministers from across the Asia-Pacific, to find new ways to broaden and deepen a regional security network.

In raising the prospect of conflict in the South China Sea, Carter said China is isolating itself by building up man-made islands there. The Chinese in some cases are erecting airfields that will extend Beijing’s military reach. He said for the second time in a week that China’s actions could erect a “great wall of self-isolation.”

“There is growing anxiety in this region, and in this room, about China’s activities on the seas, in cyberspace, and in the region’s airspace,” he said. “Indeed, in the South China Sea, China has taken some expansive and unprecedented actions, that have generated concerns about China’s strategic intentions.”

He also noted a coming ruling by a U.N. arbitration tribunal on the Philippines’ challenge to China’s claims in the South China Sea. He called this ruling, which is expected this summer, “an opportunity for China and the rest of the region to recommit to a principled future, to renewed diplomacy, and to lowering tensions, rather than raising them.”

During a question-and-answer session with his audience, Carter was asked why the U.S. attaches such importance to exercising its right to fly and sail military aircraft and ships near other countries’ coasts, including China’s.

“What we stand for is the principle of rule of law and abiding by international law in the commons,” Carter said. “It’s not a focus on China. It’s a focus on principle.”

In his speech, Carter mostly emphasized the positive.

“The United States welcomes the emergence of a peaceful, stable and prosperous China that plays a responsible role in the region’s principled security network,” he said. “We know China’s inclusion makes for a stronger network and a more stable, secure and prosperous region.”

He also made clear, however, that the U.S. intends to maintain, even expand, its military presence in the Asia-Pacific.

“The Defense Department maintains its world-leading capabilities because the United States has made incomparable investments in it over decades. As a result, it will take decades or more for anyone to build the kind of military capability the United States possesses,” he said.

China did not send its defense minister to Singapore, and Carter held no meetings with members of Beijing’s delegation. But at a conference-opening dinner Friday evening Carter shook hands and spoke briefly with the senior Chinese representative, Adm. Sun Jianguo, according to a U.S. official who was present.

—

AP reporter Annabelle Liang contributed to this report.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...fighter-pilots-are-outliers-u-s-military-says

Unsafe Chinese Fighter Pilots Are ‘Outliers,’ U.S. Military Says

By Rosalind Mathieson
June 4, 2016 — 12:43 AM PDT

- Intercepts by Chinese planes are rare, says Admiral Harris
- China-U.S. navy code generally working well, Harris says

China’s military is behaving in a more positive way and unsafe incidents involving its fighter pilots should be viewed as unusual, according to U.S. Pacific Command chief Harry Harris.

Speaking in Singapore to reporters on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La security dialogue, Admiral Harris said military cooperation with China was increasing, even as tensions over its actions in the disputed South China Sea were on the rise.

“We have seen positive behavior in the last several months from China” he said. “You know every now and then you’ll see an incident in the air that we may judge to be unsafe, but those are really over the course of time rare.”

The U.S. last month said two Chinese fighters conducted an unsafe intercept of a surveillance plane over international waters in the northern part of the South China Sea, coming within 50 feet and forcing the U.S. pilot to descend. China said the aircraft were flying near Hainan, the country’s island gateway to the South China Sea, at a safe distance from the reconnaissance plane.

The encounter is reminiscent of a case in August 2014, when a Chinese fighter flew within 20 feet of a U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft near Hainan. It highlights the risk of an inadvertent episode that escalates tensions between the two countries in the western Pacific, even as their navies have agreed to a code for unplanned encounters at sea.

For a graphic on China’s military expansion in Asia, click here

That code, known as CUES, does not cover the coast guard or fishing militias, which are increasingly being deployed by China to assert its claims in the waterway.


China contests more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in seaborne trade passes every year, overlapping claims from countries like Vietnam and the Philippines. It has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres of land in the area in the past few years, and built some military infrastructure.

Chief of U.S. naval operations Admiral John Richardson said CUES was working.

“In a part of the world that’s getting busier and busier at sea, more and more of our encounters are completely consistent with that code, they are routine, safe and professional,” he said at the briefing. “Every now and then we’ve got an outlier and we need to address those when they happen.”

Freedom of Navigation

At the same time, Harris said the U.S. navy would continue freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, where it sails ships near reefs claimed by countries including China.

“We want to cooperate with China in all domains as much as possible,” he said. “But we have to confront them if we must. I would rather that we didn’t have to, but we have to operate from a position of strength against all outcomes.”

China is joining the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Exercise again this year. Harris said China would bring five ships to the drills, which are held off Hawaii. “We’re going to sail with them en route to RIMPAC and we will be able to operate together.”

Scarborough Shoal

Speaking at the same briefing, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter again warned China against any move to build on the Scarborough Shoal. The uninhabited shoal was seized from the Philippines in 2012.

With an international court ruling expected within months on a Philippine challenge to China’s sea claims, the focus has turned to the shoal as a possible avenue of Chinese response if the ruling goes against it.

Carter said he had nothing new to say on any Chinese activities in the area, but “any actions there would be provocative and destabilizing.” If China were to build on the shoal there would be a U.S. reaction, he said, without giving details.

Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen told reporters in a separate briefing on Saturday that the waterway was crucial to Southeast Asian states, including for trade.

"It’s a practical worry that indeed if there is any incident, there will be a disruption,” Ng said. “It’s not theoretical because as you remember there have been incidents where fishermen have been injured if not shot, if not killed and there’ve been actual physical incidents which show that it’s not theoretical, it can occur."

 

[Housecarl]

I can hear the gnashing of teeth in Beijing now.....

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tiananmen-idUSKCN0YQ07Y

World | Sat Jun 4, 2016 3:41am EDT
Related: World, China

Democracy is nothing to fear, Taiwan tells China on Tiananmen anniversary

TAIPEI | By J.R. Wu


On the anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on student-led protests in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Taiwan's new president told China on Saturday that democracy is nothing to fear.

Tsai Ing-wen said in a Facebook post on the 27th anniversary that Taiwan could serve as an example to China.

Tsai said in the run-up to Taiwan's elections earlier this year she had seen people from from China, as well as the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, mixing with crowds in Taiwan.

"These many friends, after experiencing things for themselves can see that in fact there's nothing scary about democracy. Democracy is a good and fine thing," wrote Tsai, who took office last month.

China sent in tanks to break up demonstrations on June 4, 1989. Beijing has never released a death toll but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.

The subject remains all but taboo in China, where President Xi Jinping is overseeing a broad crackdown on rights groups and activists.

Tsai also said in her Facebook post about the Tiananmen crackdown's anniversary that nobody could deny the material advances China had made under the Communist Party.

However, China would win even more respect internationally if it gave its people even more rights, wrote Tsai, who is from Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

Taiwan is the only part of the Chinese-speaking world which holds free elections, and Tsai risks upsetting Beijing with her frank remarks on Tiananmen.

China has never renounced the use of force to bring what it views as a wayward province under its control and is deeply suspicious of Tsai. Chinese officials have accused her of pushing the island toward formal independence.

In Beijing, security was tight at Tiananmen Square, with long lines at bag and identity checks. The square itself was peaceful, with hundreds of tourists stopping to take photos in the early summer sun.

While most state media made no mention of the sensitive anniversary, the English version of popular Beijing-based tabloid the Global Times wrote in a commentary that people in China had put the events of 1989 behind them.

"The annual hubbub around the June 4 incident is nothing but bubbles that are doomed to burst."

Tsai said Taiwan understood the pain caused by Tiananmen because Taiwan had similar experiences in its struggle for democracy, referring to repression under the martial law enforced by the Nationalists over the island from 1949-1987.

"I'm not here to give advice about the political system on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, but am willing to sincerely share Taiwan's democratic experience," she said.

People in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule under a deal to preserve wide-ranging freedoms in 1997, will mark the anniversary later on Saturday. It is the only place on Chinese soil where June 4 commemorations are tolerated.


(Additional reporting by Faith Hung, and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/revealed-indias-ambitious-new-naval-strategy-16438

Revealed: India's Ambitious New Naval Strategy

New partners show New Delhi is thinking regionally.

Vivek Mishra
June 2, 2016

Recent developments in the Indian Ocean have been a witness to India’s mustering enough political will to advance its regional interests through actionable deliverables, visibly in opposition to mere notional assertions of the past. As India reorients its Indian Ocean policy, a tripartite transformation is underway—a regional outlook that ties together India’s Act East policy, its Look West policy and, most noteworthy, its cooperation with the United States in the regional maritime domain.


Acting East

The transformation from a Look East to an Act East policy has been at the center of India’s maritime recalibrations in the past few years. Such an approach has been accompanied by an improvement in relations with not just the individual countries to its east, but with strong regional organizations such as ASEAN. Countries of specific focus for India have recently included Vietnam, Brunei, Thailand and Indonesia.

The maritime area extending from India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands has also been critical to India’s recent regional maritime calculus. The focus on the Andaman Sea, for instance, has been critical to both India’s developing role in the Indo-Pacific as well as its by now axiomatic desire to be a regional net security provider. In this regard, from April 19–27 in the Andaman Sea, INS Karmuk along with a Dornier maritime patrol aircraft participated in the twenty-second Indo-Thai Coordinated Patrol (CORPAT). CORPAT has been underway since 2005, taking place biannually to ensure the safety of international trade and shipping lines. The twenty-second CORPAT had a clear focus on search and rescue at sea and preventing unlawful activities, furthering India’s regional net security provider agenda. India has also extended naval cooperation with Thailand in other areas, such as training of Thai navy and coast guard trainees. For this purpose, Indian naval ships Tir and Sujata and sail-training ship Sudarshini, along with the Indian Coast Guard’s Varuna, were deployed in Phuket, Thailand as part of an overseas deployment this spring.

Another country that has been involved with India recently in maritime CORPAT exercises is Indonesia. The Indonesian-Indian CORPAT followed the Indo-Thai CORPAT. The 2016 CORPAT exercises between the two countries marked the twenty-seventh in the biannual series since 2002. In the ongoing exercise, which lasts almost a month, both countries are working to secure Indian Ocean sea lanes from the twin threats to commercial shipping and international trade, besides improving interoperability—a rather manifest component of most maritime exercises. Since 2014, both navies have consistently raised the bar for the next year in terms of resources and commitment. The most outstanding factor of the latest chapter of Indonesian-Indian CORPAT exercises has been the geostrategic optics involved in choosing the venue of Port Blair in the Andaman Sea, once again underscoring the high priority accorded to the maritime area in India’s latest Indian Ocean policies.

India’s eastward maritime attention has been complemented by unprecedented multilateral diplomacy with the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM Plus). Between March 2–8 this year, India hosted on its soil a multinational field training exercise called “Force 18,” comprising the eight dialogue partners of the ADMM Plus. These countries included important countries to India’s east like China, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. The peacekeeping component of Force 18 focused on regional stability.

India’s eastern maritime inclination has been further concretized by its enhanced focus on the Andaman Sea, and by extension the Indo-Pacific. The aforementioned CORPAT exercises largely took place in the Andaman Sea. The maritime area comprising the Andaman Sea has become strategically crucial for India over the years. This message was made loud and clear when India built its first Tri-service theater command of the Indian Armed Forces, based at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The post has assumed special strategic significance, not only because it allows India to keep a close watch on China’s naval forays in the Indian Ocean, but also because it proves a good launch pad for India’s anticipated net-security-provider role in the region.

Besides India’s aforementioned eastern maritime rejuvenation, the latest step has involved an Indian geostrategic push for the South China Sea, which the Ministry of Defence in India has labeled a region of “of vital strategic importance to India.” On May 18, India sent four ships of the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet for a two-and-a-half-month operational deployment to the South China Sea and northwestern Pacific. India’s step, coming on the heels of several bilateral steps to increase maritime cooperation with the United States in the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific, has been widely interpreted as pitting India against growing Chinese maritime dominance in the region.


An Indo-U.S. Grand Regional Maritime Strategy

The Andaman Sea, along with the larger Indo-Pacific, has become indispensably critical to the joint India-U.S. regional grand maritime strategy that is in the making. This has been sufficiently established by both the gradual strengthening of the U.S.-India defense partnership through deliverables, and the series of bilateral agreements signed between the two countries, bringing them closer than ever before. India and the United States signed the “U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region” in January 2015. The mention of the South China Sea, together with “freedom of navigation and over flight,” brought out the common interests between the two countries in the Asian maritime theater.

This sentiment was supplemented by the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) agreed to, though not signed, during the visit of the United States’ Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to India in April 2016. The LEMOA contains apparent anti-China rhetoric. Ashton Carter’s April visit also underscored the need for a navy-to-navy bilateral discussion between the two countries on the issue of antisubmarine warfare. China’s submarines, which have been spotted more frequently in the Indian Ocean since 2010, have raised hackles both in New Delhi and Washington, causing the countries to come together on the issue. To advance the pledge made in April this year, India and the United States have started discussions on antisubmarine warfare (ASW). ASW is likely to prove a critical maritime deterrent strategy against China’s Indian Ocean adventures. The most likely cooperation in ASW between India and the United States will be in naval aviation, as India’s naval aviation has reached a “threshold of transformation.” The United States’ Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol/anti-submarine warfare aircraft and the Indian Navy’s P-8I Neptune, an export version of the P-8A, constitute the most modern ASW technologies.

More notable is the maiden maritime security dialogue between India and the United States held recently, where both countries discussed Asia-Pacific maritime challenges, naval cooperation and multilateral engagement, stressing the bilateral maritime agenda. The involvement of officials from the Defence and External Affairs Ministries of India shows that the current establishment is demonstrating renewed policy seriousness toward India’s littorals.

The rhetoric surrounding a regional grand strategy in the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific has been gradually moving from a stage of tacit consent to one that is fast becoming unequivocal. During his most recent visit to New Delhi, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry B. Harris, invoked the idea of the now defunct Quadrilateral Initiative, in a clear shot at reviving the idea of cooperation between India, Japan, Australia and the United States. Outlining his choice of the term “Indo-Asia-Pacific” versus the term “Asia-Pacific,” he voiced Washington’s desire to bring back Australia to the quadrilateral maritime partnership that went awry due to Beijing’s opposition soon after it was proposed in 2007.


Looking West

The part of the Indian Ocean to India’s west has traditionally been the outlier in its regional maritime strategy. However, more recently, there has been a perceptible shift in India’s maritime policy to integrate some of the countries that lie to its west. India’s western maritime focus in the Indian Ocean has been accelerated by the growing Chinese presence in the region, but more importantly by a realization that a holistic Indian Ocean strategy (one that conforms to a regional grand strategy in principle) is probably a better way to stop the Chinese juggernaut in the longer term. A few immediate concerns in the Indian Ocean that have retooled its erstwhile maritime policies are China’s port-led encirclement of India, Chinese control of the Indian Ocean port of Gwadar in Pakistan, China’s gaining basing rights in Djibouti in East Africa and, most recently, an increase in the frequency of Chinese submarine visits in the Indian Ocean.

Although India has officially protested at some of the aforementioned Chinese steps in the Indian Ocean, it has considered a long-term comprehensive maritime response to increasing Chinese footprints in the Indian Ocean to be a fitting countermeasure. India’s recent finalization of the Chabahar Agreement, along with Iran and Afghanistan, is aimed at mitigating Chinese leverage in the Indian Ocean through its unbridled access to the Gwadar port. This has been backed by India’s heightened sense of responsibility towards guaranteeing security in the Indian Ocean, besides a show of strength in the Persian Gulf. India has increased routine reconnaissance in the western Indian Ocean. Recently, a naval Poseidon-8I long-range patrol aircraft on routine reconnaissance thwarted a pirate attack on the high seas by flying over a merchant vessel that was being targeted by three pirate ships, around eight hundred nautical miles from Mumbai.

The Narendra Modi government has made a deliberate push to improve India’s maritime policy to the west by improving naval relations with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. On April 24, 2016, India confirmed that it would send a flotilla of warships to the Persian Gulf to add military heft and improve naval relations with some of the Indian Ocean countries. Since that promise, INS Delhi, Tarkash and Deepak have anchored in Dubai to bolster naval relations between India and UAE. Importantly, both countries are expected to perform a joint naval exercise in the region, sending strong regional signals. The three warships continued their goodwill visit in Bahrain and Kuwait, expanding the scope of India’s maritime cooperation with Gulf countries in combating piracy and maritime terrorism.

These diplomatic feelers on either side of peninsular India had an appropriate prelude in Modi’s earlier landmark visits to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, besides his numerous other oceanic overtures in the Indian Ocean. Modi has also led India’s leasing out of Assumption Island from Seychelles, marking a historic shift in India’s expansive reconnaissance and surveillance designs in the Indian Ocean. India’s enhanced maritime focus on either side of its peninsular landmass has also been supplemented by a quest for dominance through competition with China, towards the south.

India recently has sought to boost maritime cooperation with the Maldives, too. In April of this year, India deployed its Advanced Light Helicopter MK III at Kadhdhoo Island in the Maldives in a bid to assist that country in search and rescue, casualty evacuation, coastal surveillance, maritime reconnaissance, communication and logistic duties. While Mauritius has been caught in intense maritime cooperation between India and China, most speculations have rendered Seychelles finally falling in India’s geostrategic corner. More importantly, India has pushed for the spirit of south-south cooperation in the southern Indian Ocean, most notably through its recent maritime cooperation, along with Brazil and South Africa, called IBSAMAR.

India’s latest bid to change its maritime character has involved engaging with a host of countries to its east as well as to its west, marking India’s new bidirectional strategic maritime loops. While its western maritime loop has included the Gulf countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran and Saudi Arabia, its eastern maritime loop intends to tie the ports of Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, Subic Bay in the Philippines, Sasebo in Japan, Busan in South Korea, Vladivostok in Russia and Port Klang in Malaysia.

India’s push at bettering naval relations with the countries in Southeast Asia, the Gulf countries and countries to its south is part of a larger maritime agenda, to form as well as lead a new institutionalized response in the region that is largely led by the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium—a body which has served as a forum for sharing information and cooperating on maritime issues in the region, but more importantly, which aspires to turn around India’s regional maritime purpose.


Vivek Mishra is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University and is finishing his PhD on "American Maritime Strategy on the Indian Ocean in the post Cold War era, 1990-2012" from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://warontherocks.com/2016/06/tomorrow-never-comes-neglecting-the-nuclear-force/

Tomorrow Never Comes: Neglecting the Nuclear Force

Ben Jonsson and Andrew Hill
June 3, 2016

http://warontherocks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/MinuteManIII.jpg

In 2014, following several high-level embarrassments, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel ordered two enterprise-level reviews of nuclear forces. Remarking on their findings, Hagel said, “The internal and external reviews I ordered show that a consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces —over far too many years — has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses.” Until now, documented problems with America’s nuclear enterprise have focused primarily on personnel issues— a lack of focus by the missile crews, pilots, technicians, or the leaders of those charged with handling America’s most powerful weapons. However, the persistent lack of investment in the nuclear enterprise suggests that the reasons for lapsed focus are actually structural, and thus require structural solutions. The findings of the 2014 nuclear enterprise reviews were not new. In 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff General Michael Moseley for their “drifted focus” away from the nuclear mission. New Air Force leaders spent the next six years refocusing the service on the nuclear mission. The nuclear enterprise’s structural problems require urgent attention, most of all how resources are allocated for nuclear forces.

While the question of how to restructure the nuclear force to keep it credible and affordable is an important one, this article addresses a more fundamental problem. Regardless of the composition of the nuclear force, policymakers will continue to defer modernization for these forces as long as the budget structure remains as it is.

Instead, the Department of Defense should adopt a “mandatory insurance” policy, requiring a constant, material percentage of every defense budget to be allocated to nuclear forces, with an entity in the Office of the Secretary of Defense determining the division between the Navy and the Air Force. The result would be that a constant percent of every defense budget, every year, would be for nuclear forces (a rough estimate based on projected modernization indicates that between 3-8 percent over the next three decades would be required). While we do not advocate for a specific transformation of the current nuclear triad, we assume that at least two of the three legs of the triad would be retained.

It is understandable that policymakers have foregone investment in nuclear weapons given the urgent operational need for conventional weapons. Yet, during the 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in times of relative peace and war, through every conceivable balance of party power in the executive and legislative branches, and under presidential administrations of four very different kinds, meaningful investment in nuclear forces has continually been deferred.

During the Soviet era, the Pentagon invested in platforms that it hoped would pose a robust and credible mix of conventional and nuclear deterrents to the Soviet Union and its allies. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the U.S. military was released from many of the constraints that bound it during the Cold War, thereby increasing the focus on conventional operations. The logic of nuclear deterrence and its associated force structure became much less clear. If we think of military forces as goods, during the Cold War nuclear forces were part of a basket of goods that satisfied current needs of policymakers. After the Cold War, however, nuclear forces were no longer meeting policymakers’ needs, and under-investment in nuclear deterrence reflected this reality. Nuclear deterrence moved into the basket of goods that may meet an uncertain future need, similar to life insurance or retirement savings. This is a problem.

Although consumers can be relied upon to buy things they need now, they tend to invest too little of their present income in future consumption. This behavior has precipitated what researchers Shlomo Benartzi and Richard Thaler call “the retirement savings crisis.” To deal with this crisis, Benartzi and Thaler recommend automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans, as well as other measures to create a structure that encourages sufficient investment in future gains. The authors believe that an analogous approach is essential to fixing the lack of investment in nuclear forces.

The Cost of Deterrence

A capable and credible nuclear deterrent is critically important to U.S. national security today, particularly in view of changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine and destabilizing behavior, Chinese investments in advanced capabilities, and North Korea’s aggressive nuclear program, among other threats. However, without significant modernization of the aging systems, the capability and credibility of the current deterrent will come into question. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work testified: “The choice right now is modernizing or losing deterrent capability in the 2020s and 2030s.” The problem, of course, is that the defense budgets are already under intense pressure from the 2011 Budget Control Act, and nuclear modernization requirements have been deferred for so long that they are now expansive and costly. Recent estimates for needed facilities, weapons, and infrastructure upgrades for the nuclear triad total $1 trillion over the next 30 years, even after cutting the nuclear stockpile in half since 2001. While defense department officials have insisted on maintaining the Cold War-era nuclear triad, fiscal realities must inform U.S. strategy.

Underinvestment in the Nuclear Forces

That the Department of Defense could not discipline itself to make the necessary investments in the nuclear triad is telling. Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Winnefeld testified:

[A]ny remaining margin we have for investing in our nuclear deterrent has been steadily whittled away as we’ve pushed investments further and further into the future…The fact is there is no slack left in the system. We will need stable, long-term funding to recapitalize this most important element of what we do.

The budgetary structure, combined with the demand on the service budgets for conventional capabilities, meant that the Air Force and the Navy pushed necessary investment in nuclear modernization to out-years. In economic terms, this resulted from poor intertemporal choices.

Intertemporal choice refers to how people and organizations assign value and make decisions about two or more payoffs at different points in time. Buying something on credit is an intertemporal choice, as is saving current income for a future purchase. Economists and psychologists have found that people chronically over-value present gains relative to future costs, and under-value future gains relative to present costs. More simply, we tend to obtain something good now at too high a future cost, and we are unwilling to set aside a reasonable amount today for something good in the future. These problems of “self-control” in consumption are compounded when the future consumption has an insurance-like payoff that occurs only in an adverse event, such as with life insurance. America’s nuclear forces have been the victim of policymakers’ intertemporal preferences, which were informed by domestic, political, and other pressures. The relatively low cost of modernizing nuclear forces over the long term has continually been traded off for modernizing conventional weapons systems in the short term. This has led to the present condition of the nuclear forces: decay. This undermines U.S. nuclear deterrence and credibility while leaving the nation with a massive bill for nuclear modernization.

This failure needs to be addressed by changing the way resources for nuclear modernization are allocated. One way to do this is similar to a nuclear account which Secretary of Defense Carter promoted, except that Congress should mandate that this account be tied to a specific percentage of the defense budget. We recommend a top-line increase for the Department of Defense in the President’s budget to account for this mandatory allocation, but also recommend that the percentage remain constant regardless of the top-line appropriated by Congress. In this sense, the Department of Defense would be forced to adopt something akin to a “mandatory insurance” policy, in response to the failure of market forces to sustain a credible nuclear deterrent for the long term. The size and complexity of nuclear systems (think of ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, long-range bombers, and C4I) requires long term investment to avoid overwhelming the department with the modernization costs when development of new platforms begins. Right now, the Pentagon faces an enormous modernization burden as all three elements of the triad require replacements.

America’s nuclear force has been a stabilizing presence in global security for decades. But maintaining that stability requires moral and financial commitment. Structural changes are required to maintain a credible and capable nuclear force for the future. Solving this problem requires a sustained and steady commitment of financial resources to the nuclear force, but the past 25 years have demonstrated that the current defense budgeting structure is incapable of this. The clear needs of the present always outweigh the uncertain needs of the future. The market failure in nuclear modernization requires a new and distinct structure for nuclear investment.


Lt. Col. Ben Jonsson is an Air Force pilot and member of the Carlisle Scholar Program at the U.S. Army War College. He has been a nuclear-certified crewmember in two aircraft.

Andrew Hill is the Professor of Organization Studies in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College. He received his doctorate in business administration at Harvard Business School.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army War College, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

Image: U.S. Global Strike Command

 

[Housecarl]

EUROPE IS IN DENIAL ABOUT PUTIN’S THREAT OF WAR
Started by northern watch‎, Today 08:01 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?492591-EUROPE-IS-IN-DENIAL-ABOUT-PUTIN’S-THREAT-OF-WAR

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http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/...ussia-turns-to-soft-power-to-meddle-in-europe

Economically Weakened, Russia Turns to Soft Power to Meddle in Europe

Maria Savel |Friday, June 3, 2016

Last Friday, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic made an unannounced visit to Moscow. The trip came amid reports of Russian concern with Serbia’s overtures to the West, including taking steps toward joining the European Union.

Later that day, Russian President Vladimir Putin headed to Greece, where he discussed energy cooperation and investment with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, before visiting the male-only Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos with the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church. The trip was Putin’s first to an EU country this year, as the debate heats up in Brussels over renewing EU sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine.

Sanctions, which are due to expire in July, have put a huge economic burden on Russia, along with the fall in global energy prices. But sanctions have also hurt many European economies, and there are a growing number of voices in Europe against renewing them. The lower house of the French Parliament voted to lift the sanctions, and the German foreign minister said he believes in easing them, provided certain conditions are met. Those conditions include the full implementation of the Minsk cease-fire that was struck in February 2015 and aimed to stop the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, where Russian-backed separatists continue to battle government forces.

“It is difficult to conceive of any major move on sanctions without any major move by Russia on the Donbass,” says Dimitar Bechev, a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard. So far, Russia has blamed the government in Kiev for the lack of progress on implementing the cease-fire; the Ukrainian government blames Russia for its continued support of separatists.

While the crisis in Ukraine is stuck, recent Russian outreach elsewhere in Europe, including Putin’s Greece trip, has been successful at starting a debate over the utility of sanctions. The public in many European countries remains critical of Moscow, but “business and political elites have increased their interest in cooperating with Russia,” according to Stefan Meister, the head of the Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia program at the German Council on Foreign Relations. In addition to Germany and France, Austria, Greece, Hungary and Italy have shown some willingness to consider easing sanctions.

With its economy suffering, Russia’s usual diplomatic toolkit has been reduced. Before the Ukraine and economic crises, “Russia could use the prospects of large-scale infrastructure projects to drive relationships,” explains Behcev, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. But given the current fiscal reality, Russia can no longer attract partners though major investment projects.

“What matters to Russia is exposing weakness anywhere.”

Moreover, Russia can no longer use gas “as a foreign policy weapon,” as Bechev puts it. Falling energy prices and the influx of gas in world energy markets, due in large part to fracking, mean more countries are less dependent on Russia for energy than they used to be. The EU has taken steps to improve energy infrastructure links between its member states, while tighter EU regulation has put a damper on Russia’s energy footprint in Europe. Stricter EU competition rules have weakened the position of Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, which must now face real competition in European energy markets.

“What Russia still has is soft power,” Bechev says. Moscow has used its considerable media influence and propaganda broadcast in Western countries to highlight the failures and disunity of the EU. This tactic has proven successful, especially in the Western Balkans, where political leaders in Albania, Serbia and Montenegro are already sympathetic to Moscow—even Vucic, who has courted the EU.

But those sentiments toward Russia won’t prevent other Balkan countries from following Serbia’s example and pursuing closer ties with Western institutions, such as the EU and NATO. Although public opinion in the Balkans is generally in favor of closer ties with Russia, the benefits from EU and NATO membership outweigh any potential Russian retaliation or backlash. And while Moscow knows that the EU and the West are the preferred partner of most governments in the region, that doesn’t stop Russia from playing the spoiler. Russia also hopes that, if and when the Western Balkan countries join the EU and NATO, they will bring a pro-Russian stance to the table.

Russia is also using its soft power to curry favor outside of the Balkans, especially with Europe’s far-right populist parties. The leader of the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, has spoken about his admiration for Putin, and France’s National Front has received a $9 million loan from a Russian bank. As Hungarian analyst Peter Kreko told The Guardian, “It’s surprising how open Russian influence is.” According to The Guardian, European and American diplomats believe—“without supplying hard evidence”—that Russia is funding environmental campaigns against fracking in Europe and opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the proposed free trade deal between the U.S. and the EU.

Moscow has used its media influence to support pro-Russian, often far-right politicians and show the cracks in European unity on issues like the refugee crisis and economic policy. At home, it uses pro-Russian speeches and visits by far-right politicians to Crimea to show the Russian public that Moscow has European support.

And though Russia’s ties to Europe’s far-right haven’t produced dramatic policy shifts in Europe yet, the growing popularity of many of these parties across the continent and Russia’s deepening influence on them could still prove Moscow’s soft-power strategy successful. This can already been seen as the debate over rolling back sanctions becomes more contentious among European leaders.

“What matters to Russia is exposing weakness anywhere,” says Bechev. Moscow has shown that while sanctions and falling energy prices may have limited its reach, it still has plenty of influence in Europe.

Maria Savel is an associate editor at World Politics Review.


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[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-security-niger-idUSKCN0YQ0HO

World | Sat Jun 4, 2016 3:04pm EDT
Related: World, Africa

Boko Haram attack in southeastern Niger kills 32 soldiers


Thirty soldiers from Niger and two from Nigeria were killed in a Boko Haram attack by "hundreds of assailants" on Friday on the southeastern town of Bosso close to the border with Nigeria, the Niger defense ministry said on Saturday.

It was the deadliest attack carried out in Niger by the Islamist group since April 2015, when at least 74 people, including 28 civilians, were killed at the Lake Chad island of Karamga.

"The counter-offensive conducted early this morning helped to retake control of all the positions in the city of Bosso. The situation is under control," the defense ministry said in a statement. "A sweep is ongoing in the area with the mobilization of all land and air means".

Seven others from Niger and eight from Nigeria were injured in the attack that targeted a military post, according to the ministry, which reported "several deaths" among the assailants.

In a statement released later, Boko Haram claimed killing 35 soldiers and wounding nearly 70 from the Nigerien and Nigerian armies, according to the US-based jihadist monitoring service SITE. Boko Haram also said it seized a "large quantity of weapons and ammunition" during the attack.

The town of Bosso is part of the Diffa region, where many refugees and internally displaced people have sought shelter from Boko Haram violence elsewhere. The region has been targeted numerous times in attacks blamed on the militants.

Around 200 people took the streets on Saturday in the capital Niamey to voice support for the population in Diffa and to ask for an audit of military spending as they denounced a "lack of results" from army action.

Along with Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Benin, Niger has contributed troops to a 9,000-strong regional task force dedicated to fighting the group that has so far survived attempts by African armies to destroy it.

"The terrorist threat remains a concern to our subregion," said Senegal's president Macky Sall, the incumbent chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

"We must face it by combining all our resources in a comprehensive long-term perspective," he told an Ecowas summit in Dakar on Saturday.

"We must at the same time remove any confusion in terminology: there is no Islamic state in West Africa matching the terrorist aims of Boko Haram. Boko Haram remains Boko Haram and Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and its killing spree".

Boko Haram has been trying to establish an Islamic state adhering to strict Sharia law in northeast Nigeria since 2009. About 2.1 million people have been displaced and thousands have been killed during the seven-year insurgency.


(Reporting by Boureima Balima; Writing by Marine Pennetier; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Clelia Oziel)

 

[Housecarl]

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https://news.usni.org/2016/06/03/admiral-warns-russian-subs-waging-cold-war-style-battle-atlantic

Admiral Warns: Russian Subs Waging Cold War-Style ‘Battle of the Atlantic’

By: Sam LaGrone
June 3, 2016 7:00 AM • Updated: June 2, 2016 8:20 PM

Russia has stepped up its submarine operations and is regularly probing U.S. anti-submarine networks in a new “Battle of the Atlantic,” the commander of U.S. 6th Fleet said.

In an article for the U.S. Naval Institute’s June issue of Proceedings, Vice Adm. James Foggo III outlined a new era in U.S. and Russian submarine warfare he dubs “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic.”

In his piece, Foggo compares the current uptick in Russian submarine posture to the great submarine battles between the Allies and the Germans in World War I and World War II and the Soviets and the U.S. during the Cold War.

“Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us. Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict,” Foggo wrote.
“Not only have Russia’s actions and capabilities increased in alarming and confrontational ways, its national-security policy is aimed at challenging the United States and its NATO allies and partners.”

Since the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014, Russian Navy surface ships, aircraft and submarines have been much more active in presence operations – particularly the submarines.

Russian officials have been open about increased submarine operations over the last two years. Russian Navy head Adm. Viktor Chirkov said in March of 2015 that submarines operations have increased by 50 percent.

“This is logical and necessary to guarantee the security of the state,” he said at the time in Russian state-controlled press.

While Russian surface ships and aircraft trail behind their U.S. equivalents technologically, Russia has maintained a strong submarine industrial base since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In late 2014, the U.S. officer in charge of the U.S. submarine construction told a conference he was so impressed with the Russian Navy’s new Yassen-class attack submarine he had a model built of the first-in-class attack boat K-329 Severodvinsk.

“We’ll be facing tough potential opponents. One only has to look at the Severodvinsk, Russia’s version of a [nuclear-guided missile submarine] (SSGN),” then-Program Executive Office submarines Vice Adm. Dave Johnson said at the time.
“I am so impressed with this ship that I had [the Navy] build a model from unclassified data.”

In addition to nuclear submarines, the Russians are improving the technological capability of their diesel-electric submarines, including the ability for Russian Kilos to launch long-range Kalibir NK cruise missiles.

“These are the platforms that are the most challenging for us to deal with because of their inherent stealth,” Foggo wrote.
“As demonstrated last December by Kalibr launches into Syria from the Eastern Mediterranean, Russian leaders will use such weapons at will, without the same qualms we have about collateral damage.”

All told, Foggo outlines an “arc of steel” of Russian submarine strength from the Arctic to the Black Sea.

“Combined with extensive and frequent submarine patrols throughout the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea, and forward-deployed forces in Syria, Russia has the capability to hold nearly all NATO maritime forces at risk,” he wrote.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-security-diplomacy-iran-idUSKCN0YR08N

World | Sun Jun 5, 2016 4:30am EDT
Related: World, United Nations, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia expands its anti-Iran strategy beyond the Middle East

RIYADH | By Angus McDowall


Under King Salman, Saudi Arabia is expanding its confrontation with Iran well beyond the Middle East, no longer relying heavily on Western allies to smother Tehran's ambitions outside the Arab world.

Since Salman came to power early last year, and Tehran struck a nuclear deal with world powers, Riyadh has adjusted its strategy for countering the efforts of its Shi'ite Muslim rival to build influence in Africa, Asia and even Latin America.

Most notably, the Sunni power has used Muslim networks to push states into cutting off contacts with Iran, including by creating an Islamic Coalition against terrorism without inviting Tehran to join.

"Iran is the one that isolated itself by supporting terrorism," Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a recent news conference. "That is why the world reacted to Iran, and particularly the Islamic world, and basically said 'enough is enough'."

Tehran denies it sponsors terrorism, and points to its record of fighting the Sunni Muslim militants of Islamic State through backing for Shi'ite militias in Iraq and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Riyadh is alarmed by Tehran's support for the Shi'ite Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, and cut off military aid to the Beirut government after it failed to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. Likewise, Saudi forces have launched a war on Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But all this is part of its long-standing diplomatic, economic and military efforts to contain what it sees as a pernicious expansion of Iranian activity in Arab nations. Now it is attempting to orchestrate support elsewhere, including from countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia through its creation last November of the coalition against terrorism.

"In many ways the dimensions of the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia are beginning to go beyond the Middle East. This is an interesting development that historically hasn't been the case," said Mehran Kamrava, a professor at Georgetown University-Qatar.


OLD ORDER DEAD

The strategy partly responds to implementation of the nuclear deal in January. Riyadh fears this will give Iran more scope to push its interests internationally by releasing it from many of the sanctions which have crippled its economy.

With even the United States now saying Western banks can resume legitimate business with Tehran, the Saudis believe their main Western ally is gradually disengaging from the region.

"They understand the old international order is dead and they have to take responsibility," said a senior diplomat in Riyadh.

But the strategy is also driven by King Salman's belief that Iranian influence has grown only because nobody has stood up to it, said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert with close ties to the Saudi interior ministry.

The coalition against terrorism falls into this context. When chiefs of staff from 34 Muslim states met after a joint military exercise in late March, a cartoon in the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat, owned by the ruling family, showed a bomber dropping leaflets with a no-entry sign onto Iran.

The coalition, which caused some confusion as to its scope and membership when Riyadh first announced it, is now moving forward and work to establish a "coordination center" may be formalized during the Muslim holy month which starts shortly.

"The next step is the meeting of defense ministers, perhaps during Ramadan. At the same time we prepare a coordination center in Riyadh," said Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri.

This center will have permanent staff members from each participating country, Asseri said, and would be a place where states could either request help in dealing with militancy or offer military, security or other aid.


TAKING THE FLAG

Although not explicitly aimed at countering Iran, the coalition includes neither Tehran nor its allied government in Iraq. The alliance also aims to counter comment in some Western media that while Iran and its Shi'ite allies are fighting Islamic State, Sunni Saudi Arabia supports jihadist militancy on some levels.

"This new coalition is basically to get the worldwide Islamic support for Saudi Arabia to lead the fight against terrorism and take the flag from Iran," said Alani.

Whether the coalition members see it that way is another matter.

Mohammad Nafees Zakaria, spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, praised Riyadh for setting up the coalition and said Islamabad would be happy to share expertise.

But he also said the arrangements would take time to develop and added that Pakistan sought "brotherhood" between Islamic states and was therefore concerned about the escalation in tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Beyond the coalition initiative, Riyadh is trying to win the support of India and encourage it to isolate Iran. So far it has achieved mixed results. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited both countries last month, Saudi energy sales to India grew but New Delhi also agreed to build a port in Iran.

Riyadh's hosting of a summit of South American and Arab League states last year was also partly aimed at pushing back Iran, said a Saudi analyst who sometimes carries out diplomatic functions for the government.

Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador in 2012 seeking diplomatic support from the left-wing states, with little apparent success.


AFRICAN RIFT

Some African countries have followed many Arab League states in recent months in cutting diplomatic ties with Iran. This followed the storming of Riyadh's Tehran embassy in reaction to Saudi Arabia's execution of a Shi'ite cleric in January.

On Monday, Zambia's president appeared in Riyadh on an official visit soon after speaking out against Tehran.

Iran has devoted money to winning friends across Africa, investing in local industries and paying to spread its Shi'ite version of Islam in Muslim states. Playing on its anti-imperialist credentials, Tehran's goal appeared to be winning wider support at the United Nations.

Not only is soft power at stake. In 2012 two Iranian warships docked at Port Sudan, just across the Red Sea from the Saudi coast, following years of close ties between Khartoum and Tehran.

Since then Riyadh has invested around $11 billion in Sudan and ignored international arrest warrants on President Omar al-Bashir to allow him to visit the kingdom. In January, Khartoum cut off ties with Tehran.

Djibouti and Somalia did the same. A document seen by Reuters in January showed Mogadishu had received an aid package of $50 million shortly beforehand. But Djibouti denied in February that its break was motivated by money and accused Tehran of spreading sectarian tension in Africa.

Overall, Riyadh believes its approach is succeeding. "Iranian expansionism is almost stopped," an adviser to Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last month.

But at Georgetown University-Qatar, Kamrava said it's too early to declare winners and losers.

"In international relations you can rent friends but you can't buy them. For Saudi Arabia the long-term effectiveness of this policy is questionable because these alliances are based on purely tactical or commercial relations," he said.


(Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Edmund Blair in Nairobi and Praveen Menon in Kuala Lumpur; editing by David Stamp)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-kurds-idUSKCN0YR0BZ

World | Sun Jun 5, 2016 7:08am EDT
Related: World, Turkey, Iraq

Turkish warplanes target Kurdish militants, at least 27 killed: army


Turkish warplanes struck Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey and the army killed 27 fighters near its borders with Iraq and Iran, the armed forces said on Sunday.

Conflict in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast has been at its most intense level in two decades since a two-year-old ceasefire by the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed last July.

Air strikes on Saturday destroyed gun positions and shelters and caves used by PKK fighters in the Gara area of northern Iraq and the countryside of Lice district in Diyarbakir province, the military statement said.

It did not give a death toll but state-run Anadolu Agency cited security sources as saying small groups of PKK militants were killed in those strikes.

Seven PKK militants were killed in a clash in Semdinli near the Iraqi and Iranian borders on Saturday, while air strikes in Semdinli on Friday killed 20 PKK fighters, the army said.

PKK guerrillas also launched an attack on a military outpost in Sirnak province overnight and in the ensuing clash one PKK fighter was killed along with a member of the state's 'village guard' militia, security sources said.

In northeast Turkey's Gumushane province, not usually an area of conflict, two soldiers were wounded when their military vehicle came under fire in a gun attack, local authorities said. Media reports said one of the soldiers subsequently died. It was not clear if the attack was related to the Kurdish conflict.

The air strikes in Lice were conducted after the Diyarbakir governor's office declared a curfew there on Saturday. It said the curfew was lifted on Sunday morning after the completion of military operations there.

Turkish security forces on Friday concluded operations targeting PKK fighters in the town of Nusaybin near the Syrian border and in Sirnak near the border with Iraq.

More than 1,000 people, mostly PKK fighters, were killed in three months of clashes in those areas, security sources say.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, launched its insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.


(Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Toby Chopra)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-violence-idUSKCN0YR06B

World | Sun Jun 5, 2016 8:04am EDT
Related: World

Wife of Bangladeshi anti-terrorism policeman stabbed, shot dead

DHAKA | By Ruma Paul


The wife of a senior Bangladeshi police official known for battling Islamist militants was stabbed and shot to death on Sunday, and machete-wielding assailants killed a Christian grocer in a separate incident.

Both attacks appeared to be the work of Islamist militants who have killed at least 30 people, including religious minorities, liberal bloggers and academics, since February last year, police said.

Three assailants riding a motorcycle stabbed and then shot Mahmuda Aktar, 33, while she was on her way to put her son onto a school bus near her home in the southeastern port city of Chittagong, police said.

"She was stabbed first. Then they shot her in the head three times," Humayan Kabir, deputy police commissioner of Chittagong, told Reuters.

Her husband, police superintendent Babul Aktar, has played an important role in cracking down on militants in the region.

“Babul Aktar is an efficient police officer and played a key role in apprehending Islamists. They might have killed his wife because they failed to get him,” Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters.

Aktar, who was recently posted to police headquarters in the capital, Dhaka, busted several hideouts of the banned group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen. His team also arrested one of the group's leaders, who was later killed in a grenade blast during a police raid in October.

The government has launched a crackdown on militant groups who want to impose strict Islamic law on Bangladesh, whose population of 160 million are mostly moderate Muslims.

In Sunday's other killing, Sunil Gomes, a 60-year-old shopkeeper, was hacked to death in his shop in the northern district of Natore, local police official Manirul Islam said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing Gomes, according to the U.S.-based monitoring service SITE.

Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for many killings in the past but the government denies either group has a presence in Bangladesh and says home-grown radicals are responsible.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam told Reuters in an interview last month that Islamic State was trying to ride a wave of religious radicalization by falsely claiming killings, and said there was enough evidence implicating domestic militant groups.


(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attacks-idUSKCN0YR0C9

World | Sun Jun 5, 2016 6:03am EDT
Related: World, Afghanistan

Taliban attack kills five at Afghan court


At least five people were killed on Sunday when Taliban gunmen attacked a courthouse in eastern Afghanistan, an attack the insurgent group said was in retaliation for the government execution of six militants in May.

Two attackers opened fire at an appeals court in Pul-e Alam in Logar province, just south of the Afghan capital city of Kabul, according to the province's deputy police chief Nesar Ahmad Abdul Rahimzai.

Among the five killed in the attack was the newly named head of the appeals court, Rahimzai said.

The gunmen injured at least 19 other people before being killed by security forces, he added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying it was in response to the government's execution of six Taliban prisoners in early May.

The executions followed a deadly attack in Kabul that killed at least 64 people, prompting President Ashraf Ghani to declare that the "time of unjustified amnesty" for insurgents was over.


(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni, Writing by Josh Smith)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...ech-tourist-bus-france-injured-glass-39619321

Gunfire Hits Czech Tourist Bus in France, 6 Injured by Glass

By The Associated Press · PARIS — Jun 5, 2016, 7:47 AM ET

Two rounds of gunfire have hit a bus carrying Czech tourists through southeastern France, injuring six passengers.

The prosecutor of Valence, Alex Perrin, says the bus was hit Friday night as it traveled along the A7 highway on its way home from a trip to Spain.

Six of the passengers, which included school children, were slightly injured after being hit by flying glass and one person was seriously hurt.

Perrin told BFM-TV that a first shot hit the front window and a second hit the rear window, shattering both.

There have been no arrests, claims of responsibility or even conjectures about the motive.

Perrin said "one could think that this bus ... was no more a target than any other."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-aleppo-idUSKCN0YR0DI

Business | Sun Jun 5, 2016 1:41pm EDT
Related: World, Russia, Aerospace & Defense, Syria

Syrian and Russian aircraft step up bombing of Aleppo city - monitor

AMMAN | By Suleiman Al-Khalidi


Nearly 50 air strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, residents and a monitoring group said.

The group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said an unidentified war plane had crashed in countryside south of Aleppo, in an area where Islamist rebel fighters are battling the Syrian army and Iranian-backed forces. It had no information on what caused the crash.

A civil defense worker said at least 32 people were killed in the rebel-held parts of the city during the air strikes, with 18 bodies pulled from flattened buildings in the Qatrji neighborhood, the worst hit.

The monitor said dozens of barrel bombs - oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel- were dropped by helicopter on densely populated districts.

"This week-long campaign of bombing is very intense and day by day it's getting worse ... it is the worst we have seen in a while," said Bebars Mishal, a civil defense official in rebel-held Aleppo.

For their part, rebels hit government-held areas of Aleppo in what Syrian media said was an escalation of mortar attacks on the western districts.

State media said attacks on Sunday on Hamadaniyah, Midan and other neighborhoods by insurgents killed at least 20 people, in the second day of intense shelling of government-held areas. The death toll over the whole weekend was at least 44.

Aleppo, the country's largest city before the war, has been divided for years between rebel and government-held zones.

Full control of Aleppo would be a huge prize for President Bashar al-Assad. Russia's military intervention since September has helped to bolster Assad's government.


Related Coverage
› War jet crashes near Syria's Aleppo, cause unknown: monitoring group

Syria issued a toughly worded statement denouncing Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, holding them responsible for the latest surge in rebel attacks and accusing them of wrecking any effort to reach a U.N.-backed political settlement.

Damascus says that along with several major Western countries, those regional countries finance and train Islamist rebels seeking to topple Assad's government.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, meanwhile, residents said Syrian and Russian jets bombed the rebel-held provincial capital, setting fire to a bustling market in the heart of the city. More than 30 people were injured, at least three killed and dozens were unaccounted for, according to an activist contacted in the city.

The Idlib strikes came just days after some of the heaviest raids on residential areas for months, killing more than 30 people and injuring dozens on May 31. Idlib has been a relative haven for thousands of displaced Syrians [L8N18S0T5].


ATTEMPTS TO ENCIRCLE INSURGENTS

The air raids in Aleppo on Sunday came in the wake of strikes on civilian areas on Friday that residents said were the most intense in over a month.

The Syrian Observatory said the Syrian government raids had targeted the main Castello road that leads into rebel-held Aleppo as part of a campaign to complete the encirclement of the city's insurgent-dominated areas.

A Russian defense ministry statement on Sunday accused militant Syrian Islamist groups of firing mortars on the mainly Kurdish-populated Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood in Aleppo that overlooks the Castello road.

The monitor said 13 people, including six children, were killed on Saturday in the Kurdish-run area by insurgents' mortars.

Rebels accuse the powerful Kurdish YPG of working with the Syrian army to cut the main artery by intensifying their ground attacks on the highway.

The Russians had on Saturday accused militants from radical Islamic groups of bringing at least 1,000 fighters into an area in the southern Aleppo countryside.

The militants have consolidated gains since Friday in the area around the strategic town of Khan Touman [L8N18V382], rebels say.

The Nusra Front spearheaded an attack on Khan Touman last month, delivering one of the biggest battlefield setbacks yet to a coalition of foreign Shi'ite fighters supporting Syrian government forces..

Rebels say Russian jets on Sunday pounded insurgent positions in the area to prevent them from advancing towards the nearby town of Hader, which rebels say is a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias.

Also U.S.-backed forces on Sunday engaged with Islamic State fighters in an offensive that began last Tuesday against IS-held areas in Aleppo province, beginning with the Manbij area where they continued to seize more villages, according to Kurdish sources and the monitor.


(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Andrew Bolton)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2016/06/167_206290.html

Posted : 2016-06-05 16:27
Updated : 2016-06-05 16:27

Pyongyang between China, US

By Tong Kim

As tensions continue on the Korean peninsula, and while there is no prospect of a breakthrough to the worsening confrontation between Seoul and Pyongyang, the whole issue of North Korea ¯ including its nuclear and missile programs ¯ is getting out of control for South Korea, becoming an issue of strategic competition between Beijing and Washington.

Seoul has rejected Pyongyang's repeated proposals for holding inter-Korean military talks, which was suggested by Kim Jong-un during the 7th party congress of the Korean Workers Party and was followed up by the ministry of armed forces under the DPRK's national defense commission.

Seoul determined that it was the time to focus on sanctions, not talks, suspecting that the proposal was a scheme to loosen up the unity of the international community regarding the sanctions levied on Pyongyang, and to divide the South Korean public. The South insists inter-Korean talks are meaningless, unless it deals with denuclearization.

In the meantime, the North Korean issue is slipping out of the hands of South Korea. It appears that Seoul is losing the challenge and the opportunity to improve the security environment and to influence changes in the North that it wants to see happen.

More bilateral sanctions followed the toughest ever UN Security Council Resolution 2270 against the DPRK. South Korea, Japan, the EU, and the United States have imposed bilateral sanctions. China says it will fully implement the UN sanctions with the hope that the North return to the negotiation table. Washington is appreciative of Beijing's co-authorship of and its commitment to the UN sanctions.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel confirmed, at a news conference on a preview of the 8th SED (Strategic and Economic Dialogue) with China for June 5 to 7 in Beijing, that the goal of the 2270 is "not to bring North Korea to its knees but to its senses" and "to look for a North Korean agreement to negotiate the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

On June 1, the U.S. Treasury Department designated North Korea as a "primary money laundering concern" under the U.S. Patriot Act in an effort to cut off Pyongyang's access to all international financial institutions, which would block North Korea's trade. The Treasury's action was announced amid the alleged reports that Pyongyang absconded with tens of millions of dollars by hacking the central bank of Bangladesh.

The latest U.S. sanction was already mandated by the UN resolution. The difference is that the new U.S. sanction can punish a third country's financial institutions if it is involved in transactions with a North Korean bank or an entity. Most likely targets are Chinese banks doing business with North Korea that may or may not be legitimate under the UN sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal has reported the new Treasury Department sanction raises "direct economic conflict with China." It could be a major contentious issue at the next round of the SED, where isolation of North Korea will be a major topic.

Against the pressure of condemnation and sanctions from the international community, North Korea continues to advance its nuclear and missile technology. Experts believe the North is ready to conduct a fifth nuclear test to demonstrate its perfection of a hydrogen bomb. In January, the North Koreans claimed a successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb, but Western scientists saw it only as "a boosted atomic bomb test".

The North keeps conducting tests of short and intermediate range missiles, including Musudan missiles from mobile launches with a maximum range of 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers. All four tests of the Musudan missile so far this year have failed. However, these failures suggest that they will not give up the effort to improve their nuclear delivery systems.

To complicate the situation, Chinese President Xi Jinping, a few days before the convening of the latest SED, welcomed a high ranking North Korean delegation headed by Ri Su-yong, a vice chairman of the Korean Workers Party, and stressed the importance of traditional friendly cooperation between the two socialist states. Xi also wished for "the DPRK's greater success in endeavors for the economy and standards of living."

In line with Beijing's consistent policy on the Korean peninsula, the Xinhua news agency reported, Xi "called for all relevant sides to stay calm, exercise restraint, and enhance communication and dialogue to safeguard regional peace and stability." This is interpreted as a message for the North to stop further provocations and for the U.S. and the South to slow down joint military drills.

It is of significant nuance that Xi met with Ri's delegation after the latter conveyed a clear message to the chairman of international relations of the Chinese Communist Party that Pyongyang would uphold its renewed policy of parallel development of nuclear weapons and the economy. However, it is unlikely that Kim Jong-un's "personal verbal message" to Xi discussed Pyongyang's parallel direction of nuclear and economic development.

An upside to the situation: Pyongyang keeps saying it would behave as a responsible nuclear weapon's state to contribute to non-proliferation, it would not use nuclear weapons first, and it would safeguard the safety of its nuclear program. It is better to hear them talk about dialogue with the South to avoid an accidental war than hearing their belligerent rhetoric of threats to wage a preemptive nuclear strike against the South and the United States.

Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo are very much on the same page on North Korea, with President Obama stressing at the recent G-7 meeting a stronger allied deterrent against North Korean nuclear threats and the nuclear envoys ¯ from the U.S., Japan, and South Korea ¯ calling for more sanctions for Pyongyang's failed missile tests.

The problem is that nobody knows for sure what it would take to resolve the North Korean issue that has gone out of control. A collapse of North Korea is unlikely in the near term; there is no assurance that the North would succumb to the pressure of sanctions; and the U.S. rebalance to Asia tends to drive China towards protecting North Korea rather than punishing it. What's your take?

Tong Kim is a Washington correspondent and columnist for The Korea Times. He is also a fellow at the Institute of Korean-American Studies. He can be contacted at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.

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Posted : 2016-06-05 16:31
Updated : 2016-06-05 16:31

No to Xi-Kim summit

Meeting to violate UN rules unless it helps disarm NK


Following a high-level North Korean delegation's visit to Beijing, it is cautiously speculated that a summit is next on the cards. Chinese President Xi Jinping told Pyongyang's envoy Ri Su-yong of the importance of the two countries' friendship despite the North's nuclear and missile development that embarrassed its only benefactor, raising the possibility that the two were ready to mend ties.

Xi should remember two things as he deals with the North and especially when it comes to a meeting with Kim Jong-un.

First, it would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of existing sanctions imposed by the United Nations on the North after its fourth nuclear test and long-range missile launch. U.N. Resolution No. 2270 calls for all member states to implement punitive measures as stipulated with the goal of having Pyongyang give up its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. It was approved by all the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council. As one of the five, China, which accounts for 90 percent of the North's trade, promised to abide by it.

The Xi-Kim summit could definitely ease the pressure applied on the North, now being tightened by the U.S. designation of it as a state of "primary money-laundering concern." This is expected to have a bigger effect than the freeze of $25 million deposited in the Banco Delta Asia that forced Pyongyang to come back to the negotiating table. Russia, the North's former supporter, and even Uganda, its staunch ally, have now joined the U.N. effort

If this global effort to disarm the North wobbles, Xi should be held responsible. He should say goodbye to his dream of making his country a global leader. A leader requires respect from other nations and the first step to gaining this is to keep his word. Twice before, China put its ties with the North ahead of its obligations as a superpower. After the North's nuclear test in 2009, Hu Jintao, Xi's predecessor, sent his top lieutenant there, ironically as part of a charm offensive. Then, in 2013, Xi received Choe Ryong-hae, now vice chairman of the North's Central Military Commission, headed by Kim, and made up with its client state, making the sanctions ineffective.

Already, key state holders including South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are casting suspicion on what transpired during the Xi-Ri meeting. This alone could create mistrust between China and the rest of the world, throwing a spanner into the ongoing effort to separate Pyongyang from its WMDs.

Of course, there is no rule without an exception.

If a Xi-Kim meeting produces tangible results toward the North's denuclearization, then it could be given the go-ahead. The conditions may be met if the North declares an indefinite and verifiable moratorium on its nuclear programs. This moratorium should not be a kind that Pyongyang can switch on or off at will, but rather one that can be made permanent.

Although it is hidden under strong rhetoric, the international community doesn't want to see the North implode at the risk of a refugee or nuclear crisis. It may throw a lifeline to the North, if it is willing to have a serious talks that can lead to it give up its nuclear weapons. If Xi is confident about this, he may try to talk directly to the young dictator; but at his own peril. The Bible says, "Where there is a will, there is a way. "Xi, a supposed atheist, may try to find out whether that is true.


foolsdie@ktimes.com

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kazakhstan-extremists-shooting-idUSKCN0YR0IX

World | Sun Jun 5, 2016 2:26pm EDT
Related: World

Suspected militants attack Kazakh guard base, kill six

ASTANA | By Raushan Nurshayeva and Olzhas Auyezov


Suspected Islamist militants killed six people at a national guard base and two stores selling firearms in the Kazakh industrial city of Aktobe on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.

Four of the attackers were killed and seven detained by police in a counter-terrorist operation, ministry spokesman Almas Sadubayev said. Some remained at large, he said.

Sadubayev said police suspected the attackers were "followers of radical, non-traditional religious movements", a phrase used in Kazakhstan, a mostly Muslim nation, to describe Islamist militants.

In near simultaneous attacks, the gunmen killed a clerk and a guard at one firearms store and then wounded three policemen who arrived at the site. At another firearms store, they killed a visitor before police arrived and killed three attackers.

A third group hijacked a bus and used it to ram the gate at the national guard base where they killed three servicemen before guards and police killed one attacker.

Sadubayev did not say how many people were involved in the three attacks.

A resident of Aktobe who asked to be identified only by his first name, Valery, told Reuters by telephone he had seen armed police from his balcony and heard a few gunshots.

"They were telling children playing outside to run to their homes," Valery said, adding that he had also seen low-flying helicopters.

Valery received a text message saying a 10 p.m. (1200 ET) curfew was being imposed in the city.

"Right now, everything is normal," he said about an hour after the curfew, referring to the absence of gunshots or other unusual noise.

Police shut down public transportation, malls and entertainment venues in the city after the attacks, which took place on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Aktobe, 100 km (60 miles) from the Russian border, was the site of Kazakhstan's first suicide bombing in 2011 when a local man detonated an explosive device inside the building of the state security service.

Kazakh authorities often announce detentions and trials of Islamist militants, but most of them are people who traveled or planned to travel to places such as Syria and Iraq. Violent clashes within the country itself are rare.

However, the plunge in the price of oil, Kazakhstan's main export, has threatened political and social stability in the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation of 18 million.

Thousands of Kazakhs took part in street protests across the country in April and May which were triggered by a planned land reform but quickly became an expression of general discontent with the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power since 1989.


(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva and Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Adrian Croft)

 

[energy_wave]

Taiwan says won't recognize Chinese air defense zone over South China Sea

Taiwan's new defense minister said on Monday the island would not recognize any air defense zone declared by China over the South China Sea, as the island's top security agency warned such a move could usher in a wave of regional tension.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could prompt Beijing to declare an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims, as well as close military ties with Washington.

"We will not recognize any ADIZ by China," Taiwan defense minister Feng Shih-kuan told lawmakers in a parliamentary session.

The comments come after Taiwan's new government of President Tsai Ing-wen, of the independence-leaning ruling party, was sworn into power last month. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party overturned eight-years of China-friendly Nationalist rule on the island.

China drew condemnation from Japan and the United States when it imposed its ADIZ, in which aircraft are supposed to identify themselves to Chinese authorities, above the East China Sea.

China has neither confirmed nor denied it plans such a zone for the South China Sea, saying that a decision would be based on the threat level and that it had every right to set one up.

"In the future, we don't rule out China designating an ADIZ. If China is on track to announce this, it could usher in a new wave of tension in the region," Taiwan's National Security Bureau said in a report presented to parliament.



'INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS'

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday the United States would consider any Chinese establishment of an air defense zone over the South China Sea "provocative and destabilizing".

Speaking at the beginning of a high-level strategic dialogue in Beijing on Monday, Kerry said he would make it clear the United States is looking for a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea.

"The only position we've taken is, let's not resolve this by unilateral action, let's resolve this through rule of law, through diplomacy, through negotiation, and we urge all nations to find a diplomatic solution rooted in international standards and rule of law," he said.

China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said China "resolutely makes it own contribution to peace, stability and development".

China has been angered by what it views as provocative U.S. military patrols close to islands China controls in the South China Sea. The United States says the patrols are to protect freedom of navigation.

Taiwan's defense ministry said in its own report it would strengthen its defenses on Pratas Island, in the north of the South China Sea, and on Itu Aba in the Spratly Islands.

The ministry said China is building up of its military presence in the South China Sea with deployments of anti-missile systems, drones and fast missile ships in the area.

Last month, Beijing demanded an end to U.S. surveillance near China after two Chinese fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Yeganeh Torbati in Beijing; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-idUSKCN0YS09J

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-jordan-security-attacks-idUSKCN0YS0RF

World | Mon Jun 6, 2016 4:39am EDT
Related: World

Five killed in attack on Palestinian camp in Jordan: government spokesman


Three Jordanian intelligence officers and two employees were killed in an armed attack on a security office in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital, a government official said on Monday.

Jordanian television quoted a government spokesman saying the attack which took place in the large sprawling camp at 7 am was a "terrorist attack" but gave no details.


(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Toby Chopra)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.ibtimes.com/us-china-str...ijing-amid-rising-tensions-over-trade-2378408

US-China Strategic And Economic Dialogue Opens in Beijing Amid Rising Tensions Over Trade And South China Sea

By Duncan Hewitt @dhewittChina
On 06/06/16 AT 3:33 AM

SHANGHAI — China’s President Xi Jinping called for greater trust between China and the U.S., as senior officials from the two countries began annual talks in Beijing, which have been overshadowed by tensions over the South China Sea and U.S. sanctions on Chinese steel makers. But analysts say comments from Chinese experts and officials in recent days have made it clear that many differences are unlikely to be bridged.

In opening remarks at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, Xi called for more contact between the two sides, saying they should work harder to solve differences.

“The key is not to adopt a confrontational attitude towards any differences,” he said, adding, “Some differences cannot be solved at the moment and both sides should take each others’ actual situations into consideration and take a constructive approach ... The key is not to adopt a confrontational attitude towards any differences.”

But Xi’s remarks also hinted at the tensions over the South China, where China has embarked on a controversial program of reclaiming land on reefs in disputed waters that are also claimed by several countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam. In response, the U.S. has launched a series of naval and air “Freedom of Navigation Operations” in the area, in what China says are its territorial waters – prompting accusations of interference from Beijing, and a recent incident in which two Chinese fighter planes flew close to U.S. surveillance aircraft. Chinese media have also accused the U.S. of seeking to encourage other countries in the region to confront Beijing over the issue – particularly after the U.S. lifted a decades-old arms embargo on Vietnam last month.

In his speech to the opening session of the dialogue, Xi said the Asia Pacific region should be a platform for cooperation, not an “arena for countries to leverage,” the South China Morning Post reported.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, called on Beijing to promote a “diplomatic solution” to the South China Sea issue, and also called on China to keep up pressure on North Korea, a traditional ally of Beijing, which has launched a series of nuclear and missile tests this year. Beijing has backed the toughest-ever sanctions against North Korea at the U.N. Security Council, but Chinese media have also said Beijing cannot abandon its isolated neighbor, and have criticized a plan to deploy a U.S.-developed missile defense system in South Korea, saying this would be targeted not only at Pyongyang but also at China.

Tensions have risen further after reports last week quoting Chinese military sources as saying Beijing might consider declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea area, further asserting its sovereignty. Kerry said at the weekend that such a move would be a provocative and destabilizing act.

A senior Chinese military official said at a security conference in Singapore this weekend that China was not afraid of trouble in the region.

“We do not make trouble, but have no fear of it,” said Sun Jianguo of China’s central military commission, in what state media called a “strongly worded speech.” He said Beijing would not “allow any infringement upon its sovereignty and security interests, or stay indifferent to the irresponsible behavior of some countries in and around the South China Sea.” And a commentary in the official Global Times newspaper Monday hit out at what it called the “arrogance of the U.S. Pacific Fleet,” saying the U.S.’s “unbridled behavior” had given Chinese people a sense of “insecurity,” and "reminded the Chinese that our military strength is still weak and we must develop our own strategic military capability to deter the U.S."

Some Chinese experts noted that there is still significant cooperation between the two countries:

“The overall relationship is still positive, there is still a lot of cooperation, including on climate change, global nuclear issues and finance,” Professor Tao Wenzhao of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told International Business Times recently.

But he said that there was real anger in China over the South China Sea dispute, which was likely to “become a long-term issue.”

Zhao Minghao, a researcher at Renmin University in Beijing, wrote in the Global Times Monday that “the most important bilateral ties in the world shouldn’t be dominated by the South China Sea dispute." And he noted that contacts between the two countries had increased in recent years, with China due to join the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, a naval drill led by the U.S., later this month.

Talks will also cover areas such as cooperation on innovation and agriculture, while President Xi called for progress on a long-debated Bilateral Investment Treaty between the countries. But this too has been mired in disputes, with the U.S. saying that China’s "negative list," of sectors of the economy it will not open to foreign investment, is too long. China, meanwhile, has complained about the exclusion of its own companies from investing in high-tech sectors seen as sensitive in the U.S., and the China Daily said Beijing would urge Washington to provide a “level playing field for Chinese investment.”

Tensions have also been fueled by the recent U.S. imposition of punitive tariffs on some Chinese steel products, amid accusations of dumping and unfair subsidies. U.S. treasury secretary Jacob Lew Monday called on Beijing to “substantially reduce production” in industries affected by excess capacity, such as steel and aluminum, saying this was "critical to the function and stability of international markets.”

China has said it is taking action to close some plants and lay off workers, but a recent rise in steel prices saw some Chinese producers pledge to increase output – and the Global Times Monday accused the U.S. of “unwise” trade protectionism over the issue.

Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security at the Atlantic Council, wrote in an article published by the Global Times Monday that Beijing should cooperate on trade issues, including greater access to its markets, saying “China is unlikely to find a more cooperative US president than Obama.” Yet some observers have suggested that Beijing now sees the outgoing U.S. president as a lame duck, and is waiting to see who his successor will be. Some Chinese media and experts have also argued that if Republican candidate Donald Trump were to win the U.S. election, this would benefit Beijing — as his foreign policy would likely be less focused on playing a role in the Asia Pacific region than that of President Obama, who has promoted a “pivot to Asia.” Trump, however, has been sharply critical of China's trading practices, accusing it of stealing U.S. jobs.

So while experts say the fact that the two countries can continue talking despite the current tension is a good sign, many believe relations are set for a further period of uncertainty in the foreseeable future.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://rudaw.net/english/analysis/05062016

Analysis

Why it makes sense for Syrian regime to advance into Raqqa now

By Paul Iddon 18 hours ago

The Syrian military re-entered the country’s Raqqa province for the first time in almost two years on Saturday morning, aiming to recapture it from Islamic State (ISIS) militants.

Syrian soldiers and allied militias, supported by Russian airstrikes, are advancing toward the town of Tabqa, which is home to a former Syrian military airbase and dam.

This offensive began shortly after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched their own offensive in northern Raqqa, and toward Manbij. Both groups aim to retake Tabqa, which is 40 kilometers upstream (westward) from the city of Raqqa – ISIS’s so-called de-facto capital and main Syrian stronghold.

For Damascus to undertake such an offensive against ISIS in Raqqa now makes sense because retaking Tabqa would reverse one of two humiliating military defeats Syria’s military suffered at the hands of ISIS.

During the summer of 2014, months after ISIS seized Raqqa city, Tabqa airbase constituted the Syrian regime’s remaining bastion in that province. Damascus presumed the base was capable of defending itself since it was manned by 1,000-1,400 Syrian soldiers and was home to Syrian Air Force MiG jet fighters, which could bomb anywhere in that province.

Until that point in time ISIS had been busy killing other armed groups Damascus opposed -- Raqqa was the first provincial capital the regime lost to the opposition early in 2013 and was later taken over at their expense by ISIS in January 2014 -- so it chose not to confront the group while it was liquidating its other adversaries in that region.

Then Mosul fell to ISIS in June 2014, ISIS was able to seize large quantities of weapons and military hardware the Iraqi Army left behind after it infamously withdrew from that region ahead of ISIS’s rapid advance. Many of those weapons were trucked into Syria for the group’s use there against the Syrian Kurds.

ISIS assaulted Tabqa that August. The Syrian military managed to hold out for 18-days, launching airstrikes against ISIS in Raqqa and the surrounding areas from the base. The airbase nevertheless fell after at least 300 Syrian soldiers were killed by ISIS. The rest were forced to flee for their lives.

The fall of Tabqa airbase marked the moment Damascus lost complete control of that province to ISIS.

Similarly in May 2015 the Syrian Army suffered another humiliating defeat in Palmyra when ISIS overran that ancient city and infamously mass-executed 21 Syrian soldiers in its ancient Roman-era amphitheater.

Syria reversed its defeat in Palmyra by recapturing it, with close Russian air support, late last March. Advancing against ISIS in Tabqa next is logical since that area would give the Syrian Army a strategically significant foothold in the Raqqa province.

It is a smart aim also since ISIS under pressure on its northern and western fronts from the SDF’s offensive – meaning the militants cannot realistically divert the bulk of their forces solely in order to try and halt a Syrian military advance from their west without instantly losing ground elsewhere to the SDF.

In the long-term re-securing a foothold in Tabqa would more easily enable the Syrian military to keep rival groups in Raqqa province in check. Whether they plan to put the airbase there back into use, if and when they recapture Tabqa, has yet to be seen.

This offensive may also be a first step toward linking up with Syria’s remaining easternmost outpost, where a Syrian Army contingent has been preventing ISIS from taking over that entire city for around two years now. Deir Ezzor is home to 200,000 people who are having to endure a very dire humanitarian situation caused by ISIS’s siege of their city.

Completely retaking these two provincial capitals would once again make the Syrian regime a formidable force in the east of the country and give credence to President Bashar al-Assad’s declaration, made last February, that he will eventually re-conquer “the whole country” from his opponents.

Reclaiming a sizeable foothold in Raqqa province and reinforcing the contingent in Deir Ezzor will likely be on the agenda for Damascus, especially if this fledgling offensive makes good headway in the coming days and weeks.


Paul Iddon is a Rudaw reporter based in Erbil, Kurdistan Region.

 

[Housecarl]

REPORT: Germany ‘Annexing’ Dutch Military As Secretive EU Army Begins To Take Shape
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ary-As-Secretive-EU-Army-Begins-To-Take-Shape

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/world/europe/european-union-germany-army.html?_r=1

Europe

In a Reversal, Germany’s Military Growth Is Met With Western Relief

By ALISON SMALE
JUNE 5, 2016

BERLIN — You know times have changed when the Germans announce they are expanding their army for the first time in 25 years — and no one objects.

Back when the Berlin Wall fell, Britain and France in particular feared the re-emergence of a German colossus in Europe. By contrast, Berlin’s pledge last month to add almost 7,000 soldiers to its military by 2023, and an earlier announcement to spend up to 130 billion euros, about $148 billion, on new equipment by 2030 were warmly welcomed by NATO allies.

It has taken decades since the horrors of World War II, but Berlin’s modern-day allies and, it seems, German leaders themselves are finally growing more comfortable with the notion that Germany’s role as the European Union’s de facto leader requires a military dimension.

Perhaps none too soon. The United States and others — including many of Germany’s own defense experts — want Germany to do even more for Continental security and to broaden deployments overseas.

President Obama expressed frustration in an interview this year that the United States’ European and Persian Gulf allies were acting too often as “free riders.” Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been even more scathing in his remarks, threatening to pull out of NATO if he is elected.

As a July NATO summit meeting in Warsaw approaches, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is now key to how the alliance will face the twin perils that have transformed the strategic situation in Europe: a more menacing Russia and the Islamic State’s expansion beyond individual acts of terrorism like executions to seizing territory.

In Europe, where NATO’s easternmost members, particularly Poland and the Baltic States, have clamored for permanent deployment of Allied troops to deter Russian meddling, Germany looks set to take command of a brigade in Lithuania, joining Britain and the United States in leading the effort to marshal a robust presence on Russia’s borders.


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Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany is also playing a part in NATO programs to pool resources of member states for greater collective security. Defense experts hold up increased German-Dutch cooperation as a model.

The path to even a semblance of collective European defense is littered with unmet promises of better cooperation — for example, the quarter-century-old Franco-German brigade, which remains mostly a paper tiger, and the scramble ahead of the Warsaw meeting to find a fourth country to command a unit in the new NATO deployment in Eastern Europe. Britain and France, both nuclear powers, continue to set their own priorities.

But whether on its own or with others, Germany is showing signs of growing more comfortable with embracing a bigger military role, a gradual but distinct shift away from an instinctive pacifism that took hold starting in 1945, and a post-Cold War tendency to shrink the nation’s military.

The shift started becoming publicly apparent in 2014, when Germany’s president and foreign and defense ministers all urged an increased global security role for the country at the annual Munich Security Conference. Weeks later, Russia’s leader, President Vladimir V. Putin, annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

Since then, Germany has responded by helping to build a NATO rapid response force in Eastern Europe, leading the diplomacy efforts in Ukraine, and training and arming Kurdish pesh merga battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Now, a new government strategy document, the first such “White Book” in 10 years, is being prepared. It is likely both to bolster Germany’s role on the world stage — beyond its traditional sphere of activity in Europe — and to talk explicitly of military contributions.

How far this thinking has spread outside the political and military elite is open to question. Polling shows that “the general public is not very comfortable with the military dimension,” said Sylke Tempel, the editor of International Policy, the magazine of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

The policy-making elite, on other hand, know that “strategic thinking includes the notion that you have to build a force in order to be taken seriously, and that you have to spend on this dimension,” Ms. Tempel said.

Germany is not moving fast enough for defense experts like Hans-Peter Bartels, the parliamentary commissioner for the military, or Karl-Heinz Kamp, the president of the government’s Federal Academy for Security Policy.

Germany should expand its military “as quickly as possible, as much as possible,” said Dr. Bartels, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party. Despite the announced expansion, he noted, military spending is in danger of sinking to 1.08 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, which he said would be its lowest ever — and well below the 2 percent that NATO member states committed to spend at the alliance’s last summit meeting, in Wales in 2014.

Dr. Kamp was more upbeat about German and NATO efforts, particularly the plans for meeting any Russian challenge on the alliance’s eastern borders.

“We are almost at permanent presence, almost,” Dr. Kamp said. “More is being decided than Putin could ever have imagined.”

The major danger he sees for these plans is “the fact that we have these anti-establishment movements on both sides of the Atlantic — we have the Alternative for Germany, we have the National Front in France and in the U.S.A. we have Trump.”

Populists in such movements have little interest in knitting together trans-Atlantic interests and deploying Allied forces for common goals, he said.

“These anti-establishment movements stand in contrast to everything which is NATO, and that is the only point which really worries me,” Dr. Kamp said.

In German politics, the post of defense minister has traditionally proved difficult. The job is prestigious, but plagued by difficulties in securing finances and suitable, modern equipment.

Neither the defense minister nor the chancellor is commander in chief of the army — another legacy of post-Nazi efforts to constrain Germany. Control of the army belongs to the Parliament, and any military expense or deployment is subject to its approval.

Further, demographic decline and the lure of good civilian jobs in Germany’s robust economy have made it difficult to recruit an all-volunteer force.

Thomas Wiegold, an expert on defense affairs, noted that regular troop strength — around 166,000 in April — already lags the current target of 170,000 and asked whether the defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, could reach that level and then keep her pledge of more soldiers by 2023.

“The political message is that after decades of shrinking, we want to grow,” Mr. Wiegold said. “But how that translates practically, nobody yet knows.”

The defense minister has taken several steps to make the military a better employer. They include hiring a senior aide from the business consultant McKinsey to examine structures, and simply ensuring more contact between soldiers overseas and their families back home.

A new cyberwarfare unit is a priority. The Defense Ministry is trying to end equipment failures and malfunctions. Last year, a dispute erupted with the arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch over the standard issue G-36 machine gun, which the ministry said did not always fire straight.

Another major task is to convince skeptical Germans, particularly in the east, that NATO is keeping its 1997 bargain with Russia that alliance troops would not be stationed permanently at Russia’s edge.

And so, in another measure of how things have changed in Europe, listeners of a Berlin broadcaster, rbb Inforadio, heard an unusual early morning interview on May 19. On the line from the Polish port city of Szczecin was Lt. Gen. Manfred Hofmann, a 42-year veteran of the German Army, who commands a corps that began in 1999 as a German-Danish unit to help Poland integrate into NATO, which it joined that spring.

Dialogue with Moscow has not shut down, he said, and NATO is keeping its commitments not to permanently station combat units on former Soviet bloc territory.

But the general noted that the corps command is now a 400-person, 21-nation unit, overseeing rapid deployment of NATO units if necessary, and reflected that since the 2014 summit meeting in Wales, “an unbelievable amount has happened.”


Follow Alison Smale on Twitter @asmalenyt.

A version of this article appears in print on June 6, 2016, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Germany’s Military Growth Met With Western Relief. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-nuclear-idUSKCN0YS1S2

World | Mon Jun 6, 2016 1:04pm EDT
Related: World, North Korea

North Korea apparently reopened plant to produce plutonium: IAEA


North Korea appears to have reopened a plant to produce plutonium from spent fuel of a reactor central to its atomic weapons drive, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday, suggesting the country's arms effort is widening.

Pyongyang vowed in 2013 to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main reactor at its Yongbyon site that had been shut down and has been at the heart of its weapons program.

It said in September that Yongbyon was operating and that it was working to improve the "quality and quantity" of its nuclear weapons. It has since carried out what is widely believed to have been a nuclear test.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has no access to North Korea and mainly monitors its activities by satellite, said last year it had seen signs of a resumption of activity at Yongbyon, including at the main reactor.

"Resumption of the activities of the 5 megawatt reactor, the expansion of centrifuge-related facility, reprocessing, these are some of the examples of the areas (of activity indicated at Yongbyon)," IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told a news conference during a quarterly IAEA Board of Governors meeting.

Centrifuges are machines that enrich uranium, a process that can purify the element to the level needed for use in the core of a nuclear weapon. Reprocessing involves obtaining plutonium from spent reactor fuel, the other main route to a bomb.

"There are indications the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon has been reactivated," an IAEA spokesman said later on Monday. "It is possible that it is reprocessing spent fuel."

Little is known about the quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that North Korea possesses, or its ability to produce either, though plutonium from spent fuel at Yongbyon is widely believed to have been used in its nuclear bombs.

North Korea has come under tightening international pressure over its nuclear weapons program, including tougher U.N. sanctions adopted in March backed by its lone major ally China, following its most recent nuclear test in January.

The website 38 North reported in April that exhaust plumes had been detected on two or three occasions in recent weeks from the thermal plant at Yongbyon's Radiochemical Laboratory, the site's main reprocessing installation.

The U.S. national intelligence director said in February that North Korea could be weeks away from recovering plutonium from Yongbyon, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had also expanded its uranium enrichment facility there.


(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/arab-states-almost-double-small-arms-imports-report

Middle East states almost double small-arms imports

Report raises questions over how much sales of light weapons and ammunition are fuelling conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya

Julian Borger World affairs editor
Monday 6 June 2016 13.01 EDT

Middle East countries have nearly doubled their imports of guns and ammunition within a year, figures on the small-arms trade show, raising questions over how many of the weapons are fuelling conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

The latest bulletin of the Small Arms Survey, sponsored by western governments and published on Monday, shows that some of the Arab states that most dramatically increased their imports of handguns, light weapons and ammunition between 2012 and 2013 are also the least transparent in terms of reporting on their arms trading.

Small-arms deliveries to big importers in the Middle East surged from $342m (£237m) in 2012 to $630m a year later, an increase of 84%.

Saudi Arabia almost tripled its gun imports in that period, from $54m to $161m, despite a call from the European parliament in February for an arms embargo in view of the high civilian casualties of Saudi military operations in Yemen.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) more than doubled its imports of small arms from $71m to $168m in the same period. Deliveries of small arms to Qatar grew eightfold, from $2m to $16m.

Meanwhile, some of those same countries were the most opaque about their arms dealing. The UAE came last in a list of 50 countries on a transparency barometer run by the Small Arms Survey, while Saudi Arabia came 49th, below Iran and North Korea.

Ammunition that was sold to Qatar was later found in Libya, in apparent breach of Qatar’s agreement not to re-export it without the permission of the countries of manufacture.

“The near doubling of small-arms transfers to the Middle East from 2012 to 2013 raises important questions”, Eric Berman, director of the Small Arms Survey, said.

“Do states rigorously assess the potential for diversion, destabilisation, or human rights violations before exporting arms? The survey’s recent research, and in particular the results of the survey’s 2016 transparency barometer, indicate that many major exporters are not open regarding such assessment processes or even decisions to authorise or deny a transfer.”

The most transparent arms-trading nations were Germany, the UK, Netherlands and Serbia.

The US retained its long-held position as both the top exporter and importer. It sold a record $1.1bn-worth of small arms in 2013, followed, in terms of exports, by Italy ($644m) and Germany ($557m).

Together, these three countries accounted for almost 40% of total exports in 2013. At the same time, the US imported $2.5bn-worth of small arms, representing 42% of all imports.

The latest report is published at the beginning of a week of meetings at the UN in New York aimed at developing a programme of action to regulate the global arms trade and make it more transparent.

The Arms Trade Treaty, which came into force in 2014, requires states to exert control of the flow of arms into and out of their territories and to report imports and exports to a treaty secretariat.

Based on official figures, the Small Arms Survey concedes that its analysis “is skewed toward documenting more transparent countries and underestimates the total value and extent of the global trade in small arms”.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-idUSKCN0YS27Z

World | Mon Jun 6, 2016 5:23pm EDT
Related: World

Mexico ruling party routed in regional vote on graft, gang violence

XALAPA, Mexico | By Dave Graham


Mexico's ruling party lost several bastions in Sunday's regional elections to the center-right opposition, dealing a heavy blow to President Enrique Pena Nieto for failing to crack down on corruption and gang violence.

The rout will help set the tone for the next presidential election in 2018, underscoring deep discontent over graft scandals and a sluggish economy, and throwing the contest open to contenders from both the left and right.

Results from gubernatorial races in 12 of Mexico's 31 states on Monday showed Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, heading for defeat in seven of them, a result far worse than most polls had forecast.

Pena Nieto, four years into his single six-year term, heeded the drubbing in his first public remarks on the elections.

"We who govern must pay attention to the citizens' message," Pena Nieto told a banking conference on Monday.

Losses included two oil-rich strongholds in the Gulf of Mexico, Veracruz and neighboring Tamaulipas, both of which have been plagued by gang violence for years, as well as Quintana Roo, home to Mexico's top tourist destination Cancun. All three have been run by the PRI for over eight decades.

The center-right National Action Party (PAN) was the big victor in the gubernatorial races, leading in seven states. In three of these contests, it fielded a candidate in alliance with the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)

"If we get results, we're going to win the presidency in 2018," PAN leader Ricardo Anaya told local radio.


Related Coverage
› Mexico ruling party loses powerful states in regional vote


CHALLENGE FROM THE LEFT

The PRI held nine of the 12 states going into the vote, of which the most populous is Veracruz, a region dominated by just a few families since the PRI took control in the decades after Mexico's 1910 revolution.

PRI party boss Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who some had viewed as a potential presidential candidate, struck a contrite tone.

"What we need to do is observe this election, and take on board the electorate's message to the PRI," he said.

With more than 80 percent of votes counted in Veracruz, the PRI was behind the PAN-PRD contender Miguel Angel Yunes and ahead of the unheralded candidate of a new leftist party founded by combative two-time presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Investors have eyed warily the progress in Veracruz of Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement (Morena), because he has vowed to undo Pena Nieto's historic opening of the oil industry to private investors if he wins in 2018.

Only registered as a party two years ago, Morena won a large chunk of the vote in three states and emerged as the first choice of the left in others.

PAN chairman Anaya was quick to target Lopez Obrador, suggesting he now viewed the leftist firebrand as his party's main rival in the next presidential vote.

"We don't want the option for change to be the destructive populism that Lopez Obrador represents," he said. "I'm convinced that an alternative like that would put Mexico in the same situation Venezuela is now in."

Veracruz, where Morena initially led the vote count on Sunday, became a liability for Pena Nieto after years of gang warfare, mounting debts and allegations of corruption.

Accused by critics of misusing public funds and failing to tackle rampant impunity, outgoing Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte was such a lightning rod for public anger that PRI candidate Hector Yunes was "embarrassed" to be in the same party.

Duarte, who could not seek re-election, has denied wrongdoing. But his six-year term became notorious for the killings of journalists and violent crime.

Asked on Monday if he would seek to put Duarte behind bars, the PAN-PRD's Yunes said: "Undoubtedly".

Few voters in Veracruz state capital Xalapa sought to defend Duarte.

"There's no money, there's no jobs, there's no security for our children," said local teacher Ruth Morales, 52. "This government has only benefited a handful of people."


(Additional reporting by Natalie Schachar, Lizbeth Diaz and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Simon Gardner and Mary Milliken)

 

[Housecarl]

Counter-Terrorism: The Unwanted Cure
Started by Shacknasty Shagratý, Today 03:49 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?492735-Counter-Terrorism-The-Unwanted-Cure

--

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20160606.aspx

Counter-Terrorism: The Unwanted Cure

This is a good analysis of Islam and why we all just can't get along.
SS

' Counter-Terrorism: The Unwanted Cure
June 6, 2016: The West has had a hard time understanding and accepting the reality of Islamic terrorism. This has been a major problem when trying to deal with what appears to be a zombie death cult based on religious belief in the need for global conquest and the establishment of a worldwide religious dictatorship. The few non-Moslems who understand it, mainly experienced members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, have long been dismissed as, well, unbelievable by Western leaders. This despite the fact that the thousands of Special Forces operators who speak Arabic and have practical, up close and very dangerous experience with Islamic terrorism not only know the language and culture but also the history of Islam and religious fanatics this faith regularly produces. The solution widely accepted by knowledgeable outsiders (like Special Forces) and insiders (including many Moslem historians and reform-minded rulers) is that it is an internal problem that must be fixed via the Moslem equivalent of the Christian reformation and subsequent treaties and cultural shifts that made religious tolerance a widely accepted practice. This greatly reduced the number of Christian religious zealots. That will be difficult for Islam because it is the only major religion whose scriptures demand blind obedience and constant struggle (“jihad”) against infidels (non-Moslems) and Moslems who want a reformation.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that many Moslems do not understand Islamic terrorism either. Those Moslems who do understand the history and motivation of Islamic terrorists, which has been a problem, mainly to other Moslems, for over a thousand years, are regarded by most Moslems as misguided or worse (as in being apostates who should be killed). Thus there is a division of opinion as to the cause of Islamic terrorism among Moslems. One theory, long popular in the Moslem world and increasingly accepted in the West as well, is that the main cause of Islamic terrorism is Western attempts to destroy the Islamic terrorists who attack the West. This theory blames the West for not accepting Islam when first attacked by Moslem armies in the 7th century and defeat subsequent attacks as well. To many Moslems forcing non-believers (“kaffirs” or “infidels”) to convert to Islam is a duty and the ends justify the means. Fighting back is blasphemy.

Most non-Moslems in the West, and a growing number of people in the Islamic world, consider this nonsense. All agree that Islam was born in conquest (after finding that the missionary approach took far too long compared to military conquest) and has never discarded its mandate to convert the world, using force if necessary. Many Moslems defend their faith by calling it the “religion of peace.” The historical record says otherwise and ignores the fact that Islam literally translates as “submission.” But saying that to infidels is seen by Moslems as counterproductive even that is what is preached in many mosques.

Another fact not everyone agrees with is that Islamic terrorism is an ancient problem. This is an important point to remember whenever one contemplates the current outbreak, where it came from, and how to deal with it. How ancient is Islamic terrorism? Well, consider that the word "assassin" comes from a group of very successful Islamic terrorists who existed a thousand years ago. This group of highly organized killers used drugs (hashish) to give suicide assassins a taste of paradise before sending them out on missions that would get them killed. These guys were called “hashish eaters”, and that word, when picked up by English speakers, emphasized the murder aspect and were mispronounced as "assassin". Islamic terrorists groups still motivate their fighters with drugs and access to female slaves.

Okay, so ruthless men have been using Islamic radicalism and drugs to create terrorists for a long time. No argument about that. But where did the current crop come from? Historically a noticeable increase in violence by Islamic radicals occurred every three or four generations. Most Islamic countries experienced it, and some got a more lethal dose than others. The terrorists always lost, usually when a powerful ruler in the area launched a major military operation against the population, usually a tribe or part of a province that was supporting the terrorists. Much bloodshed ensued. Today these measures would be described as genocide and war crimes. But in the past, the "massive retribution" approach worked and the terrorists disappeared. This is how the Mongols got rid of the original “assassins.” So the second lesson learned here is that what worked in the past, won't work today, because customs have changed. We have become kinder and gentler and must come up with different methods of dealing with terrorists.

Where exactly did the current crop of Islamic terrorists come from? Basically, they came from oil rich Arabia, mainly Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi sect of Islam had always been among the most strict and intolerant and it comes from Arabia. The Saud family owed their power, in large part, to a 19th century alliance with the Wahhabi sect. Holy Warriors from the Wahhabi tribes provided the crucial muscle that enabled the Sauds to conquer Saudi Arabia and establish their kingdom 70 years ago. But the Sauds realized that the more reactionary attitudes of the Wahhabis would hurt the kingdom in the long run. For example, many Wahhabi clerics were opposed to modern technology (unless it was a weapon). Radio, automobiles, and all manner of gadgets were resisted. The Sauds were constantly haggling with the Wahhabi clerics. Finally, in the 1970s, after a serious outbreak of Islamic terrorism, the Sauds made a fatal deal with the Wahhabi clerics. The Wahabbis could control education in the kingdom, and have their own "lifestyle police" to enforce proper Islamic standards on Saudis, in return for keeping Islamic terrorism under control.

Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Wahhabi clerics saw this as an assault by communist atheists (which is what Islamic conservatives considered the Soviets) on an Islamic state. The Wahhabi declared jihad (holy war, although a more appropriate translation would be “crusade”) against Russia. Billions of dollars and thousands of Arabs (most of them Saudis) went off to help the Afghans fight the Russians. The Pakistanis cooperated because, at about the same time, the generals running Pakistan had seized on Islamic conservatism as a cure for the corruption that was making the country ungovernable and bankrupt. The Wahhabis, and their money, were welcomed. The Americans were there as well, as the "Afghan Freedom Fighters" were popular in the United States. The Americans provided some high tech weapons, intelligence, and trainers but most of the aid, and weapons, came from the Saudis.

In addition to guns, the Saudis also brought in Wahhabi preachers to set up religious schools for the millions of Afghan refugees. Pakistanis were allowed to attend these schools as well. The result was that some of the Pushtun tribes on both sides of the Afghan border were radicalized with Wahabbi beliefs. At this point Saudi Arabia was also exporting billions of dollars, and thousands of Wahhabi preachers, to many other Islamic countries in Asia and Africa. Some of that money went to Moslem communities in Europe and the Americas as well. But in the 1980s, Pakistan was where the Wahabbis were creating a new generation of Islamic radicals.

In the mid-1990s, Islamic radicals in the Pakistani military created the Taliban, by arming Afghan students in Wahhabi religious schools in Pakistan, providing some training and technical support, and sending the lads off to end the civil war raging in Afghanistan. But when the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan the Pakistanis began to have second thoughts. In fact, by then, many Pakistani generals and politicians had abandoned Islamic conservatism, for it had proved no solution to Pakistan’s problems. It was too late. When September 11, 2001 came along, and American troops engineered the overthrow of the Taliban government two months later, the Pakistanis found Islamic terrorism had become entrenched among their Pushtun tribes on their side of the border and was spreading to some urban areas of Pakistan.

After al Qaeda was chased out of Afghanistan the terrorist group declared war on the Pakistani government, for siding with the Americans. That war continues, with al Qaeda losing but not yet destroyed. ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), an even more radical al Qaeda faction showed u, Meanwhile, back in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 set off the Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia. While the Wahhabi religious establishment did not back the Islamic terrorists, it had to come out against Islamic terrorism once Saudi al Qaeda members began making attacks inside Saudi Arabia. Within two years all the al Qaeda activity in Iraq, which mainly consisted of killing Iraqis, led to a sharp drop in the popularity of Islamic terrorism throughout the Moslem world.

Because of international media networks, Islamic terrorism was no longer a bunch of separate problems, occurring in different cycles. There was now one, world-wide, movement. As in the past, the Islamic terrorist recruits came mainly from those who felt most oppressed. These days that includes the young population in most Arab states that are run by dictators or monarchs. The dictators and kings don't want democracy, and Islamic radicals consider democracy un-Islamic. So the only way to vote is to set off a bomb somewhere. That somewhere, it turned out, was not at home. These Arab despots had equipped themselves with an efficient police state security apparatus, which had managed to shut down Islamic radicals wherever they have shown up in Moslem nations. That led to al Qaeda's campaign against Western nations. This was seen as an indirect way of bringing down Arab tyrants, which al Qaeda now believed were being propped up by the Western infidels. That was never the case, as the historical record clearly shows, but blaming an outsider is a popular technique for distracting restless subjects.

The American invasion of Iraq forced the Islamic terrorists to rush home and fight against an outbreak of democracy in their heartland. So how do you fight Islamic terrorism these days? Can't use the old ("kill 'em all") methods, so all you can do is keep the killers out of your own territory and wait for the madness to die out naturally, as it has done many times before. Changing the poor and misgoverned Moslem nations that generate Islamic radicalism is another option. But that takes time as well and the current wave of Islamic terrorism may die out before democracy takes root in the Arab world. The Arab Spring is helping that along but there is still a lot of resistance from the Islamic radicals. Another nasty aspect of Islamic terrorism is that, while only a small percentage of Moslems are willing to become Islamic terrorists, a larger percentage (ten percent or more, even among Moslems in the West) will support the Islamic terrorists and a majority of Moslems will, if asked, say they believe Islamic terrorism is justified when used to “defend Islam.” Unless the Arab world reforms itself, the terrorism will keep returning until it does because the appeal of Islamic terrorism has, for over a thousand years, continually inspired young Moslem men to step up and kill for the cause. Because the victim populations, especially non-Moslem ones, will not stop fighting back, it’s either Islamic reform or continued mayhem.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-manbij-idUSKCN0YS0O8

World | Mon Jun 6, 2016 6:42pm EDT
Related: World, United Nations, Syria

U.S.-backed Syria force closes in on IS-held city; slow Iraq advance causes rift

BEIRUT/BAGHDAD | By John Davison and Maher Chmaytelli

Reuters

Syrian market ablaze after deadly air strikes: Amateur video (00:50)

Replay

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters have surrounded the Islamic State-held city of Manbij from three sides as they press a major new offensive against the jihadists near the Turkish border, a spokesman for the fighters said on Monday.

But in a sign of the difficulty world powers have faced in building a coalition to take on the self-declared caliphate, the slow pace of a separate assault by the Iraqi army on a militant bastion near Baghdad caused a rift between the Shi'ite-led government and powerful Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia.

The simultaneous assaults on Manbij in Syria and Falluja in Iraq, at opposite ends of Islamic State territory, are two of the biggest operations yet against Islamic State in what Washington says is the year it hopes to roll back the caliphate.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), including a Kurdish militia and Arab allies that joined it last year, launched the Manbij attack last week to drive Islamic State from its last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. If successful it could cut the militants' main access route to the outside world, paving the way for an assault on their Syrian capital Raqqa.

Last week Iraqi forces also rolled into the southern outskirts of Falluja, an insurgent stronghold 750 km down the Euphrates River from Manbij just an hour's drive from Baghdad.

The SDF in Syria are backed by U.S. air strikes and a small contingent of American special forces. The Iraqi army is also backed by U.S. air power, as well as by powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite militia led by politicians who have emerged as rivals of Prime Minister Haider Abadi.

In Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad also launched a separate offensive last week against Islamic State, with Russian air support.

The assaults by Islamic State's disparate enemies on a variety of fronts have put unprecedented pressure on the group, although its fighters have put up strong resistance so far.

The offensives have also put large numbers of civilians in fresh peril. The United Nations estimates 50,000 civilians are trapped in Iraq's besieged Falluja, and more than 200,000 are at risk of being displaced by fighting around Syria's Manbij.


RACE TO RAQQA

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that reports on the war, said the U.S.-backed forces in northern Syria had cut the road north from Manbij to Islamic State-held Jarabulus at the Turkish border.

Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council, said the U.S.-backed alliance had advanced to within 6 km (4 miles) of Manbij, and the attack was going to plan. More than 150 jihadists had been killed, with 50 of the bodies in SDF hands, he said.

Homes being used by Islamic State members were now empty as they had left with their families, he said: "They took everything they could and left the city."

Reuters was unable to verify the account, and Islamic State fighters could not be reached.

The SDF included the commander of one of the groups, Faysal Abu Layla of the Sun of the North Battalions, who died of wounds caused by a mortar bomb, Darwish said.

The Observatory said 56 Islamic State members and 19 SDF fighters had been killed so far. It also said Islamic State fighters had sent their families out of Manbij, but did not confirm Darwish's account that fighters themselves had left.

The Syria fight against Islamic State is taking place in the midst of a multi-sided five-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and made millions homeless.

Russia and the United States, both enemies of Islamic State, support opposing sides in the wider conflict and are leading separate air campaigns. They have cooperated since last year on diplomacy to end the wider war, largely fruitlessly.

The SDF and its Kurdish faction have proven to be the first U.S. allies on the ground in Syria that are effective against Islamic State, and have been bearing towards the militants' Syrian capital Raqqa. The Syrian government has also been advancing in the area with Russian support, in what some of its allies call a "race to Raqqa" to prevent U.S. allies from dominating territory won from Islamic State.

Warplanes believed to belong to Russia or the Syrian army killed at least 17 people in an air raid on a market in an Islamic State-held town in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on Monday, the Observatory reported. The province links Islamic State's Syrian territories with its Iraq strongholds further down the Euphrates. Moscow denied its planes had flown in the area near the reported strike.

A Syrian military source said the army had captured a crossroads in its latest offensive, from which it could advance towards Raqqa, Deir al-Zor or eastern Aleppo.


BAGHDAD SHIFTS BRIGADE TO MOSUL

In Iraq, Washington's main target is Mosul, a northern city that held 2 million people before it fell to Islamic State two years ago. U.S. planners hope Mosul can be taken this year by a combination of Iraqi government forces and security forces from Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region.

But the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government veered from the plan two weeks ago with the announcement that its next offensive would be just west of Baghdad in Falluja, a Sunni bastion where U.S. troops faced the bloodiest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation.

Iraqi army troops poured into a rural district of Falluja a week ago, but halted at the outskirts of built-up areas, with Prime Minister Abadi saying the assault would be slowed to protect civilians.

Shi'ite militia criticized Abadi's decision to slow the advance. They say Falluja is a more urgent target than Mosul because of its proximity to the capital, where a campaign of suicide bombings has escalated in recent weeks.

Washington worries that the Iraqi army could become bogged down in Falluja and a protracted battle there could worsen sectarian hostility, especially if the Shi'ite join the fight.

Abadi depends on powerful politicians linked to the militia for his ruling coalition. He has tried to remove some from senior government posts, but faces resistance in parliament.

The head of the largest militia, former government minister Hadi al-Amiri, criticized the army for moving a brigade to an area near Mosul while the battle for Falluja was still under way, saying the decision was taken under U.S. pressure.

"Unfortunately there is an absence of precise planning for the military operations," said Amiri, who leads the Badr Organisation. "I believe that sending a large number of armored vehicles and assets to Makhmour, under the pretext of the Mosul battle, is a betrayal of the battle for Falluja," he told Al-Sumaria TV.

Iraqi army officers confirmed a brigade had arrived on Sunday night in Makhmour, a staging point for a future assault on Mosul. Troops would prepare for an offensive to take an airfield across the Tigris River, and bridges and boats had been brought to facilitate the crossing.

Iraqi armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told Reuters the mobilization near Mosul would not subtract from the campaign in Falluja.

"The forces allocated to Falluja are achieving victories and we have started moving towards the city center."


(Writing by Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-nato-russia-commentary-idUSKCN0YS0B6

Blogs | Mon Jun 6, 2016 11:03am EDT
Related: Commentary

Commentary: How NATO really provoked Putin

By Lucian Kim


Poland is about to host the largest multinational military exercises on its territory in more than a decade. The “Anakonda-16” exercises, involving 31,000 troops from more than 20 countries, are intended to showcase the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s unity and speed one month before the alliance’s summit in Warsaw. The U.S. Army will play a key role, with a mechanized regiment based in Germany simulating a mission to rescue the Baltic states from a Russian attack.

The exercises come just weeks after the United States inaugurated the first of two controversial missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe. Next year, the Pentagon plans to quadruple military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion and begin rotating an armored brigade through Eastern Europe — in addition to extra NATO forces to be deployed to Poland and the Baltics.

The Kremlin’s response to Anakonda-16 is predictable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already threatened Romania for participating in the U.S. missile shield. The large-scale maneuvers will only fuel the Kremlin narrative that Russia is being encircled by hostile forces. European peaceniks, too, won’t have to look far for new evidence of American war-mongering.

The escalating standoff resembles the chicken-egg conundrum. NATO argues that a return to containment and deterrence is the regrettable result of Putin’s 2014 attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin and its apologists answer that military intervention was necessary to forestall the U.S.-led alliance’s inexorable eastward encroachment. All debates over the Ukraine conflict start and end with NATO’s role.

In the case of Ukraine, NATO is a red herring. The former Soviet republic was never under serious consideration for membership, and barely a fifth of Ukrainians supported joining the alliance in polls taken before the Russian invasion.

NATO actually bowed to the Kremlin when Germany and France blocked a straight path to membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008. Months later, Russia occupied two breakaway regions in Georgia in a prelude to the annexation of Crimea and the creation of two puppet states in eastern Ukraine. To be accepted into NATO, an applicant country may not have any outstanding territorial disputes.

It’s easy to forget that it was reunified Germany that initially pushed for NATO enlargement after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Far from being a diabolical Pentagon plot, the issue was hotly debated on both sides of the Atlantic. Although dismayed by Western triumphalism after the Cold War, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called it a “myth” that Western leaders had promised not to enlarge NATO.

After being situated on the Cold War frontline for more than four decades, Germans were eager to extend the NATO security bubble as far east as possible. The West was operating on the naive assumption that Russia had a shared interest in seeing the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe turn into stable, flourishing democracies. In fact, the Kremlin — even before Putin — preferred a buffer zone of weak, divided kleptocracies that had no chance of joining Western institutions or serving as an example for Russia.

“Expansion” is not the best word to describe NATO’s enlargement because it implies that the 12 Eastern European nations who have joined since 1999 were somehow passively involved. Having been trapped in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War Two, Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, and Hungarians went for the best insurance policy around. Ultimately the decision to join NATO was taken by sovereign, democratic states incapable of defending themselves but for whom neutrality was not an option.

Moscow is not doomed to antagonism with the West. Russia has allied itself with Western European powers for more than two centuries. As he was running for his first presidential term in 2000, Putin said that he neither viewed NATO as an enemy, nor would he rule out joining the alliance — as an equal. Those last three words are key to understanding his anger with NATO today.

From the Kremlin’s point of view, it’s infinitely worse to be ignored than to be considered a worthy rival. Unfortunately, Putin’s rise coincided with the presidency of George W. Bush, who ran roughshod over the sensibilities of friend and foe alike. Putin’s outreach was rebuffed. In the face of Bush’s militant unilateralism, Moscow’s membership in the United Nations Security Council, the Group of Eight and the NATO-Russia Council proved useless.

Bush’s interest in Eastern Europe was primarily to reward nations that had participated in his “coalition of the willing” during the war in Iraq by bestowing NATO membership or promising to base elements of a planned U.S. system to shoot down missiles originating in the Middle East.

When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he first had to dig himself out of the rubble of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy. The new president declared a “reset” in relations with Russia and froze missile defense plans for Eastern Europe, arguably the most contentious issue between Washington and Moscow.

In the end, Obama approved a pared-down version of the Bush missile shield because it would have been politically difficult to abandon a project involving Eastern European allies. Although the laws of physics prohibit the new installations from targeting Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons, missile defense serves the Kremlin well as an example of NATO encirclement.

Obama originally wanted to cooperate with Putin on issues of common concern and continue to ignore him wherever else possible. The American president failed to appreciate the post-imperial phantom pains still plaguing Russia.

When Obama spoke about a future without nuclear weapons, Putin heard him say Russia should be stripped of its only credible deterrent. When the White House pivoted to Asia and withdrew the last U.S. tank from Germany in 2013, the Kremlin saw it as waning American commitment to Europe.

Putin’s lightning occupation of Crimea and manufactured insurrection in eastern Ukraine took NATO by surprise. Even if Eastern Europeans remained wary of Moscow’s intentions, the rest of the alliance had come to view Russia as a grumpy neighbor rather than a stealthy adversary.

NATO’s efforts to reassure eastern allies with rotational forces from the United States or Germany are a crucial first step to restoring balance in Europe. But missile defense is a political football that poses no real threat to Russia. Eastern Europeans are using it to get U.S. boots on the ground, while the Kremlin can raise it as the hobgoblin of encirclement.


The United States may have provoked Putin through ignorance, arrogance or negligence — but not belligerence. That’s why NATO is in such a mad scramble to catch up.

 

[Housecarl]

- Begs the question about the readiness/availability/deployment numbers on the SSNs, SSGNs and SSBNs.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...ps-deployed-china-russia-operations/85526820/

US Navy Deploys Most Carrier Strike Groups Since 2012

Christopher P. Cavas, Defense News 7:17 p.m. EDT June 6, 2016

WASHINGTON — For the first time in nearly four years, the US Navy has four aircraft carrier strike groups deployed at the same time. Two more carriers are carrying out local operations, making for six of the fleet’s ten active carriers underway — an unusually high percentage. And another is preparing to go.

The departure June 4 of the Ronald Reagan from Yokosuka, Japan, coupled with the June 1 deployment of the Dwight D. Eisenhower group from the US East Coast, doubled the number of deployed groups. The Harry S. Truman is in the eastern Mediterranean conducting combat strikes against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, and the John C. Stennis group is continuing operations in the South China Sea.


NAVY TIMES
Top Navy officer visits carrier in contested South China Sea


Closer to home, the Carl Vinson and George Washington are cruising off the West and East coasts, respectively, undergoing qualifications and training.

A seventh carrier, the Norfolk-based George H. W. Bush, is expected to be underway for training operations in June, preparing to deploy later this year.

The last time four strike groups were deployed simultaneously was over a nine-week period from late August 2012 to early November 2012, a Navy spokesman said. It’s not clear when the last time six or more carriers were underway.

The moves are not in response to a specific crisis. “It’s all been in the works for months as part of the Global Force Management program,” a Navy official said, referring to a joint Pentagon plan that guides major deployments of US military forces.

The level of flattop activity is noteworthy on two counts. Deployments were noticeably cut back starting in late 2012 and early 2013 in response to spending restrictions caused by mandated budget cuts under sequestration rules. The services are still struggling to build up operating funds — just last month, the Navy informed Congress of an $848 million shortfall in fleet-wide readiness accounts, $91 million of which was directly attributable to extending the Truman’s deployment an extra 30 days to operate in the Mediterranean.

But despite the cost, few military displays carry more symbolism than a carrier deployment. Navy officials have said since last year that carriers would spend more time in the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet region rather than simply passing through en route to Fifth Fleet operating areas in Central Command — an effort to counter the growth in Russian operations in the eastern Med off Syria. Truman, after leaving Norfolk in November, spent the bulk of her deployment in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, but passed through the Suez Canal on June 2 to enter the Mediterranean.

In the Pacific, the Stennis has operated exclusively in the western Pacific since beginning its deployment in mid-January, a distinct change from recent WestPac tours that generally saw the carrier spend more operating time in the Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf region. But Stennis has spent far more time in the South China Sea, re-establishing a continuing presence as a counter to China’s extensive growth there.

Stennis and her escorts generally have not directly challenged Chinese territorial claims around artificial islands built up in the South China Sea, even as the warships’ presence sends a clear message of interest.

“We’re trying to not be too provocative,” acknowledged a US Navy official. “But we’re working to get used to operating in close proximity to a close competitor navy. It was an important learning experience for us to get used to operating in a competitive environment. The last time we did this was in the 1990s.

“We’ve learned a lot — what can you do and not do in this environment — and that goes into the planning factors. The entire strike group — carrier, air wing and escort ships – have all done very well. And by all anecdotes the Chinese have done well also. The communications have been professional. It’s been a learning experience for both navies.”

Both dual-carrier operations will provide prime photo opportunities for the US to display the kind of naval power it can still wield in the face of Chinese and Russian military buildups.

In each theater, the carriers are expected to double up and operate together. The Stennis and Reagan likely will cruise the South China Sea together for a time, before Stennis heads for Hawaii and the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises that get under way in early July.

Similarly, Eisenhower and Truman will probably cruise together at least for a time, before Truman heads home to Norfolk and Ike carries on to the Persian Gulf region.

Of the remaining carriers, the Nimitz is in overhaul at Bremerton, Washington; Theodore Roosevelt is in lower readiness at San Diego, having returned from deployment in November; and Abraham Lincoln is at Newport News, Virginia, in the later stages of a 3-year refueling overhaul.

Another carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, is completing at Newport News. When she joins the fleet later this year, the carrier force will be restored to its mandated 11-ship level.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...ff-poland-major-us-army-involvement/85541328/

Anakonda Kicks Off In Poland With Major US Army Involvement

Jen Judson, Defense News 2:42 a.m. EDT June 7, 2016

WARSAW, Poland — Poland has kicked off its joint multinational exercise with heavy US Army participation in order to test readiness and interoperability using 31,000 soldiers from 24 countries, 100 aircraft, 12 vessels and 3,000 vehicles.

The US Army’s role in the biggest Polish national exercise called Anakonda will include a multinational air assault and airborne operations as well as bridging operations and live fire, command post, field training, cyber and electronic warfare exercises led by the 4th Infantry Division Headquarters.

Among some of the key activities, the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will conduct an airborne operation into the Torun training area to secure terrain east of the Vistula river and the 10th Army Air & Missile Defense Command will conduct electronic warfare exercises in the Utzka training area in support of air defense artillery brigade maneuvers that will include live fire exercises.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Monday during the opening ceremony that the single purpose for the US Army in Anakonda is to demonstrate that the US Army is “shoulder to shoulder” with Poland, its army and NATO “to ensure that all countries of NATO remain free and independent.”

He added the forces participating in the exercise are doing so to “ensure mutual defense and deter aggression and in particular we need to work on our collective skills of interoperability and readiness.”

During the opening ceremony, Antoni Macierewicz, the Polish defense minister, took pains to stress the exercise has a “purely defensive character,” noting the “difficult circumstances” in Poland and along the Eastern flank.

Poland and the countries that border Russia are becoming increasingly concerned with Russia’s aggression in the region as it continues to provoke Ukraine and occupy Crimea. Many Baltic countries fear Russia’s provocative behavior will spread to inside their own borders.

Macierewicz added that the Polish military would “especially” like to evaluate cooperation in the context of hybrid warfare on land and sea and with special forces.

Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine have been characterized as hybrid warfare.


DEFENSE NEWS
Poland's Defense Minister: Military Modernization Program Underfunded


As Anakonda kicks off, there is a concern regarding how Russia will react to the military activity and if the country will view it as provocative.

US Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges addressed the concern stating, “The West wants and needs Russia back into the international community and there are several things that Russia could do almost immediately that would help facilitate that, particularly improved transparency for their own exercises.”

When considering whether a country’s military activity is provocative, it’s important to note Russian occupation of Crimea and its operations in Eastern Ukraine as well as its positioning of troops in South Ossetia, Hodges added.

The commander noted that Poland invited Russia to attend the exercise as observers but “unfortunately they turned down the invitation. I hope that they will change their mind, they would be very welcome.”

Email: jjudson@defensenews.com

Twitter: @JenJudson

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/french-defense-minister-to-urge-eu-south-china-sea-patrols/

French Defense Minister to Urge EU South China Sea Patrols

Will the European Union become a more active player in the crowded waters of the South China Sea?

By Ankit Panda
June 06, 2016

Throwing his country’s support behind U.S. initiatives to promote freedom of navigation and overflight in the increasingly tense South China Sea, France’s Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, told attendees of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian security forum, that France would encourage the European Union to undertake “regular and visible” patrols in the area.

In recent months, tensions in the South China Sea have steadily grown, amid regional concerns over China’s constructions of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands and continuing militarization in the Paracel Islands.

“If we want to contain the risk of conflict, we must defend this right, and defend it ourselves,” Le Drian noted on Sunday, referring to the freedom of the seas. Le Drian justified France’s concern over this issue in the South China Sea by suggesting that the erosion of this norm there could lead to deleterious outcomes in the Arctic and the Mediterranean, areas more proximal to French shores.

“Several times per year, French navy ships cross the waters of this region, and they’ll continue to do it,” Le Drian noted, somewhat echoing language used by U.S. Defense Minister Ashton Carter, who has regularly insisted that the U.S. Navy would continue to freely transit the South China Sea.

“This is a message that France will continue to be present at international forums,” Le Drian said. “It’s also a message that France will continue to act upon, by sailing its ships and flying its planes wherever international law will allow, and wherever operational needs request that we do so.”

According to a senior French official who spoke to Bloomberg, France would ideally like to see a year-long European Union presence in the South China Sea, borne of greater intra-EU coordination.

To date, the European Union, while an interested party in the South China Sea, has played a limited role in the South China Sea disputes, mostly urging claimant parties, which includes China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, and Taiwan, to resolve their differences peacefully.

France, along with its fellow European G7 members, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, has signed on G7 statements on maritime security and freedom of navigation. Most recently, at this year’s G7 Summit hosted in Ise-Shima Japan, the group noted that it was “concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas, and emphasize the fundamental importance of peaceful management and settlement of disputes.”

The Chinese foreign ministry criticized the statement, noting that it exaggerated tensions and “is not beneficial to stability in the South China Sea.”

 

[Housecarl]

Well this is going to get "interesting".....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-turkey-idUSKCN0YT0UI

World | Tue Jun 7, 2016 5:03am EDT
Related: World

Turkey will strongly support possible operation in Mosul: foreign minister


Turkey will strongly support a possible operation to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State militants, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told state broadcaster TRT Haber on Tuesday.

Iraqi forces, with help from a U.S.-led coalition, are expected to try and retake Mosul later this year. The Iraqi army is currently attacking the Islamic State bastion of Falluja near Baghdad.


(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nato-idUSKCN0YT0T9

World | Tue Jun 7, 2016 4:52am EDT
Related: World

Kremlin: NATO war games undermine trust, threaten Europe's security

Military exercises currently being conducted by NATO in Poland and several other European nations do not contribute to an atmosphere of trust and security on the continent, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Jack Stubbs)

 

[Housecarl]

Well this is going to stir the pot in the UK.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.rt.com/uk/345660-trident-nuclear-secret-upgrade/

Britain secretly upgrading its nukes without asking MPs - report

Published time: 7 Jun, 2016 10:29

Britain is secretly upgrading its arsenal of Trident nuclear weapons and is developing an entirely new warhead, according to a report from the Nuclear Information Service (NIS). Controversially, Parliament is yet to consent to its renewal.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Berkshire, where Britain’s nuclear warheads are manufactured and maintained, is working on a program to upgrade the current Trident warhead to produce a more powerful and accurate nuclear warhead, “Mark 4A,” the independent research body says.

Peter Burt of the NIS says: “The Mark 4A warhead modification programme will allow Trident nuclear warheads to remain in service until the middle of this century, and plenty of money is being spent to pave the way for developing a new generation warhead which will remain in service for even longer.”

A joint US-UK working group has been set up to allow collaboration on the programs, and new warheads have been tested at Sandia National Laboratories in the US.

The costs and the timetable of the program have not been revealed to Parliament, according to the report.

The modified warhead is however mentioned in a letter on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) website, dated July 2, 2014.

The letter says Dr Paul Hollinshead would be responsible for the “nuclear warhead capability sustainment programme” and for “commencement of Mk4A production in accordance with the Trident Manufacture Plan.”

The report reveals £85 million (US$124 million) has already been spent by the AWE on new nuclear warhead design studies.

Later this year the government is expected to table a Commons motion in favour of replacing the existing fleet of Trident submarines with four new boats. The government says they will cost £31 billion, but has set up a £10 billion contingency fund in the event of overruns.

The MoD has declined to comment on the overall costs of the Trident program on the grounds the information is classified.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) meanwhile estimates it will cost £205 billion.

“The government is committed to maintaining minimum continuous at-sea deterrence to deter the most extreme threats to the UK and protect our vital interests – a decision on replacing the warhead will be taken when necessary,” a ministry spokesperson told the Guardian.

The report says the AWE is an important national resource in terms of its scientific expertise and equipment, and a big local employer that makes a significant contribution to the local economy.

It says if the Trident program is cancelled, the likelihood of outright closure of the establishment would be “low.”

On Monday, anti-nuke activists began a month-long blockade of the Berkshire atomic facility, arguing the weapons should not be renewed by Parliament later this year.

Throughout June, CND supporters will join activists from Trident Ploughshares and groups from across Europe to “blockade, to occupy, and to disrupt” the weapons manufacturing base.

Last August, the AWE was censured by UK regulators for failing to show a long-term plan for handling radioactive waste at its Aldermaston site.

The nuclear weapons factory also faces further action for failing to meet legal obligations to treat radioactive waste by 2014, according to a report published by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) last July.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160607000841

N. Korea vows to develop more nuclear weapons

Published : 2016-06-07 17:09
Updated : 2016-06-07 17:09

North Korea pledged Tuesday to develop more nuclear weapons as its existing arsenal has helped raise the country's strategic leverage in dealing with external relations, the North's state media said.

North Korea plans to actively pursue diplomatic policy commensurate with its enhanced global status which has been earned thanks to its nuclear weapons program, according to Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper.

The country has conducted four nuclear tests since 2006 with outside observers believing the North has a small stockpile of nuclear weapons.

"We will produce more modern and diverse nuclear weapons," the newspaper said. "The weapons are not aimed at posing a threat to peace. We will not use nuclear weapons if aggressors do not attack us with nukes," it said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has referred to his country as a "responsible" nuclear state at the congress of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea held in early May.

Kim made it clear that he will "permanently" defend the pursuit of his signature policy of developing nuclear weapons in tandem with boosting the country's moribund economy, commonly known as the "byeongjin" policy.

The North claims that it has succeeded in making a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, but Seoul and Washington said that Pyongyang's miniaturization technology has not been fully achieved.

The newspaper report came as North Korea is engaged in a flurry of diplomacy apparently to drive a wedge in united fronts for imposing sanctions over the communist country's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch early this year.

Ri Su-yong, a vice chairman of the ruling Workers' Party, made a rare visit to China last week in an apparent bid to improve strained ties with Beijing following Pyongyang's nuclear tests.

North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam, also visited Equatorial Guinea last month to attend the inauguration ceremony of the president of the African country. (Yonhap)

 

[mzkitty]

Just thought I'd stick this here. It looks kinda cheesy to me but I bet that's all real gold leaf:


9m
Photo: Israeli PM Netanyahu meets with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and hails 'ties of great importance' - @netanyahu

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-base-bryansk-idUSKCN0YT1PN

World | Tue Jun 7, 2016 3:10pm EDT
Related: World, Russia

Russia deploys troops westward as standoff with NATO deepens

KLINTSY, Russia | By Anton Zverev


Russia is building an army base near its border with Ukraine, the latest in a chain of new military sites along what the Kremlin sees as its frontline in a growing confrontation with NATO.

While there have been no clashes between the former Cold War rivals, Russia is building up forces on its western frontiers at a time when the NATO alliance is staging major military exercises and increasing deployments on its eastern flank.

A Reuters reporter who visited the Russian town of Klintsy, about 50 km (30 miles) from Ukraine, saw a makeshift army camp, large numbers of newly-arrived servicemen and military vehicles.

Two soldiers in camouflage gear who were manning a checkpoint in a forest turned the reporter away, saying they were guarding a "special military site".

Last year, Reuters also reported on construction of two other bases further to the south on Russia's border with Ukraine.

The defense ministry has not acknowledged the deployment of troops to Klintsy, which usually serves as a stop for truck drivers traveling between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

However, a town council official said Klintsy had been chosen as the site of a newly-formed division, and that so far about 240 soldiers had arrived. "What's to hide? That they've come? They've arrived," said council deputy chairman Oleg Kletny. "They're going to be garrisoned here."

When completed, the base will be the latest component in a build-up of forces along a line running from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

On the western side of the line, NATO has been rotating troops and equipment in greater numbers to members states that were part of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.

The Western alliance, which says it's responding to Russian military intervention in Ukraine, was this week staging one of its biggest exercises in eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War.

To the east, Russia is building up its own forces, saying it needs to protect itself from NATO's eastward advance.

Each side says it is only responding to steps taken by the other, but the build-up risks locking NATO and Russia into a spiral of measure and counter-measure from which it will be difficult to escape.

Russia and NATO member states share borders around the Baltic Sea, while further south the two blocs are separated by Ukraine and Belarus.

But since Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted in a popular uprising two years ago and replaced with a Western-leaning administration, the perception in Moscow is that Ukraine has become, de facto, a NATO satellite.


ANTI-TANK DEFENSES

Russia has pulled out of the treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, a post-Cold War pact that limits the deployment of troops in Europe, so it is free to move extra troops and hardware to its western border.

On Monday Klintsy, normally a sleepy town, was a hive of military activity. The Reuters reporter saw about a dozen tents and the same number of military vehicles in a temporary camp in a clearing in a forest where the troops will be billeted until their permanent base is ready.

Military trucks drove through the town, which lies in an area that is the closest point on Russian territory to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, 280 km away.

About a dozen servicemen were at a gas station near the camp, buying food supplies. A road near the camp was blocked off by antitank obstacles and road spikes.

Last week, Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source familiar with the deployment to Klintsy as saying it "can be seen as a response to the growing activity of the North Atlantic Alliance near Russia's borders".

The defense ministry did not reply to questions from Reuters about the base and its purpose.

Council deputy chairman Kletny said the troops, from a motorized infantry division, started arriving on May 30. They came from a base in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural mountains region about 2,000 km to the east of Klintsy.

He said they were deployed following a decision earlier this year by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to create three new divisions. The soldiers will be eventually garrisoned in the grounds of a disused military base in Klintsy which they are renovating, said Kletny.

"It's good that the military will come; our demographic situation will improve, we'll get a bigger population. If servicemen come her with their families, that will be good too," he told Reuters.

A notice lodged with Klintsy town council and seen by Reuters stated that approval is being sought for re-zoning and construction works on two plots of land with a total area of 142 hectares (351 acres), or about the size of 140 soccer pitches.

The plots of land would be used "for the interests of the Russian armed forces", according to the notice.


(Additional reporting by Yelena Fabrichnaya in MOSCOW; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by David Stamp)