WAR 06-13-2015-to-06-19-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(167) 05-23-2015-to-05-29-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...29-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(168) 05-30-2015-to-06-05-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...05-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(169) 06-06-2015-to-06-12-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...12-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****


Please look at the last entries from yesterday afternoon/evening on the last thread regarding the South China Sea and the CIA releasing 9/11 related documents....HC

_____

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/world/asia/taliban-police-base-southern-afghanistan.html?_r=0

Asia Pacific

Taliban Overrun Police Base in Southern Afghanistan

By ROD NORDLAND
JUNE 13, 2015

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s police force took another severe blow from the Taliban on Saturday, as 17 police officers were killed in a clash with the insurgents in the southern province of Helmand, officials said.

The insurgents overran a police base near the center of the strategically important district of Musa Qala, the officials said. Local police officers and eyewitnesses described a large-scale attack that began after midnight and continued until daylight.

“There are also casualties to the Taliban but we do not know the figures,” said Omar Zwak, the spokesman for Helmand Province’s governor. “We are investigating how this happened.”

One police officer, stationed at a base near the one that came under attack, said the insurgents surrounded it and by dawn had completely destroyed it. Roads around the base, known as Takhtapol base, were planted with mines and booby traps, preventing its defenders from escaping and other officers from coming to their aid, the officer stationed at the nearby base said.

Musa Qala, in Helmand’s north, adjoins the district of Baghran, which the Taliban already control, according to Maj. Gen. Mohammad Afzal Aman, chief of operations for the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Officers assigned to fight the Taliban in Baghran were stationed at Takhtapol base.

Afghanistan’s poorly trained and equipped national police force has borne the brunt of the fighting, and the casualties, in Helmand, as in many other parts of the country.

“We do not have modern weapons to fight the Taliban and have no aircraft to target them,” said a police officer from Musa Qala, who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make statements to the news media. “When we learned that Taliban ambushed the police base, we cannot assist them, due to fears of ambush or IEDs,” the officer said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

Musa Qala district itself nearly fell to the Taliban last year, but the insurgents were turned back, in part by air support from the U.S.-led coalition.

General Aman said at a news conference Saturday in Kabul that the Taliban now control four of Afghanistan’s more than 300 districts, including two in Helmand. The other Helmand district they control is Dishu, in the extreme south of the province, the general said.

The other two Taliban-controlled districts are Khak-e Afghan District in Zabul Province and Nawa District in Ghazni Province, General Aman said. “No other area except those four districts is under the enemy control now,” he said. Last week the insurgents overran Yamgan District in northern Badakhshan Province, but General Aman said that was now back in government control.

Lt. Gen. Mohammad Dawran, the commander of the Afghan Air Force, acknowledged Saturday that a lack of air support since the American-led combat mission ended last year was a problem for the country’s security forces. A much smaller number of American and allied troops remain in Afghanistan, mainly for training, advising and counterterrorism operations. American warplanes no longer routinely carry out close air support for Afghan units.

“We really have serious problems in this area,” General Dawran said. “The president sees and follows this in the national security council himself and works on how we can find a better solution for this problem,” he said, referring to President Ashraf Ghani.


Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...e-military-considers-using-drones-patrol-seas

Chinese military considers using drones to patrol seas contested by Japan

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 13 June, 2015, 2:10pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 13 June, 2015, 2:21pm

The Chinese army is weighing the full use of unmanned aircraft to regularly monitor the East China Sea, a move that may add fuel to heightened tension in the area where Japanese-controlled islands claimed by China lie, a Chinese document on the country’s use of drones showed on Friday.

The document compiled in October suggested the need for the People’s Liberation Army to use military unmanned aircraft, noting that the current patrolling activities in the East China Sea through Chinese official ships dispatched there is not enough to protect the country’s interests.

Chinese vessels are frequently spotted in the sea area claimed by Japan as its territorial waters. They claim Beijing’s sovereignty over the disputed islands.

A drone was detected near the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, called Diaoyu in China, on September 9, 2013, prompting Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force to scramble fighter jets.

Quoting experts on Chinese military drones, the document highlighted the importance of using unmanned aerial vehicles to counter repeated US surveillance activities by its Global Hawk drones in the East China Sea as well as to deal with territorial disputes with Japan.

The document also said Beijing has the legal grounds to conduct periodical unmanned aircraft surveillance because China has established an air defence identification zone over the East China Sea in November 2013.

The Chinese army owns some 50 military unmanned aerial vehicles, including its Yilong drone that is seen as most suitable for a mission in the East China Sea because it has a range of 4,000 kilometres and can fly 20 hours continuously.

The Yilong drone costs about US$1 million, substantially cheaper than a US unmanned aerial vehicle. It is also expected to carry out the surveillance mission more effectively than manned flights.

But the Chinese army may have to improve the safety of the drones before implementing the mission, the document suggested.

The report also said China’s State Oceanic Administration constantly uses nine surveillance ships and four airplanes to monitor the East China Sea area. It has 11 aerial observation bases and also uses unmanned aircraft.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/tactical-nuclear-weapons-and-deterrence/

Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence

Could tactical nuclear deterrence help prevent conflict in an Asian maritime context?

By Christine M. Leah
June 12, 2015

37 Shares
26 Comments

With the South China Sea becoming increasingly contested by most regional states, and the United States asserting its freedom of navigation in the area, the chances of conflict seem less and less remote. China has been testing the boundaries of its provocations by building up a series of artificial islands and – just recently – deploying military capabilities on them. This is taking place against the backdrop of a massive and sustained build-up in sea-denial capabilities, including aircraft carriers, submarines, anti-ship ballistic missiles, and reports of the People’s Liberation Army managing to MIRV its DF-5 ICBM. In addition, the Chinese have raised new concerns about South Korea and Japan’s participation in the U.S. ballistic missile defense program. There are more and doubts about the size and shape of the North Korean nuclear arsenal. All these factors mesh together to create an environment in which the U.S. nuclear arsenal has a very important role to play.

One of the problems with U.S. extended nuclear deterrence is that, although Europe may have gotten rusty on its nuclear strategy 101, U.S. allies in Asia never even got to touch the book. Since Europe was more important, East Asia only got the “leftovers” of U.S. capabilities and doctrine. But now it is clear that the Asian landscape is just as important, if not more, than Western Europe today, to the global strategic landscape. And nuclear weapons will have a role in containing the prospects for a conflict between China and the U.S.

However, there is almost no literature on the tactical use of nuclear weapons at sea.
“Tactical” nuclear weapons are, after all, an essential part of the credibility of deterrence and, therefore, extended deterrence. There are two notable exceptions: Desmond Ball and Linton Brooks. But their work was premised on the Cold War context of confrontation, with scenarios between the U.S. and USSR. There was much less work devoted to what a U.S.-China nuclear scenario in and of itself might look like. Might it be more acceptable to use nuclear weapons at sea? Could the exchange be limited? How would a nuclear confrontation terminate? Geography means the scenarios and concepts developed for Europe may be largely inapplicable to the Asian maritime context.

There are any number of scenarios that could arise where one side seriously considers using nuclear weapons against the other. Crucial questions follow: What are the prospects for a conflict between China and the U.S. involving the use of nuclear weapons being kept limited? Several questions guide the answer to this major one: To what extent would nuclear weapons be used primarily at sea against each other’s military targets? Who would be the first to use these weapons? To what extent and for how long could an exchange remain limited to assets at sea before escalating to land industrial, military, and civilian targets? This goes to the issue of controllability. Would a limited nuclear exchange in the Asia-Pacific be more controllable than during the Cold War? Could the fact that there would be a much clearer distinction (for both sides) between civilian and military targets in this context, lead to a “norm” emerge against targeting cities specifically? And by virtue of all these elements, might it be more “appropriate” and “acceptable” to use nuclear weapons in the Asian maritime context?

For the disarmament community especially, the use of even one nuclear weapon equates to wholesale destruction and terrible human suffering. But these advocates fail to appreciate that nuclear warheads have different yields, for instance. The use of nuclear weapons can be limited, precise, and the level of destruction and damage can be moderated. But we might forgive the disarmament community for dismissing these factors. This is because our conceptions of the feasibility and “morality” of using nuclear weapons was heavily colored by the Cold War context. First, it was a land context. Military bases were not far from big cities. And industrial targets were, obviously, also close to cities. So any strikes against military bases would also certainly result in high civilian casualties. Second, many of the missile systems suffered from issues of precision. Fourth, these factors combined meant that an initial use of even one nuclear weapon might escalate to more intense and geographically dispersed nuclear strikes between both sides, which would then indeed lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians.

However, those factors don’t necessarily apply in the Asian maritime context. Or at least, they would play out in a very different manner. Let’s compare the current context to that of the Cold War. First, the first nuclear strikes would more than likely take place against sea-based military targets. These are far from civilian and industrial targets. So already the ladder of escalation, one can argue, is much larger. Second, the U.S. could easily employ low-yield weapons against military targets. Third, there have been significant advances in the precision of missiles. Fourth, these factors combined mean that an initial use of even one nuclear weapon might not necessarily escalate to more intense and geographically dispersed nuclear strikes between China and the U.S., which also means that the possibility of limited nuclear strikes might end the lives of a few hundred people, at most.

There is a plethora of assumptions here. For instance, the idea that both sides would be eager to keep any exchange as limited as possible before escalating to territorial targets. Perhaps, for instance, that because China’s arsenal is much smaller and would exhaust more quickly than America’s in a hypothetical conflict, it would be the first to attempt to hit U.S. command centers, although this would be extremely difficult given how diversified and robust U.S. C3I is.

But if a limited nuclear exchange were possible and “successful” (in other words, limited military goals were achieved without escalating to a nation-to-nation exchange, and civilian casualties were extremely limited), how might this change the “morality” of the limited use of nuclear weapons? Does it? What would the implications be for the deterrent value of “tactical” nuclear weapons? Between the U.S. and China, but also for other states contesting for maritime influence. Say, India and Pakistan. Nuclear weapons tend to conjure up impressive images of mushroom clouds, but will nuclear limited exchanges always escalate? Are there instances they would remain limited, or indeed be used to de-escalate? Can we look to other instances of escalation and de-escalation in history for insights?

The Asia-Pacific is a very different military arena to Western Europe. And these dynamics would tend toward limited nuclear options being 1) much more feasible and 2) much more acceptable. The question is, however, how would this affect deterrence? Would the effect be limited to tactical nuclear weapons, or would it also apply to “strategic” weapons capable of hitting each sides’ population centers?

Given these differences, it is time to re-think both the concept, and role of limited nuclear options. This would reinforce the credibility problem of America’s nuclear arsenal, inject some sobriety in U.S.-China military decision-making in a conflict, and possibly contribute to the de-escalation of a potential conflict.

After all, if U.S. tactical, or “battlefield” nuclear weapons helped prevent the Cold War from turning hot, they certainly have a role to play in Asia.

Christine M. Leah is a Postdoctoral Associate in Grand Strategy at Yale University. She was previously a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow in Nuclear Security at MIT.

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Conflict News ‏@rConflictNews 5m5 minutes ago

BREAKING: Russia has allegedly decrypted the files stolen by Snowden, who said no intel*li*gence ser*vice could do so http://thebea.st/1Qw5xLB

posted for fair use (spacing theirs, not mine)

an hour ago

NOT GOOD
Russia, China Decrypt Snowden Files

Russia and China have allegedly decrypted the top-secret cache of files stolen by whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to a report from The Sunday Times, to be published tomorrow. The info has compelled British intelligence agency MI6 to withdraw some of its agents from active operations and other Western intelligence agencies are now actively involved in rescue operations. In a July 2013 email to a former U.S. Senator, Snowden stated that, "No intel*li*gence ser*vice—not even our own—has the capac*ity to com*pro*mise the secrets I con*tinue to pro*tect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my spe*cial*iza*tions was to teach our peo*ple at DIA how to keep such infor*ma*tion from being com*pro*mised even in the high*est threat counter-intelligence envi*ron*ments (i.e. China)." Many in the intelligence agencies at the time greeted this claim with scepticism. Now, one senior British official said Snowden had "blood on his hands," but another said there's yet no evidence anyone was harmed. Snowden eventually fled to Russia via Hong Kong after downloading some 1.7 million documents from U.S. government computers and leaking them to journalists out of a desire to protect "privacy and basic liberties." The revelations of mass spying outraged populations and governments around the world, at least temporarily damaged relations, and eventually led to changes in the mass surveillance policies of the NSA and British GCHQ.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/06/13/russia-china-got-snowden-files.html?via=twitter_page





Open Source Hologram ‏@OpenSourceHolog 38s39 seconds ago

UK agents 'moved over Snowden files' http://ift.tt/1FSww9R Hacker News


posted for fair use

UK agents 'moved over Snowden files'

6 minutes ago
From the section UK

UK intelligence agents have been moved because Russia and China can now read files stolen by a US whistleblower, a Downing Street source has told the BBC.

The Sunday Times is reporting that Russia and China have cracked the encryption of the computer files.

The Downing St source told the BBC the countries "have information" that led to agents being moved but added there was "no evidence" any had been harmed.

Edward Snowden, now in Russia, leaked intelligence data two years ago.

The former CIA contractor left the US in 2013 after leaking details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence to the media.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33125068



Martin Shapland ‏@MShapland 1m1 minute ago

I wonder what will happen to Snowden now Russia and China can read all the files he had encrypted

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/us-usa-military-europe-idUSKBN0OT0TR20150614

World | Sat Jun 13, 2015 11:46pm EDT
Related: World, Russia

U.S. plans to store heavy arms in Baltic, Eastern Europe: source

WASHINGTON

The United States plans to store heavy military equipment in the Baltics and Eastern European nations to reassure allies made uneasy by Russian intervention in Ukraine, and to deter further aggression, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

"We will pre-position significant equipment," the official said, commenting on a New York Times report that the Pentagon was poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 troops.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to comment on the details of the report, which cited U.S. and allied officials.

The report said the move, if approved, would mark the first time since the Cold War that Washington has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member states in Eastern Europe that once formed part of the Soviet sphere of influence.

The proposal, which seeks to reassure European allies in the wake of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in March 2014, is expected to be approved by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the White House before a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels this month, the paper said, quoting senior officials.

Asked about the article, a Pentagon spokesman said no decision had been made about the equipment.

"Over the last few years, the United States military has increased the prepositioning of equipment for training and exercises with our NATO allies and partners," Colonel Steve Warren said.

"The U.S. military continues to review the best location to store these materials in consultation with our allies," he said in a statement.

"At this time, we have made no decision about if or when to move to this equipment."

As it now stood, the Times said, the proposal envisaged that "a company's worth of equipment, enough for about 150 soldiers, would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Enough for a company or possibly a battalion, or about 750 soldiers, would be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary."

(Reporting by Sandra Maler and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Frances Kerry and Clarence Fernandez)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3122827/Putin-Erdogan-meet-discuss-gas-pipeline.html

Putin, Erdogan meet, discuss gas pipeline

By Associated Press

Published: 10:52 EST, 13 June 2015 | Updated: 10:52 EST, 13 June 2015

MOSCOW (AP) — The presidents of Russia and Turkey have met and discussed a proposal for a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Russia to Turkey.

Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Saturday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the sidelines of the European games, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

Peskov gave no specifics of the talks, other than to say they were detailed.

The pipeline, called Turkish Stream, has been proposed by Russia after the abandonment of South Stream, a long-proposed project to carry Russian gas to southern Europe.

Putin also met separately with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. That meeting discussed a resolution of the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian local forces.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33125108

Africa
Omar al-Bashir: ICC urges S Africa to arrest Sudan leader

2 hours ago
From the section Africa

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has called on South Africa to arrest Omar al-Bashir, with the Sudanese president in the country for an African Union (AU) summit.

Mr Bashir is wanted for war crimes over the conflict in Darfur.

An ICC statement said South Africa should "spare no effort" in detaining him.

But instead he was welcomed by South African officials on his arrival in Johannesburg, SABC tweeted.

Sudan's Suna news agency said he was accompanied by the foreign minister and other top Sudanese officials.

There are tensions between the ICC and AU, with some on the continent accusing the court of unfairly targeting Africans.

The AU has previously urged the ICC to stop proceedings against sitting leaders.

The warrants against Mr Bashir, who denies the allegations, have severely restricted his overseas travel.

He has however visited friendly states in Africa and the Middle East.
Arrest 'unlikely'

The ICC statement said South Africa should "respect their obligations to co-operate with the court", something South Africa's News24 said was unlikely to happen.

Human rights organisations and South Africa's main opposition party have also called for his arrest.

Darfur has been in conflict since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government. The UN says more than 300,000 people have died, mostly from disease.

The ICC has ended an investigation into war crimes in the region, but the warrants against Mr Bashir remain outstanding.

The official theme of the AU summit is the "Year of Women's Empowerment and Development".

But the political turmoil in Burundi, crisis in South Sudan and the recent spate of xenophobic attacks are also likely to feature heavily.

African Union meetings are often criticised for avoiding burning issues that affect the continent, and this year's summit is not expected to be any different. Analysts say discussions will be held, but outcome will be vague.

The packed agenda is expected to focus on violence in Burundi, the crisis in South Sudan, Nigeria's fight against Boko Haram, and terror threats by al-Shabab in East Africa.

South Africa stepped in to host the summit at the last minute because of terror threats in Chad.

But the recent xenophobic violence in Johannesburg and Durban have left the hosts embarrassed.

Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Nigeria lashed out at President Jacob Zuma's government for the attacks.

 

[Housecarl]

P5+1 + Iran Announces Reaching Solutions on Key Parameters for Agreement
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...lutions-on-Key-Parameters-for-Agreement/page5

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/us-iran-nuclear-rouhani-idUSKBN0OT0HA20150614

World | Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:36am EDT
Related: World, Davos

Iran's Rouhani aims to limit nuclear inspections

DUBAI | By Sam Wilkin

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday a comprehensive nuclear deal could be delayed if world powers brought new issues into play, and he would not accept a U.N. inspections regime that jeopardized state secrets.

Iran is aiming to strike an accord with six powers by June 30 that would curtail its nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. But negotiators have hit an impasse in part over how much enhanced access International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors should have to Iranian sites.

"Iran will absolutely not allow its national secrets to fall into the hands of foreigners through the Additional Protocol or any other means," Rouhani said in a televised news conference, referring to an IAEA provision that would allow more intrusive inspections in the Islamic Republic.

U.S. and French diplomats have called for Iran to accept stringent measures including granting inspectors access to its military sites as well as inspections on as little as two hours notice -- access that the Protocol could encompass.

Rouhani said Iran could embrace the Protocol, noting that other states that are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had done so without problem. But he insisted Iran should not face especially far-reaching measures.

Related Coverage

› Iran's Rouhani says extension of nuclear talks possible: live TV

"A problem we face on many issues is that when we reach a framework in one meeting, our negotiating partners go back on it in the next meeting," said Rouhani, a pragmatist elected in 2013 on a platform of limited Iranian engagement with the West, after many years of deepening hostility.

"If the other side sticks to the framework that has been established, and does not bring new issues into play, I believe it can be solved... But if they want to take the path of brinkmanship, the negotiations could take longer."

The IAEA has long had regular, if limited, access to Iran's nuclear-related sites. But Tehran has refused to let the agency visit military sites, citing the risk of security-sensitive information being passed on to Western intelligence agencies.

The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said on Thursday that additional nuclear transparency measures were outlined in a preliminary deal reached in April between Iran and its negotiating partners.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on Iran's foreign and security policy, has ruled out several requests by the West, including on interviewing its nuclear scientists and "extraordinary supervision measures".

The Additional Protocol would also permit the IAEA to collect environmental samples like soil that can unearth military dimensions to nuclear activities years after they have taken place.

Western powers have long suspected Iran of trying to develop the means to make atomic bombs, while Iran insists its uranium enrichment program is purely for peaceful purposes.

Rouhani said: "What is important to Iran is that, in implementing this protocol, we make it clear to the world that the accusations we have faced about trying to build a bomb are baseless."

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-confirms-hypersonic-missile-test/

China Confirms Hypersonic Missile Test
Defense Ministry says weapon not directed at U.S.

BY: Bill Gertz Follow @BillGertz
June 13, 2015 2:29 pm

China’s defense ministry on Friday confirmed a fourth test of a new hypersonic strike vehicle was carried out last week.

“The scheduled scientific research and experiments in our territory [are] normal, and those tests are not targeted at any country and specific goals,” said the ministry in response to a report of the test published Thursday by the Free Beacon.

U.S. defense officials disclosed the latest test of what the Pentagon calls the Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle and said the most recent test, conducted June 7 in western China, involved extreme maneuvers by the high-speed strike weapon.

The advanced strategic strike weapon travels at speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound, or more than 7,600 miles per hour.

The Wu-14 test was carried out amid heightened tensions between the United States and China over Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

The test also took place days before a top Chinese military leader, Gen. Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, met senior U.S. officials in Washington.

Defense Secretary Ash Cater met Fan at the Pentagon on Friday and discussed China’s island building in the South China Sea.

“Carter reiterated U.S. concerns on the South China Sea, and called on China and all claimants to implement a lasting halt on land reclamation, cease further militarization, and pursue a peaceful resolution of territorial disputes in accordance with international law,” the Pentagon said in a statement on the meeting.

Critics in Congress said Fan should not be allowed to visit the United States in light of recent reports of the Chinese military’s hacking of U.S. government computer networks, and the aggression in the South China Sea.

Chinese analysts said the Wu-14 test, launched atop a ballistic missile, was timed to the Fan visit as a way to express China’s displeasure with U.S. opposition to Chinese island-building in disputed waters of the South China Sea, the South China Morning Post reported.

“The test is aimed at helping Fan increase the People’s Liberation Army’s bargaining power on the negotiation table when he deals with his U.S. counterpart,” Macau-based military analyst Antony Wong Dong told the Hong Kong daily.

Another Chinese analyst, He Qisong of Shanghai University, said the hypersonic glide vehicle test was a political message in response to the flight of a U.S. P-8 surveillance aircraft two week ago over the South China Sea.

“The Wu-14 … is designed to penetrate US missile defense systems, meaning the PLA is capable of defending China’s territorial sovereignty,” he said. “But such a test is only a nuclear deterrence. Neither China nor the U.S. wants to declare war over the South China Sea issues.”

The June 7 Wu-14 test was the fourth time China tested the ultra-high-speed maneuvering weapon. Earlier tests took place in 2014 on Jan. 9, Aug. 7, and Dec. 2.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported the tests.

U.S. intelligence has assessed the Wu-14 to be a nuclear delivery vehicle designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses, which currently are designed to counter ballistic missiles and warheads that have predictable trajectories.

Current U.S. missile defenses are not capable of countering maneuvering targets, such as the Wu-14. The U.S. government insists that its missile defenses are not designed to counter Chinese or Russian strategic missiles.

The Wu-14 can travel up to 10 times the speed of sound, or around 7,680 miles per hour.

A congressional China commission stated in a report published last fall that “hypersonic glide vehicles could render existing U.S. missile defense systems less effective and potentially obsolete.”

China also is developing a hypersonic weapon that employs a high-technology scramjet engine.

The Pentagon has said its main counter to such maneuvering high-speed missiles is an extended-range version of the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system.

The House version of fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill would add $291 million for the advanced THAAD development to counter hypersonic threats.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nation.com.pk/columns/14-Jun-2015/isis-in-pakistan

ISIS in Pakistan

June 14, 2015/ 5 Comments
Marium Kamal

ISIS’s operative presence in Pakistan is an overt apprehension. It might exist in the near future if we don’t secure our porous borders, contain extremist ideological jihadi groups, impede the external agencies, and most relevantly to improve our security and governing bodies. The time has come to fill the social gapes by economic engagement and enrich our education system to divert the obsessed youth from sectarian fanaticism. ISISs’ probability of existence and their terrorist acts can surely be curtailed by the ongoing operations in Karachi and North Waziristan and our armed forces’ prudence, but still our frail social fabric comprising of more than 200 operative religious organisations who have the potency to attract or are attracted by ISIS extreme ideological phenomenon can lead to self-styled ISIS in Pakistan.

The Middle East is bleeding by the sectarian violence created by ISIS, which led the region to complete chaos and complexity. The group originated in 1999 with compatible ideological dimensions under Al-Qaida. By June 2014, ISIS proclaimed itself to be a worldwide Caliphate of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdai (Amir al-Muminin), a mysterious figure, either a cleric or a soldier is not clear. The group renamed itself as the ‘Islamic State’ or ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’. Their ideology has parallel alignment with the Salafi group with an inclination towards Jihadism. ISIS grew due to the decline of Al-Qaida in Iraq, where the Shia majority strived to form a government after the demise of Saddam Hussain. The US intervention and Saddam Hussain’s liquidation pushed Iraq into a political vacuum that paved the way for the extremist groups to enhance their influence with help of sectarian element to mount their authority on other groups.

As a result, regional convolutions enhanced after ISIS captured major northern areas of Iraq leading to severe clashes between Shia-Iraqi and ISIS forces. ISIS attracted much Sunni population in Iraq and included many commanders who were in Sadam Hussains’ army and fighters from Afghanistan and Chechnya. It is said that the group is militarily very well equipped. It possesses the latest technological weapons that may have been stolen from the Iraqi and Syrian army and achieved by some other sources. The group engages in well-funded and organised vicious attacks and they dishonor the bodies of their victims by exhibiting them on web and social media, and by showing photographs and videos of slaying under the name of Islamic Caliphate. ISIS’s activities are funded by different means. These include heavy ransom, black-marketed oil, looted banks and antiquities from historical sites, and international support. It controls oil and gas fields in both Syria and Iraq in addition to nearby phosphate mines that developed a lucrative trade. It has been revealed through different sources that sectarian Gulf states are supporting them in terms of cash and weapons with mutual ideological strokes, while, it is also recognised that some western powers are in their supportive list and have been providing artillery assistance.

ISIS’s expansion to Syria and its confrontation against Bashar-Al-Asad confirm its anti Shia stimuli, rather than being against Israel as the major threat to the Muslim Arab world. Israel is the sole beneficiary from the ongoing political turmoil in Middle East. It is established that ISIS is operative in Israeli bordering areas to make the Muslim states weak internally, and the wounded ISIS predators are kept in Israeli hospitals for treatment. The hidden external forces have ignited the sectarian element that eventually can bring the Middle Eastern states under self styled or tribal governing bodies, clash between regional major players and lastly Israelis undue expansion in Middle East. The regional imbalance surely depicts and reveals the global players’ intents and their biased attributes that pushed the region into complete anarchism.

A chronological study of ISIS activities reveals the intimidation that the group is engaging in to protect the Zionist agenda. The ongoing brutality has the potential to spill over in Pakistan but yet there is no evidence of an ISIS-Pakistani leadership. It has been also claimed that ISIS is recruiting fighters and flying black flags in Afghanistan. Especially in Pakistan, TTP or some other radical groups can be inclined towards its identity of Islamic Caliphate and the religious Pakistani sectarian militant groups may collaborate with ISIS due to their anti-Shia sentiments and their extremist agendas. There is a dire need to curb extremism with an iron hand once for all and pay utmost attention to improve the security measures by opting the principles of good governance and ensuring social justice for the well being of Pakistani nation.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4633/prelims-on-the-subcontinent#comments

Prelims on the Subcontinent

By krepon | 8 June 2015 | 45 Comments

[Note: This post has been corrected.]

Very bad news often follows when adversaries give up on improved relations. We’re at this juncture now on the Subcontinent. High-ranking Indian and Pakistani officials are lobbing over-heated public recriminations about abetting terrorism in each other’s sensitive spaces. Pakistan has elevated the Kashmir issue – never a good sign for Pakistan or for India — and firing across the Kashmir divide has increased in recent years. Absent top-down initiatives to mend fences – initiatives that New Delhi appears unwilling to take and that Pakistan’s civilian government is handcuffed from taking – the stage will be set for another nuclear-tinged crisis in the region.

Increased firing across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir accompanied the advent of another Pakistani government led by Nawaz Sharif, who makes no secret of his desire to improve relations with India. Firing intensified after the election of a new Indian government led by Narendra Modi, who has made no secret about responding in more than tit-for-tat fashion to cease-fire violations.

Indian officials see bad omens in Pakistan’s release from polite confinement of Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi – the Lashkar e-Toiba’s operational commander who was deeply involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Intercepts of communications confirming Lakhvi’s role are publicly available, and copious evidence against Lakhvi provided by New Delhi was initially deemed inadmissible in Pakistani courts; his release was accompanied by statements blaming India for insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Pakistani officials read bad omens in statements by senior Indian officials regarding a willingness to engage in “sub-conventional” warfare, if warranted by Rawalpindi’s actions. Before becoming National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval gave a talk in February 2014 in which he conveyed the message that, “You can do one Mumbai and you may lose Baluchistan.” Last month, Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar, a neophyte in the art of public obfuscation, warned Pakistan against stepping up a proxy war in Kashmir: “There are certain things that I obviously cannot discuss here. But if there is any country, why only Pakistan, planning something against my country, we will definitely take some pro-active steps.” Parrikar used the the colloquial Hindi phrase for “removing a thorn using another thorn,” adding, “We have to neutralize terrorists through terrorists only. Why can’t we do it? We should do it. Why does my soldier have to do it?”

Hopes for improved relations generated by Modi’s invitation to Nawaz to attend his inauguration in May 2014 have now ebbed completely. Nawaz is in a bind. He has nothing to show for accepting Modi’s invitation. Civilian-led governments in Pakistan have been unable or unwilling to reciprocate India’s granting of Most Favored Nation trade status back in 1996. Pakistan understandably uses different terminology – non-discriminatory market access – which the previous government led by Asif Ali Zardari chose not to finalize, and which Nawaz is in no position to pursue. If he takes further initiatives and is left empty-handed, he will be in an untenable position back home. With Rawalpindi now signaling a hard line, this is out of the question.

Lakhvi’s release and Nawaz’s inability to push ahead on trade have reaffirmed New Delhi’s lack of interest in investing time and effort on improved relations. One of its key conditions for forward progress is tangible steps by Pakistan against the groups that target India. Statements by Doval and Parrikar have now allowed Pakistan to turn these tables, reverting to habitual themes about Indian subversion when bilateral relations take a turn for the worse.

A chorus of outrage has followed from the Foreign Ministry, government-inspired news accounts and opinion columns. The Chief of Army Staff has weighed in, decrying the actions of Indian intelligence services and clarifying that the fortunes of Pakistan and Kashmir are inseparable.

Modi has now entered the fray with remarks in Dhaka that, “Every now and then Pakistan keeps disturbing India, creates nuisance, promotes terrorism and such incidents keep recurring.” Modi was there to sign a long-delayed border settlement. The contrast between New Delhi’s commitment to improve relations with Bangladesh and its lack of interest in improving ties with Pakistan could not be starker.

The blame games now underway may mask an important shift in the dynamics of deterrence on the Subcontinent. New Delhi’s hand has been strengthened and Rawalpindi’s efforts to shore up deterrence by means of a nuclear buildup are being circumvented. Back in October 2014, Doval reportedly said, “We would like to resolve our problems through negotiations, through talks. I can’t think of any problem that cannot be resolved through negotiations. But on the other hand, India would like to have an effective deterrence to deal with terrorism.” One can read the statements by Doval and Parrikar to suggest that the Modi government has landed on a strategy of sending deterrent messages in the coinage Rawalpindi understands best.

As the stronger power, India only loses by making nuclear threats, while threatening to respond to severe provocations with conventional military thrusts into Pakistan offer headache without gain — which is why the Indian Army’s interest in “Cold Start” lost traction. Doval and Parrikar may be telegraphing a different Indian response if Rawalpindi turns up the heat in Kashmir or if the LeT carries out another spectacular act of terrorism within India. New Delhi can respond in Baluchistan or exploit other internal security problems in Pakistan, of which there are many. And as with the firing along the LoC, New Delhi can respond twofold to whatever cuts Rawalpindi inflicts.

Rawalpindi has been counting on a deterrence strategy that threatens first use if conventional capabilities are not up to the task. First use includes the detonation of short-range, or tactical, nuclear weapons against Indian troop concentrations and armor. New Delhi has studiously underplayed this threat; Rawalpindi can build as many tactical nuclear weapons as it likes and still not be able to use them if New Delhi adopts a strategy of fighting fire with fire — one that the previous Congress Party-led government was loathe to pursue.

New Delhi’s recent deterrent messages are far more convincing than beefing up conventional or nuclear forces, which is why Pakistan has reacted so vigorously against them. It knows that India’s leaders will seek to avoid using nuclear weapons and that New Delhi has backed away from threats to fight a limited ground war on Pakistani soil in the past. In contrast, India’s amped-up deterrent threats of proxy or sub-conventional warfare are credible because Pakistani leaders assume that India is already swimming in these waters.

Pakistan blames India for the widespread disaffection in Baluchistan, where its own military actions have sown disaffection, just as Indian military forces’ have in Kashmir. New Delhi has been able to handle everything Rawalpindi has thrown at it in Kashmir. Can Rawalpindi do the same in Baluchistan? China’s newly-announced, high-profile infrastructure corridor will pass through this province, where gas lines are periodically blown up and where Rawalpindi is raising a special security contingent for Chinese workers.

The hullaballoo in Pakistan over Doval and Parrikar’s statements is partly contrived, since the context and conditionality of these threats have been conveniently disregarded. But Pakistan’s concerns are very real, since hopes for the country’s economic future rest on Chinese investment through this corridor.

Deterrent messages can help avoid limited wars on the Subcontinent, but they cannot improve India-Pakistan relations. Diplomatic initiatives are required for this purpose. Once the sting of Lakhvi’s release subsides, New Delhi will be well-positioned to shift gears. No one’s interests are served by concurrent proxy campaigns in Kashmir and Baluchistan, so new deterrent threats could serve a useful purpose. But what then? It has been seven years since the Mumbai attacks. How much time needs to pass before resuming the composite dialogue?

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45 Responses to “Prelims on the Subcontinent”

Asif Ezdi | June 9, 2015

You have got your dates wrong. Doval’s threat to foment subversion in Balochistan (“You can do one Mumbai and you may lose Baluchistan.”) was not delivered on 5 January this year but on 21 February 2014, three months before he became National Security Adviser. Also, Parrikar’s remarks that India has a policy to “neutralise terrorists with terrorists” was made on 21 May this year, not on 13 January. More important, neither Doval nor Parrikar started these policies. India’s policy of exporting subversion and terror to Pakistan, mostly from Afghan soil, is much older than the Modi government.
Reply

krepon | June 9, 2015

My error on the dates.
MK

Akash | June 9, 2015

“But what then? It has been seven years since the Mumbai attacks. How much time needs to pass before resuming the composite dialogue?”

Like forever, oiseaule. When you janus faced morons start talking to Al Qaeda (after all its been a dozen years since 9/11), then come back and preach.
Reply

Arun | June 9, 2015

” How much time needs to pass before resuming the composite dialogue?” — it is not a matter of “time heals all wounds”.

Action by Pakistan to bring to book the perpetrators of Mumbai 26/11 will bring about an immediate resumption of Indian overtures to Pakistan. So the real question is – how much time need pass before Pakistan cracks down on its jihadis?
Reply

Jonah Speaks | June 9, 2015

There is a fine line between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Presumably India would support existing rebels within Pakistan, not send in special forces to masquerade as “rebels” within Pakistan.

What are India’s parameters for support of rebels within Pakistan? Blowing up gas lines or attacking Chinese workers sounds like terrorist activity. Does India intend to limit its support to non-terrorist types of rebel activity?
Reply

Ali | June 9, 2015

lakhvi is still behind bars. The case hasn’t progress as many wanted but you mentioned the reasons yet the guy is not on the road again
Reply

krepon | June 10, 2015

Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi’s status:
1. Lakhvi is a free man, but is awaiting trial. He’s not in jail, and is reportedly staying at an undisclosed location guarded by JuD members (http://www.dawn.com/news/1175099).
2. Since his release from custody on April 10 (http://tribune.com.pk/story/867971/...bail-mumbai-attack-suspect-lakhvi-walks-free/), his trial has been delayed three times.
3. The trial was initially delayed on May 26 because a judge was on leave (http://www.dnaindia.com/world/repor...urns-lakhvi-hearing-as-judge-on-leave-2072126).
4. The trial was once again delayed on June 3 for the same reason—the judge was on leave (http://www.newindianexpress.com/wor...ial-Till-Jun-10/2015/06/03/article2847440.ece).
5. Today, the trial was adjourned until June 17 due to a lawyers’ strike (http://indianexpress.com/article/world/asia/pak-court-adjourns-mumbai-attack-trial-till-june-17/).

bennedose | June 9, 2015

The author asks” It has been seven years since the Mumbai attacks. How much time needs to pass before resuming the composite dialogue?”

How about 800 years?
Reply

RajS | June 9, 2015

Spare us your indignation. Modi is simple pursuing the Reagan Doctrine: Peace Through Strength. Peace through negotiations is no longer on the table. We will enforce peace by ensuring those who disrupt it, pay for it extremely heavily. It worked for the US. Don’t lecture us on why we shouldn’t be using it.

Example: the pursuit just yesterday of Manipuri terrorists into Myanmar, and the destruction of the PLA run camps there. India has never before followed these terrorists across the border. Time to change the game.
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Archie | June 9, 2015

MK no need apologies dates are irrelevant.
The whole article is error. You are nuclear expert with only high school physics. No big deal a year there or year here, it’s not atoms colliding. No?
Reply

krepon | June 9, 2015

High school chemistry. Physics was too hard.
MK

Ricki | June 10, 2015

Mr. Archie, as a Ph. D (in NE), let me note that ad hominem arguments are, at best, “middle school”. I may not (often) agree with MK, but his points are value-added to the discussion.

RaNa | June 10, 2015

I was reading this with interest until I reached the part where you so callously refer to 7 years having passed after the Mumbai attacks and that India should not restart the “composite dialogue” with Pakistan.
What a laugh!
Why don’t you ask the U.S Govt and others to forget the 3000+ people killed in 9/11, now that 15 years have passed and invite Al Qaeda and the rest of the groups to Washington for “composite talks”?
The fact that you, like many others in the U.S, pontificate about the need for other countries to grin and bear it..while you go about bombing the rest of the world to smithereens based on a whim..is galling.
First: Stop the U.S, U.K and the self-labelled “international community” of a few nations from interfering in every other country. Cry from the roof tops, write op-eds and blogs..when you have cured these countries of their ills…come and pontificate to us.
Thank you.
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Ali | June 10, 2015

Arun: if you want to know if Pakistan has cracked down on militants or not then please start reading the newspapers. And please ! When you mention Lakhvi then don’t forget confessed masterminds and executors of train bombing on Indian Soil that killed over 50 Pakistanis. Those folks have links to RSS and any news about their prosecution and punishment ? That was two years before Mumbai

Jonah : what is driving Indians wreckless ( their latest attack across Mayanmar) is their firm conviction that Americans will justify what ever Indua does. Please don’t help the Indian ministers by justifying what they actually meant. Leave it for Indians. At best defend the mess that your country has created in Libya, Iraq and Syria. People confessed to have received support from India have been killing civilians in Karachi and Bsluchistan.
Reply

Jonah Speaks | June 10, 2015

I do not know what the Indian ministers meant, nor what they have done or plan to do. That is why I asked the questions, what is India contemplating to do?

If India genuinely plans to support terrorism in Pakistan, that could easily rankle relations with the U.S. So far as I am aware, U.S. policy since 2001 has been to oppose terrorism, not fight terrorism with terrorism.

My guess, for the moment, is that isolated statements from Indian officials are just macho blather, best left unsaid and most definitely not acted upon. If India really were to support rebellion within Pakistan, a detailed moral and practical plan of action would need to be discussed and drawn up.

krepon | June 10, 2015

Jonah:
This is pretty binary.
Either the Government of India has a plan or these folks are talking off the cuff.
If the Government of India seeks to deter acts of terror by fighting fire with fire, this will either deter Rawalpindi or Rawalpindi will redouble its efforts.
If the latter, buckle your seat belts.
MK

Jonah Speaks | June 11, 2015

Or not binary. Indian officials may be contemplating a plan that they have not yet decided to implement. If there is serious contemplation, it is worth a discussion.

One problem with fighting fire with fire is that you may burn down the forest. Terrorist fire is already burning Pakistan and much of the Middle East. Does India wish to be engulfed in the same fire? Even setting aside the moral aspects, is this a good strategic move for India? I think not.

sk | June 12, 2015

Krepon, Jonah :
Minister Parrikar’s statement should be taken with the actual context he was addressing. Go back and check, that time there was an successful encounter of terrorist from across borders in J&K and the success was based on the intelligence gathered from the “ex-terrorist” who are now co-operating with the local democratically elected government and the local authority. His statement was in that context of use of thorns and ‘ex-thorns’.

Arun | June 10, 2015

Ali, I and a consortium of others read Pakistani newspapers every day. Lakhvi is not behind bars. There is not one named person who “confessed” to having received support from India. We have the MQM leader Altaf who said something that he apologized for, about wanting support from RAW.

The Samjhauta Express bombing – curiously, the US declared Arif Qasmani of the Lashkar-e-Taiba as an international terrorist because of the attack on the train. Here is the UN notice on Arif Qasmani, dated June 29, 2009:

http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/NSQDi271E.shtml

“Arif Qasmani has also provided financial and other support to Al-Qaida (QDe.004). As of late 2006, Qasmani provided funding to Al-Qaida members and facilitated the return of foreign fighters to their respective countries. Between 2004 and 2005, Qasmani provided Al-Qaida with supplies and weapons and facilitated the movement of Al-Qaida leaders in and out of Afghanistan. In return for Qasmani’s support, Al-Qaida provided him with operatives to support the July 2006 train bombing in Mumbai, India, and the February 2007 Samjota Express bombing in Panipat, India.”

This February 2007 Samjota Express bombing is the one you are referring to.
Reply

Jack | June 10, 2015

Ali
Presumably you are referring to the Samjhauta Express bomb attack carried out by the LET.
The UN and interpol have already issued red corner notices against the Pakistani nationals who were involved.

Michael, what an utter waste of an article this is! It seems that your hatred for India simply clouds everything for you.
Reply

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

Arun | June 10, 2015

In The Washington Post, May 11, 2010, Sebastian Rotella wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110506271.html

“In a previously unreported tip just seven months before the Mumbai attacks, one of Headley’s ex-wives told U.S. officials overseas that she suspected he was linked to a 2007 bombing in India that killed 68 people and has been blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. She also warned that Headley was on a “special mission,” according to a senior anti-terror official. ”

“”She said Headley had been given a special mission and that he had both U.S. and Pakistani passports,” the senior anti-terror official said. “She said she felt she had been innocently used in an express train bombing” in India that had killed 68 people in 2007.”

So the Indian NIA investigation is pretty much a sham, kept in play to be able to do the pseudo-secular equal-equal, which is exactly what you’re doing, Ali.
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Arun | June 10, 2015

This is for you, Mr. Krepon – back in 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304023504577320811915728378

“The U.S. has announced a bounty of as much as $10 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Hafiz Saeed for his alleged involvement in terrorist attacks, including the 2008 strike on Mumbai that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans.”

Yet Hafiz Saeed walks free in Pakistan, appearing on TV, and with official sponsorship of his conventions and events.

Is this something that you take lightly?
Reply

krepon | June 10, 2015

The plot gets thicker.

This important development from a colleague in India:

We on this subcontinent are indeed now beginning ‘to live in interesting times’, I think, as you have warned, even more so since yesterday’s ‘delayed hot pursuit’ operations by the Indian Army onto terrorist/insurgent bases in Burma (Myanmar). These were in response to an ambush last week by a conglomerate of North-East ‘Indian’ rebel groups and a Burma-based Naga group which has mostly Burmese Nagas and a Burmese Naga leadership. This was the first publicly-acknowledged cross-border retaliation anywhere, and thus significant.

The message to Pakistan is clear, and there will be some reaction from there, I am sure, starting with verbal ones before anything physical. After that, things will probably be escalalatory, so let’s see how things develop.

And this from the 6/10 edition of The News(Pakistan):

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said on Wednesday that India should not mistake Pakistan for Myanmar.

The minister’s statement was in response to Indian Minister of State for Information Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore who hours after his country had carried out an operation against militants in Myanmar had said India will strike at a place and at a time of their choosing against all countries, including Pakistan, and groups harbouring “terror intent”.

krepon | June 10, 2015

About as lightly as a bout with cancer.
MK

Arun | June 10, 2015

On this article – if we take it as a reflection of the views of the US foreign policy establishment, that is one thing; if it is the personal opinion of a scholar, then it is possible to have a meaningful conversation.

So, Mr. Krepon, as far as India is concerned, the region to its west is in a mess. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran — India does want to do more with Iran, but is mostly toeing the American line. On India’s east however, there is a plethora of friendlies. Bangladesh is friendly, Vietnam is especially keen on defense relations with India, and we are told the Philippines is interested, too. Singapore, Myanmar and the rest of ASEAN are interested in expanding economic relations with India. Japan is interested in partnerships with India in Myanmar to counter Chinese influence. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan are all keen on increasing trade with India, and all can provide India much-needed technology. The US looks upon this kindly as helping create a balance with China. Likewise the Australians.

So, should India spend its diplomatic efforts on a recalcitrant Pakistan (as e.g., Mani Shankar Aiyar has written, it should be India’s top foreign policy priority)? or should India expend effort where it is welcome, where success is much more likely and where there are very tangible benefits and simply remain in a “holding pattern” with respect to Pakistan?

Do you really think the India-Pakistan relationship is the most important thing for India? If you say, it has the potential to be so, I can’t disagree; but realistically, in the current circumstances, why should India spend any effort on relations with Pakistan when there is so much other “low-hanging fruit” ?
Reply

krepon | June 10, 2015

Arun,
I would, indeed, place a high priority on trying to improve ties with Pakistan.
The countries to India’s east can’t wreck India’s future. Pakistan can.
I understand the structural difficulties and the pathologies involved in the relationship. But in my view, you are moving into very dangerous waters, and nobody’s steering toward safe passage.
MK

Aru | June 10, 2015

The only way Pakistan can wreck India’s future is by attacking it with nuclear weapons. Mumbai 26/11 or NYC 9/11 type attacks or 1965- or 1971- type wars cannot wreck India’s future. So, plainly speaking, you think Pakistan is on a nuclear-war collision course with India based on the current trends?

CRamS | June 10, 2015

Mr. Krepon, thanks for your sermon. And may I advise you and your condescending ilk, that instead of preaching to Indians about grinning and bearing your ally Pakistan’s terror, how about US linking its massive military/economic aid to Pakistan cracking down on all terror groups including those targeting India like the LeT, and not just the mighty “Al Queda”? And US policy must be visible, i.e., that it is completely and unequivocally on the side of India, just as US is on the side of UK/Israel etc, on the issue of terror sponsored by the Pak army and ISI. This policy of US, instead of useless sermons advising India to be a “good boy” will go a long way. Is US prepared to do that? Finally, and I am getting greedy now, how about US spending a fraction of the energy it does in rolling back Pak’s nukes, as it does in rolling back Iran’s? What crime has Iran committed that Pak has not?

Best Regards,
CRamS
Reply

Jim | June 10, 2015

“It has been seven years since the Mumbai attacks. How much time needs to pass before resuming the composite dialogue?” Wow. That is utterly cynical. How much time? How about till the day Pakistan demonstrates its good faith in unequivocally stamping out terrorism. That means rolling up Dawood, Hafiz Saeed, Lakhvi, not just a bunch of vague al Qaeda # 3 to appease you dumb folks in Washington. I lost a friend and family member in the 26/11 attack. So no, seven years is not enough to forget nor is this lifetime. But I’ll accept talks when there is justice. When your children, family, friends die in a terrorist attack, I’ll be happy to ask you “how much time before you forget and move on?” Your entire article provides a rationale for Pakistan’s use of terrorism as state policy…it essentially advocates succumbing to nuclear blackmail. The day the governments of United States and China, primed by analysts like you, call Pakistan’s bluff and stop supporting it, you’ll see how quickly peace will come to the region as all the hot air goes out of Islamabad. I hope you think through this line. The argument against it: “US does not have leverage against Pakistan” is totally bogus. Pakistan is no North Korea or Iran to stand up to sanctions. U.S can bring Pakistan to its knees in three days. Even a signal that U.S will not back Pakistan in its nuclear brinkmanship with India is sufficient to take the wind of our the fattened generals in Rawalpindi, many of whose sons and daughters are in the U.S.
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Ali | June 10, 2015

So here is an interesting article in Economic Times by Mr. Aymen Sharma, “Swami Aseemanand is our Lakhvi”.

http://blogs.economictimes.indiatim...dia-must-not-fail-pakistan-on-samjhauta-case/
Reply

Andy Matchbook | June 10, 2015

There are some decent policy experts in NNSA who understand reality. Amateurs at this website make the entire effort look silly. All the folks upset at Krepon, please ignore him. He doesn’t make policy.
Reply

krepon | June 10, 2015

Andy,
Pray tell, what is US policy toward the subcontinent?
MK

George William Herbert | June 10, 2015

I was told by someone in the know that US policy towards the subcontinent roughly approximates the sage words of the Bartender in the Cantina Scene in Star Wars (original) as the two wanted men start the fight with Obi-Wan and lose.

“No blasters, no blasters!,” and he dives to the floor.

krepon | June 10, 2015

GWH:
Can we hire the bartender?
MK

krepon | June 10, 2015

Well… It seems I’ve touched a nerve. Or several.
I have spared ACW readers of more venom.
MK
Reply

Ali | June 10, 2015

Andy: God alone knows the level and depth of NNSA folks.Atleast MK allows for a conversation.
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Uban | June 11, 2015

I often ask myself – What good is a secret analysis if it doesn’t get properly reviewed?

Transparency has its benefits.

BoredRat | June 11, 2015

One way to ensure peace is for the U.S. to stay on in Af-Pak innit?
The sabre rattling is mostly due to U.S. withdrawal and Chinese arrival.
Reply

GPR FIX | June 11, 2015

And how does the Indian nukes figure into all these discussion? Does it have any impact on Pakistani’s behavior at all? I mean does Pakistan consider that India can use its nukes against Pakistan too in case Pakistan uses it against India ?
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Uban | June 11, 2015

Pakistani experts generally acknowledge that Pakistan faces an existential threat from India but refrain from emphasizing details like what you have mentioned.

Looking too directly at the “but India can nuke us many times over…” information is seen as defeatist or mentally disabling in Pakistan. Instead people tend to focus on ways of negating the threat.

Uban | June 11, 2015

Dear Mike,

I think I get what you are saying – please correct me if I am wrong/missing something.

The stability of the India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence regime is not a static quantity. It evolves with time and it is connected in detail to all other security matters.

Indians are tired of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism. If the Modi government is seriously considering a policy of reciprocity on terrorism issues, then it may cause the Pakistani intelligence community to stop its sponsorship, but as you point out the entire region will become massively unstable, i.e. the slightest disturbance or error or misperception will breed a nuclear escalation.

This kind of instability may actually suit India’s needs on the nuclear front. As things stand India and Pakistan keep weapons and delivery systems de-mated. If India wants to be one of the big boys, India will need to mate weapons and warheads and put them on the new Arihant submarines.

Pushing things to wire with Pakistan can give India the excuse it needs to proceed with mating weapons and delivery systems. The lack of mating has been a major complaint by India’s military. By addressing that complaint, the Modi government can distinguish itself from all its predecessors on national security issues.

The risks associated with such an approach cannot be understated. One can only hope that experts in India know what they are doing. If deterrence fails between India and Pakistan even once – it will have failed everywhere at once. That will cause problems for nuclear deterrence regimes on a global scale.
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Uban | June 12, 2015

There is another aspect to this issue that may be worth considering.

Traditional Indian thinking on national security issues has been constrained by “Gandhian” thoughts (i.e. don’t kill millions), the economic situation (i.e. grinding poverty in most parts of the country) and the geopolitical realities (Pakistani hostility, P-5 attitudes, Han big-brotherliness etc…).

Over the last two decades, a new strain of criticism has emerged which has sought to link this kind of constrained thinking to India’s persistent resource scarcity. It is well known that this scarcity feeds corruption and other social ills. As civil wars have raged across India (Khalistan, Kashmir, NE, Maoist etc…) this kind of criticism has collected a large group of adherents especially among younger people.

The election of Narendra Modi with an overwhelming majority is an expression of this critical review. The Modi regime will find itself under great pressure to deliver on its promises to the voters.

One avenue suggested by some to break out of the constraints is to “think big” i.e. use all available economic strength to pursue an open-ended agenda of rapid weaponization. Pakistan will not be able to keep up with such a massive effort, and it will simply cease to be a real constraint. Also by demonstrating (beyond reasonable doubt) India’s ability to produce and stockpile advanced weapons designs and physics packages, the P-5 will be left with no choice but to admit their irrelevance or at the very least invite India to the table.

As the weaponization will be a completely internal affair to the Indian economy, investing aggressively in it will cause a massive increase in internal cash flows. The resulting prosperity will allow the economy as a whole to grow.

It is unclear if the Modi Govt. subscribes to this vision of things. By making weaponization – the core of everything – one is betting big on technology. This would be akin to investing everything in tech stocks, – a very high risk affair. But many Indians subconsciously look to the US for a sense of what works in other democracies, and since the US successfully pulled something like this off – chances are Indians will be tempted to try it.

Given that this vision resonates with a lot of Indians and their desire for immediate prosperity, it is likely that the Modi regime will find itself pushed by unseen political forces to achieve what the vision lays out.

In order to advance the vision forward, they will need an excuse – a “Reichstag Fire” of sorts. I feel that some Pakistanis could easily end up providing that excuse. Once the Modi regime has that excuse, debate over the core issue will end, and while people in pressed shirts won’t immediately march around saying “My Honour Is Loyalty” – the level of opposition to the vision will decline precipitously.

krepon | June 12, 2015

Uban,

Thanks for weighing in.
The analogy of the Reichstag fire is a powerful one. Do the attacks on the Parliament and Mumbai qualify?
I have witnessed elephants running at amazing speed with light flicks of the switch. India’s defense procurement system seems impervious to prompting.
This from today’s Hindu:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/fighting-without-equipment/article7306306.ece?homepage=true

MK

Arun | June 11, 2015

This just in:
http://nation.com.pk/national/10-Jun-2015/pakistan-is-in-war-with-afghanistan-afghan-president

“President Ashraf Ghani said Pakistan is in undeclared war with Afghanistan for the past 36 years. President Ghani, while talking at a gathering of government officials in Kandahar, said Pakistan has been given notice of the concerns.”
Reply

maybach57 | June 13, 2015

I couldn’t agree more with the comment “Very bad news often follows when adversaries give up on improved relations.”.

It is clear that with respect to relations with Pakistan, India has simply moved on. It has little economic interests in dealing with Pakistan. So, India will just ignore it and be content with the status quo in Kashmir.

However, it is Pakistan’s army which needs to keep the Kashmir flame alive to keep its funding and political relevance. Aiding terrorist actions in India and Afghanistan has been its solution.

Thus far, India has turned the other cheek despite a long list of terrorist actions (including Mumbai, Parliament, 2008 Kabul embassy). However, should another major attack occur, it is unlikely that India will continue to not retaliate.

Given uncertainty with escalations in a war, it is much simpler for India to retaliate through a proxy war. With Pakistan’s civil unrest that should be relatively straightforward, especially in places like Baluchistan. This is also far cheaper than, say, mobilizing ground troops as was done after the Parliament attack.

So, for any meaningful talks/progress, Pakistan should be forced to stop aid to terrorists. There is little point trying to improve relations with anyone who has shown no interest is changing their violent behavior.

 

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June 13, 2015

Why Iran's Plan B in Syria Will Not Work

By Hanin Ghaddar

Earlier this month, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (ICRG) Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani made a surprise visit to Syria near the frontlines outside Latakia, where he vowed that upcoming developments in Syria will soon “surprise” the world. So far, the world has not seen any surprises. On the contrary, the opposition seems to have gained more ground with each day.

The Iranian regime now faces a number of crises. In addition to last-minute challenges before signing the final nuclear deal with the P5+1 by June 30 and its struggling economy, Iran must contend with a unified Arab front in both Yemen and Syria. Given the inability to send more troops to Syria due to financial limitations, Iran has chosen to sacrifice more of Hezbollah’s resources.

Iran’s priority now centers on limiting its losses in Syria and protecting the corridor that links the coastal region to the anti-Lebanon mountain chain—i.e., to Hezbollah. To do so, the IRCG has pulled its military units and allied Shia militias from Syria’s north, positioning them along the Alawite coast, Damascus, and the southwest to back Hezbollah forces in Qalamoun. Controlling these areas would secure the strategic corridor that Iran needs to protect its interests in Syria. Everything else can go to rebels—or even the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL).

Qalamoun’s link to Damascus, Homs, and the Alawite enclave along the coast makes it a strategic prize. It also gives Hezbollah safe access to the Golan Heights, allowing the group to encircle Israel and Iran to use it as geopolitical leverage. Yet Iran’s Plan B faces the challenge of recent rebel gains in southern Syria and mounting Hezbollah casualties in Qalamoun.

One week after Soleimani’s pledge, the surprise came from the opposite side, when the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front captured the base of the 52nd Brigade in Harak, Deraa Province, hours after the attack was first announced. As the second largest base in southern Syria, it occupies a strategically significant position between the Deraa and Suweida provinces. The capture of this base breaks the regime’s first ring of defense around Damascus. Syrian rebels have also scored gains in other parts of Syria, making Soleimani’s vows sound like empty rhetoric.

While these recent opposition victories will not win the war against the Assad regime, they do impose a new reality on the ground. In order to secure this corridor, Iran would have to impose a kind of buffer zone, which would not come easily.

When the Army of Conquest, the Qalamoun rebel group fighting Hezbollah, reclaimed Idlib and Jisr al-Shougour earlier this year, it opened the Alawite coast to vulnerabilities. Damascus is another story. Whoever takes Damascus will have an upper hand in Syria. Today, the Southern Front nears the city, determined to go further to take Izraa and Deraa city—two strategic points held by the regime. It will be an easy battle, but neither will it be so for Iran and its militias.

As Hezbollah loses more fighters in Qalamoun with each passing day, it increasingly struggles to replace them. Despite recent statements by the party’s officials, reassuring its supporters on victories in Qalamoun, nothing is yet certain. Opposition sources in Qalamoun told the Lebanese media that despite its occasional victories, Hezbollah cannot maintain its hold against Nusra Front forces. If Iran does not guarantee a win in Qalamoun, its loss would threaten access to the Golan along with the link to the coast. The Army of Conquest, the Nusra Front, and other factions—realizing the stakes—have doubled-down on this battle, making it that much harder on Iran and its allies.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is bleeding—in both Lebanon and Syria. The Lebanese Shia community is not pleased with Hezbollah’s results in Syria. It has produced too many “martyrs” without any victory. Assad is losing ground, the Shia are more isolated than ever, and funerals have become a daily occurence. The longer this trend continues, the less likely that Lebanese Shia families will send their young men to fight in Syria, forcing Iran to depend more on untrained Shia Afghans and Pakistanis.

All signs indicate that, even if Iran maintains this corridor, it will remain vulnerable to opposition factions and Islamist rebels from all sides. Nonetheless, Iran decided long ago that only a military solution in Syria would protect its interests. Given the amount of blood, money, and political capital already expended, Iran will not change its calculations easily. At best, it might limit its scope to securing the corridor, but will not likely let go.

While the West insists that only a political solution will solve Syria’s ills, Iran has stayed the military course. The United States may soon sign a nuclear deal with Iran, eventually leading to relaxed sanctions that would allow Iran to boost its vulnerable military in Syria. Any talk of a political solution that does not acknowledge this reality is doomed to failure, just as any talk of a solution that does not acknowledge regional concerns over Iranian hegemony will not work.

Iran may relinquish the parts of Syria outside this vital corridor, but there is no Plan C. If the Syrian people and their regional backers are not included and assured in any political agreement, no solution will work and the rebels will continue fighting with whatever weapons they can acquire until further notice. Unless the United States forces Iran to compromise on these local and regional concerns, Iran will keep pursuing Plan B, the opposition will keep fighting it, and Syria will continue to disintegrate into more chaos, dragging the region to more wars and instability.

Hanin Ghaddar is a Nonresident Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council and the Managing Editor of NOW.

This article originally appears at the Atlantic Council.

 

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June 13, 2015

The Cost of Russia's Military Modernization

By Vladimir Isachenkov

It has a remote-controlled turret, it bristles with state-of-the-art defense systems and its computerized controls make driving it feel "like playing a video game." Russia's Armata tank, which its creator says can be turned into a fully robotic combat vehicle, is the crowning glory of a sweeping military modernization drive that is rumbling forward amid a perilous confrontation with the West over Ukraine.

But President Vladimir Putin's expensive arms build-up faces major hurdles as Russia's economy sinks under the weight of Western sanctions and falling oil prices. The 22-trillion ruble (about $400-billion) program, which envisages the acquisition of 2,300 new tanks, hundreds of aircraft and missiles and dozens of navy ships, was conceived back at the time when Russia's coffers were brimming with petrodollars.

Putin vowed that the military upgrade would go ahead as planned, and this year's military budget rose by 33 percent to about 3.3 trillion rubles (nearly $60 billion). Some observers predict that the Kremlin will inevitably have to scale down the plans amid a grinding recession.

In one of the first harbingers of the possible curtailment of new arms procurement, a deputy defense minister said earlier this year that the air force will likely reduce its order for the T-50, a costly state-of-the art fighter jet developed for two decades to counter the U.S. Raptor.

Another problem is also hampering the modernization drive: The sanctions include a ban on the sale of military technology to Russia. Nick de Larrinaga, Europe Editor for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, predicted that Russia would find it hard to replace Western military know-how.

"They have been relying on Western sub-systems, electro-optical systems is a good example, but also computer chips and things like that, which Russia doesn't make," he said. "How Russia goes about trying to replace these systems is going to be a really big challenge."

The rupture of military ties with Ukraine dealt another heavy blow to Putin's re-armament effort. Ukrainian factories had exported a wide array of weapons and sub-systems to Russia, and officials acknowledged that it would take years and massive resources to launch production of their equivalent at home. Since Soviet times, Ukraine specialized in building helicopter engines, and Putin said that Russia was setting up a capacity to produce them at home.

It could be even more challenging to substitute another Ukrainian product, ship turbines. Its refusal to deliver them has derailed the commissioning of new Russian navy ships.

Last month, the Armata starred in the Victory Day parade on Red Square, becoming an emblem of the country's resurgent military power. Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister in charge of weapons modernization, likened Russia to a "big Armata" and claimed that the new tank is 15-20 years ahead of the current Western designs.

Speaking in a recent live TV talk show, Rogozin also used armor as a symbol to issue a bold threat to the West — showing how military hardware can also be a powerful weapon in the Kremlin's propaganda war.

"Tanks don't need visas!" Rogozin declared, in a reference to Western travel bans and economic sanctions against Russia. Amid the tensions with the West, Putin emphasized the need for the nation's defense industries to quickly shed their dependence on imported components.

The Armata's price hasn't been announced, but some observers speculated that the new tank could be as expensive as a fighter jet, too heavy a burden for the struggling economy. There are no reliable cost estimates of the tank.

The tank's chief designer, Andrei Terlikov, 52, shrugged off such claims, saying that the Armata's price will drop significantly once it enters full-scale production. "In the end, the price of those machines will be affordable," Terlikov told The Associated Press in his first interview with foreign media.

Speaking at his office at the mammoth UralVagonZavod factory in the Ural Mountains, one of the biggest industrial plants in the world, Terlikov described the Armata as a "decisive step toward more advanced unmanned machines, including those which could operate autonomously in combat."

He emphasized that the Armata uses only domestically produced parts. "From the very start, we have set the task to rely on our own resources," he said.

Viktor Murakhovsky, a retired Russian army colonel who is now the editor of the Arsenal Otechestva military magazine, said the Armata's advantages come at a price — but that eventually it may pay for itself.

"The Armata is significantly more expensive than the current models," he said. "But it far excels all Russian and foreign tanks on the cost-efficiency basis."

The Armata marks a radical departure from the traditional Soviet and Russian tank design philosophy. Unlike its predecessors, which had a compact build and low silhouette for nimble maneuvering, the Armata was designed to make crew protection the main focus.

"There is nothing more important today than crewmembers' lives," Terlikov said.

Terlikov's deputy, 35-year old Ilya Demchenko, said that the onboard computer system performs most of the technical functions, allowing the crew to focus on key tasks. "For the crew, it's like playing a video game, taking some final moves and making decisions," he said.

De Larrinaga agreed that the Armata represented a technological advance for Russia.

"The crew has a much better chance of surviving if the tank is destroyed," de Larrinaga said. "If you look at old Russian tank designs, they had a habit of blowing up quite spectacularly with pretty poor chances for crew survivability."

© Copyright 2015 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

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Ethnic cleansing claims as Kurds take fight to Islamic State in Syria

Date June 14, 2015 - 5:57PM
Rana Moussaoui

Kurds unite to build Kurdistan in defiance of Islamic State
On the front line, militias fight to free kidnapped families

Beirut: Kurdish fighters have advanced to the outskirts of a key Syrian border town held by Islamic State, as Turkish forces sought to prevent thousands fleeing the fighting from crossing the frontier.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have edged closer to Tal Abyad, a border town used by jihadists as a gateway from Turkey into Syria's Raqqa province, the Islamic State's stronghold.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said YPG fighters, backed by Syrian rebels and air strikes from the US-led coalition fighting IS, advanced to within a few kilometres of the town.
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Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said there were only 150 IS fighters holding Tal Abyad itself, and that they had threatened to withdraw if they did not receive reinforcements from Raqqa.

"But the leadership in Raqqa will not send them reinforcements, because the coalition air strikes have been decimating IS," Mr Abdel Rahman said.

Thousands of displaced Syrians amassed at the frontier, prompting Turkish security forces to use water cannons and fire warning shots to push them away.

After receiving 13,000 Syrian refugees in less than a week, Turkey accused the combined US-Kurdish offensive of driving Arabs and Turkmen out of Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in one of first public appearances since his party lost its majority in parliamentary elections, accused "the West" of killing Arabs and Turkmen in Syria, and replacing them with YPG militia affiliated with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which Turkey and the West consider a terrorist group.

"The West, which has shot Arabs and Turkmens, is unfortunately placing the PYD [a Syrian Kurdish party] and PKK in lieu of them," Mr Erdogan said.

Arabs and Turkmen who have fled Syria charge that YPG fighters have stolen their homes and livestock, burned their personal documents and claimed the land as theirs.

"They forced us from our village and said to us 'this is Rojava'," the term the YPG uses to describe territory it claims across northern Syria, said Jomah Ahmed, 35, a member of the al-Baqqara tribe. He arrived from the village of al-Fwaida with dozens of members of his extended family before Turkey closed the border.

"They said 'Go to the al-Badiya desert, go to Tadmur, where you belong.'" Tadmur, captured last month by Islamic State, is more than 150 kilometres south-east of Tal Abyad.

Tarik Sulo, the spokesman for the Syrian Turkmen community in northern Syria, said the US bombing support and the YPG ground forces "are changing the demography of the area in an ethnic cleansing". He said Turkmen, an ethnic Turkish minority in Syria, "are losing lands where they have been living for centuries".

The US Central Command said it was looking into the allegations. "As a matter of course, we neither condone any form of ethnic cleansing nor would we willingly support any such activity," said Air Force Colonel Patrick Ryder, a US military spokesman. "But we take any such allegations seriously and will look into them."

A YPG spokesman in Kobane said Kurds there gave a warm reception to Arabs who fled Tal Abyad after Islamic State captured the town a year ago.

The situation is made more complex by the acknowledgment that some Tal Abyad residents took part in IS activities when their villages were captured.

"Many of our sons got involved with the Islamic State," said Abu Khaled, 63, who arrived at the border crossing with his five sons and several dozen grandchildren. "Some joined Koran sessions, and others took up weapons."

A top rebel military official said that if the YPG expulsions continue - some estimates put the number at 40,000 in Hasaka province alone - they will become a recruiting tool for IS.

"Until now we don't know what the [US-led] coalition wants. Does it intend to fight [IS] or empower [IS]?" said General Ahmed Berri, the deputy chief of staff of moderate rebel forces.

The latest accusations come as an al-Qaeda-linked rebel group, the Nusra Front, acknowledged that its fighters were involved in the killing of Druze villagers in north-western Syria this week, saying they had violated orders and would face justice.

Twenty Druze villagers were reportedly killed in the village of Qalb Loze in Idlib province on Wednesday when Nusra Front members opened fire in an incident that spiralled from their attempt to confiscate a house.

The Druze sect is viewed as heretical by the puritanical brand of Sunni Islamism espoused by al-Qaeda and IS.

In a statement, the Nusra Front said "everyone involved in this incident will be presented to a sharia court and held to account for blood proven to have been spilt". It did not give a casualty toll or describe what had happened in "the incident".

AFP, MCT, Reuters

 

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N. Korea fires 3 short-range missiles into East Sea

2015/06/14 18:02

SEOUL, June 14 (Yonhap) -- North Korea fired three short-range missiles into the East Sea on Sunday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The communist North "fired three KN-01 missiles from its eastern border town of Wonsan onto Mayang Island (in the East Sea) between 4:21 p.m. and 4:47 p.m. today," the JCS said in a statement.

The launch is presumed to be Pyongyang's additional test-firing of the anti-ship projectiles after two rounds of the same tests were carried out in February and last month, one of the JCS officers said, noting that the cruise missiles flew some 100 kilometers.

"Our military has been closely watching North Korea's movements, and has maintained a full-fledged posture against their possible provocations," the JCS said.

graceoh@yna.co.kr

(END)

 

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PLA has right to ram Japanese warships in South China Sea: admiral

Staff Reporter 2015-06-12 09:14 (GMT+8)

Admitting that Japan has the capability to project its naval force to the South China Sea, Admiral Li Jie of China's People's Liberation Army said Chinese warships also have the right to ram Japanese ships in the disputed region, according to the nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times.

Tokyo's Kyodo News reported that Japan is considering about when and how to intervene in the complex territorial disputes in the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety despite conflicting claims from neighboring states. The Japanese government declared the South China Sea to be a critical matter to Japan's national interests when the Diet was reviewing the nation's mutual cooperation and security treaty with the United States. Japan is likely to provide logistical support to the US Navy operating in the region.

Li Jie told Global Times that Japan would have no technical barriers to sending its warships and aircraft to the South China Sea. The P-3C anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and E-2C and E-767 early warning aircraft of the Japan Self-Defense Forces can fly directly from Japan to the area, he said, while its KC-767J refueling aircraft can extend the operational range of fighters such as the F-15J and F-2. Japanese warships including the newly commissioned helicopter destroyer Izumo are perfectly designed for operations in the South China Sea, Li said.

This notwithstanding, Japan will face diplomatic pressure from Southeast Asian nations if it demonstrates strong political ambitions in the region, Li said. The admiral warned that Japanese politicians think carefully about sending aircraft or warships to the South China Sea because China may not only express its opposition through diplomatic channels. Chinese warships have the legal right to ram vessels that intrude on national territory, according to Li — a further suggestion that the distinction between territorial and international waters may not be acknowledged by Beijing.

 

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Vietnam's K-300P system can attack Chinese targets in Hainan

Staff Reporter 2015-06-13 14:25 (GMT+8)

The People's Navy of Vietnam is capable of launching a direct attack against Shanya Naval Base located on the island of Hainan with its K-300P Bastion-P mobile coastal defense missile system, according to Kanwa Defense Review, a Chinese-language military magazine based in Canada.

Vietnam devotes lot of attention to its coastal defenses due to its territorial dispute with China over the South China Sea. The K-300P Bastion-P introduced from Russia allows the Vietnamese navy to launch P-800 Oniks anti-ship cruise missiles designed to damage or sink enemy surface combat vessels. With an attack range of 300 kilometers, the missile can reach critical Chinese targets near the island of Hainan.

Since Hainan is now a staging base for People's Liberation Army to project its forces into the South China Sea, the K-300P Bastion-P has the potential to bring serious losses to China's South Sea Fleet. When engaging the Chinese navy in its costal region, the Kh-35E anti-ship ballistic missile with which the Vietnamese navy's two Gepard-class frigates and other warships are equipped is deadly to any Chinese vessels operating in the region.

The attack range of the Kh-35E is currently 130 km. However, this range can be extended to 260 km if the Vietnamese navy chooses to equip its warships with the more advanced Kh-35UE Super-Uran missile, according to the Kanwa Defense Review. The weapons systems could give Vietnam the edge in a potential asymmetric conflict against China.

 

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North Korea plants landmines in DMZ to prevent soldiers from fleeing

June 14, 2015
by Yonhap News
1 Comment

SEOUL — North Korea has been planting anti-personnel mines alongside the inter-Korean border for the past couple of months to prevent North Korean soldiers from fleeing to South Korea, a South Korean official said Sunday.

“Under the order of leader Kim Jong-un, the military has gone all-out to prevent soldiers from going AWOL across the North Korea-China border,” the official said, adding the deployment of land mines near the inter-Korean border sees to serve a similar purpose.

Last October, the two Koreas exchanged fire after troops from the communist country drew near the border. No one was hurt.

A month later, a North Korean patrol approached the land border again, prompting warning shots from South Korean troops.

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korean troops seem to have collected some military information near the western, middle and eastern fronts of the Military Demarcation Line for the past two months, the official told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity, adding that South Korea has beefed up its defense against a possible southward intrusion.

North Korean soldiers, mostly in groups of up to 20, are also checking signposts marking the MDL and re-erecting any that have collapsed.

There are nearly 1,300 such signs lining the border, spaced out between 200-300 meters from one another.

 

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Confirmed: US Will Hold 2016 Cobra Gold Military Exercises in Thailand

The U.S. military will scale down the annual exercise over human rights concerns, but won’t cancel it.

By Prashanth Parameswaran
June 13, 2015

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On June 12, media outlets reported that the United States had decided this week to go ahead with preparations for Cobra Gold 2016 — the Asia-Pacific’s largest annual multinational military exercise — despite lingering rights concerns.

According to the Associated Press, senior State Department official Scot Marciel told a congressional hearing on June 11 that the Obama administration would move forward with Cobra Gold 2016 but that the exercise would be scaled down again because of the political situation in Thailand, where a military junta continues to rule after seizing power in a coup last May.

The report publicly confirms what many had already expected. The decision is essentially the same as the one Washington made last October when it chose to go ahead with a scaled down version of Cobra Gold 2015. As I have written previously, this course allows the administration to signal its disapproval with the rights situation in post-coup Thailand while preserving an engagement that is a crucial part of not only the U.S.-Thai relationship, but U.S.-Asia policy as well (See: “US-Thailand Relations and Cobra Gold 2015”). Though Cobra Gold began as a bilateral drill between the United States and Thailand, it has grown to involve some 30 countries including Japan and China.

The administration appears to have made the call this year far earlier than it did in 2014. That will be a point not lost on those involved in planning the exercises, which takes longer than most appreciate. Last year, the administration deliberated for so long that some worried it may have been too late to even hold the exercise in February as scheduled even if a decision was eventually made to proceed.

Indecisiveness was already beginning to affect the necessary planning that would go into Cobra Gold 2016 this year. In April, the U.S. embassy in Bangkok confirmed that the Concept Development Working Group, the committee which plans the exercises, had delayed its initial planning meeting scheduled to take place from March 24-26 in Hawaii. At the time, embassy spokeswoman Melissa Sweeney had to clarify that while the meeting was delayed, no decision had been made about whether to hold the exercise or not. On the Thai side, officials were waiting for Washington to make up its mind but expecting preparations – including a summer meeting in Thailand – to be held as usual. Now that a decision has been made, such balancing acts will no longer be necessary.

Important details, however, still remain undisclosed. Those familiar with the planning of such exercises know that ‘scaling down’ has to be translated into specifics – whether it is the number of U.S. troops participating or what the various components of the exercise will involve. For instance, last year’s ‘scaled down’ Cobra Gold meant that the number of U.S. troops was reduced to just 3,600 and a large-scale, live-fire exercise associated with amphibious landing was canceled. It is unclear whether the scaling down will play out in the same way and occur to the same degree for Cobra Gold 2016. Thailand’s reaction to this will also be interesting to watch. As I noted in a previous piece, the ruling junta struggled with how to explain the ‘scaling down’ last year since it got to the heart of the legitimacy of its rule.

Of course, much of this will be determined depending on the state of U.S.-Thai relations more generally. The run-up to last year’s Cobra Gold was especially messy because ties had deteriorated during the weeks leading up to it, with top U.S. envoy for East Asia Daniel Russel’s public rebuke of the ruling junta in a January 26 speech provoking a fierce backlash. Since then, both sides have tried to improve the relationship. Thailand charged its newly appointed ambassador Pisan Manawapat in February with quickly mending ties in Washington, while the Obama administration nominated a new U.S. ambassador to Thailand in April following a six month vacancy for the post (See: “US Nominates New Envoy to Thailand Amid Strained Ties”).

But ties will also be a function of how the situation evolves in Thailand. As it is, things aren’t looking all that good. Elections, which were supposed to be held late last year, have now been postponed again till at least September 2016 (See: “When Will Thailand Hold Its Election?”). Martial law has been lifted, but many of the security provisions included in the interim constitution contain similar restrictions on civil liberties. The environment in Thailand is far from one that would allow for the “inclusive political process” that U.S. officials continue to call for. And yet, things could also get much worse in the coming months, with discontent among rival political factions once again spilling into the streets and further setbacks to democracy.

In a prepared joint statement for the congressional hearing, Marciel and his two U.S. government colleagues expressed hope that Thailand would continue to be a crucial partner for the United States in Asia if it creates democratic institutions of governance and reconciles competing political factions. At least for now though, that remains a big if.

 

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Africa
Omar al-Bashir: ICC urges S Africa to arrest Sudan leader

2 hours ago
From the section Africa

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has called on South Africa to arrest Omar al-Bashir, with the Sudanese president in the country for an African Union (AU) summit.

Mr Bashir is wanted for war crimes over the conflict in Darfur.

An ICC statement said South Africa should "spare no effort" in detaining him.

But instead he was welcomed by South African officials on his arrival in Johannesburg, SABC tweeted.

Sudan's Suna news agency said he was accompanied by the foreign minister and other top Sudanese officials.

There are tensions between the ICC and AU, with some on the continent accusing the court of unfairly targeting Africans.

The AU has previously urged the ICC to stop proceedings against sitting leaders.

The warrants against Mr Bashir, who denies the allegations, have severely restricted his overseas travel.

He has however visited friendly states in Africa and the Middle East.
Arrest 'unlikely'

The ICC statement said South Africa should "respect their obligations to co-operate with the court", something South Africa's News24 said was unlikely to happen.

Human rights organisations and South Africa's main opposition party have also called for his arrest.

Darfur has been in conflict since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government. The UN says more than 300,000 people have died, mostly from disease.

The ICC has ended an investigation into war crimes in the region, but the warrants against Mr Bashir remain outstanding.

The official theme of the AU summit is the "Year of Women's Empowerment and Development".

But the political turmoil in Burundi, crisis in South Sudan and the recent spate of xenophobic attacks are also likely to feature heavily.

African Union meetings are often criticised for avoiding burning issues that affect the continent, and this year's summit is not expected to be any different. Analysts say discussions will be held, but outcome will be vague.

The packed agenda is expected to focus on violence in Burundi, the crisis in South Sudan, Nigeria's fight against Boko Haram, and terror threats by al-Shabab in East Africa.

South Africa stepped in to host the summit at the last minute because of terror threats in Chad.

But the recent xenophobic violence in Johannesburg and Durban have left the hosts embarrassed.

Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Nigeria lashed out at President Jacob Zuma's government for the attacks.

Well this is getting "interesting" real fast.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL5N0Z00AN20150614

UPDATE 2-South African court orders indicted Sudanese leader not to leave
Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:22pm GMT

* Bashir attends AU summit in South Africa
* ICC calls for his arrest for war crimes
* Arrest unlikely as South Africa gives leaders immunity (Adds confirmation of Bashir's arrival at AU Summit, ICC source)

By Ed Cropley

JOHANNESBURG, June 14 (Reuters) - A South African court issued an interim order on Sunday preventing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir leaving the country, where he was attending an African Union summit, until the judge hears an application calling for his arrest.

Bashir is accused in an International Criminal Court arrest warrant of war crimes and crimes against humanity over atrocities in the Darfur conflict.

Judge Hans Fabricuis said if Bashir was allowed to leave the country it would damage South Africa's reputation, according to local media. The court hearing is due to resume at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).

"We are all happy to be here. There's no problem," a Sudanese official told Reuters at the summit, where Bashir was earlier seen arriving.

The ICC has called on South African authorities to arrest Bashir. A statement issued by the court in The Hague asked Pretoria "to spare no effort in ensuring the execution of the arrest warrants".

It said the court's members had "deep concern" about the negative consequences if a member state failed to assist in detaining Bashir, who was indicted more than a decade ago.

But an arrest in South Africa appears unlikely because President Jacob Zuma's government has given immunity to any leader or delegate attending the AU summit.

"He (Bashir) would be a fool if he had not sought guarantees he would not be transferred before leaving for South Africa," one ICC official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

A foreign ministry spokesman in South Africa, which is an ICC signatory and therefore obliged to exercise arrest warrants from the Netherlands-based court, did not respond to requests for comment. (Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Catherine Evans)

© Thomson Reuters 2015 All rights reserved

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.strategypage.com/qnd/yemen/articles/20150614.aspx

Yemen: Fantasies Crumble And Turn To Dust

June 14, 2015: Since the war with the Saudi led Arab coalition began on March 26 th about 2,600 have been killed (half of them civilians) and over 11,000 wounded (about 40 percent civilians). Over 95 percent of the losses have been Yemenis. Saudi warplanes continue to seek out and bomb the homes of those known to be close (family and associates) of former president Saleh. The Saleh family still has a lot of power in Yemen and is seen as a silent (but vital) partner in the Shia rebellion. Long time ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh was the target of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Yemen and has been trying to broker a peace deal and thus regain much political power and possibly become president again. Despite being a Shia himself Saleh managed to assemble a coalition of largely Sunni groups that kept him in power for decades. That coalition fell apart in 2011 and Saleh was deposed in 2012, after he had negotiated amnesty for himself. He was replaced by Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi after elections the Shia insisted were unfair (but international observers approved of). Saleh was long suspected to secretly supporting the Shia rebels and that proved to be true once the Shia rebels sought to take control of the government earlier this year. The Shia rebels were a frequent headache for Saleh but after he was deposed it did not surprise most Yemenis that Saleh had quietly developed an alliance with the Shia tribes up north. About a third of Yemenis are Shia and the Shia-Saleh Coalition has attracted some Sunni support (because the Shia have always called for a reduction in corruption and more effective government). Thus the rebels are not only more united but have the support of nearly half the population.

The coalition air strikes have weakened or distracted the Shia rebels sufficiently so that the pro-government forces (a shaky coalition of tribal, separatist and Islamic terrorist militias plus a few military units) to hold onto their territory and retake some areas lost to the Shia advance before late March. Some army units decided to back president Hadi or, if they were fighting for the Shia rebels, became neutral or disbanded. The Saudis may not be a military superpower but they have weapons and cash and know how to use both to some effect. Some of the interested parties in Yemen are taking that into account and backing away from the Shia rebels. But the Shia rebels are not as impressed and know that they could, at the very least, inflict some embarrassing losses if the Saudis sent in troops to capitalize on the convincing Saudi use of air power. The Shia also know they are determined enough to hang onto most of the territory (most of western Yemen) they seized before the bombing began in late March. In response the Saudis have offered to negotiate.

The UN sponsored peace talks were supposed to start in Switzerland today but disagreements over travel arrangements have delayed the start of the talks at least 24 hours. The UN hopes to get a ceasefire and a withdrawal of the Shia rebels back to their homeland in the north. This, in turn, would enable a lot more aid to get in and delivered, which is more of an incentive for everyone as this war goes on and shortages in many areas gets worse.

The Saudi security forces have suffered some casualties on the ground since March 26th. These losses have been small (less than 200 dead and wounded), considering the number of men (over 30,000 troops) the Saudis have on the Yemen border. The Saudis claim to have killed far more (over 500) Shia rebels near the border so far time but this appears to be a gross exaggeration. The Saudis also know that this border area has been the scene of Sunni Shia conflict for a long time and so far the Shia have resisted conquest by being so tough that the cost (in lives and cash) was never worth the Sunni effort to crush Shia power down here. The western border area has been occupied by Shia tribes for centuries. The current border was only established, by force, in 1934 when the Saud family created Saudi Arabia. This was done with a largely Sunni tribal coalition organized and led by the Sauds. Some of those tribes were Shia and are just across the border from similar Shia tribes in Yemen. The Sauds have treated their Shia tribes well and the Saudi Shia obviously live better than their Yemeni cousins. That is largely why there has been no unrest from the Saudi Shia tribes. But the Yemeni Shia have always believed that the way the Sauds drew the border 80 years ago unfairly took land belonging to the Yemeni Shia and now these long simmering disputes have added to the animosity between Saudis and many Yemenis. While the Saudis have more armed men on the border, men who are better trained and armed than the Yemeni Shia, these Yemeni Shia have combat experience and won skirmishes in 2009 that the Saudis have not forgotten. An investigation of the 2009 defeat revealed more of what Western (mainly American) military trainers and advisors have been saying for years; officers and NCOs are not good quality and there is little pressure from the top to improve. The same can be said for most Saudi troops. The problem is that military service is not popular as there are easier ways for a Saudi citizen to make a living (government job or unemployment benefits) and many members of the military would quit if pressured to improve their performance. The Saudis try to make up for this by purchasing all the newest and most capable weapons money can buy. That really doesn’t work well for the ground forces, although Saudi troops do have basic skills and respond to patriotic appeals, especially the danger of invasion, especially one leading an Iranian takeover of Saudi oil. So on the Yemen border Saudi troops manning artillery and mortars manage to fire accurately at Shia rebels facing them. But close combat is another matter. The Yemeni Shia are more determined fighters because they are poor and have little choice.

These 2009 defeats (which were officially, at least in Saudi media, victories or stalemates) were very embarrassing for the Saudi monarchy because there were at least 109 Saudi dead and many more wounded and these injuries and funerals could not be completely covered up. The Saudis do not want more such defeats. The Shia rebels tried to make something of their psychological edge by threatening to invade Saudi Arabia if the air campaign were not halted. The Saudis countered that by ordering their troops on the border to not advance, but not to retreat either and to use their superior firepower to defeat any Shia advance. That was good for the morale of Saudis troops who knew that strategy gave them an edge and greatly reduced potential Saudi casualties. The Shia rebels did the same calculation and have not attempted a major ground advance into Saudi Arabia. There have been some small night raids, apparently all or mostly by Shia and apparently none of these have succeeded. The Saudi troops have night vision equipment, so as long as those on duty at night stay awake the Shia raids will continue to fail. The Saudis are using these advantages (which include attack and transport helicopters, better communications and modern MLRS rocket systems) to build confidence among their ground troops and provide practical combat experience without risking any more embarrassing defeats. So far this is working.

In addition to lots of smart bombs many members of the coalition are also shipping in food, fuel and other aid (especially medical). This is critical because the long-term poverty and the disruptions since 2011 have caused most (80 percent, about 20 million) Yemenis to increasingly unable to obtain basics like food, water and fuel. About five million are in really bad shape when it comes to food and water. That number is growing as the air campaign and Shia occupation of Sunni areas continues.

June 13, 2015: Saudi Arabia denied bombing ancient ruins in Sanaa and blame the Shia rebels for the recent explosion there. The Saudis accuse the Shia of hiding ammo and weapons among the ancient ruins in order to protect them from attack and that some of the poorly stored ammunition went off because of the unseasonable intense heat recently.

June 12, 2015: Mortar shells fired from Yemen hit a Mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing one Saudi and wounding another. There was some damage to the mosque.

June 10, 2015: In the southeast (Hadramawt province) an American UAV missile attacked killed three AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) officials near the port city of Mukalla. A similar attack a month ago killed three AQAP members.

June 6, 2015: Shia rebels launched one of their SCUD ballistics against a major Saudi Arabian air base. But the Saudis had quietly moved at least one of their Patriot missile batteries south and two Patriot missiles were launched and the SCUD missile was destroyed before it could hit anything. The Saudis had implied that their air campaign had destroyed all of the SCUDs Yemen was believed to have. SCUDs (almost all bought from North Korea) have been in Yemen since the late 1980s. But as recently as 2002 there were only about twenty of them. Since then Yemen has obtained more and was believed to have (in 2014) six mobile launchers and about 30 missiles. At least one missile and one launcher survived the bombing campaign. The Yemeni SCUDs are believed to be older models with a max range of 300 kilometers. This means these missiles cannot reach the Saudi capital or the major oil fields. Most of the armed forces remained loyal to former president Saleh, who took good care of the military and that was one reason Saleh rule lasted for three decades. So now the Shia rebels can deploy artillery on the Saudi border, although they have to be careful of Saudi airpower and artillery shooting back.

June 4, 2015: For the first time Saudi Arabia publicly admitted that it had been secretly meeting with Israel. The Saudis explained that this was because both Israel and Saudi Arabia had mutual concerns about Iran and nothing more than that. Most Arabs know better and these meetings have been no secret even if their existence was denied officially. For a long time Arabs could not speak out in support of Israel (or even cooperation with Israel against common enemies). That has been changing since the 1990s. Cooperation against common foes (mainly Islamic terrorism and Iran) has grown since its modest beginnings in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia has always been the major supporter of greater, and open, cooperation with Israel, but never on an official level. It has long been an open secret that this relationship existed, has existed for decades and continues to be useful for both Arabs and Israelis. Israel has long urged their secret Arab allies to go public about these relationships but because of decades of anti-Israel propaganda most Arabs believed their people would violently protest against any Arab government that admitted the truth of the Arab-Israel relationship. Then again Arab leaders may simply be paying attention to opinion polls. A recent one showed that 54 percent of Saudis saw Iran as their principal foe, followed by 22 percent for ISIL and only 18 percent for Israel (long in first place).

Some Arab leaders have spoken out in favor of Israel, but usually generated more death threats for themselves and approval from other Arab leaders. Yet there was always progress, however slow, towards openness about the Arab-Israeli cooperation. This could be seen with the Arab battles with ISIL and Iran. Israel made itself useful in both areas, including the recent Saudi intervention in the Yemeni civil war. Despite all this cooperation no Arab government has yet dared to contradict the popular myth that ISIL was the creation of the U.S. and Israel. What has been denied is that that somehow Israel is secretly allied with Iran against the Arabs. Israeli cooperation with the Iranian monarchy (before the Islamic revolution of 1979) was long offered as proof. For these Arab fantasies there is always some kind of proof. But eventually the fantasies crumble and today another one was reduced to dust. .................

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/ne...in-mexico-and-all-others-have-splintered-top/

Only two drug cartels left in Mexico and all others have splintered, top official says

Published June 12, 2015
Fox News Latino

It’s been over eight years since former Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared an offensive on the country’s drug trafficking organizations that left over an estimated 100,000 people dead on both sides.

In the coinciding years, a slew of drug cartels have risen to prominence to fill power vacuums left following the death or capture of their counterparts. But now, according to a high-ranking Mexican official, there are two cartels operating in the country: the stalwart Sinaloa cartel and the newer Jalisco-New Generation cartel.

Tomás Zerón, the director of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) within Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR), said in an interview with Mexican newspaper Proceso that these two crime groups are the only two "operating and functioning" in Mexico, as the death and capture of other high-ranking cartel figures have severely splinted or completely disintegrated various other drug-trafficking organizations.

While the Sinaloa cartel has not been immune to attacks from the Mexican government – Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the most wanted drug trafficker in the world, was arrested in 2014 – the cartel has maintained a more organized, almost corporate structure that has kept it running even as one or another of its leaders is either arrested or killed.

The Jalisco-New Generation cartel is one of the new breeds of organized crime groups cropping up across Mexico in the wake of the government's war against the old guard of cartels – the Zetas, the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, to name the largest. New Generation, which formed in 2010 following the splintering of the Milenio Cartel, was first established with the express purpose of countering the Zetas, Now, it has begun targeting Mexican security forces and many observers say that this dicey tactic could lead to its quick demise.

"This is not a smart tactic," Christopher Wilson, the deputy director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, told Fox News Latino. "It’s a hallmark of a quick burner. In Jalisco, this is not a place where you push the military and they will just roll over."

Zerón added that only three major cartel bosses now remain in Mexico, and two of them – Ismael Zambada, alias "El Mayo," and Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, alias "Chapo Isidro" – are leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. The third, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," leads the Jalisco-New Generation cartel.

In the interview, the director also warns that despite the fact that there are allegedly only two major cartels operating in Mexico now, there are various other splinter groups that have cropped in the wake of the demise of groups such as Gulf, Juárez, Tijuana, Knights Templar, and the Beltrán Leyva organization.

"Dismantling them was a necessary step, but that does not end the problem of insecurity," said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "The next part is more complicated. There are still small groups, remnants, which will be extorting, robbing and perhaps even producing methamphetamine."

The breakdown of the big groups has in turn led to a diversification of revenue sources for these small groups – from human trafficking to extortion – as well as a spike in violent crime as they battle with each other for control of small markets and turf.

"These are cells that are trying to seek power for survival, and that’s why right now we are seeing the homicides among them," Zerón said.

Also, despite the arrests and breakdown of cartels, little has stopped the flow of drugs into the U.S. Seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border have fluctuated since 2010, when 2.7 million pounds were seized overall, to a high of 3.1 million in 2011 and down to 2.3 million pounds in 2014, according to U.S. government figures, the only way to estimate flows of drugs.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/06/china-pakistan-cpec-agreement-complicates-geopolitics/

China, Pakistan CPEC Agreement Complicates Geopolitics

Posted By: Christopher Morris
Posted date: June 14, 2015 09:23:31 AM

As the diplomatic relationship between China and the United States continues to evolve, the East Asian nation also has reason to cosy up to Pakistan. In recent months, the government of Pakistan have made certain decisions which have inevitably led to the country being drawn further into China's geopolitical attention.

China-Pakistan CPEC Agreement

Traditionally, China and Pakistan have had a relatively profitable relationship. For over half a century, diplomatic relations between the two countries were pretty warm and friendly. However, the recent unveiling of the 2,900 km China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) during a visit to Pakistan by Chinese President Xi Jinping has had a significantly positive influence over the relationship.

The project in question is worth $46 billion, and involved as part of its remit is the construction of roads, railroads and power plants. This is an extremely broad-based infrastructure project, which will take 15 years to complete. Although this was a particularly significant landmark in Pakistan-China relations, it can also be seen in the wider context of numerous other agreements in the fields of military, energy and infrastructure in particular.

CPEC is one of numerous bilateral agreements being initiated in the world at the moment which is of geostrategic importance. CPEC is also buttressed by some earlier agreements between the two nations, ensuring that its qualitative importance is increased. In April of this year, China was granted operation rights to the port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean, in a strategically important location of the heart of the Persian Gulf. In exchange for this privilege, Beijing is later expected by analysts to invest over $1.5 billion in the region.

CPEC to offer China economic benefits

Gwadar will be the point at which the CPEC project begins, and winds its way down to Kashgar in Western China. This will be extremely beneficial for the oil requirements of China, as once the CPEC project is operational and the port comes into the auspices of the East Asian country, it will be able to transport a significant amount of oil through the port. Naturally this will help meet the energy requirements of the world's most populous nation, but it will also serve the vital purpose of saving billions of dollars, not to mention precious time and manpower. It has also been noted by observers of the region that China will now be able to circumnavigate the potentially vulnerable Malacca Strait.

In short, Gwadar will rapidly play an extremely important role in China's land and maritime operation, with the East Asian nation also expected to utilize it for silk exportation and importation. This new network will link China to central Asia and beyond, and will become of critical economic importance to the rapidly industrializing nation.

Another vital aspect of the CPEC project to note is that although Gwadar is being constructed as a commercial port, in the future it could be possible to develop it into a naval facility. This would unquestionably lead to maritime competition in the Indian Ocean.

CPEC complicates China-India relations

Although China has been an obvious beneficiary of this agreement, it is pretty obvious that Pakistan would not enter into it without gaining something in return. Thus, another rather less publicized aspect of this CPEC arrangement has been the Asian subcontinental nation’s purchase of eight diesel-powered attack submarines. Although this conjures up images of nuclear weapons, it is important to emphasize that these are conventionally harmed, but it nonetheless represents Pakistan upping the ante of its military provisions.

Once Pakistan has purchased these submarines, then serious complications would result in any attempt of India to blockade Karachi or Gwadar. The sale would further cement China as Pakistan’s principal arms provider, and complicate its relationship with the Asian subcontinent.

The immediate economic benefits for China are obvious; Pakistan is already the destination of 60 percent of Chinese arms sales. But the obvious tension between India and Pakistan, and the fact that China had previously forged a favorable relationship with China, will complicate the diplomatic position of this nation of over one-billion people.

China has been happy to welcome India into the BRICS grouping of nations, but it may be increasingly indifferent about the prospects of India considering its recent economic malaise. China quite obviously benefits from a close and bilateral relationship with Russia, but with India desperately struggling against its huge economic, demographic and infrastructure issues, it could be that China now views this relationship as less beneficial than it once was.

The geopolitical implications of CPEC

Meanwhile, China's interest in deepening involvement with Pakistan is neither new nor particularly difficult to understand. With the United States having ended official military operations in Afghanistan in 2015, its interest in the region has declined somewhat, and China has effectively stepped into the vacuum created by America's diminishing interest in Pakistan and the Asian subcontinent.

Thus, the East Asian nation has increased its long-term economic and strategic interest in Pakistan with the aim of strengthening its position in the world. In accordance with this overall strategy, China's political leaders have been prepared to invest in Pakistani infrastructure, a decision which has obviously met with approval in the country that has struggled with economic and terrorism-related issues in recent years. The question which would obviously arise for policymakers in Washington is how this project will affect American interests in the region.

The completion of this CPEC project would also enable China to link up with its significant economic and oil interests in neighboring Afghanistan. It is thus of interest that the former Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai, has recently explicitly warned China and Russia of dangers emanating from ISIS involvement in Afghanistan. It could be that China is moving to cement its interest in the region at the moment with the CPEC project, while one can also see Afghanistan being a significant theater of conflict in the future between the Anglo-American old word order and the new BRIC-based superpowers.

Thus, the CPEC project may not be particularly common knowledge in the Western world at the moment, but it will almost inevitably play a role in a wide variety of geopolitical issues that will play out on the world stage in the coming years.

 

[mzkitty]

6m
Poland, Lithuania discussing plans to harbor US army equipment - @RT_com

http://rt.com/news/267106-us-poland-weapons-deployment/

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150614/as--hong_kong-democracy-1f255e6f7e.html

Thousands rally as Hong Kong braces for democracy showdown

Jun 14, 8:15 AM (ET)
By KELVIN CHAN

(AP) People march in a downtown street to support for a veto of the government{2019}s...
Full Image

HONG KONG (AP) — Thousands of people, many holding yellow umbrellas, marched in Hong Kong on Sunday to urge lawmakers to vote down Beijing-backed election reforms that sparked huge street protests last year, although the turnout was lower than organizers had expected.

With a crucial vote on the southern Chinese financial hub's political future days away, pro-democracy supporters marched to city government headquarters to rally support for a veto of the government's electoral reform package.

At issue is how Hong Kongers will choose their top leader, who's currently hand-picked by a panel of Beijing-friendly elites. Under the reforms to be put before lawmakers starting Wednesday, the government proposal would allow direct elections for the first time but also require screening of candidates by the panel.

Pro-democracy activists — who caught the world's attention last autumn by occupying parts of the city for 11 weeks to demand greater electoral freedom, turning umbrellas and the color yellow into symbols of their movement — have blasted the proposals as "sham democracy" and called for genuine universal suffrage.

(AP) A protester wears a T-shirt with slogan during a rally as people march in a downtown...
Full Image

The organizers of the protest, including the Civil Human Rights Front, student groups and pro-democracy political parties, estimated that 3,500 people took part, far less than the 50,000 expected. Police said 3,140 joined.

People marching in the blazing afternoon heat chanted "I want genuine democracy" and "Veto fake universal suffrage." A large yellow banner mounted on a truck read "The citizens against pseudo-universal suffrage campaign."

"I hope that they will bring out another proposal that can be accepted by Hong Kong people," said Louis Cheung, a 54-year-old writer. "It's impossible to have an election without the Hong Kong public's opinion and say Hong Kong has universal suffrage. This is impossible to accept."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Friday that the proposal was "in line with Hong Kong's current circumstances, taking into account the interests of and appeals from different social groups and sectors in Hong Kong."

Authorities had been bracing for renewed tensions, fearing that protesters would again try to occupy roads, though organizers have ruled out such action. On Saturday, police removed objects such as bricks and metal bars from protesters' tents outside the government complex.

Last year's student-led protest movement caught the world's attention with its mostly peaceful street demonstrations. Protesters said China was reneging on a promise that the city's top leader would be chosen through "universal suffrage" agreed when Communist leaders negotiated the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain.

---

Associated Press writer Louise Watt in Beijing contributed to this report.

 

[Housecarl]

Well this is getting "interesting" real fast.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL5N0Z00AN20150614

UPDATE 2-South African court orders indicted Sudanese leader not to leave
Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:22pm GMT

* Bashir attends AU summit in South Africa
* ICC calls for his arrest for war crimes
* Arrest unlikely as South Africa gives leaders immunity (Adds confirmation of Bashir's arrival at AU Summit, ICC source)

By Ed Cropley

JOHANNESBURG, June 14 (Reuters) - A South African court issued an interim order on Sunday preventing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir leaving the country, where he was attending an African Union summit, until the judge hears an application calling for his arrest.

Bashir is accused in an International Criminal Court arrest warrant of war crimes and crimes against humanity over atrocities in the Darfur conflict.

Judge Hans Fabricuis said if Bashir was allowed to leave the country it would damage South Africa's reputation, according to local media. The court hearing is due to resume at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).

"We are all happy to be here. There's no problem," a Sudanese official told Reuters at the summit, where Bashir was earlier seen arriving.

The ICC has called on South African authorities to arrest Bashir. A statement issued by the court in The Hague asked Pretoria "to spare no effort in ensuring the execution of the arrest warrants".

It said the court's members had "deep concern" about the negative consequences if a member state failed to assist in detaining Bashir, who was indicted more than a decade ago.

But an arrest in South Africa appears unlikely because President Jacob Zuma's government has given immunity to any leader or delegate attending the AU summit.

"He (Bashir) would be a fool if he had not sought guarantees he would not be transferred before leaving for South Africa," one ICC official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

A foreign ministry spokesman in South Africa, which is an ICC signatory and therefore obliged to exercise arrest warrants from the Netherlands-based court, did not respond to requests for comment. (Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Catherine Evans)

© Thomson Reuters 2015 All rights reserved

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150615/af--south_africa-sudan_president-533a2d3715.html

South African court puts restrictions on Sudan's president

Jun 14, 10:32 PM (ET)
By LYNSEY CHUTEL

(AP) Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, right, stands with...
Full Image

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African judge on Sunday ordered authorities to prevent Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was in South Africa for an African Union summit, from leaving the country because of an international order for his arrest.

Sudanese officials, however, said al-Bashir had been assured by the South African government that he would be welcome during his visit.

Al-Bashir appeared for a group photo with other African leaders at the summit in Johannesburg on Sunday, wearing a blue three-piece suit, a tie and a smile as cameras flashed. The conference was scheduled to end Monday.

Rabie Abdel-Attie, a senior member of al-Bashir's National Congress Party, said in Khartoum that al-Bashir will stay at the meeting "until it ends."

(AP) In this Monday, Jan. 6, 2014 file photo, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir...
Full Image

South African Judge Hans Fabricius instructed authorities to prevent al-Bashir from leaving the country because he is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

He said border officials should enforce his decision pending a hearing on whether al-Bashir should be arrested, according to Caroline James, a lawyer with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre rights group. A court is expected to rule on Monday if al-Bashir should be handed over to the International Criminal Court to face charges of alleged genocide and human rights abuses.

Kamal Ismail, the Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, told reporters in Khartoum that al-Bashir had received assurances from the South African government prior to his visit that he would be welcome and was expected to return to Sudan on schedule.

He said the court order seeking to prevent al-Bashir from leaving South Africa "has nothing to do with the reality on the ground there," adding that "until now things are normal and there is no threat to the life of the president of the republic."

The African National Congress, South Africa's ruling party, said the South African government granted immunity "for all (summit) participants as part of the international norms for countries hosting such gathering of the AU or even the United Nations."

(AP) Ethiopian President, Hailemariam Desalegn, center, arrives at the Waterkloof Air...
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The party urged the government to challenge the court order, saying African and Eastern European countries "continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC."

Even before Sunday's events, the African Union had asked the ICC to stop proceedings against sitting presidents and said it will not compel any member states to arrest a leader on behalf of the court.

Al-Bashir has traveled abroad before and local authorities had not detained him at the behest of the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said South Africa is under a legal obligation to arrest al-Bashir and surrender him to the court. Her office has been in touch with South African authorities on the Sudanese president's reported visit.

If al-Bashir is not arrested, the matter will be reported to the court's assembly of states and the United Nations Security Council, which first referred the case of Sudan's Darfur region to the International Criminal Court in 2005, she said.

(AP) Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, centre right, arrives at the Waterkloof Air...
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The U.S. State Department called on the "Government of South Africa to support the international community's efforts to provide justice for the victims of these heinous crimes," in a statement issued Sunday night.

The charges against al-Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, stem from reported atrocities in the conflict in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in a government campaign, according to United Nations figures.

He has visited Malawi, Kenya, Chad and Congo in the last few years, all of which are International Criminal Court member states. The court doesn't have any powers to compel countries to arrest him and can only tell them they have a legal obligation to do it.

In March, the International Criminal Court halted proceedings against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta after the prosecution said it did not have enough evidence against him. Kenyatta, who is attending the summit, was charged in 2011 as an "indirect co-perpetrator" in postelection violence that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2007 and 2008. He always maintained his innocence.

Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto is on trial for crimes against humanity in the election-related violence.

---

Associated Press writer Mohamed Osman contributed to this report from Khartoum, Sudan.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korean-teen-soldier-defects-south-korea-across-dmz-n375381

News
Jun 15 2015, 1:53 am ET

North Korean Teen Soldier Defects to South Korea Across DMZ

by Reuters

SEOUL - A teenaged North Korean soldier walked across the world's most heavily militarized border on Monday in a bid to defect to South Korea, South Korean Defense Ministry officials said.

While there are more than a thousand defections from North Korea to South Korea every year, most defectors come via China and it is rare for a North Korean to cross the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The last such crossing was in 2012.

The soldier approached a remote South Korean guard post in Gangwon province's Hwacheon county, in the central area of the peninsula, at about 8 a.m. on Monday, one Defense Ministry official said. There was no exchange of fire or warning shots as the soldier clearly expressed his desire to defect, the official said.

The soldier was being held in custody while officials ran checks.

Stretching across the Korean peninsula, the DMZ is 2.5 miles wide and is fortified with landmines and barbed wire. There are telephones on the South Korean side for defectors from the North to call seeking help. Yonhap News Agency reported that the North Korean military had been laying landmines along parts of the border this year, in an apparent move to prevent defections, citing a South Korean government official.

South Korean's defense ministry declined to confirm the report.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/...ears-loom-large-in-Yemen-attacks#.VX5vkFJ5spo

Saudis’ internal fears loom large in Yemen attacks
Jun 2015 Monday 15th

The Houthi takeover in Yemen poses a challenge to the legitimacy of the Saudi state, argues Richard Steinhardt

WHAT WE are witnessing when we see Saudi Arabia and its allies bomb Yemen and blockade its ports is part of the government of Saudi Arabia’s response to questions made about the legitimacy of the Saudi state itself, questions which intensified during and after the Arab Spring.

The fractious attempt at Houthi nation-building on the Saudi border is anathema to the way Saudi Arabia itself was constructed. Saudi Arabia’s state control and legitimacy comes from the unifying force of Islam and the breaking down of tribal systems of governance.

Saudi attitudes towards the Houthi attempts at gaining autonomy are more clearly understood when you understand that national boundaries between the countries seem more permeable to the Saudis and Yemenis themselves than they do to outsiders.

The question of Shia versus Sunni is not relevant here and nor is the participation of Iran an important factor. Zaidi Shia has little in conmen with the Iranian strand of Ithna Ashariyyah. Zaidi Shia jurisprudence even institutes elements of Sunni jurisprudence.

The story of Iranian involvement in Yemen is a red herring. It is being spun, post facto, to provide additional justification for the attacks. The al-Yami tribe is Shia too. It is the dominant tribe along the Saudi border with Yemen to the west. And yet the al-Yamis are firmly within Saudi Arabia.

In all of this, al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula, with its 50 to 300 estimated members, is just a ruthless bystander. They are mere guns for hire to the warring tribes in Yemen — loose cannons.

The main criticisms of secular and religious alike is that the Saudi state is incompetent, corrupt, anachronistic and incapable of either governing effectively internally or playing the role of a regional power and defending the two holy mosques (Mecca and Medina) from potential aggressors.

King Abdullah tried to address this problem of legitimacy incrementally by boosting measures to combat corruption, and through the Saudi intervention in Bahrain marking the beginning of a shift from the Saudi use of “soft power” — money and influence — to the projection of hard — military — power.

But the best chance to show that the problems were being addressed came with the arrival of new King Salman in January.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly sent 100 warplanes and 150,000 soldiers to support the operation in Yemen. The threatening and unstable condition of Iraq to the north, a hostile Iran in the east and the shifting sands of Egypt to the west meant that Saudi Arabia needed to show its military strength.

The Saudis are using so-called precision munitions, but their show of force has come at a high price for the civilians of Sanaa and North Yemen and for its infrastructure and historic monuments.

In fact, Saudi Arabia has been very generous with North Yemen in the the past and, up until now, its inhabitants have benefited far more from their relationship with Saudi Arabia than from the central government of Yemen, which has provided meagre services to the tribally governed regions in the north.

In addition, the 300,000 Yemenis who live in Saudi Arabia send back £1.3 billion a year. Saudi Arabia has supported Yemen with £2.6bn in aid. When it stops fighting it has offered £170 million in humanitarian aid to offset the damage caused by its bombardment and blockade.

The other challenge to Saudi legitimacy is corruption. Saudis are aware of endemic graft that it stands in the way of a more modern, smoothly functioning nation.

But Saudi Arabia has some characteristics of a populist welfare state. While Saudis pay no taxes they receive government services, in some respects, providing training and education, free healthcare and many other services in addition to subsidised electricity and fuel.

But corruption has undermined even this loose arrangement. This leads citizens to question where the oil money has been spent. A few years ago a Saudi official cracked a private joke: “Why are there so many skyscrapers and magnificent buildings and facilities in Dubai and so few in Saudi Arabia?” he asked. “Because they build above ground while we build below.”

Accusations of corruption make the Saudi state vulnerable to extreme jihadist rhetoric, which might resonate with disenfranchised Saudis.

Currently the show of strength of the Saudi government — the anti-corruption measures it has taken and its military actions — have the support of most Saudis and, despite their qualms or anger about civilian casualties, Saudis are reassured. Unfortunately for the Saudi government, neither action is sufficient to restore legitimacy.

Anti-corruption measures need to bite much deeper and, having made their costly, deadly gesture in Yemen, the Saudis need to step back quickly and negotiate a solution with the Yemeni tribes — a solution that acknowledges the close ties between the countries and North Yemen’s economic dependence of Saudi Arabia.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/in_defense_of_missile_defense.html

June 15, 2015
In Defense of Missile Defense
By Alan W. Dowd

U.S. sailors are arriving in Romania to flip the switch on a new missile-defense facility, the first of two missile-defense sites scheduled to come online in Eastern Europe in the coming years. One might expect advocates of missile defense to see this as good news. However, it comes with an asterisk. Even as missile defense gains support around the world -- and understandably so, given the metastasizing missile threat -- it’s not gaining support where it arguably matters most.

Three decades ago, there were nine countries that fielded ballistic missiles. Today, there are 32. Several of them are unstable (Pakistan and Egypt) or unfriendly (Iran and North Korea) or both (Syria).

Because of the nature of their regimes -- adjectives like paranoid and terrorist come to mind -- North Korea and Iran are the most worrisome of the world’s missile threats. To be sure, other regimes have larger, more lethal arsenals, but those other regimes are relatively rational and stable, which means the old rules of deterrence can keep them at bay. That may not be the case with a nuclear-armed Iran or an unraveling North Korea.

Earlier this year, Beijing estimated that North Korea possesses 20 nuclear warheads -- and could have 40 by 2016. Pentagon brass recently assessed North Korea’s nuclear-capable KN-08 ICBM to be operational. This is a regime that spasmodically tests nuclear weapons and warned in 2013 it was prepared to launch “a preemptive nuclear attack” against the U.S. and South Korea.

The Pentagon reported in 2012 that Iran may be able to flight-test an ICBM by this year. Iran already has launch sites for long-range missiles. But Iran’s missile reach is not limited to land-based assets. In 2004, Pentagon officials confirmed that Iran secretly test-fired a ballistic missile from a cargo ship. This is a regime that is following North Korea’s road map to the nuclear club, that normalizes terrorism into a basic government function, that threatens to wipe neighboring countries off the face of the earth.

But if proliferation gives us reason to worry, two realities offer reason for hope. The first is the record of missile defense in battle and in testing.

In battle, U.S. missile-defense assets intercepted nine inbound Iraqi missiles in the early stages of the Iraq War, shielding the coalition’s headquarters in Kuwait from a decapitation strike. Saudi Patriot batteries recently knocked down missiles fired by Iranian-backed militia in Yemen. Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defense system -- relying on the same basic principles as longer-range missile defense -- intercepted 735 inbound threats and registered a kill rate of nearly 90 percent during the most recent war with Hamas, Aviation Week reports.

In testing, this system of systems has scored successes on 66 of 82 hit-to-kill intercept attempts since 2001 -- an 80-percent success rate. The Aegis sea-based system has achieved 29 successful intercepts in 35 attempts. The ground-based interceptor (which targets inbound threats near their highest point) has hit 9 of 17 intercept attempts. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD, which targets threats near the end of their flight trajectories) has scored a perfect 11 out of 11 in testing.

The second reason for hope is the growing global architecture of missile defenses. The operative word here is “global.” Twenty countries, plus the NATO alliance, are part of the emerging international missile defense (IMD) coalition.

President Bill Clinton signed legislation that paved the way for deployment of a missile-defense system, reflecting the emergence of a national consensus on the issue. Thanks to that consensus, President George W. Bush was able to begin deploying a layered system of missile defenses, including ground-based interceptors, a chain-link fence of radars spanning the globe, sea-based Aegis interceptors and theater-wide defenses. By 2008, NATO had endorsed U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Eastern Europe, including Bush’s proposal for permanent ground-based interceptors in Poland and IMD radars in the Czech Republic.

With a wary eye on North Korea, Japan deploys Aegis warships and hosts IMD radars. South Korea fields Patriot batteries and Aegis warships, and is edging toward purchasing a THAAD system.

Israel and the U.S. have collaborated on development of missile defenses for decades. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the United States agreed in May to “a region-wide ballistic missile defense capability,” with Washington promising technical assistance. The UAE recently became the first foreign government to purchase a THAAD battery.

However, the IMD system’s technical successes and global advances have occurred in spite of -- rather than because of -- President Barack Obama’s policies.

Unlike Clinton and Bush, Obama seems to view missile defense not as a new tool in the arsenal, but as a bargaining chip. To mollify Moscow, Obama unilaterally scrapped the Bush administration’s missile-defense plans for NATO. Instead of planting permanent ground-based interceptors in Poland and IMD radars in the Czech Republic, Obama opted for missile-defense warships in the Mediterranean and a scaled-back, land-based variant of the Aegis system, dubbed “Aegis Ashore.” Obama’s missile-defense reversal gained nothing from Moscow and fractured relations within NATO. The Czech Republic rejected Obama’s plans as “a consolation prize.” A Polish defense official called Obama’s retreat “catastrophic.”

The Obama administration’s initial budget cut overall missile-defense spending by 16 percent. The president shelved the airborne laser and ultimately reneged on his own watered-down plans for Eastern Europe. The administration’s 2013 budget proposal hacked another $810 million from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), cut spending on ground-based missile defense by 22 percent, reduced the number of warships to be retrofitted with missile-defense capabilities and capped the number of U.S. ground-based interceptors at 30 instead of the planned 44. (When Pyongyang started rattling nuclear sabers in 2013, the administration scrambled to deploy those extra 14 interceptors in Alaska and California -- interceptors that would have been operational if Obama had simply followed the bipartisan plans put in place before his presidency.) All told, missile-defense funding has been slashed from $9 billion per year to $7.8 billion per year under Obama.

Those cuts have consequences. The Navy deploys 33 ships equipped with Aegis missile defenses. By the end of 2016, the Navy will need 77 Aegis ships to meet combatant commanders’ requests. MDA has nowhere near the resources to meet that.

None of this should come as a surprise. During his 2008 campaign, Obama vowed, “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” His staff made it clear he would support missile defenses only “when the technology is proved to be workable.” Critics of missile defense use words like “workable” and “proven” to set such a high standard that anything less than a 100-percent intercept rate means the system is “unproven” or “unworkable.”

But if (when) an American or allied city is in the crosshairs of an inbound missile, who would prefer a 0-percent chance of intercepting the killer rocket -- something guaranteed by not fully funding, not testing and not deploying a missile shield -- over an 80-percent or even 50-percent chance?
Alan W. Dowd is a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute Center for America’s Purpose.


Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

 

[Lilbitsnana]

News_Executive ‏@News_Executive 24m24 minutes ago

Breaking: A North Korean soldier has crossed the demilitarised zone and defected to South #Korea.


Jose Reinoso EL PAÍS ‏@josereinosot 30m30 minutes ago

#NorthKorea soldier defects across land border https://sg.news.yahoo.com/n-korea-soldier-defects-across-land-border-042657574.html …


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N. Korea soldier defects across land border
AFP NewsAFP News – 2 hours 56 minutes ago
Related Content

A North Korean soldier has crossed the border with South Korea in a rare defection through the heavily fortified frontier, military officials sayView Photo

A North Korean soldier has crossed the border with South Korea in a rare defection …

A North Korean soldier crossed the border with South Korea Monday in a rare defection through the heavily fortified frontier, military officials said.

The soldier, reportedly in his late teens, surrendered himself to South Korean border guards after walking across the border in Hwacheon northeast of Seoul, the South's defence ministry said.

He was under investigation by the authorities, and the ministry promised to disclose details later.

Hundreds of North Koreans flee their isolated homeland each year but it is rare for defectors to cross the land border, marked by barbed wire and guarded by tens of thousands of troops on both sides.

In August last year, two North Koreans swam across the Yellow Sea border to a South Korean frontline island.

Most North Koreans who flee repression and poverty at home cross the porous frontier with China first before travelling to a Southeast Asian nation and eventually arriving in the South.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/n-korea-soldier-defects-across-land-border-042657574.html

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/15/us-yemen-security-idUSKBN0OV0JR20150615

World | Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:46am EDT
Related: World, United Nations, Yemen

Saudi planes strike Yemen's capital ahead of talks

SANAA

Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition bombarded Yemen's capital Sanaa overnight, a Reuters witness said, as the country's warring factions prepared for talks due to start in Geneva on Monday.

Air strikes caused large explosions before dawn and hit locations south and west of the city as part of the coalition's nearly 12-week campaign to target the Houthi militia and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The talks hosted by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are aimed at finding a political solution to the fighting that has caused thousands of deaths in Yemen, but it was not clear if the opposing factions would meet each other.
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Delegates will instead meet initially in separate rooms for talks with U.N. officials, who will try to bring them closer together with the ultimate aim of getting them around the same table.

There is little sign so far that either the Iran-allied Houthis and Saleh, or the Riyadh-based President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are ready to compromise after fighting that has resulted in stalemate since Saudi strikes began on March 26.

While Western countries largely backed Riyadh's air campaign as a way of pushing the Houthis to the negotiating table, they have more recently started to press the kingdom to commence another humanitarian pause to allow aid in, and to negotiate.

An existing humanitarian crisis in Yemen was worsened by an air and sea blockade imposed to stop arms supplies to the Houthis and Saleh, but which also cut off access to food, medicine and fuel for many of the country's citizens.

In recent weeks an "alarming" number of dengue fever and measles cases have also been reported in Yemen, contributing to a public health crisis, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a note late on Sunday.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall, Editing by William Maclean and Andrew Heavens)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/us-kenya-attack-idUSKBN0OU0D420150614

World | Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:02pm EDT
Related: World, Africa

Somali Islamists attack Kenya military base, 11 militants, two soldiers dead

MOMBASA, Kenya | By Joseph Akwiri

Eleven Somali al Shabaab militants and two Kenyan soldiers were killed when the al Qaeda-linked fighters attacked a military base on Kenya's northern coast near to the Somali border on Sunday, a local official and a military spokesman said.

The militants carried out the early morning raid on the military base near the town of Baure in Lamu County, said Lamu's deputy county commissioner, Joseph Rotich.

Militants also stormed Mangai village where they forced men out of their houses and took them to a local mosque where they led prayers for an hour before they disappeared.

"The militants tried to force entry into the camp and that's when the battle ensued," David Obonyo, a Kenyan military spokesman said, adding that Kenyan forces were searching for militants who were believed to have fled into a nearby forest.

Obonyo said the military had seized weapons including 13 AK-47 rifles, five rocket-propelled grenades and eight grenades.
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Al Shabaab confirmed the attack in a statement and claimed its militants had "killed many Kenyan soldiers." Al Shabaab often cites higher death tolls or casualty figures than numbers given by officials.

Kenya is preparing to mark the anniversary of two attacks in the town of Mpeketoni, also in Lamu County, in which militants killed at least 60 people a year ago.

Although Mpeketoni is inland from Kenya's Indian Ocean coastline, the attacks froze the tourism industry in Lamu, which had been popular with tourists from Europe and North America.

Al Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow the Western-backed Somali government and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law, has frequently targeted neighbouring Kenya in recent years, saying it is retaliating for Kenya's participation in an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

In April, al Shabaab militants raided a university in the northern Kenyan city of Garissa, killing nearly 150 students, and in September 2013 militants killed at least 67 people in an attack on Nairobi's upmarket Westgate mall.

(Editing by Edith Honan and Gareth Jones)

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/12...a-can-build-a-bomb-any-damn-time-it-wants-to/

Sorry, Fareed: Saudi Arabia Can Build a Bomb Any Damn Time It Wants To

Why do we think it’s so hard for a non-European country to acquire a 70-year-old technology?

By Jeffrey Lewis
June 12, 2015

Fareed Zakaria has written a predictably buzzy article suggesting that, whatever Saudi officials might say, Riyadh is simply too backward to build a nuclear weapon. “Whatever happens with Iran’s nuclear program,” Zakaria writes, “10 years from now Saudi Arabia won’t have nuclear weapons. Because it can’t.”

While I don’t think it is terribly likely that Saudi Arabia will choose to build nuclear weapons, I think it is deeply misguided to conclude that Saudi Arabia (or pretty much any state) cannot do so. Simply put, Zakaria is wrong — and it’s not all that hard to demonstrate why.

Zakaria isn’t explicit about what he believes to be the technical requirements for building a nuclear weapon, but he clearly thinks it is hard. Which was probably true in 1945 when the United States demonstrated two different routes to atomic weapons. Since then, however, the technologies associated with producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium have been developed, put to civilian use, and spread around the globe. The fact that most states don’t build nuclear weapons has a lot more to do with restraint than not being able to figure it out.

Zakaria’s argument that Saudi Arabia can’t build nuclear weapons is pretty shallow and relies largely on two assertions: a flip comment about Saudi Arabia lacking even a domestic automotive industry, and a superficially data-driven claim about Saudi Arabia’s “abysmal” math and science ranking.

First, automobile production is a terrible indicator of whether a state can build a nuclear weapon. The technologies are really not at all similar — or at least they don’t have to be. India, Pakistan, and North Korea all succeeded in building nuclear weapons despite not having much of an auto industry at home. And the Soviets were really good at building nuclear weapons, even though their cars famously sucked.

And, anyway, Saudi Arabia is investing in a domestic auto industry. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry is hoping the Meeya will be on the market by 2017. So, there’s that.

More importantly, Saudi Arabia is investing in a civil nuclear industry. “Where would Saudi Arabia train the scientists to work on its secret program?” Zakaria wonders. Oh, I don’t know, how about the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy? Somehow Zakaria never mentions that Saudi Arabia is building a dedicated city for training nuclear scientists. I can’t predict whether this investment will pay off, but then again neither can Zakaria — if he even knows it exists.

Zakaria is also skeptical because, he writes, Saudi Arabia “ranks 73rd in the quality of its math and science education, according to the World Economic Forum — abysmally low for a rich country. Iran, despite 36 years of sanctions and a much lower per capita GDP, fares far better at 44.”

Abysmally low for a rich country? Perhaps. But for a nuclear weapons state? Not nearly. Let’s do what he should have done and make a little table using his own data. Here is a list of selected countries — in bold if they currently possess nuclear weapons — by “Quality of Math and Science Education.” (Again, this is his data. Don’t blame me!)

17. France
44. Iran
51. United States
56. China
59. Russia
63. United Kingdom
67. India
73. Saudi Arabia
79. Israel
104. Pakistan
125. Libya
144. South Africa
— Iraq
— North Korea

Select Countries, Ranked by Quality of Math and Science Education

(Source: World Economic Forum)

Using Zakaria’s own measure, Saudi Arabia would hardly be the least nerdy country to acquire a nuclear weapon. Now, obviously I’d prefer to have historical data. But I strongly suspect that China’s and India’s rankings weren’t nearly so high in 1964 and 1974 when they conducted their first nuclear tests. The point is this: You don’t need to be a rich country, or have a great education system, to build a bomb.

This should be no surprise. Did I mention that we just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear explosion, Trinity? Seventy years. What other 70-year-old technology do we believe remains impossible for non-European countries to acquire, even after several have done so? You know what else was invented in the 1940s? Microwave ovens, solid-body electric guitars, and the Slinky.

I don’t mean “acquire” in terms of buying a nuclear weapon off the shelf — I agree with Zakaria that is a nutty idea. And I don’t mean purchasing a turn-key infrastructure to produce plutonium, as Syria did from North Korea, or highly enriched uranium as Libya did from Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan. No, I mean building a bomb from scratch. The fancy machine tools, materials, and components that were good enough to build the nuclear weapons of the 1970s are widely available now. My favorite example is that one of the machine tools linked to the A.Q. Khan network was a used Denn machine tool. If you go to the Denn website, they tell you what their machine tools can be used for: everything from armaments to kitchenware. And, be still Fareed Zakaria’s fluttering heart, auto parts. (Flow forming machines make sweet rims.) Talk about dual use!

The United States was deeply skeptical that Pakistan could build centrifuges in the 1970s because of the country’s limited industrial base. What U.S. analysts didn’t grasp was that Pakistan’s industrial base — and that of every other proliferator — was the entire world. There is no reason to think this problem went away with A.Q. Khan. Take a spin around Alibaba, the big Chinese online B2B procurement site sometime.

Moreover, a proliferator doesn’t have to try to acquire the most modern centrifuges. When U.N. inspectors were stumbling across the remnants of the Iraqi nuclear program in the early 1990s, they made a surprising discovery: Calutrons. These were an obsolete uranium enrichment technology (electromagnetic isotope separation) from the 1940s that fell out of favor after World War II. Inefficient, sure, but good enough to make the highly enriched uranium for the Little Boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Frankly, we’re lucky that nuclear weapons have not spread as quickly as the technology to make them. Some of the success in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons is down to sanctions, export controls, and the occasional air strike. Most of the success, however, goes to the regime that discourages states that could build nuclear weapons from doing so in the first place.

If you ask a policy wonk whether the nonproliferation regime has been successful or not, the chances are better than even that you’ll hear about President John F. Kennedy’s famous warning that “I see the possibility in the 1970s of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.” (It’s kind of a standard talking point we all learn early on.)

That didn’t happen — and credit usually goes to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). To see why, look at the countries that were in Kennedy’s list of 15, 20, or 25 nuclear-armed states. Kennedy’s estimate came from a 1963 briefing paper provided by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that is now declassified. Here is McNamara’s chart:mcnamarachart

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mcnamarachart.png

Look at those names. They aren’t rogue states, but rather a list of the world’s relatively industrialized countries, along with a few developing regional powers like China and the UAR (The United Arab Republic was a brief political union of Egypt and Syria). The working assumption behind Kennedy’s estimate was that any state that could build nuclear weapons probably would. That’s because, before the NPT, nuclear weapons were seen by many people as just another weapon, part of any modern military’s future arsenal. In fact, virtually all the non-Warsaw Pact countries on this list seriously considered a nuclear weapons program. Australia, Sweden, and Switzerland all had active nuclear weapons programs.

The NPT helped changed that. (In the case of Australia, Jim Walsh has written a particularly compelling account of the role played by the NPT in constraining Canberra’s nuclear aspirations.) Treaties are absolutely necessary. It is simply not possible to sustain a nearly universal regime through technology denial and military action. The regime depends on the vast majority of states choosing compliance, allowing the international community to focus its enforcement efforts on a small number of hard cases like North Korea and Iran.

The nonproliferation regime can only function with the support of those states that can build nuclear weapons, but choose not to — states like Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are clearly alarmed by the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon. While I suspect that a lot of the talk about acquiring nuclear weapons is intended to make the United States focus on Saudi security concerns, it doesn’t help to dismiss Riyadh’s anxieties by mocking their educational system and ability to go nuclear.

Rather, we need to focus on making sure the nonproliferation regime works for Saudi Arabia and other states. That means closer consultations on regional defense issues, expanded security arrangements, and crucially an attempt to head off an Iranian bomb with a negotiated settlement. Fareed Zakaria may well win his bet that the Saudis will not have a bomb in 10 years, but it’s not because they can’t have one. If he wins — and I hope he does — it’s because the United States and other powers have successfully addressed Iran’s nuclear program and the regional security issues that would push Riyadh toward a bomb. And who knows, maybe in 10 years we’ll all be driving Meeyas.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/15/libya-usa-idUSKBN0OV05O20150615

India Top News | Mon Jun 15, 2015 3:13am EDT

Libya says 'uncatchable' veteran militant killed in U.S. strike

TRIPOLI/WASHINGTON | By Ahmed Elumami and Peter Cooney

A veteran Islamist militant blamed for a deadly attack on an Algerian gas field and who ran smuggling routes across North Africa has been killed in a U.S. air strike inside Libya, Libya's government said on Sunday.

The recognised government said the strike had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian militant who became a major figure in insurgencies across North Africa and the Saharan border region and was dubbed "The Uncatchable" by the French military.

The U.S. military confirmed Belmokhtar had been targeted in Saturday night's air strike but did not say if he was killed.

The Pentagon was continuing to assess the results of the operation, spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said in a statement.

Libya's internationally recognised government, which sits in the eastern town of Bayda, said the U.S strike had killed Belmokhtar at a gathering with other militant leaders, who it did not name.

Libyan officials gave no further details about the area of the strike. But Libyan military sources said an air strike on a farmhouse on Saturday in Ajdabiya city near Benghazi had killed seven members of the Ansar al Sharia militant group who had been meeting there.

ELUSIVE 'GANGSTER-JIHADIST'

Belmokhtar earned a reputation as one of the most elusive jihadi leaders in the region. He has been reported killed several times, including in 2013 when he was believed to have died in fighting in Mali.

If confirmed, the death of Belmokhtar - who was blamed for orchestrating the 2013 attack on Algeria's In Amenas gas field in which 40 oil workers died, and for several foreign kidnappings - would be a major strike against al Qaeda-tied groups in the region.

Once associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's Algerian leadership, Belmokhtar broke from the group but remained tied to al Qaeda's central leadership even after forming his own group "Those who sign in Blood".

The one-eyed veteran of Afghanistan and Algeria's own 1990s Islamist war had long been a major figure in Saharan smuggling, hostage-taking, arms trafficking and insurgencies, including the conflict in Mali.

Linked to a string of kidnappings of foreigners in North Africa in the past decade, Belmokhtar, who was born in Algeria in 1972, earned a reputation as one of the most important "gangster-jihadists" of the Sahara.

He also gained prominence as a supplier of arms to Islamist groups and as a trafficker of cigarettes, which gained him the nickname "Mister Marlboro" among the local population in the Sahara.

LASER-GUIDED?

Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and Libya's slide into chaos and fighting between two rival governments, the North African state has seen the rise of Islamist militant groups, which have taken advantage of the turmoil.

Some are allied with al Qaeda's leadership, others have local loyalties and some have recently declared allegiance with Islamic State, which has been gaining ground.

Ansar al-Sharia is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States after it was blamed for the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi that led to the death of the American ambassador.

In 2013, U.S. special forces carried out a raid on Tripoli to capture Abu Anas al-Liby - a Libyan suspected in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 civilians.

European states and Libya's North African neighbours have grown alarmed at Islamic State's expansion beyond its strongholds in Iraq and Syria to a chaotic country just across the Mediterranean sea from mainland Europe and with little control over its porous borders.

One Ajdabiya city resident said Saturday night's air strike had appeared to be much more accurate than ones carried out by local forces. The resident said it appeared to be laser-guided.

"It was a really accurate strike," the witness said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli and Peter Cooney in Washington; Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Sandra Maler and John Stonestreet)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/...s-back-to-the-future-of-carrier-based-strike/

From Skywarrior To UCLASS: Back To The Future Of Carrier-Based Strike?

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on June 11, 2015 at 5:21 PM

WASHINGTON: Overstretched as they are, the Navy’s 10 aircraft carriers remain unequalled icons of American might. But the ugly truth is they’re not as mighty as they might be.

The maximum range of carrier-borne strike aircraft has eroded over the last quarter century. Even the Navy’s future fighter, the F-35C, will have an unrefueled range of about 600 nautical miles: That’s one-third the range of the old A-3 Skywarrior, which entered service in 1956. Navy F-18 Hornets striking targets in Afghanistan had to refuel repeatedly from lumbering aerial tankers — but that option is not available in airspace contested by enemy fighters or anti-aircraft missiles.

Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain and the outspoken chairman of the House subcommittee on seapower, Rep. Randy Forbes, want to solve this problem with a long-range drone: the UCLASS, short for Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance & Strike. An unmanned aircraft can fly longer, take greater risks, and boast a smaller radar profile than one burdened with a human pilot. But the Navy has proposed a UCLASS that’s optimized for long-range reconnaissance, with limited capability to penetrate so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses and to strike a well-defended target.

“If my priority is it’s got to get through an A2/AD defense, and I’m building something that couldn’t possibly get through an A2/AD defense, I know from the beginning I’m wrong,” Forbes said this afternoon at the Army and Navy Club here in DC.

“What do we want this thing to do?” Forbes said. “I want it to drop some pretty heavy stuff on some pretty bad people.”

“The thing that bothers me most is that we’ve taken a lot of thoughts off the table,” the congressman continued. The Navy’s proposed requirements insist on at least 14 hours of unrefueled endurance, which is ideal for long reconnaissance patrols. But 14 hours forces trade-offs favoring fuel load at the expense of bomb load and fuel-efficient flight at the expense of stealth. We need to relook those requirements, Forbes said.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense agrees, at least enough for the UCLASS requirements to be repeatedly delayed by reviews led by the powerful Deputy Secretary, Bob Work.

“We’ve had an RFP (Request for Proposals) ready to go for a year and a half, two years now, and it’s been held up because of a look at overall ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] systems,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said last week at the American Enterprise Institute. “One of the reasons we’d like to go ahead and get the RFP out is that we’d like to find out what’s available out there in industry.”

The Navy staff’s director of air warfare, Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, put it more bluntly to reporters last week: “We have lost this time to put that technology to work. That’s where my frustration is.”

Forbes, of course, thinks OSD is just taking the time to get this right. Many dissidents inside the Navy Department agree with him, he said. “The Navy’s very divided on this,” Forbes said, “and there are many people in the Navy that concur with us and think the questions we’re asking are appropriate questions.”

Mabus argues that the technology (and the budget) probably aren’t ready to build a UCLASS that can do the deep-strike mission. “The way I’ve always seen UCLASS is as a bridge between where we are today and a full-up … autonomous strike UAV in contested areas,” he said at AEI.

Forbes has no patience for the “bridge” analogy. . “If you don’t know what that [future] platform’s going to look like, then you basically have a bridge to nowhere,” he said today. “When you ask them, ‘well, where’s the bridge leading? What is that platform going to look like?’…. then all of a sudden the mike goes quiet.”

Forbes and other advocates of a deep-striking UCLASS argue the current carrier air wing is too short-ranged, potentially requiring the valuable flagships to sail so close to their targets that they become vulnerable to shore-landed anti-ship missiles. The irony here is the Navy used to have a long-ranged carrier strike capability. But it gave it away in the 1990s, when it retired the 1,000-mile A-6 Intruder and cancelled its troubled replacement, the A-12.

“The A-3 came online in the early to mid 1950s, and for most of the next fifty years the Navy was able to do long-range deep strike,” said retired Navy captain Jerry Hendrix, who moderated today’s discussion with Rep. Forbes. Most of those old strike aircraft had an unrefueled range of 1,000 to 1,2000 miles, he told me after the event, but the A-3 itself “had a range of 1,800 nautical miles — unrefueled — and could carry a 12,000-pound atomic bomb.”

“If you look at the A-3 Skywarrior….that plane was the reason why we developed the Forrestal-class, the first super-carrier, [in the first place],” said Hendrix, who’s writing a study of carrier air wing evolution at the Center for a New American Security. The 1,000-foot flight deck of a modern carrier was originally designed to give large, long-ranged jet aircraft room to take off. Its massive maintenance spaces and ordnance storage were originally intended to support heavy bombers, not just strike fighters. As anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles get more threatening, it may be time to use the super-carrier for its original purpose again.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/13/w...ary-will-be-smaller-than-it-was-prior-to-911/

When Obama Leaves Office, the Military Will Be Smaller Than It Was Prior to 9/11

James Carafano / @JJCarafano / June 13, 2015 /

A “tiger mom” might go ballistic if her child came home with a “needs improvement” on his kindergarten report card. But most adults wouldn’t panic. They know there is time to get the kid up to standard before the deadline for that Harvard application falls due.

Defending America is different. A sub-par grade for military preparedness ought to be an immediate concern.

Today, despite our multibillion-dollar investment, America’s military is not all that great. That was the finding of a two-year research effort by a team of analysts at The Heritage Foundation.

“The Index of U.S. Military Strength” grades the armed forces. The ranking this year? Marginal.

Heritage is not alone. Every single service chief issued a similar warning this spring, when testifying at the annual readiness hearing before Congress.

For example, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno declared the “Army cannot fulfill its role in the defense strategy” if all cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 are fully implemented.

The other services raise red flags, as well. The Marine Corps, for instance, is running about two-thirds the number of battalions it has historically needed to meet day-to-day operational demands.

Indeed, by the time President Barack Obama leaves office, every branch of the U.S. military will be smaller than it was on 9/11.

Does that make sense? Is the world safer for America today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001?

When the U.S. military lacks the capacity and capabilities to protect all its vital interests, the country is worse off. It is just that simple.

Few dispute that today’s U.S. military is comparatively smaller and less capable to handle the missions assigned to the Pentagon—especially given the variety of active adversaries and competitors. But some argue that this is no big deal.

After all, they say, nobody really wants to fight World War III with the United States.

That’s probably right. But this rejoinder misses the point. Moscow, Tehran and Beijing don’t want to get into a fighting war with the United States.

Even al-Qaida and the Islamic State don’t really want to mess with us. They would actually prefer that the U.S. not repeat the large-scale military interventions mounted against them during the Bush administration.

Yes, everyone would prefer to win without fighting. Sadly, diminishing American military might plays directly into our opponents’ preferences as well as their strategy.

Potential adversaries can add. As U.S. relative power declines, the Pentagon becomes increasingly unable to deal with more than one problem at a time. They know, for example, that if Washington becomes absorbed in a Middle East crisis, it will have less capacity and appetite to intervene elsewhere.

If the U.S. lacks the means to win, then an enemy’s answer is a lot easier: Just demonstrate the ability to make sure America knows wars will be messy. That will convince Washington the best course is to just back off.

As problems grow and the Pentagon loses more capacity to deal with them, decision makers in the U.S. will become increasingly risk-averse.

Adversaries will exploit America’s indecision and reluctance to engage.

This administration has tried to make up for shaving military power by adding a double dose of diplomacy. Their efforts have demonstrated that hard and soft power are not interchangeable.

Adding a diplomatic initiative is no substitute for dumping a division. The Russian reset, for insistence, didn’t deter Russian adventurism in Europe.

Deliberate self-weakening in the face of an aggressive adversary invites aggression. Military and diplomacy work better when they wisely complement each other.

Washington doesn’t need more war-mongering. But it does need a responsibly sized and capable military—one that realistically matches the needs of a global power with global interests. Pairing the right armed forces with the right foreign policy is the best answer.

Originally distributed through McClatchy-Tribune

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-nicaragua-protest-chinese-canal-plan-133001423.html

Thousands in Nicaragua protest Chinese canal plan

AFP
23 hours ago

Managua (AFP) - Thousands of demonstrators gathered Saturday in a central Nicaraguan city to protest the construction of a $50 billion (44 billion euros) canal that will run through their land.

The protesters waved Nicaraguan flags and shouted "No to the canal!". They accused President Daniel Ortega of "selling the country" to China by allowing the waterway's construction.

Chinese firm Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment (HKND) is behind the massive canal project.

Canal opponents, mainly farmers whose land lies on the waterway's planned route, gathered from across the country in the central city of Juigalpa.

Estimates put the number of participants at around 15,000, although authorities were not able to confirm that figure.

HKND received a concession from Ortega in 2013 to build the 280-kilometre (175-mile) canal.

The project was inaugurated in December, but digging will not begin until 2016.

Scheduled for completion in 2019, the canal is expected to displace some 30,000 people, mainly poor farmers and indigenous peoples, but could be a major financial boon for the Central American nation.

HKND is expected to employ 50,000 people over five years of construction. The canal route crosses Lake Nicaragua and runs through rainforest and at least 40 villages.

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[Lilbitsnana]

Lots of threats/searches on planes lately. There was some kind of incident yesterday where they made all passengers get off the plane while the luggage that was left on the plane.


News_Executive ‏@News_Executive 11m11 minutes ago

BREAKING: Delta flight 069 from London being searched at Newark Airport after bomb threat was made



ETA: a snippet on the incident yesterday

News_Executive ‏@News_Executive 20h20 hours ago

BREAKING: Emergency services board Alitalia flight 604 on tarmac at JFK, Helicopter above, all passengers taken off without luggage

News_Executive ‏@News_Executive

UPDATE: Passengers are now back on the Alitalia 604 from Milan to JFK, plane taxing to the gate now. Unclear the reason why it was searched

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-nuclear-plan-is-working-1434392929

Opinion | Commentary

Putin’s Nuclear Plan Is Working

Washington musters only an intermittently credible response as the Kremlin tries to undermine NATO.

By John Vinocur
June 15, 2015 2:28 p.m. ET
1 COMMENTS

A Russian academic, often a disseminator of Vladimir Putin’s designs for the future, offered up a message of nuclear provocation and intimidation concerning the West for a small group of European security-affairs specialists gathered at a Paris think tank last week.

“We now have the nuclear capacity to confront NATO in Europe,” the Russian emissary said, according to an event participant. Here was a Russian insider’s description of Moscow’s intention to be a meaner, harsher problem beyond the dimensions of the confrontation in Ukraine.

The Russian nuclear boast was not new. But the timing—two days after the U.S. repeated its unheeded complaint that Russia has tested a cruise-type missile banned by a joint arms-control agreement—gave an in-your-face sense to Moscow’s contention that it now has the nukes to neuter the superiority the U.S. and NATO still enjoy in conventional forces. This fits a portrayal of Mr. Putin by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as someone looking “for opportunities to discredit and undermine the Alliance.”

Next week, NATO defense ministers will meet to discuss what a Brussels diplomat called “the Russian nuclear posture.” That means the U.S. and its allies are searching for a riposte to an aggrandizing Russia whose strategy provides for regional conflicts using nuclear weapons alongside “little green men”—Russian troops that Moscow claims aren’t really Russian soldiers—and conventional forces.

For the nostalgic Mr. Putin, disabling NATO is a priority with promising precedents. In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union nearly succeeded in turning allies’ fears of basing U.S. atomic weapons into an Allied fold on countering existing Soviet SS-20 missiles with U.S. cruises and Pershings. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic coalition fell in 1982 over his party’s resistance to their deployment. Soviet money and influence coursed through the antimissile movement.

Now Allied debate about possible U.S. nuclear updates offers the Russians a new occasion for rage and subversion. The updates, according to European sources, could involve the U.S. modernizing existing nukes, increasing its defensive capacities or even stationing new nuclear weapons in Europe. The Russians have every reason to relish recurrent indications of Europe’s indecision and dissention.

A poll released last week reports public opinion in Germany, France and Italy opposes defending NATO border-states coming under Russian attack. German was the least-eager ally. These attitudes project a NATO whose foundations—shared risk and the Article 5 guarantee of defense to any member by all members—are wobbling.

If the Ukrainian experience shows anything, it’s a real Russian capability to spin the notion of a Western military response against Russian aggression into an instant American threat to world peace. As his threats become more visibly nuclear, Mr. Putin will be encouraged by the fact that beyond the sanctions the Kremlin ignores, the Obama administration has skirted any armed response determined enough to give the Russians pause.

Guns for Ukraine are out. A reported U.S plan to station heavy armored vehicles and U.S. troops with front-line NATO members at Russia’s borders looks like a dosed compromise on those countries’ request for the presence of permanent allied bases.

All the same, nuclear-armed France, no admirer of Barack Obama’s handling of Syria or his fade on attacking Bashar Assad, considers the American president’s giving nuclear thought to responding to Russian nuclear-bomber runs and movement of missile launchers as “an engagement beyond what he had planned.”

“It’s very important that the Allies integrate the idea of possible Russian nuclear weapons in regional conflicts,” French officials told me. Still, they saw “no indication” of a new NATO doctrine of containment at hand, and found stationing of new U.S. forces in Europe “improbable.”

Mr. Obama’s tougher talk about Moscow still has the look of a minimalist reworking of a very hesitant approach—although one that he now describes to allies as “standing up to Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

A fundamental problem is that there is no way for a new NATO line on nukes to exist and be compatible with the continuous electoral cold sweats of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. It’s next to impossible for a totally nuclear-averse Germany to effectively play European leader in NATO and the European Union in the face of a Russia turning its nuclear shadow into an everyday menace.

In the end, American credibility on Russia exists only for short periods. For months, the Obama administration had been unconvincingly claiming success in isolating Moscow. Then, five weeks ago, concluding a Russian visit, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke up from the edge of obsequiousness:

“I am particularly grateful and I want to express my appreciation to President Putin for the very significant and serious conversation that he engaged in for the very significant amount of time that he contributed to the discussion. And I express President Obama’s gratitude for Russia’s willingness to engage in this discussion at a time when the exchange of view could not be more important.”

Presto change-o, the U.S. now wants to look semi-tough on Russia again. You may officially exhale.

Mr. Vinocur is former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune.