WAR 07-23-2016-to-07-29-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKCN1062U1

World | Tue Jul 26, 2016 8:03pm EDT
Related: World

Venezuela government aims to sink Maduro recall, opposition protests

CARACAS | By Andrew Cawthorne


Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government sought on Tuesday to scupper a push by the opposition to oust him this year via a referendum, while his opponents called for protests to demand the vote.

As the OPEC nation faces in an unprecedented economic crisis, both sides are in deadlock over a provision in the constitution allowing a recall referendum halfway through the president's six-year term.

Government supporters lodged a complaint at the election board saying the Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition falsified signatures in an initial collection to trigger the process.

"They are committing grave fraud and corruption," senior Socialist Party leader Jorge Rodriguez told reporters outside the election council, saying signatures of nearly 11,000 dead people and 3,000 minors were included.

Maduro, 53, who won election to replace Hugo Chavez in 2013, has vowed there will be no referendum, and the election council has been dragging its feet over the process.

The opposition urged supporters to march towards the council's Caracas headquarters on Wednesday to demand it validate the first round of signatures, 1 percent of registered voters in each state.

"We are waiting for them to speak clearly to the country, to respect Venezuelans and the constitution," opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in a speech at a public event.

"We are in an emergency," he said. "All the prices are rising and the government does nothing. ... To change this situation, there has to be political change."

If the referendum process proceeds, the next stage would be for the opposition to obtain 20 percent, or nearly 4 million signatures, asking for the vote.

In addition to the fraud accusations, the government said there was not enough time to organize a referendum this year because the opposition had waited too long before activating the mechanism. Capriles has said it would be possible to hold it by Oct. 30 or Nov. 6.

The timing is important because if Maduro loses a referendum this year, there would be a new presidential vote - which polls indicate he would likely lose.

If Maduro loses a referendum after January, he would be replaced by his vice president, effectively leaving the Socialist Party in power until the next presidential election scheduled for the end of 2018.

Critics blame failed socialist economic policies for Venezuela's 2-1/2 year recession, the world's highest inflation, product shortages and long lines at shops. Maduro said the fault lies with falling oil prices and an "economic" war by opponents including Washington.


(Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Editing by Eyanir Chinea and Richard Chang)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN1061DK

World | Tue Jul 26, 2016 3:01pm EDT
Related: World

Turkish troops hunt remaining coup plotters as crackdown widens

ISTANBUL/ANKARA | By Daren Butler and Orhan Coskun


Turkish special forces backed by helicopters, drones and the navy hunted a remaining group of commandos thought to have tried to capture or kill President Tayyip Erdogan during a failed coup, as a crackdown on suspected plotters widened on Tuesday.

More than 1,000 members of the security forces were involved in the manhunt for the 11 rogue soldiers in the hills around the Mediterranean coastal resort of Marmaris, where Erdogan was holidaying on the night of the coup attempt, officials said.

Erdogan and the government accuse U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the attempted power grab and have launched a crackdown on his suspected followers. More than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges and civil servants have been arrested, suspended or put under investigation.

The religious affairs directorate removed another 620 staff including preachers and instructors in the Koran on Tuesday, bringing to more than 1,100 the number of people it has purged since the July 15 coup attempt.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said two Turkish ambassadors, currently in Ankara, had also been removed. Former Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu was detained and his house searched.

"There is no institution which this structure has not infiltrated," Erdogan's son-in-law, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, said in a televised interview, referring to Gulen's network of followers.

"Every institution is being assessed and will be assessed," he said. The response from the Turkish authorities would, he said, be just and not amount to a witch-hunt.

The coup attempt raised particular questions about the air force, some of whose senior members were deeply involved, and could lead to the re-investigation of past incidents including the downing by the Turkish military of a Russian warplane near the Syrian border last year, Albayrak said.

The incident provoked Russian trade sanctions but there are signs of rapprochement, with Turkey thanking Moscow for its solid support during the abortive putsch. By contrast it has frosty ties with Europe, which has criticized the post-coup crackdown, and with the United States, which it has urged to extradite Gulen.

Albayrak made the comments as the highest-level Turkish delegation since the downing of the jet visited Moscow and officials announced a planned meeting between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin next month.

"Erdogan will be eager to send a message to Washington and EU capitals that Turkey has other options," said Tim Ash, a strategist at Nomura and a veteran Turkey watcher.

The Turkish parliament set up on Tuesday a commission to investigate the coup attempt, with the backing of all political parties. It will also examine the allegations that the Gulen movement infiltrated the government and instigated the coup attempt.


Related Coverage
› Coup response requires pressure be put on Turkey: Italy Foreign Minister

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said suspects were now being questioned. "Those testimonies will give us a lot of information about the Gulen movement's influence within Turkey," he said during the commission's discussions.


MOST TURKS BLAME GULEN

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies involvement and says the coup may have been orchestrated by Erdogan himself to justify a crackdown, a suggestion the president has roundly condemned.

In an op-ed in the New York Times, Gulen wrote that if members of his "Hizmet" (Service) network had been involved in the attempted coup they had betrayed his ideals, saying Erdogan's accusations revealed "his systematic and dangerous drive towards one-man rule".

Almost two thirds of Turks believe Gulen was behind the coup attempt, according to a poll released on Tuesday. The Andy-Ar survey showed nearly 4 percent blamed the United States or foreign powers and barely 2 percent blamed Erdogan.

On July 15 rogue soldiers commandeered fighters jets, helicopters and tanks to close bridges and try to seize airports. They bombed parliament, police headquarters and other key buildings in their bid for power. At least 246 people were killed, many of them civilians, and 2,000 wounded.

Around a third of Turkey's roughly 360 serving generals have been detained since the abortive coup, more than 100 of them already charged pending trial.

Two Turkish generals based in Afghanistan were detained in Dubai, a Turkish official said on Tuesday, naming them as Major-General Cahit Bakir, a commander of Turkish forces serving in the international NATO-led security force in Afghanistan, and Brigadier Sener Topuc, who oversees education and aid in the country.


MANHUNT

The 11 soldiers being hunted in Marmaris were among a group of commandos who attacked a hotel where Erdogan had been staying. Seven others were detained at a police checkpoint on Monday.

As the coup unfolded, Erdogan said the plotters had tried to attack him in Marmaris, bombing places where he had been shortly after he left. He "evaded death by minutes", an official close to him said at the time.


Related Coverage
› U.S. authorizes departure of diplomats' relatives in Turkey

"It was an assassination attempt against Erdogan and this is being taken very seriously ... Searches are continuing in Marmaris and the surrounding areas with around 1,000 members of the security forces," another official said on Tuesday.

"The searches will continue uninterrupted until these people are found."

Weapons, hand grenades and ammunition have been seized in the countryside around Marmaris in an operation based on information from detained soldiers, said Amir Cicek, governor of Mugla province where Marmaris is located.

Special forces police, commandos, the coast guard and the navy were all involved, Cicek said in a statement.

The scale of the arrests and suspensions following the coup attempt have raised concerns among rights groups and Western countries, which fear that Erdogan is capitalizing on it to muzzle dissent and remove opponents across the board.

Erdogan has declared a state of emergency, which allows him to sign new laws without prior parliamentary approval and limit rights as he deems necessary. In his first such decree, Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and foundations with suspected links to Gulen.

The measure went "well beyond the legitimate aim of promoting accountability for the bloody July 15 coup attempt," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch.

"It is an unvarnished move for an arbitrary, mass and permanent purge of the civil service, prosecutors and judges, and to close down private institutions and associations without evidence, justification or due process," she said.

Turkey wants the United States to extradite the cleric, a call supported on Tuesday by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey's main secularist opposition, but Washington has said it will do so only if there is clear evidence of wrongdoing.

In a sign of Washington's concerns about the security situation, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara said on Tuesday employees' family members had been authorized to leave voluntarily, citing a possible "increase in police or military activities and restrictions on movement" by the Turkish authorities.


(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Ayla Jean Yackley and Gareth Jones in Istanbul, Ercan Gurses and Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Denis Pinchuk in Moscow; writing by Nick Tattersall and Seda Sezer; editing by Gareth Jones, Peter Graff and David Stamp)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/07/24/editorials/divide-missile-defense/#.V5gJ1I-cHIU

Editorials

The divide over missile defense

Jul 24, 2016
Article history

China and Russia have condemned the plan announced by Washington and Seoul to deploy an advanced U.S. missile defense system in South Korea in response to North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests, charging that deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would harm security in Northeast Asia. While deployment of the system — designed to intercept ballistic missiles while they are still at a high altitude — is supposedly aimed at countering Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile threats, Beijing and Moscow argue that it would pose a threat to their own national security.

Instead of ratcheting up tensions over the missile defense system, countries with a stake in the region should focus on efforts to contain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs — a common source of concern for regional security. They need to realize that a schism over deployment of the THAAD system will only benefit North Korea in its attempt to drive a wedge in the international regime of sanctions imposed on the reclusive state over its missile and nuclear tests.

Last week, North Korea fired three short- and medium-range ballistic missiles — two of them reportedly flying 500 to 600 km before falling into the Sea of Japan — in what is believed intended as a show of force in defiance of the plan unveiled earlier this month for deployment of the THAAD system at a military base in the southern South Korean town of Seongju, as well as an attempt to fuel the divide between the United States and South Korea on one hand and China and Russia on the other over the missile defense system. Japan has expressed its support of the THAAD deployment in South Korea.

There are also reports that North Korean regime of its leader Kim Jong Un is preparing yet another nuclear weapons test as early as by the end of this month — the fifth since 2006 and following the last one in January that earned Pyongyang more sanctions under a new U.N. Security Council resolution — as part of its response to the THAAD deployment plan.

Both China and Russia argue that the U.S. intention behind deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea, made up of anti-missile intercepter and radar units, is to monitor their own military deployments — a charge denied by South Korea — and call for withdrawal of the plan, which they say will ruin the region’s strategic balance. Further provocative acts by North Korea may provide more ammunition for Beijing and Moscow to criticize the U.S. and South Korean decision that their move is indeed exacerbating tensions in the region.

China needs to see that South Korea went ahead with talks with the U.S. for deployment of the THAAD system after being reluctant for some time, in the vain hope that Beijing, as Pyongyang’s sole diplomatic ally, would use its influence to get Kim’s regime to give up its nuclear weapons development — reportedly a key reason for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to approach China for closer ties in recent years. Seoul agreed to the formal talks with the U.S. for THAAD deployment after stronger international sanctions did not deter Pyongyang from pursuing its ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. and South Korea have tried to allay concerns of other countries in the region over the planned deployment, saying the system will only be targeted at potential attacks from North Korea.”When the THAAD system is deployed to the Korean Peninsula, it will be focused solely on North Korean nuclear and missile threats and would not be directed toward any third-party nations,” said a statement by the two countries. China remains unhappy. A meeting between Park and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang did not take place when they both attended the Asia-Europe Meeting summit in Ulaanbaatar in mid-July. Concerns linger in South Korea that China may resort to economic retaliation, for example by imposing higher tariffs on its imports.

Both China and Russia are at odds with the U.S. and its allies over other issues — Beijing over its maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and the Ukraine crisis. The friction over the planned missile defense system, if left to fester, could ratchet up tensions between the U.S. and the two major powers even further, which, along with the crack in Beijing-Seoul relations, would all be welcomed by North Korea as Kim’s regime seeks to get around international pressure to pursue its nuclear and missile programs.

Cooperation among the U.S., South Korea and Japan in dealing with North Korea is important but won’t be enough to effectively stop Pyongyang’s provocative acts. Diplomatic efforts are needed to prevent differences with China and Russia on other problems from stifling international measures — in which all these countries play crucial parts — to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs, and Japan needs to seize every diplomatic opportunity to do its share of the work.

 

[Housecarl]

North Korean Nuclear Forces and the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Northeast Asia
By Anthony H. Cordesman With the assistance of Charles Ayers and Aaron Lin
Working Draft: July 25, 2016 Please provide comments to acordesman@gmail.com
89 pages

https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/160725_Korea_WMD_Report_0.pdf

Table of Contents I NTRODUCTION
*..........................................................................................................................................................................
*3
* DPRK
*CHEMICAL
*AND
*BIOLOGICAL
*DEVELOPMENTS
*........................................................................................................
*4
* DPRK
*CHEMICAL
*WEAPONS
*..................................................................................................................................................
*6
* Western
*Estimates
*of
*DPRK
*Stockpiles
*and
*Capacity
*...........................................................................................
*6
* Figure
*V.1:
*DPRK
*Possible
*CW
*Agents
*..............................................................................................................................
*6
* Korean
*Estimates
*of
*DPRK
*Stockpiles
*and
*Capacity
*.............................................................................................
*8
* Guesstimates
*of
*Key
*Locations
*........................................................................................................................................
*8
* Defensive
*Preparations
*...................................................................................................................................................
*10
* Figure
*V.2:
*Defector
*Reports
*on
*the
*DPRK
*CW
*Program
*
*(as
*of
*2004)
*............................................................
*11
* Figure
*V.3:
*Map
*of
*Possible
*DPRK
*Chemical
*Facilities
*............................................................................................
*12
* Figure
*V.4:
*Major
*DPRK
*Civilian
*Chemical
*Production
*Facilities
*(as
*of
*2004)
*.............................................
*13
*DPRK
*BIOLOGICAL
*WEAPONS
*............................................................................................................................................
*15
* Capabilities
*...........................................................................................................................................................................
*15
* Figure
*V.5:
*Possible
*DPRK
*Biological
*Agents
*..............................................................................................................
*16
*Facilities
* .................................................................................................................................................................................
*17
* Figure
*V.6:
*Civilian
*DPRK
*Biological
*Facilities
*...........................................................................................................
*18
* Figure
*V.7:
*Map
*of
*Possible
*DPRK
*Civilian
*Biological
*Facilities
*..........................................................................
*19
*DPRK
*NUCLEAR
*DEVELOPMENTS
*......................................................................................................................................
*20
* Motivations
*for
*Acquisition
*...........................................................................................................................................
*20
* Assessments
*of
*Capabilities:
*Plutonium
*...................................................................................................................
*21
* Assessments
*of
*Capabilities:
*Uranium
*......................................................................................................................
*22
* Figure
*V.8:
*Estimates
*of
*DPRK
*Nuclear
*Fuel
*Production
*and
*Weapon
*Equivalents
*
*(as
*of
*2014)
*.......
*23
* Nuclear
*Weapons
*and
*Warhead
*Developments
*...................................................................................................
*24
* The
*Early
*Program
*............................................................................................................................................................................................
*25
* Denuclearization
*of
*the
*Korean
*Peninsula
*and
*the
*1993–1994
*Crisis
*......................................................................................
*25
* The
*Collapse
*of
*the
*Agreed
*Framework
*(1994–2002)
*.....................................................................................................................
*26
* Uranium
*Enrichment,
*Six
*Party
*Talks,
*and
*the
*Banco
*Delta
*Asia
*(2002-*‐2005)
*.....................................................................
*27
* The
*October
*2006
*Test
*and
*2007
*Accords
*and
*the
*Chinese
*Reaction
*.......................................................................................
*29
* Figure
*V.9:
*Uncertain
*Progress
*in
*the
*Six
*Party
*Talks
*.............................................................................................
*31
* Figure
*V.10:
*Key
*Agreements
*in
*the
*Six
*Party
*Talks
*................................................................................................
*31
* Figure
*V.11:
*Known
*Disablement
*Steps
*at
*Yongbyon
*
*(as
*of
*January
*2013)
*.................................................
*34
*The
*May
*2009
*Test
*...........................................................................................................................................................................................
*35
*The
*Leap
*Day
*Agreement
* ...............................................................................................................................................................................
*35
*The
*February
*2013
*Test
*and
*Reactions
*..................................................................................................................................................
*36
* Further
*Escalation
*in
*2013
*............................................................................................................................................
*40
* Halting
*Operations
*at
*the
*ROK-*‐DPRK
*Joint
*Industrial
*Complex
*at
*Kaesong
*...........................................
*43
* Figure
*V.12:
*Inter-*‐Korean
*Transportation
*Corridors
*..............................................................................................
*45
* Figure
*V.13:
*South
*Korean
*Positive
*Perceptions
*of
*National
*Security
*(Present
*and
*Future),
*March
* 2013
*..............................................................................................................................................................................................
*45
*Attempted
*De -*‐escalation
*................................................................................................................................................
*46
* The
*January
*2016
*Test
*and
*Reactions
*......................................................................................................................................................
*47
*K EY
*ISSUES
*AND
*WEAPONS
*DESIGN
*...................................................................................................................................
*50
* Miniaturization
*...................................................................................................................................................................
*51
* Fuels
*–
*Plutonium
*and
*the
*Potential
*for
*Uranium
*..............................................................................................
*52
* Future
*Nuclear
*Capabilities
*..........................................................................................................................................
*53
* Command
*and
*Control
*.....................................................................................................................................................
*58
* DPRK
*NUCLEAR
*FACILITIES
*................................................................................................................................................
*58
* DPRK
*Nuclear
*Reactors
*...................................................................................................................................................
*58
* Figure
*V.14:
*North
*Korean
*Nuclear
*Power
*Reactor
*Projects
*
*(as
*of
*January
*2011)
*..................................
*61
* Figure
*V.15:
*List
*of
*Major
*North
*Korean
*Nuclear
*Sites
*...........................................................................................
*62
* Figure
*V.16:
*Map
*of
*Major
*North
*Korean
*Nuclear
*Sites
*.........................................................................................
*63
* Figure
*V.17:
*Map
*of
*Possible
*DPRK
*Nuclear,
*Biological,
*Missile,
*and
*Chemical
*Sites
*...............................
*64
*ROK
*AND
*US
*RESPONSE
*TO
*DPRK
*NUCLEAR
*PROGRAMS
*............................................................................................
*65
*
Cordesman/Ayers Korean WMD 7/25/16 11:46 AM 3 THE
*JAPANESE
*RESPONSE
*TO
*DPRK
*NUCLEAR
*PROGRAMS
*..........................................................................................
*67
* THE
*RUSSIAN
*AND
*CHINESE
*RESPONSE
*TO
*DPRK
*NUCLEAR
*PROGRAMS
*..................................................................
*68
* ROK
*CHEMICAL
*WEAPONS
*DEVELOPMENTS
*...................................................................................................................
*69
* ROK
*BIOLOGICAL
*WEAPONS
*DEVELOPMENTS
*................................................................................................................
*69
* ROK
*NUCLEAR
*DEVELOPMENTS
*.........................................................................................................................................
*70
* Initial
*Weapons
*Research
*...............................................................................................................................................
*70
* Reprocessing
*and
*Enrichment
*Activities
*.................................................................................................................
*71
* 2010-*‐2016
*and
*the
*ROK
*Nuclear
*Development
*Debate
*....................................................................................
*71
* Civilian
*Facilities
*and
*the
*123
*Agreement
*..............................................................................................................
*73
* Nuclear
*Power
*Reactors
*.................................................................................................................................................
*74
* Nuclear
*Research
*Reactors
*............................................................................................................................................
*74
* The
*123
*Agreement
*..........................................................................................................................................................................................
*75
* Figure
*V.18:
*Nuclear
*Power
*Reactors
*Operating
*in
*the
*ROK
*...............................................................................
*77
* Figure
*V.19:
*ROK
*Nuclear
*Power
*Reactors
*under
*Construction
*or
*Planned
*.................................................
*78
*

Introduction

The two Koreas differ sharply in their political and military need for missiles and weapons of mass destruction. South Korea is now a global economic power that is fully integrated into the international system. North Korea’s economy is close to that of a failed state, and it needs nuclear weapons and missiles for both political prestige and leverage in negotiating with the United States and its neighbors.

The ROK has examined nuclear options. It has the capability to create nuclear weapons and possesses a sound base of nuclear technology to build upon. It also can almost certainly design and build cruise and ballistic missiles that can accurately reach any target in the DPRK, and can do so in a relatively short period of time. It has all of the technology and industrial base to design and build advanced chemical and biological weapons. This gives the ROK a near breakout capability to compete with North Korea if it chooses to do so. So far, however, it has chosen to rely on the United States for extended deterrence and has focused more on deploying advanced air and missile defense systems than offensive capabilities.

The DPRK, in contrast, lacks anything like the ROK’s resource and technical base. Nevertheless, it is a long-standing chemical weapons power and has tested four nuclear devices – albeit with mixed success. It is actively developing long-range missiles and almost certainly has researched biological weapons and has the capacity to build them. So far, however, it has focused on offensive systems and it has not seriously modernized its air defenses or shown that it plans, or is able, to buy and deploy missile defenses.

Nuclear weapons and long-range missiles offer North Korea the ability to pressure or intimidate its neighbors. They give the DPRK added international status, they deter ROK and US counterattacks and escalation, and they provide a cheaper alternative than trying to compete with the ROK and the United States in modernizing conventional forces.

They also give Pyongyang a strong incentive to retain and expand its asymmetric capabilities. As the 2012 Japanese Defense White Paper notes, “North Korea seems to maintain and reinforce its so-called asymmetric military capabilities by developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles and by maintaining large-scale special operation forces.”1

An ROK government report adds, “The development of asymmetric capabilities seems to serve three objectives: to secure military superiority over others, to have an effective bargaining chip, and to promote internal unity.”2

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to the Senate in January 2014 that:3

North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs pose a serious threat to the United States and to the security environment in East Asia, a region with some of the world’s largest populations, militaries, and economies. North Korea’s export of ballistic missiles and associated materials to several countries, including Iran and Syria, and its assistance to Syria’s construction of a nuclear reactor, destroyed in 2007, illustrate the reach of its proliferation activities. Despite the reaffirmation of its commitment in the Second- Phase Actions for the Implementation of the September 2005 Joint Statement not to transfer nuclear materials, technology, or know-how, North Korea might again export nuclear technology.

In addition to conducting its third nuclear test on 12 February 2013, North Korea announced its intention to “adjust and alter” the uses of existing nuclear facilities, to include the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon, and restart its graphite moderated reactor that was shut down in 2007. We assess that North Korea has followed through on its announcement by expanding the size of its Yongbyon enrichment facility and restarting the reactor that was previously used for plutonium production. North Korea has publicly displayed its KN08 road-mobile ICBM twice. We assess that North Korea has already taken initial steps towards fielding this system, although it remains untested. North Korea is committed to developing long-range missile technology that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States. Its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns.

Because of deficiencies in their conventional military forces, North Korean leaders are focused on deterrence and defense. We have long assessed that, in Pyongyang’s view, its nuclear capabilities are intended for deterrence, international prestige, and coercive diplomacy. We do not know Pyongyang’s nuclear doctrine or employment concepts

In his 2016 testimony, Clapper reemphasized these warnings. He noted that while the January 2016 nuclear test was unlikely to have been a hydrogen bomb, the DPRK remained a potent threat to the United States, stating:4

North Korea has also expanded the size and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces—from close range ballistic missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—and continues to conduct test launches. In May 2015, North Korea claimed that it successfully tested a ballistic missile from a submarine. Pyongyang is also committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States; it has publicly displayed its KN08 road-mobile ICBM on multiple occasions. We assess that North Korea has already taken initial steps toward fielding this system, although the system has not been flight-tested.

This mix of political and military factors has made the DPRK’s nuclear programs – and efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles – a source of growing concern, and has led to ongoing negotiation and arms control efforts for the better part of two decades. Despite these efforts, the DPRK became the world’s eighth atomic power when it conducted an underground nuclear weapons test in October 2006, and currently continues both its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-kerry-lavrov-idUSKCN1060B8

World | Tue Jul 26, 2016 9:14pm EDT
Related: World, Russia, United Nations, Syria

Kerry hopes to work with Russia on Syria, U.N. aims to restart talks

VIENTIANE/GENEVA | By Lesley Wroughton and Stephanie Nebehay

The United States said on Tuesday it hoped to announce in early August details of planned military cooperation and intelligence sharing with Russia on Syria, and a United Nations envoy said he would also aim to resume peace talks next month.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington and Moscow, which support opposing sides in Syria's five-year-old conflict, had made progress in recent days towards working more closely together.

The proposals would have the two powers share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and prohibit the Syrian air force from attacking rebel groups labeled as moderate.

Efforts to bridge the divide between the United States and Russia and bring Syrian government and opposition forces back to negotiations come after pro-government forces have effectively put rebel-held districts of Aleppo under siege.

Concern is growing for at least 250,000 people who have been trapped in rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo since early July, and the U.N aid chief asked on Monday for weekly 48-hour pauses in fighting to allow food and aid to be delivered.

Syrian state television said on Tuesday the army had sent text messages to residents and fighters in eastern Aleppo, saying it will grant safe passage to whoever wants to leave and asking militia to put down their weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 25 people, including three women and eight children, were killed in the last 24 hours in the Mashhad quarter of rebel-held Aleppo, when it was hit by barrel bombs thrown from helicopters.

In Geneva, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said he aimed to convene a new round of peace talks toward the end of August, quietly scrapping a previous Aug. 1 deadline to reach agreement on a framework for a political transition.

"Our aim, let me say very clearly, is to proceed with a third round of intra-Syrian talks towards the end of August," De Mistura told reporters after meeting U.S. Syria envoy Michael Ratney and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov.

De Mistura said he strongly hoped Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would make concrete and visible progress because that would improve the situation on the ground and the environment for the peace talks, although such progress was not a precondition for talks.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement after the Geneva meeting that Washington and Moscow had urged the United Nations to prepare a proposal for political transition - based on Security Council resolutions and input from Syrian parties - which would serve as the starting point for future talks.

The statement said Washington had emphasized the need to restore "compliance with the terms of the cessation of hostilities - particularly in Aleppo city - as well as the need to improve humanitarian access, as positive progress in these areas would significantly improve the prospects for successful talks".


U.S. SCEPTICISM

Kerry has defended the proposal despite deep scepticism among top American military and intelligence officials, including Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, over working with Russia.

"My hope is that somewhere in early August we would be in a position to stand up in front of you and tell you what we're able to do with the hopes it can make a difference to lives of people in Syria and to the course of the war," Kerry said after meeting Lavrov.

During the discussions, he and Lavrov outlined the next stage of implementing the plan, including a series of technical-level meetings to address concerns by the U.S. military and intelligence officers.

Kerry's State Department and White House allies say the plan is the best chance to limit the fighting that is driving thousands of Syrian civilians - with some trained Islamic State fighters among them - into exile in Europe, and preventing humanitarian aid from reaching tens of thousands more.

A senior Western diplomat said the lack of transparency of the U.S.-Russia talks was frustrating and - with what the diplomat said was increased targeting of civilians and hospitals on the ground - it was hard to foresee any deal.

"The Americans are risking a lot for a deal that is as unlikely to be honored as previous engagements the Russians have made," the diplomat said.

Another diplomat said it was unlikely De Mistura would meet his new target of resuming talks in August. "In reality it means there will be nothing in August, it means September," the diplomat said.

"The window of opportunity is extremely limited after that ... Military cooperation has become a pre-requisite,(peace talks) won’t advance without it".


"HORRENDOUS" SITUATION

Syria's government said on Sunday it was ready for further peace talks with the opposition and that it was intent on a political solution to the conflict.

Basma Kodmani, a member of the main Syrian opposition High Negotiations Committee, said the HNC was "open to going back to Geneva to discuss options" but added that there must be a reduction in the current level of violence.

"The situation is absolutely horrendous at this moment," she told Reuters. "What Mr De Mistura is probably hoping is that the agreement between Russia and the U.S. will result in a halt to the regime's raids, and Russian air raids as well."

Russia's military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad last year helped to turn the tide of the war after the government had lost ground to rebel fighters in the west of the country.

On Sunday Syrian government air strikes put four hospitals in Aleppo province out of action, while several people in the government-controlled ancient quarter of Damascus were killed when a mortar bomb hit a restaurant.

International humanitarian groups have condemned the tightening siege on rebel-held parts of Aleppo city.

"Food there is expected to run out over the next few weeks," a joint statement from international aid groups including Oxfam and Mercy Corps said on Tuesday. "A food warehouse was also targeted with almost 10,000 food parcels destroyed, while fuel ... is dangerously low," the statement said.

The United Nations said a 48-truck convoy of international aid organizations was heading to the besieged areas of Talbiseh in northern Homs province, carrying food aid for 40,000 people.


(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Dominic Evans and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by David Stamp and Bill Rigby)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-idUSKCN1070K9

World | Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:28am EDT
Related: World

Israeli forces kill Hamas militant in West Bank raid

Israeli troops shot dead a Hamas fighter on Wednesday who the military said was responsible for an attack that killed a rabbi in a drive-by shooting in the occupied West Bank earlier this month.

The militant was killed in an overnight raid in the territory, during which residents of the Palestinian village of Surif, near the city of Hebron, reported lengthy exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and gunmen.

In a statement, the military said that security forces killed the man responsible for the July 1 attack that killed Rabbi Michael Mark. Mark was shot from a moving vehicle as he drove in his car.

Israeli forces also arrested three other militants.

Islamist group Hamas identified the man killed in the raid as Mohammad al-Fakih and it said he was a member of its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. The house in which Fakih was hiding out was damaged during the fighting and then demolished by an Israeli bulldozer.

Since October, Palestinian street attacks have killed at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans. At least 205 Palestinians have been killed, 139 of whom Israel said were assailants. Others died during clashes and protests.


(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; editing by John Stonestreet)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-militants-idUSKCN1070JZ

World | Wed Jul 27, 2016 2:37am EDT
Related: World

Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for Karachi military killings

A Pakistani Taliban faction has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's killing of two military officers in the southern city of Karachi, a spokesman for the Islamist group said.

The killings were the latest attacks in the busy port city of 20 million people, where paramilitary forces have been cracking down on Islamist militants and criminal gangs for almost three years.

The officers were killed as they were on the Pakistani Taliban faction's "target list", Ehsan Ullah Ehsan, the spokesman for the group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said late on Tuesday.

Gunmen attacked the vehicle carrying the soldiers, who belonged to an intelligence agency, while they were patrolling a crowded area of the city, police had said.

The crackdown has boosted security in Karachi, although in recent months, a popular Sufi musician, Amjad Sabri, was shot dead and the son of the provincial chief justice was kidnapped, but later rescued.


(Reporting by Saud Mehsud; Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-ruling-asean-northkorea-idUSKCN1061OJ

World | Tue Jul 26, 2016 3:40pm EDT
Related: World, South Korea, North Korea

North Korea says decision on nuclear test depends on U.S.: Yonhap

North Korea's foreign minister said on Tuesday that whether it conducted another nuclear test depended on the behavior of the United States, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

The minister, Ri Yong Ho, said, however, that the United States had destroyed the possibility of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, triggering tough new international sanctions. South Korean officials and experts believe it can conduct a fifth test at any time.

"Any additional nuclear test depends on the position of the United States," Yonhap quoted Ri as telling reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos.

Ri added that North Korea was a responsible nuclear state and repeated its position that it would not use atomic arms unless threatened.

"We will not recklessly resort to its use in the absence of substantive threat, unless we are threatened by invasion by another nuclear-power state," he said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Elizabeth Trudeau, repeated a U.S. call for North Korea to take "concrete steps" to meet its international obligations - a reference to its past commitments to abandon its nuclear-weapons program.

"We call on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further destabilize the region," she added at a regular briefing when asked about Ri's comments.

Ri said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had called for a peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and the removal of all U.S. troops and equipment from the South.

"This, we believe, is the only way," Yonhap quoted him as saying.

In earlier remarks to the ASEAN conference, Ri said North Korea had made "an inevitable strategic decision that there is no other option but facing with nuclear deterrent the never ending nuclear blackmails of the U.S."

North Korea has responded to the latest sanctions with defiance, conducting a series of rocket and missile tests in spite of repeated international condemnation.


(Reporting by Jack Kim and James Pearson in Seoul, Simon Webb in Vientiane and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and James Dalgleish)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...obama_issues_attack_response_plan_109631.html

July 27, 2016

Citing Cyber "Revolution," Obama Issues Attack Response Plan

By Josh Lederman

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House warned Tuesday of a "revolution" of computer-generated threats to the U.S. stoked by growing cyber aggression by traditional U.S. foes like Russia and North Korea, and issued a color-coded response plan for the federal government to use after major cyberattacks.

Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, said while Russia and China grow "more assertive and sophisticated" online, Iran has attacked U.S. banks and North Korea is showing a willingness to attack companies and countries alike. She also warned that non-governmental actors, like the Islamic State group and "hacktivists," are finding it easy to advance their goals through the internet.

"To put it bluntly, we are in the midst of a revolution of the cyber threat — one that is growing more persistent, more diverse, more frequent and more dangerous every day," Monaco said at a cybersecurity conference in New York. "Unless we act together — government, industry, and citizens — we risk a world where malicious cyber activity could threaten our security and prosperity. That is not a future we should accept."

Aiming to streamline Washington's response to major attacks, Obama released a presidential policy directive that establishes six levels of severity for attacks, a color-coded system that evokes the terror alert system formally used by the Homeland Security Department.

high-level federal response following the directive's guidelines will be triggered anytime there's an attack at or above a level three — orange — indicating an attack likely to affect public health or safety, economic or national security or other U.S. interests. A level 5 — black — is an emergency that poses an "imminent threat" to critical infrastructure, government stability or U.S. lives.

The directive lays out which federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies take the lead coordinating the various parts of the response to the attack.

Though long in the works, the directive comes amid heightened concern and attention to cybersecurity following the hack of Democratic National Committee emails, which Hillary Clinton's campaign has blamed on Russia. The U.S. government hasn't formally accused Russia of involvement and Moscow has called the accusations "paranoid."

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/07/27/joint_operating_environment_joe_2035_109630.html

July 27, 2016
Joint Operating Environment (JOE) 2035

The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World

By Joint Force Development, Joint Chiefs of Staff, J7


Executive Summary

The Joint Operating Environment 2035 (JOE 2035) is designed to encourage the purposeful preparation of the Joint Force to effectively protect the United States, its interests, and its allies in 2035. For the Joint Force, thinking through the most important conditions in a changing world can mean the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure, and the needless expenditure of human lives and national treasure versus the judicious and prudent application of both to defend our vital interests.

This document describes the future security environment and projects the implications of change for the Joint Force so it can anticipate and prepare for potential conflicts. To do this, Section 1 describes the circumstances that are likely to alter the security environment. Next, Section 2 explores how the intersection and interaction of these changes might impact the character of war in the future. Finally, Section 3 provides a framework to think about the full range of Joint Force missions and how they may evolve over time.

JOE 2035 illustrates several ideas about how changes to conflict and war might impact the capabilities and operational approaches required by the future Joint Force. These observations include:

The future security environment will be defined by twin overarching challenges. A range of competitors will confront the United States and its global partners and interests. Contested norms will feature adversaries that credibly challenge the rules and agreements that define the international order. Persistent disorder will involve certain adversaries exploiting the inability of societies to provide functioning, stable, and legitimate governance. Confrontations involving contested norms and persistent disorder are likely to be violent, but also include a degree of competition with a military dimension short of traditional armed conflict.

These connected challenges are shaped by a wide range of trends and conditions. The future World Order will see a number of states with the political will, economic capacity, and military capabilities to compel change at the expense of others. In Human Geography, a range of social, economic, environmental, and political pressures will push states past the breaking point, spilling over borders, and creating wide-ranging international problems. The future of Science, Technology, and Engineering will see others reaching for technological parity as well as designing innovative mixes of high and low technology that may allow adversaries to more effectively challenge U.S. interests.

The intersection of trends and conditions reveals the changing character of war. The future of conflict cannot be understood in terms of individual trends. Issues and problems intersect, reinforce, and compound across many diverse areas. Sometimes relationships are clear, but more often they interact in unanticipated and surprising ways. Thinking through combinations of trends and conditions over many disciplines allows us to better anticipate changes in the character of conflict and illuminate why the Joint Force may be called upon to address threats to U.S. national interests.

Warfare in 2035 will be defined by six contexts of future conflict. In 2035, the Joint Force will confront Violent Ideological Competition focused on the subversion or overthrow of established governments. Threatened U.S. Territory and Sovereignty will become increasingly prevalent as enemies attempt to coerce the United States and its citizens. Antagonistic Geopolitical Balancing by capable adversaries will challenge the United States over the long term and place difficult demands on the Joint Force over wide areas of the globe. Intimidation, destabilization, and the use of force by state and non-state actors alike will result in Disrupted Global Commons and A Contest for Cyberspace. Internal political fractures, environmental stressors, or deliberate external interference will lead to Shattered and Reordered Regions. Each Context of Future Conflict poses a troubling problem space for the Joint Force.

The contexts, when matched with a range of strategic goals, drive an evolving set of missions. The Joint Force must prepare for a wide range of missions designed to address these contexts. This set of Evolving Joint Force Missions must at once protect our national interests, deter conflict, punish aggression, or defeat adversaries who act across regions, domains, and functions. These evolving missions will be shaped by a continuum of strategic goals that range from reactively managing security challenges to proactively solving security threats and imposing U.S. preferred solutions. This span of missions will require a diverse set of capabilities and operational approaches – some of which are not available to the Joint Force today.

The evolving mission set demands new operational approaches and capabilities. Placing too much emphasis on contested norms – particularly those high-tech and expensive capabilities to contain or disrupt an expansionist state power – may discount potentially disruptive low-end threats, which have demonstrated a troubling tendency to fester and emerge as surprise or strategic shock for the United States. Conversely, tilting the balance of force development activities towards capabilities designed to counter persistent disorder may risk a world in which other great powers or alliances of great powers decisively shift the international order in highly unfavorable ways. Ultimately, the future Joint Force will best contribute to a peaceful and stable world through wellcrafted operational approaches attuned to the evolving character of conflict.

JOE 2035 sets the foundation for the future Joint Force. The ideas found within JOE 2035 set the stage for a more detailed conversation about how the Joint Force can achieve success in the future security environment. JOE 2035 was written to accelerate new ways – or concepts – for the Joint Force to address the likely needs of future strategy and thus, identify a foundation upon which enduring U.S. military advantages can be built. Going forward, JOE 2035 will orient a wide range of future force development activities and provide an analytic basis for ongoing Joint Concept development efforts, particularly a revision of the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO).

Read Entire Document PDF

 

[Housecarl]

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https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-problem-with-fighting-islamist-terrorism/

The Problem with Fighting Islamist Terrorism

July 26, 2016 Radical Islamism is a movement, not an organization, which makes it much harder to defeat.

By George Friedman

The United States has been at war for nearly 15 years. The primary purpose of the war was to end the threat of terrorism posed by jihadists. The war has taken various twists and turns, and many of the operational choices have been questioned and are questionable. It can be said, however, that regardless of views on Iraq or Afghanistan, the fundamental strategic goal has not been achieved. Islamist terrorism remains active in Europe and shows its hand occasionally in the United States. The shift to Europe from the United States might have been the result of U.S. operations, but it might also be a shift in terrorist strategy for the moment.

At its heart, the United States’ strategy was to identify terrorist groups and destroy them. The assumption was that terrorism required an organization. Progress in this strategy meant identifying an organization or a cell planning terror operations and disrupting or destroying it. Since terrorist organizations are relatively small at the operational level, the strategy has resembled police work: the first step is to identify the person active in the organization. Having identified him, send drones or SEALs to capture or kill him.

Operationally, the strategy worked. Terrorists were identified and killed. As the organizations were degraded and broken, terrorism declined – but then surged. These endless intelligence and special forces operations may have been brilliantly carried out, but the strategic goal of the United States has not been achieved. The war is not being won and a stalemate is equivalent to a loss for the United States.

The essential problem has been a persistent misunderstanding of radical Islamism. It is a movement, not an organization. Or to be more precise, radical Islamism is a strand of Islam. How large or small it is has become the subject of a fairly pointless debate. Its size is sufficient to send American forces halfway around the world and it is capable of carrying out attacks in Europe and the U.S. Whether it is a small strand or a giant strand doesn’t matter. What matters is that it cannot be suppressed, or at least has not yet been suppressed.

One of the problems in American thinking is that it still draws from the U.S.’ experience with European and Palestinian terrorism prior to 1991. These groups were heavily influenced by the Soviet model and created organizations that were to a great extent hermetically sealed. The organizations had three characteristics. First, although sympathizers might be recruited with a careful vetting process, membership in the organizations was formal in the sense that you either were a member or you weren’t. Second, the organizations protected themselves by staying, to the extent possible, at arm’s length from any movement. They were obsessed with preventing penetration. Finally, they were heavily compartmentalized so that members and operations were known only on a need-to-know basis.

These organizations were intended to be sustainable over an extended period of time. But they had a flaw. If they could be penetrated (however difficult it might be) by informants or electronic monitoring, the entire organization could unravel. Either it would be completely destroyed through operations or the sheer paranoia of knowing it was penetrated somewhere would cause internal conflict or lead it to become inert.

In some cases, these organizations had no movement supporting them or the movement was so thin that it was not an issue. This was particularly true with European terrorists. The Palestinians had a substantial movement, but it was so fragmented and penetrated that the organizations distanced themselves from the movements. These organizations were over time broken by Western security services and bitterly factionalized to the point that the different factions could be used against each other.

For 15 years, the operational focus for the U.S. has been the destruction of terrorist organizations. The reason for this is that destroying a particular group creates the illusion of progress. However, as one group is destroyed, another group arises in its name. For example, al-Qaida is being replaced by the Islamic State. The real strength of Islamist terrorism is the movement that the organization draws itself from and that feeds it. So long as the movement is intact, any success at destroying an organization is, at best, temporary and, in reality, an illusion.

In addition, because there is a movement, the main organization can organize terror attacks by sending individuals who know little of the details of the organization to carry out operations. But because the movement consists of individuals who understand what needs to be done, jihadist organizations do not have to recruit people to carry out attacks or teach them how to do so. The complexity of 9/11 was never repeated and the level of simplicity has increased over time. That means that members of the movement who have never had contact with the organization can carry out attacks. From the point of view of the organization, these are ideal attackers. They cannot be traced back to the organization, they are not under surveillance and there are sufficient models for them to draw on without needing to ask for advice.

In the old model, all attacks were coordinated by the central organization. In the new model, most organizations have no contact with the people organizing operations and attacking the center will not diminish the attacks. Of late, there have been absurd discussions about whether particular terrorists had contact with other terrorists, or whether they had been “radicalized.” I assume this means the person was persuaded to become a terrorist. In a movement, you are aware that there are others like you and who think like you. You do not need formal attachments to respond to the ideology of the movement.

However, the idea of jihadism has permeated the movement and Muslims are aware of this. Most may reject it but others embrace it. You don’t need a training program to absorb what is all around you. If an individual doesn’t know anyone who is part of this ongoing movement, there is enough on the internet, or enough speculation in the media to draw a map for anyone who wants a map drawn. The idea that if a Muslim shoots 20 people, but has had no contact with a terrorist organization, he might not have done it for ideological reasons might be true. But it forgets that he does not need contact with a mentor to plan an attack, especially a relatively simple one. The movement and the atmosphere is filled with the idea.

The movement is not an organization any more than conservatism or liberalism is. There may be organizations attached to it, but it is more of a social tendency. However, its members still communicate with each other. There are leaders in all these movements, although there may not be managers.

This tendency in Islam makes the movement difficult to defeat. It cannot be surgically removed. Some members of the movement don’t wear a uniform. It is also impossible to attack the movement without attacking Islam as a whole. And attacking Islam as a whole is difficult. There are 1.7 billion Muslims in the world and any of them can believe in radical jihadism. And the believers in jihadism are serious people, moved by their own fate. We would like to dismiss them as fools. If they were, they would be easy to defeat.

It is obvious that the conventional special operations approach hasn’t worked and won’t work. It is also obvious that a general war on Islam is impossible. What is left is difficult but the only option. It is to bring pressure on Muslim states to make war on the jihadists and on other strands of Islam to do so as well. The pressure must be intense and the rewards substantial. The likelihood of it working is low. But the only way to eliminate this movement is for Muslims to do it. They may not want to, and they may fail if they try. But more drone strikes and announcements that another leader of some group has been killed won’t work. Our options are down to having to “live with it” or fomenting a civil war in the Islamic world. In the end, we might wind up with “live with it” anyway.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438360/

The Martyrdom of Father Hamel and ISIS’s Total-War Strategy

The terrorists take special joy in attacking the oldest Christian institution in the West.

By Tom Rogan — July 26, 2016
Comments 160

By all accounts, Father Jacques Hamel’s 86 years were defined by honorable service to his congregants and his faith. He served the picturesque town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, perched on a forested bend of the Seine River. But earlier today, two ISIS fanatics entered Father Hamel’s church and slit his throat. They also critically injured a nun before being shot dead by French SWAT officers.

ISIS’s war against humanity rumbles on. But although the investigation has just begun, we can already make some key observations.

First, it is noteworthy that ISIS’s media arm rapidly claimed responsibility. That suggests the organization is ramping up its propaganda effort in conjunction with its global war. In recent weeks, we’ve seen ISIS attackers murder a French police officer and his girlfriend, bomb Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, bomb hundreds of civilians in Iraq and Syria, slaughter patrons at a Bangladesh bakery, rundown 84 innocents in Nice, detonate a suicide vest at a German concert, and stab passengers on a German train. Multiple other ISIS plots — including a plan to massacre fans at a European Cup soccer-watch party — have also been prevented.

These attacks do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect ISIS’s three-pronged strategy. First, the group aims to inspire and mobilize losers to commit attacks in its name. Second, it is escalating its efforts to infiltrate directed cells (à la attacks in Paris last November) into the West. Third, in Iraq and Syria, it is displacing political compromise with sectarian bloodletting. These threads are distinct in character but connected by shared intent, and they require our comprehensive response.

RELATED: ISIS’s Recruiting Strategy: Use Technology to Turn Losers into Terrorists

Another aspect of today’s murder of Father Hamel also warrants our attention. By targeting a Catholic church, the attack increases the possibility of contact with a broader network of jihadist support and guidance. As the Nice investigation (and other recent plots) have shown, ISIS’s “lone wolves” often operate with larger support networks than previously assumed. But in targeting Catholicism, this incident pays special fealty to ISIS’s deeper ideological motivations. After all, as the originating authority for the Crusades, and as the perceived home of European Christendom, the Catholic Church is despised by ISIS leaders. The group has previously plotted against the Vatican and Pope Francis, and references to Rome often appear in sermons by ISIS leaders. This desire to purge and reclaim European territory takes root, at least in part, in Islamist humiliation over Muslims’ expulsion from Europe under Isabella I, Spain’s Catholic queen in the 15th century. And while the anti-Catholic motivation might seem peripheral to us, it is a key engine of the enemy’s war machine. ISIS sympathizers will be especially proud of the assassination of a Catholic priest.

The attack ultimately represents ISIS’s growing success in its war on Western civil society. Too many in the West neglect this reality. President Obama, for example, recognizes that ISIS wants to stoke Westerners’ fears, but he fails to realize that the jihadists do not create fear as an end in itself. Rather, they sow fear in order to drive Western citizens away from the daily practice of freedom. The president’s shortsightedness thus ignores the founding principles that shape Western civil society: our free choices in pursuit of happiness — our choices to go to a restaurant, or walk in a park, or go to a sports game, or to comfortably send our kids to school. Today, ISIS forces Europeans to pause and question their participation in these activities. And as I noted recently at NRO, ISIS has thus had a dramatic impact on European civil society and politics.

Nevertheless, there was one small positive takeaway from today’s atrocity: The enemy failed to fully complete its mission. The terrorists apparently recorded their slaughter with the intent of posting a video online, and ISIS’s propaganda teams would have been overjoyed to broadcast brutality. Fortunately, however, the rapid police response seems to have prevented the terrorists’ from filming the throat-slitting. Instead, the terrorists’ last video appearance probably involved their ignominious defeat by French patriots.

President Hollande should airdrop that video over Raqqa.

— Tom Rogan writes for National Review Online and Opportunity Lives. He is a panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute. His homepage is tomroganthinks.com.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.nknews.org/2016/07/unification-by-absorption-what-the-n-korea-of-2036-will-look-like/

Unification by absorption: What the N. Korea of 2036 will look like

Andrei Lankov
July 21st, 2016

The following is the third in a three-part series on future scenarios for the North. Part one can be read here, and two here.

The third of our scenarios regarding North Korea’s future implies that the DPRK of 2036 will be a unified state, after a unification with the mighty South (essentially, like it or not, on South Korean terms).

Though it is rather pointless to speculate about the probability of the two scenarios we discussed before, it seems that a future unification-by-absorption is much more likely than a successful ‘developmental dictatorship with North Korean characteristics’ or a pro-Chinese puppet government.

In fact, with the current state of affairs the only conceivable way a unification of Korea is likely to be achieved is via the notorious ‘unification by absorption’. While it is considered “politically correct” in South Korea to pretend that unification should and will be achieved as a result of prolonged negotiations and compromises between the two Korean governments, such expectations appear to be completely unfounded pipe-dreams.

To start with, no unification in recent history has ever been achieved in such a cordial and sweet manner. If we take into consideration the peculiarities of the present-day Korean Peninsula situation, such an outcome appears to be even less likely – essentially, impossible. The North Korean ruling elite has no reason to enter serious and sincere negotiations about the merger of the two Korean states since in such a merger, they – being a far weaker participant – will have no chance of remaining in a position of power and control. Furthermore, they are afraid of the type of incidents related to revenge which other disposed elites has suffered.

Therefore, if the unification of the two Koreas is going to be achieved in the foreseeable future (that is, within a few decades), it can be achieved only as a result of what can be best described as a German scenario. It will imply a revolutionary upheaval in North Korea (rather bloody and dangerous), followed by a speedy unification with the rich and powerful South, or, rather, annexation of the North by the South.

If this scenario is going to be realized, the Pyongyang of 2036 is almost certain to be more prosperous than the Pyongyang of 2036 under the two other scenarios we have discussed. The unification with South Korea – a filthy rich country by the meager North Korean standards – will immediately raise the living standards of the North Koreans and will provide most of them with instant access to modern technology. They will daily eat pork and even beef, ride cars and – at least, in the cities – have a round-the-clock supply of hot water. In other words, they will enjoy the lifestyle currently available to the top 0.5% of the North Koreans. Of course, they will have uncensored media and will live without fear of being incarcerated for a politically incorrect joke.

HOW TENSION WILL MOUNT

However, contrary to what optimists tend to believe, such a dramatic improvement in their well-being will not necessarily make them happy.

In a unified Korea, the deep inequality and division between two formerly independent states is likely to persist for decades to come. Given the low level of mass education and the sorry state of infrastructure in North Korea, it is impossible to hope that the gap between the two Koreas will disappear within the lifetime of one generation. This gap will also mean that many (perhaps, A majority) of North Koreans will soon come to perceive themselves as ‘second rate citizens’ who are subjected to all kind of discrimination in what has ostensibly become a unified country.

Indeed, with very few exceptions, it will be impossible for the vast majority of North Korean to be employed in anything but low skill, low paid jobs. For example, why would a modern company hire a North Korean engineer, a person who might have a deep knowledge of the physics and mathematics, but never used a computer design system? The North Korean medical doctors, history teachers and a majority of scientists, not to mention party propagandists (not a small group) also have no chances to find sound, respectable employment in the unified North Korea of 2036.

Many North Koreans will see this issue as a sign of deliberate discrimination by the arrogant and rich Southerners. But while discrimination is likely to be present and prominent, in most cases such treatment will be an unavoidable result of the North Koreans’ own education and background.

Such a situation is likely to lead to a great tension. The North Koreans will see their South Korean brethren as arrogant, materialistic and greedy. The South Koreans will probably reciprocate since the lion’s share of the astronomical unification cost is likely to be paid by South Korean tax payers. Thus, for the average South Korean, the North Koreans will appear as ungrateful and excessively demanding folks who are also lazy, poorly educated and poorly organized. This thinly veiled (or sometimes blatantly demonstrated) mutual irritation seems to be unavoidable – more so, given the strong traditions of the local identities and local politics in both Koreas.

Ideally, as I have argued elsewhere, instead of joining a unitary state immediately upon unification, North and South Korea should for a time being maintain a configuration. However, being realistic, one has good reasons to suspect that such a turn of events is not very likely. Most likely, the dizzying speed, passions and inflated expectations which will accompany the North Korean revolution and ‘unification crisis’ will prompt an immediate and complete absorption of what is now North Korea.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Surprisingly, it seems that the people who will fare best in a unified state will be the cadres of the North Korean regime and their children. Only these people have the education and social skills necessary for career success in the post-unification society. Though these people are unlikely to go very high on the career ladder, one can be pretty sure that most of the junior and mid-ranking positions in the North Korean bureaucracy will be overwhelmingly occupied by the former officials of the Kim family regime. They will simply – and with great ease – discard their professed belief in Juche ideas and will start busily re-inventing themselves as lifelong closet democrats and ardent supporters of the market economy. We saw this in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and in China (in less open fashion), so there is no reason to think it will not happen in North Korea as well.

In contrast, it is the ‘lords of money’ of the Kim family era – the entrepreneurial class that emerged in the 1990s and has since grown significantly – which could stand to lose the most. These people have great entrepreneurial skills, but most of their knowledge and experience is too specific and of little value for the regular market economy which will emerge in the unified state. The North Korean black market oligarchs know how to bribe officials and how to manipulate the outdated North Korean economic system, but they have little, if any, chances to successfully compete with the South Korean big businesses equipped with huge amounts of capital, experience and technical expertise.

The reaction of the common North Koreans to the new situation will be mixed. Unlike former officials or medical doctors or architects, they will not lose much social status to feel sorry about, and their material well-being will increase considerably. However, their feelings will still be hurt by the complete (and highly visible) domination of the Southerners in positions of prestige and power, as well as by the lack of possibility for social mobility (the kids of common North Koreans will have a hard time competing with Southern kids or children of the North Korean elite).

NOSTALGIA WILL EMERGE

Thus one should not be surprised if portraits of Kim Il Sung, whose statues are going to be toppled in the heyday of revolution, will start popping up in private houses. While, objectively speaking, the late Generalissimo killed more Koreans than any foreign invader, and made the entire messy situation unavoidable, he is likely to be remember as a tough and stern but caring leader under whose rule people were equal and proud. Those readers who are skeptical of this should check the situation in today’s Russia, where Joseph Stalin remains one of the most popular historical figures: an idol for a noticeable minority, and a controversial but basically worthy leader for many more.

Of course, the former victims of the Kim family regime will have different opinions. However, their voice will be well heard. The vast majority of former prison camps’ inmates and other people who suffered greatly under the Kim family regime will remain at the bottom of the new society – even though, admittedly, life ‘at the bottom’ in the post-unification North Korea of 2036 will be significantly better than the life of the average North Korean nowadays. Unfortunately, these people have little if any marketable skills and also a bad state of health, following years of hard work in fields, mines and labor camps. Given their sheer numbers, though, and the sorry state of the post-unification economy, one cannot realistically hope that regime victims will receive any meaningful compensation for their suffering.

So, the picture is rather grim. But one should not feel too much despair. As we have said before, in spite of all the social problems and discontent, the 2036 unified – or should we say ‘annexed’? – North Korea will still be a far more prosperous place than it would be conceivable under any other possible scenario.

But after ten years or so we will see the first signs of the deep social wounds beginning to heal. While middle aged North Koreans will feel nostalgic about the great days of Kim Il Sung, the youngest Koreans, then in their early 20s and as first members of the post-unification society, will probably start seeing things differently.

Eventually, the new national identity of a unified Korea will be repaired. So while in the initial years the pan-Korean identity will face serious threats, after some time the sense of shared destiny and, hence, common identity, will begin to re-emerge (perhaps, massaged and assisted by intense nationalistic campaigns). It will only be a question of time – perhaps, quite a long time – before citizens of both North and South Korea will see themselves as members of the same community. However, the transition is going to be very painful and will take a lot of time.

-

About the Author

Andrei Lankov

Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov is a Russian scholar of Asia and a specialist in Korean studies. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University in 1986 and 1989, respectively; He also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University in 1985. Following his graduate studies, he taught Korean history and language at his alma mater, and in 1992 went to South Korea for work; he moved to Australia in 1996 to take up a post at the Australian National University, and moved back to Seoul to teach at Kookmin University in 2004. Dr. Lankov has a DPRK-themed Livejournal blog in Russian with occasional English posts, where he documents aspects of life in North (and South) Korea, together with his musings and links to his publications. He also writes columns for the English-language daily The Korea Times.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence-missiles-idUSKCN10812X

World | Thu Jul 28, 2016 6:01am EDT
Related: World

China says pressing ahead with own anti-missile system

China's Defence Ministry confirmed on Thursday that it was pressing ahead with anti-missile system tests after pictures appeared on state television, amid anger at South Korea's decision to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile system.

An announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has drawn protests from China, which warned that the system would destabilize regional security.

The decision by the United States and South Korea is the latest move to squeeze increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system's radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment.

Pictures broadcast this week on Chinese television were the third time since 2010 that China has publicly indicated tests of its own anti-missile system, state media said.

"To develop suitable capabilities for missile defense is necessary for China to maintain its national security," Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a regular monthly briefing, when asked about the footage.

"It will improve the self-defense capability of China and is not targeting any specific country and will not affect international strategic stability," he added, without elaborating.

South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defense against North Korean ballistic missiles and they have tried to assuage Chinese concerns, without apparent success.

A senior U.S. administration official said on Tuesday, at the end of a visit to China by U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, that the decision to deploy THAAD did not threaten China's security.

Yang repeated that China would consider taking unspecified measures to maintain strategic balance, and dismissed assertions that THAAD was no threat to China.

"As for the technical excuses from the United States and South Korea, experts can easily see how believable this is," he said.

North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles in what it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and air fields used by the U.S. military.

China's military is undergoing an ambitious modernization program that has included tests of anti-satellite missiles.


(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Conflict News ‏@Conflicts 4h4 hours ago

BREAKING: North Korea says US responsible for provoking tensions, defends right to 'defensive nuclear deterrent.’ - AP


Conflict News ‏@Conflicts 4h4 hours ago

MORE: Says US has “crossed red line” by putting Kim Jong Un on sanctions list.

^^^ one can only hope their "red line" is the same as Obama's "red line"; it's actually meant to be crossed over and over unlike most peoples red line as final warning.

 

[Pinecone]

Thank you for all the time and hard work you all do to bring the real news to the rest of us. It is much appreciated.

 

[Housecarl]

Conflict News ‏@Conflicts 4h4 hours ago

BREAKING: North Korea says US responsible for provoking tensions, defends right to 'defensive nuclear deterrent.’ - AP


Conflict News ‏@Conflicts 4h4 hours ago

MORE: Says US has “crossed red line” by putting Kim Jong Un on sanctions list.

^^^ one can only hope their "red line" is the same as Obama's "red line"; it's actually meant to be crossed over and over unlike most peoples red line as final warning.

More on this....

For links see article source.....
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http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/nati...-Sanctions-Against-Kim-Jong-Un-388566622.html

North Korea Warns US Over Personal Sanctions Against Kim Jong Un

North Korea also warned about a possible showdown if the U.S. and South Korea conduct joint military exercises

North Korea said Washington has declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, according to a diplomat who spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday, NBC News reported.
Although the country has been sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington announced for the first time that Kim was personally sanctioned on July 6.

Pyongyang cut off its official means of communication with Washington, saying it was the final straw. Director-general of the U.S. affairs department at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, Han Song Ryol, said everything between the two must now be death with under “war law.”
Han also warned about a possible showdown if the U.S. and South Korea conduct joint military exercises next month. The two countries regularly conduct exercises, and Pyongyang usually responds with tough talk and threats of retaliation.

Published at 11:03 AM PDT on Jul 28, 2016

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/reuters...korean-missile-threat-grows--sources/42336764

Exclusive - Japan to upgrade Patriot batteries for Olympics as North Korean missile threat grows: sources

Reuters International
JUL 29, 2016 - 00:23

By Tim Kelly and Nobuhiro Kubo
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is upgrading its Patriot PAC-3 missile defence system in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, adding range and accuracy needed to intercept more advanced North Korean ballistic missiles, four sources with knowledge of the plan said.

The move represents the most significant upgrade to Japan's missile defence system in a decade and is part of an increase in military spending in the region, where geopolitical tensions are rising.

The rollout of the new advanced Missile Segment Enhancement, which could double the range of the current PAC-3 missiles to around 30 km (19 miles), will likely start next year, said the sources, who were not authorised to speak publicly about the project.

"The upgraded PAC-3 is necessary to counter the Musudan," said one source, referring to Pyongyang's intermediate-range ballistic missile.

North Korea in June test-fired what appeared to be two Musudan rockets. The first failed, but the second travelled 400 km (250 miles), more than halfway towards the southwest coast of Japan and reached a height of 1,000 km - enough altitude to give its warhead a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles).

Experts said that test represented a technological advance for the Pyongyang regime, which is also developing nuclear weapons.

It puts it one step closer to being able to lob a warhead that could plunge to its target at speeds of several kilometres a second, potentially too fast for the current PAC-3 batteries that are the last line of defence against missile strikes.

South Korea's military operates the older PAC-2 system and has a programme to replace it with the PAC-3 system by 2018, a South Korean defence ministry official said. U.S. forces based in the country were also planning to upgrade their PAC-3 batteries covering the capital Seoul, the official added.

RISING TENSIONS
Along with North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, tensions in Asia are being fuelled by ongoing territorial disputes between China and Japan in the East China Sea, and between China and several Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea.

China is swiftly modernising its armed forces, in part to counter what it sees as a strategy of containment in the United States' Asian "pivot".

A spokesman for Japan's Defence Ministry said "nothing has been decided" on the PAC-3 upgrade.

The International Olympic Committee's decision to grant Tokyo the 2020 games will help unlock funding for the PAC-3 upgrade despite military budget constraints, the sources told Reuters.

Around 100 billion yen (726 million pounds) in funding would be requested in the next defence budget proposal for the year starting April 2017, one of the sources said. Funding will need cabinet approval before going into the national budget and additional funds would have to be approved for subsequent years.

Japan is also considering purchasing the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile system, which Washington and Seoul agreed to deploy in South Korea earlier this month. That decision sparked a complaint from China, which said it would destabilise the regional security balance.

The Patriot upgrade would likely be an enhancement to Japan's ballistic missile defence, rather than an alternative to THAAD or a similar system.

Japan also has Aegis-equipped destroyers patrolling the Sea of Japan that are loaded with interceptor missiles designed to hit incoming projectiles. It is currently developing a new version dubbed the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) with the United States designed to destroy ballistic warheads in space, although no decision on a roll out has yet been made.

The PAC-3 system was developed by Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co. Japan's biggest defence contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), will begin work on Japan's systems under license after April next year, the sources said.

MHI will upgrade 12 batteries in the first year, another 12 the following year with four in the subsequent twelve months, the sources said. Those guarding the Tokyo area will take priority and some used for training will not be upgraded.

"The Ministry of Defence has not made any announcement regarding this, so as a commercial company we are not in a position to comment," a MHI spokeswoman said.

Raytheon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while a Lockheed spokeswoman said the company had "a long and successful history of working with Japanese industry in their production of the PAC-3 missile system under license”.

($1 = 104.8100 yen)

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.politico.eu/article/the-...ngela-merkel-mood-shift-refugees-economy-afd/

LETTER FROM BERLIN

The end of Germany’s golden age

Angela Merkel was great when things were good, but can she lead in darker times?

By KONSTANTIN RICHTER 7/28/16, 5:30 AM CET

BERLIN — A little over a year ago, on a Saturday in June, a large number of ordinary Germans filmed themselves doing ordinary things. They sent their footage to Sönke Wortmann, a well-known director, who cut it down to a 100-minute movie.

Wortmann’s film, called “Germany — Your Self-Portrait,” was released on July 14. It is completely devoid of German angst and it shows families on rollercoaster rides, seniors having breakfast and teenage girls hugging each other for the camera. “Friendship is a big issue in this movie,” Wortmann said in an interview. “Pets. Sports. And cars, of course.”

But while Wortmann set out to make a feel-good film, what he released has the feel of a paean to a Germany that’s on the verge of disappearing. Critics were quick to point out how dated the footage already looks — like archival material from another era.

For the past decade, Germany has been enjoying what will perhaps one day be considered a golden age. The country’s long-ailing economy ticked up in the mid-noughties and weathered the recent crises far better than most. Politically, the nation emerged as Europe’s dominant power. The national football team, playing a thrilling attacking game, improved steadily to win the 2014 World Cup.

And perhaps most importantly, Germany became an attractive place to live. Having grown up in Helmut Kohl’s dour Germany of the 1980s, I can testify that the country has become more liberal, more tolerant, more easygoing.

Today, however, that progress appears to be in doubt. The public mood shifted markedly after hundreds of thousands of refugees entered the country, putting a huge strain on resources and institutions. The right-wing party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has surged in the polls, benefiting from widespread fears of mass migration and terrorism. Chancellor Angela Merkel, at the height of her popularity when Wortmann’s movie was filmed, now looks weak and vulnerable.

The economy is showing some signs of frailty, too, with heavyweights Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank in particular trouble. And then came the violence: an ax attack near Würzburg, a mass shooting in Munich, knifings in Reutlingen, a suicide bombing in Ansbach.

In the span of just a few days, this string of heinous assaults has shaken a nation that already seemed on the verge of becoming unhinged. Something good has ended — or so it feels — and we don’t know what’s next.

* * *

Germany’s golden age pretty much coincided with Merkel’s time in office. When she ran for chancellor in 2005, the country was just coming out of a crisis. Then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s economic reforms had begun to take effect, but Germans, unaware of the recovery, voted him out anyway. And when the economy took off, it was Merkel who reaped the benefits.

Today, many worry the good times are coming to an end. Buttressed by its strong manufacturing base, Germany emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis. And while other members of the European Union were rocked by the euro crisis — blaming German-led austerity for their woes — the country’s exporting industry kept rolling, profiting, among other things, from a weakening currency. But how sustainable is this? With much of the world in turmoil, an economy so dependent on exports must eventually suffer.

And then there’s demographics. In France and Britain, an aging population is cause for concern; in Germany, it’s a time bomb. The U.N. has predicted that by 2030 only half of the country’s citizens will be working. Merkel thought she had a fix. When she opened the borders to refugees it was a humanitarian gesture, sure, but it was also an effort to rejuvenate the workforce.

Merkel thought Germans would understand. They didn’t. The long-term benefits of mass migration may, in a best-case scenario, indeed outweigh the short-term difficulties. But many in the country — especially older and more conservative voters — only saw the downside. “We can manage,” Merkel told them, and millions answered in unison, “No, we can’t.”

For the AfD, Merkel’s decision was a lifeline. Founded in 2013 by a group of Euroskeptics, the party had seemed to be in decline. Its members are a pretty angry bunch, some of them because Germany traded the Deutsche Mark for the euro, others because they believe that sex education in schools depraves innocent kids. And the one thing that gets all of them going is Merkel’s migration policy.

The party’s leaders aren’t skillful politicians. They lack charisma, and they’ve made many mistakes. But events like those in Würzburg and Ansbach, where attackers were recent refugees, will strengthen their cause, adding evidence to their argument that Merkel’s move has raised the risk of terrorism. An economic downturn would give the party a further boost.

What would happen if a German Donald Trump came along and took control? A couple of years ago, a journalist named Timur Vermes published a novel called “Look Who’s Back,” in which Adolf Hitler returned to contemporary Berlin, becoming first a media celebrity and then a politician. It’s a satirical book, and it gave many of its readers a good laugh. But suddenly, with the establishment in crisis, “Look Who’s Back” seems less like a joke and more like a cautionary tale.

* * *

The relationship between Merkel and the Germans is at its best when the national football team takes to the field during the playoff stage of a major tournament. A player, usually Thomas Müller, scores, and the Germans cheer. And then the camera swerves to show Merkel applauding from the VIP box, and the Germans cheer her too.

At this summer’s European Championships, however, Merkel didn’t show up when the team reached the semifinals. Maybe she knew people would no longer be cheering her. The Germans are confused and disappointed by their chancellor. After shocking her conservative base with her refugee policy, she alienated her newfound fans on the Left with a controversial deal with Turkey. No one knows what she’s thinking anymore, and she’s not talking. The result is obvious in her approval ratings.

For the Germany portrayed in Wortmann’s movie, Merkel was the perfect leader. As long as her fellow citizens were engrossed in sports, pets and cars, she could steer them safely through minor and major crises. She was good in late-night emergency meetings with other world leaders, able to strike complicated compromises that satisfied the Germans even if they didn’t fully understand the details.

But Merkel has many weaknesses too, and these days they’re on full display. She isn’t gifted rhetorically, and she doesn’t know how to convey her emotions. After these latest attacks, she needs to explain in simple terms what, in her view, happened over the past year. She must tell Germans how she felt last September and how she feels now. She should admit that further attacks are likely, and that she was wrong because she didn’t see them coming. And then she should stake out a new middle ground, arguing that, in spite of the violence, it’s still important to help people in need. That returning to a world with fortified walls is no answer to the threat of terrorism.

But Merkel is not the type to make emotional statements. And that’s unfortunate because Germany is becoming polarized. On one side stand the guilt-ridden advocates of Willkommenskultur, who believe Germans have a moral duty to keep borders open for everyone, and that we only have ourselves to blame when terror strikes. On the other, is the angry far right.

Missing from the debate are all those ordinary Germans who starred in Wortmann’s feel-good project. Someone please tell them it’s their turn to speak. They need to understand that the Germany they’ve lived in — the one that is liberal, tolerant and vibrant — cannot be taken for granted and needs their support.

Konstantin Richter, a German novelist and journalist, is a contributing writer at POLITICO.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://nypost.com/2016/07/27/why-palestinians-are-on-the-verge-of-civil-war/

OPINION

Why Palestinians are on the verge of civil war

By Benny Avni July 27, 2016 | 8:32pm

The two-state solution, a long-held US-backed plan for a rosy Mideast future, is threatened by Mr. Yesterday — someone hopelessly clinging to the past.

That Mr. Yesterday isn’t Donald Trump, whose aides deleted the words “two-state solution” from the Republican platform. And it isn’t Hillary Clinton, whose would-be veep, Tim Kaine, last year boycotted the Israeli prime minister’s speech to Congress. Hillary and Kaine cherish the two-state solution dearly.

It isn’t Bernie Sanders, whose supporters hoisted a Palestinian flag on the convention floor Monday in lieu of Old Glory. Or Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-Ga.), who this week called Israeli settlers “termites.”

It isn’t even those idiots who burned an Israeli flag in front of the convention hall Tuesday night to protest, well, something. If anything, those Israeli-flag-burners represent the future of America’s progressive left, not its past. They threaten a tomorrow that’ll make us weep for yesterday.

Nor is it the usual suspect, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Nah. Mr. Yesterday, the man who dreads two states more than anyone in America, Europe or Israel, is none other than the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

This week, just as Democrats struggled with how strongly to support a state of Palestine without angering their shrinking but still powerful pro-Israel base, Mr. Yesterday aimed his lance at a 99-year-old windmill by launching a battle against the Balfour Declaration at an Arab League summit in Mauritania.

The Arab League is a relic that goes mostly ignored (for good reason), and even its summits tend to be sparsely attended these days.

But the perennial beneficiary of such outmoded gatherings, the Palestinians, managed to create some news: Abbas’ foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, blamed England for the mess in Palestine and asked for help in suing the British government.

Wait, the Brits? What did they do now? Well, Arthur James Balfour, the then-UK foreign secretary, issued a historic declaration that in 1917 promised the Jews a “homeland” in Palestine, which was about to be ruled from London.

Or, according to Malki, they “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.” So Palestinians will now sue them.

“We are all aware of the significance of the 100-year anniversary,” a senior British diplomat told me Wednesday, adding, however, “I’m not sure looking back is the best way to bring peace.”

Right. But don’t tell that to Mr. Yesterday.

More fundamentally, Abbas has already raised a Palestinian flag at Manhattan’s First Avenue UN headquarters and received blessings for a Palestinian state in places like Geneva, Sweden, Mauritania and the back pages of US party platforms. Yet, he has proved completely useless in creating a state on the West Bank.

And his attempt to pretend the last century of history, in which Jews created an independent and thriving state, never happened raises suspicions that Abbas never really was all that comfortable with the existence of Israel on lands Arabs consider their own.

At the age of 80, Abbas has now spent a dozen years in an office he’d been elected to hold for four. As he nears the end of his career, many in the West Bank wonder if he’s all there. This week’s anti-British gambit will only reinforce those questions.

And if he’s starting to fade? Well, Mr. Yesterday never prepared his people for tomorrow — that day after he steps down or dies. Several leader-wannabes will duke it out then, and — like Arab nations throughout the region’s volatile history — they’ll likely fail to resolve their differences peacefully or quickly.

So all those who get so exercised about how the two-state solution is represented in party platforms better relax. America, Britain, Europe and even Israel won’t prevent Palestinians from peacefully living and thriving in an independent state.

As they always have, only Palestinians will.

As for that other side of the vaunted two-state solution: Even Mr. Yesterday can’t turn back the clock to 1917, or any other time in history.

So Israel will continue to flourish, with or without Palestine by its side.

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?496270-The-Myth-of-Lone-Wolf-Terrorism

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/gartenstein-ross-daveed-the-myth-of-lone-wolf-terrorism/

The Myth of Lone-Wolf Terrorism

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
26th July 2016 - Foreign Affairs
Co-written with Nathaniel Barr

This month, Europe has again been rocked by a series of shocking terrorist attacks perpetrated by lone individuals and claimed in the name of the Islamic State (ISIS).

On July 14, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian national residing in France, killed over 80 and wounded hundreds when he ploughed a 19-ton cargo truck through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the southern French city of Nice. Mere days after the Nice massacre, a 17-year-old Afghan migrant seeking asylum in Germany attacked passengers on a train in Würzburg with an axe and a knife, wounding four before police killed him. Two other attacks claimed in ISIS’ name have been carried out since then: A suicide bombing on July 24 injured 15 in the German city of Ansbach, and on July 26, two attackers claiming allegiance to ISIS stormed a church in a suburb of the French city of Rouen, slit an 84-year-old priest’s throat, and took hostages.

These incidents are part of a broader trend of increasing violence carried out by lone individuals. Analysts, journalists, and scholars have been quick to label each perpetrator of recent attacks as a lone wolf: individuals who lacked substantial connections to ISIS or other jihadist groups and who carried out their operations without the assistance of others. The designation has generally been applied within 24 hours of these attacks, before significant intelligence about an incident’s planning and execution has emerged—and long before authorities have concluded their investigation. Indeed, less than a day after the Nice attack, observers rushed to describe Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a lone wolf who was not in fact linked to ISIS.

Observers have repeatedly erred by definitively categorizing attacks as lone-wolf operations when they would later turn out to be connected to broader cells or networks. At a minimum, individuals labeled lone wolves are often in communication with other militants, sometimes using encrypted services that are difficult to detect and decipher. There is a danger in rushing to label operatives as disconnected from others, as doing so can cause analysts to overlook the networks that facilitate and encourage attacks. It is time to put the myth of the lone wolf to rest.

MISSING NETWORKS
The tendency to view lone attackers as unconnected to the broader ISIS organization prevented observers from fully comprehending the magnitude of the network that was behind the complex coordinated attacks in Paris and Brussels.

In April 2015, Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian national studying in France, called for medical help after accidentally shooting himself in the leg while handling a firearm. Authorities’ investigation revealed that Ghlam, who was in possession of several guns, was planning to attack churches in the Paris area and may have been involved in the murder of a woman found dead in a Paris suburb. In August 2015, three Americans restrained Ayoub El-Khazzani, a 25-year old Moroccan national, before he could open fire on passengers traveling by train from Amsterdam to Paris.

At the time, the two attacks were seen as disconnected, with Khazzani generallylabeled a lone wolf. And the bumbling incompetence of both incidents—Ghlam shot himself, while Khazzani’s weapon jammed before he could get off a shot—made the attacks seem like the work of rank amateurs. Meanwhile, ISIS fueled perceptions that it was primarily interested in inspiring lone-wolf attacks rather than guiding them, with a pro-ISIS media outlet producing a propaganda video shortly after Khazzani’s botched attack calling on “lone lions” to kill the group’s enemies.

But after the devastating November 2015 attacks in Paris, it became clear that initial judgments had been wrong. A March 2016 The New York Times article by Rukmini Callimachi detailed how Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ground commander of the Paris attacks, had directed Ghlam, Khazzani, and several others to carry out attacks in Europe, even as he was preparing the Paris operation. Although he of course wanted these small-scale plots to succeed, they also helped deflect attention from ISIS’ more sophisticated operational planning, serving as a “smoke screen” that allowed the group to “calmly prepare” its future operations, in the words of one French official. Because counterterrorism analysts and officials viewed Ghlam, Khazzani, and other attackers as unrelated to one another, they did not identify the operational infrastructure involved in coordinating ISIS’ various attacks in Europe.

With the social media boom and the growth in encrypted communications, radicalization and operational planning can easily take place entirely online.The failure to identify common ties between supposed lone wolves and ISIS is part of a broader and long-standing pattern of underestimating the scope of jihadist networks in the West. An official inquiry into the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks in London, for example, described the cell that carried it out as autonomous and self-actuating rather than tied to al Qaeda. One British official stated that “the London attacks were a modest, simple affair by four seemingly normal men using the internet.” But the idea that the London bombings were completely unrelated to al Qaeda was definitively refuted by a commemorative video the jihadist group later released in July 2006, which showed footage of a martyrdom tape recorded by cell leader Mohammad Sidique Khan. On the tape, al Qaeda’s then-deputy emir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also claimed that Khan and fellow plotter Shehzad Tanweer had visited one of al Qaeda’s training camps in Pakistan “seeking martyrdom,” an account that has since been corroborated by Western intelligence agencies. Bob Ayers, a security expert at London’s Chatham House think tank, commented when the new video was released, “It makes the police look pretty bad. It means the investigation was either wrong, or they identified links but were reluctant to reveal them.”

Since then, officials and analysts have often continued to ignore attackers’ ties with broader networks. Part of the reason for the consistent failure may lie in a desire to avoid culpability; observers may perceive attacks carried out by networks as something officials should have prevented, but potential lone attackers are notoriously difficult to spot. Another reason may be a desire to downplay networks due to policy preferences, such as wanting to avoid taking kinetic action against the networks driving these attacks. But it is a mistake to conflate facts with policy preferences, and the truth is that terrorists’ ties to broader networks are frequently overlooked.

In fact, theories that recent attacks were the work of individuals are already being discredited. When ISIS claimed responsibility for the July 2016 Würzburg train attack, the group released a video featuring the perpetrator that demonstrated ISIS had advance knowledge that he intended to strike. Less than a week after the Nice attack, French authorities revealed that Lahouaiej Bouhlel may not have acted alone. Several individuals, whom prosecutors also described as having jihadist sympathies, were detained in connection with the massacre. One suspect had posed for picturesin the truck that Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove through a celebrating crowd. Further, the perpetrator, who had been planning the attack for months, had sent out a text message to an alleged coconspirator just minutes before the attack requesting “more weapons.”

DIGITAL DILEMMA
The nature of radicalization and operational planning in the digital age has complicated efforts to interpret and analyze attacks perpetrated by single individuals. Jihadists plotting murders in the West used to congregate in person, meeting in small groups in underground mosques, houses, or other discrete locations. Radicalization occurred through in-person contact. Counterterrorism officials looked for physical hubs of recruitment, tapping phones and scanning surveillance videos for evidence that cells were meeting.

But with the social media boom and the growth in encrypted communications, radicalization and operational planning can easily take place entirely online. ISIS has capitalized on evolving communications technologies, building cohesive online communities that foster a sense of “remote intimacy” and thus facilitate radicalization. The group has also established a team of “virtual planners” who use the Internet to identify recruits, and to coordinate and direct attacks, often without meeting the perpetrators in person. Junaid Hussain, a British ISIS operative who was killed in August 2015, played the role of virtual planner for the May 2015 strike against the Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas. Hussain hadcommunicated online with Elton Simpson before the attack and was the first to celebrate it on social media. It may take months—or longer—to detect the role of virtual planners in attacks.

The changing nature of operational planning underscores the need for a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between single attackers and networks. It no longer makes sense to apply pre-digital-age thinking to jihadist attacks perpetrated in the age of Twitter, Telegram, and end-to-end encryption.

Instead, it is useful to think of four categories of attacks, with descending connections to a network. The first category consists of operations in which the attacker was trained and dispatched by an organization. Reda Hame, who traveled to Syria and received weapons training from Abaaoud before being sent back to Europe, perfectly fits this mold. The second category is attackers in touch via social media with virtual planners such as Hussain, who help set targets, determine the timing of the attack, and provide technical assistance. The third category is operatives who are in contact with a militant group via online communications but do not receive specific instructions about carrying out an attack. Finally, the fourth category comprises the true lone wolves, individuals who strike without ever communicating with jihadist networks, either online or in person.

It is clear that extremely few of the jihadists labeled lone wolves truly fit that definition. As long as attacks are falsely categorized though, the world can’t even begin to fight back. We need a better model for understanding terrorism in the digital age.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and chief executive officer of Valens Global. Nathaniel Barr is the research manager at Valens Global.. Follow Daveed on Twitter @DaveedGR.

 

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http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/27/obamas-last-big-military-gamble/

OPINION
Obama’s Last Big Military Gamble

STRUAN STEVENSON
President, European Iraqi Freedom Association
7:06 PM 07/27/2016

Barack Obama has faced an onslaught of criticism about his reluctance to get involved in the bloody civil war in Syria. Critics claim his reticence has enabled Bashar al-Assad to butcher men, women and children at will in cities like Aleppo, without fear of retribution, in a conflict that has raged for more than 6 years.

American foot-dragging in Syria has also given the green light to Vladimir Putin and to the theocratic Iranian regime to increase their support for Assad and to expand their influence in the Middle East. Obama’s only focus in the zone has been the fight against Daesh (ISIS) and in Syria this has manifested itself indirectly in America backing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), arch-enemies of the USA’s main regional ally and NATO stalwart – Turkey.

Determined to confound his critics and score a major foreign-policy victory before he demits office in November, Obama has now turned his full attention to the defeat of Daesh in Mosul in Nineveh Province, Northern Iraq. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city and home to over two and a half million Sunni Arabs. Daesh has been embedded there since 2014 and U.S. coalition and Iraqi airstrikes have already begun around the city in preparation for its recapture. The defeat of Daesh in Mosul, the most emblematic of their ISIS strongholds in their two-year-old ‘caliphate,’ will be a blow to the jihadists who have lost around half of their Iraqi territories in recent months, including Salahaddin, Ramadi, Fallujah and most of al-Anbar Province. They have also faced relentless recent setbacks in Syria and Libya.

Ironically, it was President Obama’s misguided support for Iraq’s former corrupt and sectarian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that prepared the ground for Daesh in Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki was shoehorned into power as Iraq’s puppet Prime Minister at the insistence of the Iranian regime and with the outright support of the Americans. His venal corruption and genocidal policy of aggression against Iraq’s Sunni population catapulted the country into civil war and opened the door for the invasion of Daesh and their subsequent seizure of vast tracts of Iraqi territory. Maliki is still a manipulative force in Iraqi political circles using the gigantic wealth he accumulated during eight years in office to finance his own private army and continually to undermine his successor Haider al-Abadi.

The increasing military setbacks suffered by Daesh have encouraged them to return to their al-Qaeda roots by mounting a series of devastating suicide bomb attacks on Shi’ite neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other major cities. The horrific bombing in early July in the Karrada suburb of Baghdad that killed at least 300 people was the worst carnage of its kind since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some senior Iraqis claim that the explosives-filled truck used in the attack came from Diyala, an Iraqi province controlled by Iran and its ruthless Shi’ia militias. Iran’s fingerprints on this kind of atrocity should come as no surprise. The fascist mullah-regime has exploited the war against Daesh to expand its influence and hegemony in the country. There are now more than 63 private Shi’ia militias operating in Iraq, the majority of which are financed and led by the Iranian terrorist Qods Force, whose senior commander General Qasem Soleimani is on the EU and US terror blacklists. The Karrada massacre of innocent Shi’ia civilians has provided Tehran with the perfect excuse to redouble their pitiless genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing against Iraq’s Sunni population.

Horrific sectarian atrocities were committed during the ‘liberation’ of Ramadi and Fallujah. The Iranian-led Shi’ia militias systematically arrested Sunni men and women fleeing from the besieged cities as the battles raged. Many were subsequently tortured and executed. Despite mounting evidence of such atrocities, John Kerry has praised the Iranian role in Iraq, acknowledging them as a key ally in the fight against Daesh. The besieged Sunni population in Mosul now watch nervously as the Shi’ia militias begin to encircle their city, fearful that they will face the same fate as their murdered Sunni brothers and sisters in Salahuddin , Ramadi and Fallujah, unwittingly aided and abetted by the Americans.

It has been a delay of two years of using and arming the Sunni tribes and youths in those regions. Abadi’s government and the Americans should immediately get on with this. The city of Mosul has to be liberated by this people, otherwise Iran will establish itself much more than before and we will not be able to defeat Daesh in the long term.

President Obama’s desperate search for a significant foreign-policy victory before he leaves the White House may prove to be a costly military gamble, but the price will be paid by innocent Sunni men, women and children who face imminent death and destruction in Mosul. The real victors will be the mullahs in Tehran who will forever thank America for helping them to ethnically cleanse Iraq of its Sunni population and to enable their theocratic Iranian regime to extend its evil influence exponentially across the Middle East.

Struan Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014). He was President of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-2014) and Chair of Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup from 2005-2014. He is now President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA).

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/o...r-heating-up.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Is the Iran-Saudi Cold War Heating Up?

By ELLIE GERANMAYEH
JULY 27, 2016

LONDON — Throughout decades of ferocious rivalry, Iran and Saudi Arabia have, even while backing competing forces across the Middle East, generally maintained one red line: They wouldn’t interfere directly in each other’s domestic security. Policy makers in Riyadh and Tehran have known that backing militant groups among their rival’s Shiite minorities in Saudi Arabia or Sunni minorities in Iran could lead to an escalation for which neither country is ready.

But that tacit agreement might be unraveling.

While no hard proof has been presented, in the past month Iran has ratcheted up claims that Saudi Arabia is supporting groups working to overthrow the government in Tehran or to destabilize the country, in particular opening a new front with Kurdish separatists. The Saudis, for their part, say Iran is increasing support for Shiite militants.

Both countries deny the allegations. But given the total breakdown in diplomatic relations since January, and in an increasingly volatile region, it isn’t hard to imagine this tension morphing into something much more dangerous: a tit-for-tat exchange of attacks carried out by domestic armed groups. The fact that Iran’s Sunnis and Saudi Arabia’s Shiites have suffered periods of widespread arrests and their communities have been largely excluded from political and economic opportunities has created fertile ground for militant groups eager for foreign backing.

Saudi Arabia has long accused Iran of attempting to export its revolutionary ideology. For this reason, the Saudis have tried to dissuade links between its Shiite community and Tehran. The execution in January of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric who was accused of “seeking foreign meddling” and inciting violence, was partly motivated by a desire to deter Shiite groups from turning to Iran for support. Weeks later, Saudi Arabia tried 30 Shiites detained in 2013 on charges of espionage for Iran and provoking sectarian divisions.

Last week, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, accused Iran of managing and executing the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings and harboring Al Qaeda’s senior leaders in 2003, when they ordered the bombing of housing compounds in Riyadh. Saudi Arabian officials also point to increasing fears that Iran, together with Hezbollah al-Hijaz, a Saudi Shiite militant group, has recruited and trained separatists.

For its part, Iran has complained that since the 1979 revolution that Saudi Arabia has sought to undermine it. The Iranians have accused Saudi Arabia of backing separatist groups, in particular the ethnic Arabs known as the Ahwazis in oil-rich Khuzestan Province. In the past month, Iran says Saudi Arabia has upped the ante. In particular, the Iranians point the finger at Riyadh for operations carried out by Kurdish separatists.

After almost two decades of a relatively undisturbed truce with Iranian authorities, this summer has seen the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, a rebel group, engage in skirmishes with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Iranian forces have also come under fire from Pejak, an Iranian offshoot of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party. And earlier this month, militants ambushed an Iranian lawmaker’s car as he drove in the Kurdish region near Iraq.

A senior Iranian general attributed these attacks to “terrorist groups” supported by “reactionary states,” a term often used in Iran to describe Saudi Arabia. Mohsen Rezaei, a former Revolutionary Guards chief commander and now a leading member of the influential Expediency Council, has publicly scorned Saudi Arabia for backing separatist “terror cells” among Iranian Kurds. Mr. Rezaei claimed he was privy to evidence that the Kurdish rebels were carrying out orders from Riyadh after having met with Saudi officials in Erbil, Iraq. The Saudi consulate there denied this. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran similarly rejected links to the Saudis, but has said it would welcome talks with Saudi Arabia in the future.

Iran’s perceptions about Saudi connections to recent events were fueled further by Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief who made statements this month that amounted to calling for regime change in Iran. On July 9, Mr. Turki addressed the annual rally of Mujahedeen Khalq, an exiled Iranian dissident group that Iran designates a terrorist organization. Revolutionary Guards commanders and senior Iranian officials unanimously condemned Mr. Turki’s statements, with many arguing they proved the Saudis were sponsoring Iran’s recent instability.

This has provided more ammunition to those within Iran’s security establishment who call for greater military or political responses, whether internationally or in terms of domestic pressure inside Saudi Arabia. Other factions in Iran’s leadership strongly prefer a more patient path toward de-escalation.

What can be done at this point to stop tensions from boiling over?

At a minimum, Saudi officials must avoid actions that make it look as if they are plotting regime change in Tehran. Saudi Arabia has to tread carefully in how it develops any relations with armed Kurdish groups. The Iranian leadership should steer away from provoking Saudi Arabia. For their own sakes, both countries must do more to meet the legitimate demands of their minority groups that are increasingly at risk of radicalization. The West, meanwhile, should use its alliance with Saudi Arabia and the new opening with Iran to caution against measures that threaten regional security.

The citizens of the Middle East are desperately looking for leadership that offers hope for future generations rather than greater turmoil. Saudi Arabia and Iran could take a step in this direction. But each must first do more to avoid interfering in the other’s domestic security.

Ellie Geranmayeh is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Middle East and North Africa program.

 

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/07/28/the_true_cost_of_nuclear_deterrence_109635.html

July 28, 2016

The True Cost of Nuclear Deterrence

By Peter Huessy

What’s the cost of modernizing our nuclear deterrent? Numbers ranging from $700 billion to near $1 trillion have been cited as the thirty-year cost of modernizing our nuclear deterrent including the three-legged nuclear stool of submarines, bombers and land based missiles, as well as the warhead laboratories and the command and control functions of the nuclear deterrent.

Opponents of nuclear deterrence point to these big numbers and want the next administration to cut back on most of the nuclear deterrent, including eliminating up to all three wings of the land based ICBMs, the cruise missile for the new strategic bomber and upwards of half of the planned new submarines. A recent letter from 10 US Senators, led by Senator Feinstein of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, urged the President to eliminate the cruise missile and otherwise slowdown or eliminate other parts of the nuclear modernization effort.

Are there big bucks available to cut in the nuclear modernization effort that can then be transferred to conventional military accounts as Feinstein and Warner propose?

If this is the assumption the next Administration adopts having taken office next year, they are going to be surprised by what they find on the nuclear deterrent landscape.

In new analysis referencing the excellent nuclear budget work by Todd Harrison of CSIS and Evan Montgomery of CSBA, a surprising conclusion was reached. Fully half of all the nuclear deterrent funding for the next ten years for the bomber, land based missiles and submarines will not be spent on new modern systems to replace our aging deterrent but on sustaining our old systems we failed to replace.

In fact, because we delayed necessary modernization of our nuclear deterrent forces for decades, each year requires considerable billions of dollars to refurbish, sustain and provide what is often known as a life extension program for our deterrent forces. Delaying modernization further-- as opponents propose-- will simply increase the already large cost of sustainment.

For our submarine, bomber and land based missile force, each of the current systems need to be sustained, even as we do the research and development to build the replacement. Over the 20 year period between 2016-2036 most of that effort will be completed, with each of the new modernized systems peaking in annual expenditures in 20026, 2029 and 2031, respectively.

Total costs for the three legs of the Triad to both sustain and modernize is $135 billion over the next decade. This is annually equivalent to what Americans pay each year to buy tickets to the movies or purchase chocolate candy. Given a projected GDP of $26 trillion by 2025, a defense budget of 3%--the NATO target—gives us a Pentagon allowance of $780 billion out of which 4.5% would have to be spent to completely modernize our nuclear deterrent.

And cutting nuclear modernization by a notional one quarter yields barely enough funds to repair our threadbare operations and maintenance accounts. In short, our conventional forces cannot get well on the back of our nuclear top-cover deterrent.

Like a homeowner who refused to fix the roof, update the plumbing and air conditioning and put in a modern kitchen, our nuclear house is aging markedly and is so old that every week a new repair bill comes due. At the same time, however, a new nuclear home in the neighborhood is being built because at some point “fixing” the old nuclear house will not be an option.

But to simply sustain the old Triad systems will cost $67.8 billion over the next decade. This is more than the modernization bill of $67.2 billion.

This is the result of the US failure to do timely modernization.

After the end of the Cold War, we as a country declared that it was the end of history. We went on a procurement holiday on taking care of our nuclear deterrent. Over two decades later, doing nothing—no modernization—is actually going to cost us more than actually doing “something”—the necessary modernization of our deterrent.

The next administration will face demands to put together a five-year defense plan, to say nothing of an overall long term budget that examines entitlements and tax reform. Properly done, a pro-growth tax plan can easily generate $300 billion more in revenue each year. With unfunded entitlement liabilities approaching $100 trillion over the next 70 years, reform in that area is a no-brainer.

However, if the next administration decides to do another lengthy commission-type “nuclear posture review”, last done in 2009-10, further delays will occur and costs will go up even further.

That new nuclear review, should be done carefully and in-house and then announced and explained to Congress and the American public. Greater uncertainty over America’s deterrent modernization plans could have the effect of further unnerving our allies and emboldening our adversaries. Every year we delay refurbishing our nuclear forces, we significantly add to the cost of doing “nothing” which ironically will cost more than doing “something”.

We know what that “something” is. There is remarkable consensus in Congress in support of that direction—rebuild the three legs of our Triad; modernize the nuclear stockpile while markedly reducing both the number and type of warheads; and refurbish our command and control technology.

We have to do this to maintain the peace, reassure our allies and friends and deter our adversaries.

Peter R. Huessy is President of Geostrategic Analysis, and Senior Fellow in National Security at the American Foreign Policy Council, and Senior Fellow for Strategic Deterrent Studies of the Mitchell Institute.

 

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...ing_its_biggest_threat_since_1945_109642.html

July 29, 2016

France Facing its Biggest Threat Since 1945

By Ashish Kumar Sen

“The sanctions [on Russia] are an instrument, they are not an end in themselves,” Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to the United States, said at the Atlantic Council on July 28. “We are not going to keep the sanctions for the next twenty years,” he added. (Atlantic Council/Victoria Langton)

France, a victim of terrorist attacks for the past nineteen months, is facing its greatest security challenge since World War II, according to Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to the United States.

“It is a very, very dark moment for my country,” said Araud. “It is obviously the biggest threat that France really has been facing since 1945.”

“It is a threat against our security, but it is also a threat against our values, the social fabric of our country,” he added.

Araud spoke at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative in Washington on July 28. He was later joined in a panel discussion by Frederic Hof, director of the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East; John E. Herbst, director of the Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center; and Laure Mandeville, a nonresident senior fellow in the Future Europe Initiative. Jérémie Gallon, a nonresident senior fellow in the Future Europe Initiative, moderated the discussion.


France has been attacked multiple times since January of 2015 when an assaulton the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in Paris and a Jewish deli left seventeen people dead.

The deadliest of the attacks took place in Paris on November 13, 2015, when 130 people were killed in coordinated strikes on the Bataclan concert hall, stadium, and cafes and restaurants in and around the French capital. On July 14, a lone attacker rammed a cargo truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice killing eighty-four people; and on July 26, two men murdered a Catholic priest and grievously wounded one of his parishioners at a church in Normandy, France. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has been blamed for these three attacks. The country-wide state of emergency, which was imposed by French President François Hollande following the attacks in Paris, was extended following the attack in Nice.

Mandeville noted that the public mood in France has transformed from patriotism following the Charlie Hebdo attacks to one of anger and doubt—following the Nice attack—about the capacity of the government and security services to contain these terrorist threats.

“We are faced with an enemy which is within our walls,” said Mandeville. “We have seen a palpable process of radicalization of people from very different backgrounds who suddenly turn to these awful terrorist attacks. It is an absolutely huge challenge.”

She described the murder of the Catholic priest in Normandy as a watershed moment. “It shows that the people we are dealing with—the radical Islamists—want to wage a war of civilization and a war of religion against us. We can say we are not in a war on religion, but they think we are,” she said. “What is going to be the answer to that?”

Mandeville suggested that it is a question of identity, and not so much socio-economic integration, that lies at the heart of the challenge facing European society today.

Araud took exception to this suggestion—calling the identity debate an “artificial and toxic” trap laid by the far-right. Through this frame of identity, “they want to define me as a Christian. They want to define my neighbor as a Muslim. Actually no, we are both threatened in the same way,” he contended.

Most of the terrorists who have attacked Europe were not devout Muslims, he noted.

France has become a prime terrorist target for certain reasons, according to Araud. France, a former colonial power, is seen as a symbol of the West and Western values in many parts of North Africa and the Middle East; the Muslim community in France, predominantly of Arab origin, is vulnerable to ISIS propaganda; and France has been at the forefront in the war on jihadists, including in Mali and as part of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq, he said.

The Brexit threat

In a June 23 referendum, the British public voted in favor of taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union. David Cameron, who had promised in 2013 that such a referendum be held, resigned as prime minister of the UK leaving his successor, Theresa May, to negotiate the so-called Brexit. This process could take up to two years once May informs the European Council of her country’s decision to leave the EU, thereby triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which governs the EU exit process.

A looming Brexit poses a challenge to France. “Brexit, for us, has a lot of consequences,” said Araud.

The ambassador said the EU’s other twenty-seven member states have no intention of punishing the UK for its decision to leave the bloc. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. He acknowledged moments of anger and resentment in Europe following the referendum, but said that “after the dust settles, the reality will be that we need to maintain a close and friendly relationship with the United Kingdom.”

The UK and France are already bound together in a defense relationship by the Lancaster House Agreement. Both nations are also part of NATO. “In political terms and economic terms, it is also in our mutual interests to keep a close relationship with the United Kingdom,” said Araud.

The ambassador said Brexit negotiations, which he predicted may turn acrimonious because vital interests are at stake, must respect the interests of all parties concerned as well as safeguard the four pillars of the European single market—the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people. The UK seeks to retain access to the European single market. The conditions under which the EU has agreed to grant such access to nonmember states, like Norway, include the right to free movement of workers. The UK wants to control the movement of people from the EU to the UK—a sentiment that was reflected in the outcome of the Brexit vote.

“You can’t have the cake and eat it,” said Araud. “I am sure that British as good diplomats, and [they] are very good diplomats, will try to have the cake and eat it, but the answer at the beginning of the negotiations is: No way!”

The outcome of the British referendum has raised questions about EU unity and heightens the risk of the bloc unraveling at a critical moment for Europe. The leaders of both France and Germany are up for re-election in 2017, and the EU’s future will be a central point of debate in the respective campaigns.

Western democracies are also witnessing what Araud described as an “outburst of populism” that has fed off the anti-EU sentiment. In France, this is manifested in the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front, led by Marine Le Pen.

Furthermore, France, like much of Europe, is only just limping out of the financial crisis of 2008. “We have to convince [the people] that the European Union is actually contributing to prosperity and is not limited to a sort of austerity straitjacket,” said Araud.

“We are facing a rebellion against globalization,” he said. “Globalization has been very good for the poor in the third world and for the rich in the first world. But the problem is, of course, that democracy is based on the prosperity, the well-being, and the optimism of the middle class.”


From left: Jérémie Gallon, a nonresident senior fellow in the Future Europe Initiative, moderates a discussion between Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to the United States; Frederic Hof, director of the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East; Laure Mandeville, a nonresident senior fellow in the Future Europe Initiative; and John E. Herbst, director of the Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. (Atlantic Council/Victoria Langton)

The war in Syria

France, a US ally that “combines strategic outlook, political will, military capabilities, and economic heft is poised to play a critical role in shaping Europe’s future, both in terms of growth and in terms of security,” Damon Wilson, executive vice president for programs and strategy at the Atlantic Council, said in opening remarks.

Europe today faces challenges on its east—from a revanchist Russia—and its south—from conflicts that have driven historic numbers of migrants north into the Continent. Over the past few years, Europe has seen the largest movement of people since World War II. A majority of them are fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Hof described Syria as the epicenter of the crisis facing Europe and said it was important to address the twin problems of protecting civilians in Syria and defeating ISIS in its Syrian capital, Raqqa.

Araud said Russia’s intervention on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had limited Western options for creating a safe zone for the protection of civilians in Syria. “I don’t see the Americans or the Europeans risking a major incident with the Russians,” said Araud.

Future of Russian sanctions

Earlier in July, the European Union extended sanctions on Russia that were originally imposed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March of 2014 and the country’s support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“It is absolutely essential that sanctions be maintained unless the Kremlin begins to step back from its aggression in eastern Ukraine, and that is not happening,” said Herbst. “This is the silent war that people do not pay attention to.”

Prominent voices in Europe that want to appease Russia should be discarded, said Herbst.

However, Araud contended that Europeans, who traded significantly more with Russia than the United States, are suffering as a result of the sanctions on and from Russia. “The sanctions are an instrument, they are not an end in themselves,” he said. “We are not going to keep the sanctions for the next twenty years.”

Some countries are now questioning the efficacy of the sanctions, which are reviewed every six months and can only be imposed through a unanimous consent of all twenty-eight members of the EU. “There will be a moment when some European countries will tell us, ‘Sorry, but your sanctions don’t work and they hurt us, so we have to find something else,’” said Araud.

Ashish Kumar Sen is deputy director of communications at the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @AshishSen.


This article originally appeared at Atlantic Council.

 

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http://www.stripes.com/news/analysts-recommend-2nd-us-aircraft-carrier-for-far-east-1.421496

Analysts recommend 2nd US aircraft carrier for Far East

By Seth Robson
Stars and Stripes
Published: July 29, 2016

Despite the challenges, the Navy should double the number of American aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the Western Pacific, in part to counter China’s aggressive expansionism, analysts say.

Forward-stationing another carrier west of the international dateline was recommended in a Defense Department-commissioned report, “Asia Pacific Rebalance 2025: Capabilities, Presence and Partnerships,” published this year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China’s growing assertiveness and increasingly capable air, naval and missile forces reinforce the need for more U.S. Naval forces in the region, especially carrier strike groups, the report said.

“A larger demonstration of U.S. will and capability is necessary for deterrence and reassurance purposes,” said the report, which added the Navy should examine the steps needed to move a second carrier strike group to the Far East. One possible location would be Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan.

“There is a unique political opportunity to shift a carrier forward in 2019 because the U.S. fleet is scheduled to add the USS Gerald R. Ford, which will deploy to California and would therefore permit movement of an older carrier forward without decrementing home-ported U.S. carriers,” the report said.

Tetsuo Kotani, a research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, addressed issues — particularly logistical and political concerns — that would be at play if a second U.S. carrier were brought to Japan. For example, there’s a lack of airport capacity in Japan to accommodate planes from a second carrier, he said during a lecture Tuesday just outside Yokosuka, headquarters of the U.S. 7th Fleet.

“We are now transferring a carrier air wing from [Naval Air Facility] Atsugi to [Marine Corps Air Station] Iwakuni. These airports are busy. Misawa [Air Base in northern Japan] is also busy,” Kotani said.

The Philippines recently signed a new basing agreement with the U.S., but it doesn’t allow for permanent stationing of U.S. forces there. Australia lacks the maintenance facilities required by a carrier strike group. Guam’s infrastructure is outdated and would require massive investment to accommodate a carrier, Kotani said.

“That doesn’t mean the U.S. can’t maintain a two-carrier posture in the Western Pacific,” he said.

In June, the San Diego-based USS John C. Stennis and Yokosuka-based USS Ronald Reagan conducted dual-carrier flight operations in the Philippine Sea — the first time in two years that such an operation has taken place.

U.S. officials announced earlier this year that the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, which oversees ships based in San Diego, Washington state and Hawaii, would send more ships to operate alongside the 7th Fleet.

The 3rd Fleet, which controls the Stennis, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Carl Vinson and USS Nimitz, has the capacity to station one of its carriers in the Far East at all times, Kotani said.

“If the U.S. can come up with a more effective rotation of carriers in the Pacific it would be possible,” he said. “The 3rd Fleet can become a force provider for 7th Fleet, who can be a force user.”

A two-carrier posture would send a strong signal to China about U.S. determination to maintain peace and security in the region — most notably the South China Sea where China has been building and militarizing artificial islands – but it wouldn’t be a reaction to China’s efforts to build its own aircraft carriers. China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is limited, Kotani said.

“It is not a carrier at this moment,” he said. “It is just a big transport ship.”

Carriers belonging to the 3rd Fleet carriers have deployed to the Far East in the past and will likely do so again, Lt. Clint Ramsden, Navy spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said Friday.

The U.S. is rebalancing its naval forces to station 60 percent of the fleet in the Pacific. People can expect to see the 3rd Fleet play a larger role in places that have, traditionally, been 7th Fleet areas, he said.

“There are plans in place for 3rd Fleet forward using the 3rd Fleet staff to control deploying ships from the West Coast of the U.S. into what has traditionally been the 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility all the way from the international dateline to the Indian Ocean,” Ramsden said.

robson.seth@stripes.com

Twitter: @SethRobson1

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[Vegas321]

Don't agree we need a second carrier in the far East, just another Dreadnot target that can be sunk. Infact, the US should stop building carriers all together cuz, of their super vanabiliy now to supersonic sea missiles China and Russia now have.
The US should focus on a new generation of super steath SSN & SSBN sub force. Stop spending on carriers, and start modernizing our sub fleet. Add to that, a new Trident III system.

 

[Housecarl]

Don't agree we need a second carrier in the far East, just another Dreadnot target that can be sunk. Infact, the US should stop building carriers all together cuz, of their super vanabiliy now to supersonic sea missiles China and Russia now have.
The US should focus on a new generation of super steath SSN & SSBN sub force. Stop spending on carriers, and start modernizing our sub fleet. Add to that, a new Trident III system.

An argument I heard a week or so back was for 10 to 20 diesel electric AIP attack submarines for the South China Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian/Red/Med Seas.

 

[Housecarl]

Now that's making some sense....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...er-warns-of-more-terror-attacks-a7161561.html

French Prime Minister plans ban on foreign funding for mosques with more Isis terror attacks predicted

Manuel Valls predicted that France would be targeted by further terror attacks

Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden 17 hours ago 211 comments

The French government is considering banning the foreign financing of mosques as it reshapes its counter-extremism strategy following a fresh wave of terror attacks.

Manuel Valls, the Prime Minister, told Le Monde the prohibition would be for an indefinite period but gave no further detail on the policy.

“There needs to be a thorough review to form a new relationship with French Islam,” he added.

“We live in a changed era and we must change our behaviour. This is a revolution in our security culture…the fight against radicalisation will be the task of a generation.”

Following the murder of a priest by teenage Isis supporters at a church in Normandy and the Nice attack, Mr Valls said France was “at war” and predicted further atrocities.

“This war, which does not only concern France, will be long and we will see more attacks,” he added.

“But we will win, because France has a strategy to win this war. First we must crush the external enemy.”

The French government has come under increasing criticism for failing to prevent atrocities, including the latest attack in Normandy.

Security services were tipped off that Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19, was planning an attack but police were reportedly unable to identify him from photos and a video showing him declaring allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.

He was already on country’s “fiche S” terror watchlist for attempting to travel to Syria in June but slipped through the net to re-enter France after being stopped by Turkish authorities.

Petitjean and 19-year-old Adel Kermiche took six people hostage at a church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray and slit the throat of its priest, Father Jacques Hamel, before being shot dead by police.

Kermiche was also known to security services and was wearing an electronic surveillance tag while on bail as he awaited trial for membership of a terror organisation at the time.

It came less than a fortnight after the Nice attack, when a Tunisian man killed 84 people and injured 300 more when he ploughed a lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was not among the 10,000 names on the “fiche S” but the inclusion of terrorists including several of the Paris attackers, the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen and their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly, as well as a lorry driver who beheaded his manager and attempted to blow up a chemical plant has shown the system to be ineffective.

Intelligence officials have admitted that they are under-resourced to deal with the potential threat from each individual, who would need up to 20 people monitoring them every day.

France’s continuing state of emergency has drastically expanded detention powers, sparking a wave of controversial house arrests since November.

Responding to criticism, Mr Valls said his government would not create a “French Guantanamo” or be swayed by populism.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://news.trust.org/item/20160729221652-lsse6

U.S. Air Force asks industry for proposals to replace nuclear missiles

by Reuters
Friday, 29 July 2016 22:15 GMT
By David Alexander

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force asked industry on Friday for proposals to replace the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and the nuclear cruise missile as the military moves ahead with a costly modernization of its aging atomic weapons systems.

The Air Force said in a statement it expected to award up to two contracts for a new ICBM weapons system, or ground-based strategic deterrent, sometime next summer or fall. It also expected to award up to two contracts in the same time frame for a new nuclear cruise missile, or long-range standoff weapon.

Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force is expected to cost more than $350 billion over the next decade as the United States works to replace its aging systems, including bombs, nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Some analysts estimate the cost of modernization at $1 trillion over 30 years.

The new ICBM system would be a follow-on to the Minuteman missile, whose launch systems and physical infrastructure first became operational in the mid-1960s. The system has been upgraded over the years, but much of the infrastructure is original, the Air Force said.

The most recent versions of the Minuteman III date from the late 1990s and early 2000s and had an intended 20-year life span, the Air Force said. The missile will "face increased operational and sustainment challenges until it can be replaced," it said.

"This request for proposals is the next step to ensuring the nation's ICBM leg of the nuclear triad remains safe, secure and effective," said Major General Scott Jansson, who leads the Air Force program office for strategic systems.

Opponents of replacing the nuclear cruise missile have argued that its missions could be handled by other legs of the triad. Others say it is an unnecessary expense at a time of shrinking budgets and smaller deployed nuclear arsenals.

The military insists the new cruise missile is needed to enable older bombers to deliver nuclear weapons to targets whose air space is heavily defended and difficult to reach with gravity bombs.

The missile is "needed to replace the aging air launched cruise missile, which has far exceeded its originally planned service life ... and is required to support our B-52 bomber fleet," Admiral Cecil Haney, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, told lawmakers earlier this year. (Reporting by David Alexander)

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...partment-lacks-technical-expertise-in-nuclear

July 29, 2016, 10:28 am

Defense Department lacks technical expertise in nuclear weapons

By Robert R. Monroe
Comments 2

A striking fact about today’s Department of Defense (DOD) is its critical lack of technical expertise in nuclear weapons. An immense loss has taken place over the last 25 years.

Throughout the Cold War DOD had thousands of military and civilian nuclear weapons professionals. Leading the organization was the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). DNA’s scientists and engineers managed an immense research and development program on the effects of nuclear weapons, using underground nuclear tests, nuclear weapons simulators, high-explosive tests, exo-atmospheric tests, and high-dosage radiobiology research. DNA’s “SAGE” (Scientific Advisory Group on Effects) – composed of America’s top nuclear weapons experts – helped guide the Agency’s science.

DNA also exercised strong leadership and oversight over Army, Navy, and Air Force nuclear weapons activities. DNA’s leaders and scientists constantly visited military nuclear weapons units worldwide to discuss the warfighters’ nuclear needs, problems, solutions, and ideas – which DNA would turn into tomorrow’s programs.
Each military service had had its own nuclear weapons laboratories staffed by professionals h having nuclear doctorates. As in DNA, many of these specialists had put in a tour as Research Associates at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) nuclear weapons labs.

DOD maintained highly effective career patterns for these nuclear specialists. They rotated among DNA; service labs; Army, Navy, and Air Force assignments in nuclear weapons units; NATO; Joint and Unified commands; Secretary of Defense, JCS, and military department staffs. They managed underground nuclear weapons tests; they established hardness and survivability standards for U.S. weapons systems; they investigated vulnerabilities of Soviet systems; they created targeting doctrines for each type of weapon and target; and they developed military strategy and tactics for battlefield use of nuclear weapons.

Almost all of this is now gone. For a generation America’s political leaders have actively prevented DOD from maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapon readiness. DNA was disestablished in 1997, and without its leadership, one activity after the other throughout DOD was closed down or greatly reduced.

Today, DOD does not need this same broad capability; but it certainly needs vastly more technical nuclear expertise than it has! Nuclear weapons are the most powerful military force in existence, and America expects DOD – as the "warrior class" of the nation – to be at the apex of professionalism in their understanding and use. We're a far cry from that now.

Worse, this creates even more serious problems. DOD today doesn’t have the technical expertise necessary to make wise decisions on vital nuclear issues. This is untenable! The Secretary of Defense absolutely must be able to give the President a DOD position -- independent from DOE’s – on nuclear weapons issues of great national importance. Two examples (of many):

New Nuclear Weapons. Today – a generation after the Cold War – the nuclear threats facing America have changed dramatically. Yet DOD’s nuclear thinking and planning has been on permanent hold. Our weapons are over-age and untested. Our nuclear deterrent will not deter most adversaries. New nuclear weapons of many types are needed. But the DOD expertise needed to create advocacy for these decisions and develop the persuasive politico-military rationale essential for sustained support by White House, Congress, and the American people doesn’t exist.

Resumption of Underground Nuclear Testing. In the near future the nation will reach numerous critical decision points on nuclear test resumption. These may be triggered by warhead problems; by numerous warhead modifications, by production readiness of replacement warheads, by foreign nuclear tests, by nuclear weapons’ use in a regional conflict; by terrorist WMD use, etc. DOD’s leaders tend to regard nuclear test resumption as a political issue which is “above their pay grade,” and they’re dead wrong! Testing does have political overtones; but it has equally important technical, military, and strategic overtones. History will certainly condemn DOD if it doesn’t provide the President with a strong, reasoned, independent position when test resumption is at issue. But DOD doesn’t have the technical expertise to meet these responsibilities

In sum, although most of the Pentagon’s near-term efforts must be focused primarily on conventional warfare, it cannot ignore its responsibilities for the nation’s nuclear deterrent. The need is urgent and lead-times are immense. If we start today it will still take twenty years to make any significant change in the stockpile. The future is unknowable, but it’s highly likely to involve use of nuclear weapons; and our existing stockpile will be of little use in deterring many of the growing threats. Our wisest course today is to rebuild our expertise in DOD and DOE by robust programs in R&D, design, testing, and production of advanced nuclear weapons.

Robert R. Monroe, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), is former director of Defense Nuclear Agency.