WAR 08-21-2021-to-08-27-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(484) 07-31-2021-to-08-06-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(485) 08-07-2021-to-08-13-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(486) 08-14-2021-to-08-20-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

____________________________________________

Posted for fair use.....

From Forever Wars to Great-Power Wars: Lessons Learned From Operation Inherent Resolve - War on the Rocks

Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a two-part series on airpower and Operation Inherent Resolve. The first article explores the evolution of

warontherocks.com

FROM FOREVER WARS TO GREAT-POWER WARS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE

STACIE L. PETTYJOHN AND BECCA WASSER
AUGUST 20, 2021
COMMENTARY

Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a two-part series on airpower and Operation Inherent Resolve. The first article explores the evolution of airpower since Operation Desert Storm.

What lessons can be gleaned from recent U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria that are relevant for a potential future war against a great-power adversary like China or Russia?

The U.S. Department of Defense is attempting to make the long overdue pivot from focusing on the Middle East to shoring up deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and Europe by improving its ability to prevail in large-scale combat against a great power. But it is important that the Pentagon does not relegate the lessons learned from its recent operational experience in the Middle East to the trash bin. Aaron Stein and Ryan Fishel argue that the U.S. Air Force needs to prepare for proxy war scenarios akin to Syria. The Defense Department undoubtedly should learn from its experience competing with Russia and Iran in Syria below the threshold of conventional war. But it can and should also learn lessons from U.S. operations in the Middle East for great-power conflict as well.

The war to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), known as Operation Inherent Resolve, presented one of the most permissive operating environments U.S. airpower could expect. Issues that emerged in this environment are likely to be far more acute against a more capable adversary. American military operations in the Middle East highlighted clear deficiencies in some missions that would be essential to winning a future great-power conventional war. U.S. forces should address the vulnerabilities identified during this conflict related to deliberate targeting, operating in contested airspace, and integrating air- and ground-based fires to prepare for future great-power conflict.

Preplanned Airstrikes Struggle to Keep Up With the Speed of Modern Warfare
As the U.S. military prepares for war against a great power, military leaders have re-emphasized developing offensive platforms and weapons systems to improve firepower. Currently, U.S. air operations are centered around an air operations center that preplans deliberate airstrikes as a part of a 72-hour air-tasking cycle. In Operation Inherent Resolve, however, the deliberate targeting process routinely took “from days to weeks.” This proved to be too slow to keep up with a highly adaptive adversary and rapidly changing battlefield.

The deliberate targeting process struggled due to the absence of an initial list of ISIL targets, insufficient numbers of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to simultaneously support ground operations and deliberate target development, and a stovepiped and undermanned intelligence process. Because ISIL had few fixed targets, such as buildings or airfields, U.S. forces tried to preplan strikes against headquarters; cash and weapons stores; and oil production, processing, and distribution operations. ISIL was able to stay ahead of U.S. forces’ deliberate targeting cycle by relocating mobile targets like oil trucks or regularly transferring weapons, cash, and fighters from one location to another before deliberate targets could be approved. ISIL also hid forces and assets among civilians to further complicate targeting.

In a great-power war, U.S. forces are unlikely to have the luxury of days or weeks to plan air and missile strikes if they want to stop a fait accompli and defeat invading Chinese or Russian forces. Unlike in Operation Inherent Resolve, U.S. forces will likely have an existing prioritized target list they can take off the shelf. But, after those initial strikes, it is not clear that a 72-hour deliberate targeting process will be fast enough to keep up with the adversary or be capable of supporting all-domain operations in the way that U.S. forces are envisioning. In a fast-paced, high-intensity conflict, unexpected adversary actions, battlefield developments, and damage inflicted on U.S. forces will likely render advance planning irrelevant or inexecutable. The air-tasking cycle was created to produce effective and efficient air operations, while minimizing the risk to U.S. forces. It has worked well against less-capable adversaries. But, in a war against a great power, U.S. forces will likely need to accept more risk and inefficiency if they want to survive, let alone have a chance of winning.

Moreover, if the American goal is to halt an attack, the most important target sets — such as ships, tanks, aircraft, air defenses, and missile launchers — are likely to be mobile and thus will need to be targeted dynamically. Yet, before U.S. forces can engage mobile enemy targets, they need to be able to find them, which historically has been a significant problem. There are reasons to believe that finding mobile targets would be more difficult in a high-end conflict than it was in the desert. Planners should assume that, like ISIL, Russia and China will use unmarked forces, camouflage concealment and deception, and mobility to disguise the identity and location of their forces. A combination of forward air controllers and forward command posts may allow the United States to find some mobile targets in Europe. But the U.S. forces will likely struggle to find targets in an adversary’s heavily defended homeland and in dense urban environments. A lack of air and information superiority may further complicate targeting in a future conflict with China, as American forces may struggle to accurately target military ships from range, wasting sophisticated cruise missiles on decoys in a cluttered maritime environment. Deliberate targeting is likely to play a peripheral role in air operations against a great power because of the large number of mobile targets, the pace of operations, and the urgency associated with accomplishing certain missions.

American Forces Are Not Prepared to Operate in Highly Contested Battlespaces
Preparation for future conflict with China and Russia is predicated on U.S. forces operating in a contested environment. But the recent U.S. experience in Syria in merely a congested air environment — rather than a contested one — illustrates just how difficult this will be for U.S. forces as they contend with different forms of physical and informational denial.

Unlike China or Russia, ISIL did not have the advanced capabilities to challenge American forces in the air, at sea, or in space. But U.S. forces did find themselves operating in close proximity to more-capable Russian, Syrian, and Iranian air forces in Syria during Inherent Resolve. Some U.S. troops found that they were unprepared and uncomfortable maneuvering around potentially hostile forces in a busy and congested air environment, where U.S. forces only had tacit approval to operate in Syrian airspace. This was further complicated by Russia’s deployment of sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, which posed a potential threat to U.S. and partner aircraft.

Years of operations without any air-to-air engagements, and in which almost every weapon released was approved at a high level and scrutinized after the fact, had left U.S. pilots initially reluctant to act in self-defense against emerging threats. While there were several air-to-air incidents, including U.S. shootdowns of a Syrian Su-22 Fitter attack aircraft and two Iranian-made Shahed 129 unmanned aerial systems, these only occurred after senior U.S. commanders stressed the importance of self-defense and initiative to troops. U.S. forces have become accustomed to needing approval before acting, which was appropriate and needed to protect innocent civilians in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations. But the flipside is that this may have instilled a hesitancy that a great-power adversary could exploit.

Because Russia and China both have extensive integrated air and missile defense systems and mobile air defenses organic to their maneuver units, the United States will not have air supremacy at the outset of a conflict. This means that U.S. strike aircraft will not be able to loiter over an area hunting for targets without assuming great risk, and accompanied by aircraft to defend them. These U.S. forces should be authorized and prepared to undertake defensive and offensive operations because they will likely be challenged by adversary air defenses and air forces. In future great-power conflict, U.S. military personnel will need to become more risk-acceptant and empowered to act without receiving explicit approval from their commanders. This is especially true in a degraded communications environment, as commanders may not be reachable to provide authorization.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

Both Chinese and Russian military thought emphasizes the need to fight and win an informationalized war or an information confrontation. Their war plans emphasize attacking critical U.S. information systems and command nodes in the space, cyber, and physical domains to limit U.S. forces’ ability to collect, process, and share information, thereby degrading U.S. commanders’ situational awareness and undermining their ability to effectively command and control their forces and win a conflict. It is likely, therefore, that communications, especially long-haul communications, will be disrupted during parts of a great-power conflict. American commanders have become dependent on a level of connectivity, and on having real-time visibility into the battlefield, while they sit thousands of miles away thanks to the proliferation of remotely piloted aircraft sending back live video feeds.

China and Russia’s ability to directly challenge U.S. forces and to degrade and disrupt U.S. communications suggests that it will be nearly impossible to exercise highly centralized command and control, as seen in Inherent Resolve. This will necessitate workarounds like mission command. An inability of forward-deployed forces to communicate with the air operations center will also encourage a shift away from deliberate targeting to forward units independently finding and engaging targets dynamically in a potential future war with a great power. Today, this would be challenging. U.S. forces need to train in information and communication-degraded environments, have the capabilities to plan and coordinate operations, and practice making decisions independently at lower levels of command so that they are willing and able to seize the initiative when disconnected from higher headquarters.

U.S. Commanders Need a Dynamic and Agile Way of Managing Airspace
Future U.S. military operating concepts center around the idea of being able to launch coordinated air, ground, and maritime strikes with offensive cyber, space, and electronic warfare effects. Implementing all-domain operations requires linking different military systems so they can pass information to each other, but it also necessitates coordinating and integrating these different fires. Longstanding doctrinal inconsistencies, particularly as they relate to battlespace management and air-to-ground integration, proved to be a persistent source of tension between the Air Force and the Army during Inherent Resolve. This is likely to become more problematic in the future as the Army fields increasingly long-range missiles, and future U.S. warfighting concepts require seamlessly and quickly combining air, sea, and ground missile strikes.

Battlefield geometry — the division of the battlespace into separate areas of operations with different fire control measures — was an area of disagreement that tapped into longstanding interservice rivalries over the appropriate roles for air and ground power in combat. In Inherent Resolve, an evolved and less contentious version of this debate continued. Many Air Force officers felt airpower was constrained by battlespace geometry that prioritized the ground component. They argued that fewer limits would have allowed airpower to be applied more flexibly, aggressively, and efficiently, thereby accelerating ISIL’s defeat. In contrast, ground commanders wanted to focus airpower on supporting the near fight and sought to have large portions of the battlespace under their control. The ground component prevailed, as resource and battlespace allocation favored the near fight over the deep one. This required a level of air-to-ground integration that slowed the pace of airstrikes.

Additionally, salvos of long-range rockets and missiles launched from Army or Marine Corps High Mobility Artillery Rocket System batteries had to be deconflicted with airstrikes. During large battles, U.S. commanders managed congested airspace with as many as 40 aircraft on station and several ground-based artillery units in place. Airspace management issues made it difficult to provide joint fires at the speed and volume that ground commanders desired. In an effort to solve this problem, the airspace was either divided with part assigned to aircraft and another part to artillery, or it was closed to aircraft to allow artillery to freely fire.

Neither of these offers a viable means of coordinating fires against a great power that has better defenses and a greater ability to threaten American forces. Time is not on the U.S. side in such a fight, and U.S. ground-based missiles are unlikely to be able to find and hit an enemy target before it moves or enhances its defenses if the airspace first needs to be cleared. Moreover, neither approach tightly integrates air and ground strikes, let alone rapidly delivers them to simultaneously present an adversary with multiple dilemmas or threats — a critical component of the forthcoming joint warfighting concept.

As the United States develops its warfighting concept for a high-end conflict, Inherent Resolve highlights the yawning gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s aspirations. The Department of Defense is counting on artificial intelligence and machine learning to fuse sensor data from across domains into a common operating picture and to dynamically manage the battlespace, enabling U.S. forces to make decisions faster than the enemy and achieve “decision dominance.” In the interim, the joint force — and particular the Army and the Air Force — needs to continue the dialogue on airspace management and work to find more agile ways of managing it.

Conclusion
As the Department of Defense continues to reshape the U.S. military so that it is better able to defeat aggression by a great-power adversary that can contest U.S. forces in all domains, it should take stock of how it performed and what it has learned in recent wars. These conflicts yield lessons for great-power competition and warfighting. An examination of U.S. operations in Syria and Iraq reveals that some American high-end warfighting skills have atrophied. Reinvigorating these proficiencies and developing improved ways of carrying out these missions will be essential if the United States finds itself in a large-scale war against China or Russia.

The Defense Department cannot simply wish away these problems or expect that advanced technologies will solve these issues. Technologies that automate currently manual processes and accelerate the speed of decision-making are necessary parts of the solution, but they alone are not sufficient. Questions about authorities need to be resolved, new processes and procedures should be developed, and American personnel should be trained so that they are prepared to effectively execute critical missions while challenged by a capable adversary. The Department of Defense should examine how it can improve its ability to rapidly and flexibly target enemy forces, integrate fires from multiple domains, and manage the battlespace today in order to win in tomorrow’s fight.

BECOME A MEMBER

Stacie Pettyjohn is a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. Becca Wasser is a fellow in the defense program and co-lead of the Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security. Together, they are the co-authors of “The Air War Against the Islamic State: The Role of Airpower in Operation Inherent Resolve.”
Image: U.S. Navy (Photo by Mass Communication Spc. 2nd Class Jenna Dobson)

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Diplomacy Shaken Not Stirred - War on the Rocks

Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The repetition of patterns of events and responses is one reason that scholars

warontherocks.com

DIPLOMACY SHAKEN NOT STIRRED
PAUL EDGAR
AUGUST 20, 2021
PODCASTS - HORNS OF A DILEMMA

Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The repetition of patterns of events and responses is one reason that scholars and policymakers often turn to the past for insight into how to best deal with contemporary events. It is also why classic works of history and strategy — such as Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War — have become classic and remain relevant. In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Dr. Paul Edgar, associate director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Austin, goes 1,000 years before Thucydides to find enduring lessons as told in an inscription on a statue from the 15th century BCE. While the names of the rulers and powers may not be familiar, Edgar illustrates how the themes of strategy, alliance, and statecraft in great-power competition are familiar and relevant to power struggles today. This talk was recorded at the Summer Seminar on History and Statecraft, sponsored by the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and held in Beaver Creek, Colorado.

Image: Enyavar via Wikimedia Commons

HORNS OF A DILEMMA
Diplomacy Shaken Not Stirred

javascript:void[0];

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

The real failure is Pakistan | The Strategist

There is only one good thing about the fact that the 20th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks will take place less than a month after the Taliban have re-established the Islamic Emirate ...

www.aspistrategist.org.au

The real failure is Pakistan

19 Aug 2021 | Bill Emmott

There is only one good thing about the fact that the 20th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks will take place less than a month after the Taliban have re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It will serve as a reminder of why it was necessary to invade the country and topple the Taliban government two decades ago.

When nearly 3,000 people are slaughtered on your soil in an operation planned and ordered by a known terrorist group residing in a country whose government refuses to cooperate in bringing that group and its leader to justice, there are no good options. The retaliatory attack on Afghanistan was the only time Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, under which signatories agree to consider an attack on one as an attack on all, was invoked. The United States-led invasion was widely supported; unlike the invasion of Iraq two years later, only a few countries condemned or opposed it.

For these reasons, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will be an even more sombre occasion than usual. Alongside the terrible memories of that day will now stand a powerful sense of two decades of failure in Afghanistan, of the betrayal of all those Afghans who had become convinced that they could live in a freer and somewhat more prosperous country, and of a major blow to the international credibility of America, NATO and President Joe Biden personally. But while most of the recrimination focuses on what has and has not been done in Afghanistan, the real failure since September 2001 has been regional. And that failure centres on Pakistan.

David Frum, who was writing President George W. Bush’s foreign-policy speeches in 2001 and 2002, has commented that if the US-led invasion had achieved its primary goal of killing or capturing Osama bin Laden in December 2001, the story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan would have ended very differently: a faster withdrawal and handover to some sort of new Afghan government, and no long-term commitment. We can’t know whether this counterfactual is true, but his point does highlight an overlooked issue in the aftermath of the Afghanistan debacle.

For nearly a decade, until he was killed by US special forces in 2011, bin Laden hid in Pakistan, and not simply the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the government’s writ hardly ran. He was in Abbottabad, a mid-size city just 120 kilometres from the capital, Islamabad, and home to the Pakistan Military Academy.

While some Taliban leaders decamped to Qatar after being driven from power, most based themselves in Pakistan, with the backing and apparent blessing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The fact that the Taliban still existed as an opposition group with whom President Donald Trump’s administration negotiated its exit deal last year is largely due to Pakistani support.

The biggest failure in the aftermath of 9/11 was the failure to secure long-term support from the front-line states surrounding Afghanistan: Iran, China, Russia, Central Asia’s five ‘Stans’ and India, but, above all, Pakistan. To be sure, support would never have been forthcoming from some of those countries. But Pakistan had long been a recipient of American aid, military and otherwise, and was considered a US ally during the Cold War. The fact that it was also snuggling up to China, and that its nuclear-weapons program benefited from Chinese support and technology, ought to have been viewed as an indicator of its slight commitment to the American camp.

It would never have been easy for the US to achieve sufficient leverage over Pakistan after 2001 to stand a chance of securing long-term stability in Afghanistan, especially at a time when Pakistan and India were at military loggerheads, which in 2001 and 2002 fuelled plausible fears of nuclear war. During this period, a major goal of US foreign policy was to establish a closer relationship with India (leading to the 2005 US–India Civil Nuclear Agreement), in large part to offset China’s rising power in the Indo-Pacific. These ties are now the centrepiece of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, through an enhanced role for the ‘Quad’ countries (India, Japan, Australia and the US).

With hindsight, we ought to see that the key mistake of the period lay in Bush’s 2002 state of the union address when, using Frum’s words, he described America’s enemies as an ‘axis of evil’. None of the three countries he accused of being state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq and North Korea—is responsible for America’s failure in Afghanistan and for the return of the Taliban.

The blame for that lies largely with Pakistan and America’s inability to bring the country onside. Even if the US had not diverted its attention and resources to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that failure would have doomed its policy in Afghanistan.

To say this is not to divert attention from the more immediate and tragic failures—the moral lapses and indications of incompetent planning that are not a new feature of America’s international engagement. As the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman has put it, there can now be no real doubt that we are living in a post-American world. When author and commentator Fareed Zakaria published a book with that title in 2008, months before that year’s financial crash, many believed it to be premature. Now it looks prescient.

AUTHOR
Bill Emmott, a former editor-in-chief of The Economist, is co-director of the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2021. Image: AFP/Getty Images.

RELATED POSTS

• 
  Terror and the Taliban
• 
  Pax Americana died in Kabul
• 
  Afghanistan: from peace to endless war
• 
  How did Afghanistan get to this crisis point?
• 
  Pakistan’s Taliban monster

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Opinion | Where’s Biden’s Plan to Stop Terrorism?

He acknowledges the national interest, but his administration has failed to develop a strategy.

www.wsj.com

(Listen to the article 2.29 minutes)

• OPINION
• COMMENTARY

Where’s Biden’s Plan to Stop Terrorism?
He acknowledges the national interest, but his administration has failed to develop a strategy.

By Seth G. Jones
Aug. 19, 2021 12:44 pm ET

544 Comments

President Biden said Monday that “our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on [the] American homeland.” Yet one of the administration’s most egregious failures has been neglecting to develop a clear strategy to target terrorists in the country. With more than 10,000 foreign fighters already there, from groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State, the administration quickly needs an armed surveillance strategy that involves using intelligence and air power to target terrorists.

U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have long known the Taliban continue to have close ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In a June 2021 assessment, the United Nations Security Council concluded that a “large number of al Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.” The Taliban this week released thousands of them from prisons in Bagram, Kabul, Kandahar and elsewhere.

The Taliban and al Qaeda enjoy longstanding personal relationships, intermarriage, a shared history of struggle and sympathetic ideologies. Al Qaeda leaders have pledged loyalty to every Taliban leader since the group’s establishment. It is shocking, then, that U.S. officials have brushed off the implications of a Taliban victory, even as intelligence analysts said that a Taliban victory would likely be a boon for jihadists.

The Taliban has well-established ties with other regional and international terrorist groups, such as the Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. In addition, there are roughly 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, and the group has conducted mass-casualty attacks across the country.

The Taliban victory presents a remarkable opportunity for these groups to reorganize and threaten the U.S. at home and abroad. Jihadist groups gleefully celebrated the Taliban’s conquest of Kabul on chat rooms and other online platforms, pledging the revitalization of a global jihad. We have seen this before. The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in the late 1980s spawned al Qaeda......

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Peter Beinart’s Blindness on Israel, Iran and Nuclear Weapons - Algemeiner.com

In a New York Times op-ed predictably hailed as “brave,” Peter Beinart attempts to lay out the case that a prudent American policy on Iran’s nuclear program requires shattering the delicate balancing act that Washington has maintained on Israel’s. Except that aside from tossing out dark hints of...

www.algemeiner.com

AUGUST 20, 2021 11:24 AM
0
Peter Beinart’s Blindness on Israel, Iran and Nuclear Weapons

by Shany Mor

In a New York Times op-ed predictably hailed as “brave,” Peter Beinart attempts to lay out the case that a prudent American policy on Iran’s nuclear program requires shattering the delicate balancing act that Washington has maintained on Israel’s. Except that aside from tossing out dark hints of Israel’s power in Washington, he never actually manages to coherently link the two.

Instead, we are treated to three recurring Beinart themes.

First, Beinart highlights the “artifice” of American politicians warning of the dangers of the Middle East turning nuclear but not mentioning Israel’s supposed arsenal. But he provides no evidence to back up this putative artifice, and the two quotes he does provide — from Senator Robert Menendez and President Joe Biden — make a rather different point that he either doesn’t understand or deliberately misconstrues. The two politicians never claim that the region is nuclear-free; what they do claim is that an Iranian bomb will lead to a proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the region.

This may be a good claim or a bad claim, but Beinart never engages with it at all. Israel is entirely orthogonal to the argument. President Biden, in the quotation Beinart cites, warns that a nuclear Iran will lead to a nuclear Turkey, a nuclear Saudi Arabia, and a nuclear Egypt too. This is an argument that attempts to take into account a complex region of overlapping alliances and competing interests. It incorporates a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the political pressures and geo-strategic concerns facing governments in Ankara, Riyadh, and Cairo. And it understands how different those concerns are faced with a newly nuclear Iran as opposed to half a century of assumed Israeli capabilities.

As always with Beinart, the rush to point out others’ putative hypocrisy only exposes his own. Unable to conceive of a geopolitics that isn’t obsessively focused on Israeli sin, he can’t possibly conceive the regional dynamics Biden is alluding to. Had this logic been applied to budding nuclear programs in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, there would have been a ready excuse to let them cross the threshold. Would the region be a better or worse place today in that scenario?

Second, and even more typical for Beinart, is the recurring use of meaningless polling data. Public opinion data can range from highly informative to downright silly. A poll on people’s habits of fears or even policy preferences in the face of COVID-19 might be informative. A poll asking the general public what they believe the appropriate period between vaccination shots ,or whether they knew which of the vaccines was administered with just a single shot would be ridiculous.

Beinart loves polls of the latter kind when they can be used to trash Israel. I highlighted examples of this in both my articles on his charlatanism in 2013 and 2020.

In Beinart’s latest piece, a poll showing that slightly more Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapon than believe Israel has one is to supposed to show — well, what, exactly? Something to do with deterrence, apparently (more on that later).

How can any reasonable conclusion be determined from such data? A poll asking Americans which European countries are covered by NATO’s Article V (and therefore guaranteed American protection in the event of attack) and which are not would probably yield some funny results. Actually, a poll of International Relations students on that question probably would, too. Should that be an argument for or against NATO commitments?

As ever with Beinart, one needs to follow the link on the poll; there is always something he’s hiding. In this case, 51% of Americans say Israel has the bomb, and 60% say Iran does (other countries are not asked about, so we don’t even have a baseline accuracy to measure this against). But 16% say Iran does NOT have the bomb, while only 10% say this of Israel. You could cherry pick this datum for the opposite argument, but it would still be inane.

The third touches on the Beinartian essence. The fact that Israel, uniquely in the world, is a state and a society that some actively wish to see eliminated — and that this elimination fantasy has been central to the worldview of various regional actors and has informed their political and ideological priorities for decades — has no place in his analysis. The desire to see Jewish presence in the middle east wiped out and the obsessive hatred of Jews which informs it do not exist in Beinart’s analysis. This is the black hole at the center of everything he has written in the past decade, sucking everything beyond his event horizon.

Reading Beinart on any Middle East issue would be a bit like watching a soccer match without knowing that the aim of the players is to kick the ball into one of the two goals at either end of the field. Why are they spending ninety minutes kicking that thing around and passing it and trying to hold on or regain possession? And why not just pick the damn thing up and run, or at least throw it?

This is how Beinart can talk about the occupation and feel no need to discuss how it started — a military victory against a coalition of Arab states determined to eliminate Israel; or why it has lasted so long — the refusal of the defeated side to recover occupied territory as long as that would require making a genuine peace with the existence of a Jewish state next door. This is also how Beinart can write so emotively about displaced people in 1948 without mentioning that there was a war initiated by the Arab side, with the openly stated goal of eliminating the Jews of Palestine.

And this is why Beinart is unable to make sense of Israel’s early push for a strategic deterrent. He sees that American policy makers treat the deterrent needs of Israel and Iran differently, but he can’t conceive of it being caused by anything more than hypocrisy or some kind of sinister plot. That one of those is a tiny country for which a fantasy of its elimination remains ideologically and theologically central for millions is something he simply can’t see.

Which is odd since it’s not just American presidents who understand that, but leaders of most of the global powers that have much less friendly relations with Israel, but have taken a similar approach on this issue. In fact, it is even tacitly understood by many of Israel’s neighbors. The whole point of the Menendez and Biden remarks that Beinart mangles is that an Iranian nuclear capability would engender a regional arms race, while whatever presumptions there have been about the status quo in the region have not. It’s not an overly subtle point, but blinded by sanctimony, Beinart genuinely doesn’t seem to get it.

It’s not just Israel’s goals that he can’t see. Concern that an Iranian nuclear program might be an existential threat to Israel strikes Beinart as “dubious,” but only because Beinart can’t take seriously Iranian motives and the deeply held beliefs of the mullahs and other jihadist actors in the region regarding Israel.

But maybe Iranian statements on Israel need to be taken seriously. And maybe they explain, at least partially, some otherwise inscrutable moves by the Iranian government in the past decade. On their own, the costly interventions in Syrian and Lebanon make no sense, and the support of various international terrorist organizations even less so. As part of an ideology (and theology) that Beinart refuses to see, however, they begin to make sense.

Maybe, then, Beinart could actually make a case regarding Israel’s strategic capabilities and America’s deliberate ambiguity — something that is more of a result of timing and the comparative costs and benefits of non-proliferation in other regions. And maybe he can’t. But it would be bracing simply to hear him tell the truth.

Shany Mor is a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism and a research fellow at the Chaikin Institute for Geostrategy, both at the University of Haifa. He is also an associate fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Follow him on Twitter at @ShMMor.


The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Exclusive: Pentagon Poised To Unveil, Demonstrate Classified Space Weapon - Breaking Defense

The push to declassify an existing space weapon is being spearheaded by Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

breakingdefense.com

• SPACE

Exclusive: Pentagon Poised To Unveil, Demonstrate Classified Space Weapon
The push to declassify an existing space weapon is being spearheaded by Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

By THERESA HITCHENS
on August 20, 2021 at 1:44 PM

WASHINGTON: For months, top officials at the Defense Department have been working toward declassifying the existence of a secret space weapon program and providing a real-world demonstration of its capabilities, Breaking Defense has learned.

The effort — which sources say is being championed by Gen. John Hyten, the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff — is close enough to completion that there was a belief the anti-satellite technology might have been revealed at this year’s National Space Symposium, which kicks off next week.

However, the crisis in Afghanistan appears to have put that on hold for now. Pulling the trigger on declassifying such a sensitive technology requires concurrence of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, and a thumbs up from President Joe Biden, sources explain; with all arms of the national security apparatus pointed towards Kabul, that is almost certainly not going to happen next week. And until POTUS says yes, nothing is for certain, of course.

The system in question long has been cloaked in the blackest of black secrecy veils — developed as a so-called Special Access Program known only to a very few, very senior US government leaders. While exactly what capability could be unveiled is unclear, insiders say the reveal is likely to include a real-world demonstration of an active defense capability to degrade or destroy a target satellite and/or spacecraft.

At least, that is what has been on the table since last year — when officials in the Trump administration viewed revealing the technology as a capstone to the creation of Space Command and Space Force. The plan apparently had been to announce it at the 2020 Space Symposium, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the arrival of the Biden administration also led to a reevaluation of moving forward with the reveal.

Expert speculation on what could be used for the demonstration ranges from a terrestrially-based mobile laser used for blinding adversary reconnaissance sats to on-board, proximity triggered radio-frequency jammers on certain military satellites, to a high-powered microwave system that can zap electronics carried on maneuverable bodyguard satellites. However, experts and former officials interviewed by Breaking Defense say it probably does not involve a ground-based kinetic interceptor, a capability the US already demonstrated in the 2008 Burnt Frost satellite shoot-down.

Requests for comment to the offices of Hyten, Haines, and SPACECOM were not returned by deadline.

Many military space leaders believe that Space Force and Space Command must publicly demonstrate to Moscow and Beijing not just an ability to take out any space-based counterspace systems they may be developing or deploying, but also to attack the satellites they, like the US, rely upon for communications, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

Notably, the second-in-command of the Space Force recently foreshadowed movement in the long-running debate about declassification of all things related to national security space — a multifaceted and complex debate which has pitted advocates against upholders of the traditional culture of secrecy within DoD and the Intelligence Community.

“It is absolutely a true problem,” Gen. DT Thompson, deputy Space Force commander, responded to a question about over-classification during a July 28 Mitchell Institute event. “I wish we owned our own destiny in that regard, but we don’t — it’s part of a broader activity and we just have to work through that. What I will say is, I think we’re on the verge of a couple of significant steps.”

The Transparency Dilemma

In fact, Thompson’s comments represented only one of several comments, quietly dropped in speeches or interviews, from top military space officials pushing for declassification of high-end systems, following several years of a steadily intensifying drumbeat on the issue. A who’s-who list of top officers, DoD civilian leaders, and key members of Congress have for years been arguing that over-classification is harming the ability to convey the growing threat of foreign counterspace to lawmakers, the public and allied/partner nations — as well as the ability to cooperate with industry and foreign partners to mitigate those threats.

Sources say that Hyten remains the biggest proponent of a new, declassified demonstration of counterspace capabilities. (And for this reason, there is some rationale to speculate that any announcement would come before he retires in November.)

For years, Hyten has argued that it is impossible to deter adversaries with invisible weapons, and he has taken the lead in calling for space systems to be declassified at a more rapid pace than some traditionalists find comfortable.

“In space, we over-classify everything,” Hyten told the National Security Space Association (NSSA) on Jan. 22. “Deterrence does not happen in the classified world. Deterrence does not happen in the black; deterrence happens in the white.”

Further, Hyten, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond, and Space Command Commander Gen. Jim Dickinson all have asserted that offensive space weapons are a necessary part of that deterrent.

There is also precedent for using conferences to unveil black programs. In 2014, Gen. William Shelton, the then-head of Air Force Space Command, casually unveiled the existence of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites in the middle of a presentation.

But while there is broad consensus among DoD space leadership on the need for declassification, there is fierce debate about what actually should be brought out from behind the onyx curtain of mega-secrecy (in Air Force slang, often called “The Green Door”.)” The National Reconnaissance Office, for example, has long been loath to reveal much of anything about its spy satellites — with officials even attempting to slow-roll a 2018 Hyten policy lifting restrictions on access to basic orbital data about national security satellites.

The central dilemma isn’t hard to understand, but the devil is in the details of solving it.

“We need to take a very hard look at what capabilities we keep concealed, as in our, quote, ‘ace-in-the-hole’ capabilities, if you will, that we would only use in an actual conflict to ensure we maintain the military overmatch we would need to ensure victory, without allowing the enemy to devise ways to defeat that particular capability by having advance knowledge of it,” Matt Donovan, undersecretary of the Air Force under the Trump administration, said in a July 10 Mitchell Institute podcast.

“But what we would really like to do … is prevent that conflict from happening in the first place, by convincing the enemy that they cannot win in a conflict, that the costs of entering into a conflict would be so high to them they don’t start it to begin with; that is the essence of deterrence,” said Donovan, who now heads Mitchell’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center. “So, the problem with only having ‘ace-in-the-hole’ capabilities is they do nothing for deterrence.”

There are also a number of experts who believe that whatever decisions are made, the march of technology guarantees there soon will be no possible way to keep US satellites, or actions on the ground, secret.

“My overall perspective is that a fully transparent world is coming — and no government policy is going to stop it. So, the US — like other governments who are based in the rule of law, respect privacy and protect civil liberties — should not fight that inevitable outcome,” said Robert Cardillo, who spent many years in the Intelligence Community, and recently became board chairman of Planet Federal.

Not so fast, argued another former DoD space official, because the deterrence value actually depends on exactly what kind of weapon system is being discussed.

“Did you conceive of the capability with the idea that you would reveal it? Because if you didn’t, you shouldn’t be revealing it now, or you should really think hard before revealing it,” the source said. “We need to design things that can be that can be revealed without eliminating their effectiveness, and without causing escalation. That’s Step A.”

Military leaders “always want to argue about Step C, instead of doing the intellectual exercise of Step A first,” the former DoD official added.

Another source similarly opined: “The declassification thing is a disaster. … The genesis is supposedly for deterrence — but those doing it lack basic understandings of deterrence. It’s a f***ing shitshow.”

Deterrence — It’s Complicated

To be fair to decision-makers, there have been countless studies, essays and books written about deterrence theory, including about space deterrence, and there are just as many opinions as there are authors.

There is a general consensus among Western experts that strategists and policy-makers must be careful in attempting to map space deterrence to traditional Cold War nuclear deterrence. While there are some similarities — and importantly some strong linkages between nuclear stability and the use of space — there are too many differences, not the least of which is the fact that losing a few satellites is not parallel to losing a few cities.

The second area of general consensus is that deterring adversaries from attacking US space systems (military and commercial) will depend on the adversary. China is not Russia, or even the Soviet Union. Furthermore, because of economic entanglements, US relations with China are way more complicated than they ever were with the USSR.

A third and final point of agreement: space deterrence in particular is hard, and will require an entire tool box ranging from multi-domain military capabilities, to diplomatic actions such as signaling and building international consensus about threatening activities, to economic levers such as punitive sanctions.

Choosing what tools to use when, however, is where agreement breaks down.

This is particularly true with regard to China, which up to now has not had as great a military reliance on space as the US — and more importantly does not have a strategic view shaped by Cold War superpower nuclear deterrence theory (i.e. “mutually assured destruction.”) Following Beijing’s 2007 anti-satellite (ASAT) test, there have been oodles of studies inside and outside DoD specifically on deterring China in space, many of which come to the same conclusion, if not always the same solutions: it’s hard.

For example, RAND’s recent “Tailoring Deterrence for China in Space” has snagged a lot of DoD eyeballs. It highlights the obstacles to success, and argues that DoD might need a “demonstration of capabilities (emphasis ours) that would compromise the PLA’s space systems, perhaps through enhanced U.S. cyber hacking, spoofing, jamming or other dazzling capabilities against China, but could also include kinetic options as well.” But, it warns, any such Space Force activities must be “carefully calibrated.”

A 2008 Council on Foreign Relations report, “China, Space Weapons and U.S. Security,” based on meetings of an advisory board that included active and former DoD and IC officials plus think tank experts (including this author), came to essentially the same conclusions as RAND regarding the difficulties involved. It, too, recommended deployment of offensive ASAT weapons, but limited to non-kinetic systems with reversible effects — and coupling this with robust diplomatic initiatives to set norms and/or establish a treaty to ban debris-creating ASATs.

Active Messaging
The US military tends to focus on two distinct types of deterrence, including in the space domain: reducing the vulnerability of US capabilities (i.e. building resilience/reconstitution/passive protections) and punitive military responses via offensive strikes.

In the blurry middle between those two is “active defense.” The key Joint Publication outlining milspace operations, JP 3-14 Space Operations (updated in October 2020), defines active and passive “space defense” (not to be confused with plain old active and passive defense as elsewhere, and differently, defined in the “DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms”.) It says:

Active space defense consists of actions taken to neutralize imminent space control threats to friendly space forces and space capabilities.

“The purpose of the US offensive counterspace capability has nothing to do with space. It has to do with protecting US forces on the ground,” a former senior DoD official attempted to explain. “The purpose of US resilience is to continue to provide mission capability to forces on the ground. And the purpose of active in-space defense is to protect satellites in space. So three different things here.”

And the terminology used by the US in declassifying a weapon will matter, because it affects the messaging, and how that message is received by the US public, allies/partners, and the broader international community. Indeed, these distinctions are often deliberately muddied by space weapons advocates out of concerns about US public perception, which to this day remains largely leery of space weaponization.

For example, one expert worried about the declassification plan’s potential negative ramifications for US efforts to set global norms of behavior for space — especially if there is an accompanying demonstration of capability akin to 2008’s Burnt Frost. (Ironically, DoD just last month issued its first-ever policy on space norms.)

In Burnt Frost, DoD took down a failed satellite that was tumbling back to Earth, using a modified Standard Missile-3 interceptor. The George W. Bush administration argued at the time that the move was necessary to avoid the potential spread of toxic rocket fuel, convincing almost no one.

Instead, the shoot-down spurred criticism inside and outside the US, including in allied nations, with observers perceiving it as a direct response to China’s ASAT test the year before. Critics argued that it was at best was an unnecessary demonstration US ASAT capability that until then was known but implicit; and at worst provocative, confirming long-standing allegations by Beijing (and Moscow) that US missile defenses were also designed as ASATs.

“The response of an offensive ASAT to a Chinese ASAT is not going to make them stop doing it,” one former government official said. “If you want to demonstrate a response, demonstrate … an unexpected maneuver or a LEO satellite that they had never seen before. But the fact that the response was, ‘well, I can shoot down satellites too,’ that doesn’t do shit about stopping them from shooting mine down.”

And even today, one concerned insider said, “A lot of the DoD work on space control ‘strategic messaging’ isn’t backed up by any real strategy, or red-teaming.”

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

Nuclear Weapons in South Korea? Not So Fringe Anymore.

Conservatives in South Korea’s upcoming presidential election support the country’s nuclear armament. This trend may be a sign that Washington might soon be dealing with an incoming administration who potentially champions a dangerous pro-nuclear policy.

nationalinterest.org

August 21, 2021
Nuclear Weapons in South Korea? Not So Fringe Anymore.
Conservatives in South Korea’s upcoming presidential election support the country’s nuclear armament. This trend may be a sign that Washington might soon be dealing with an incoming administration who potentially champions a dangerous pro-nuclear policy.

by William Kim

Don’t be taken aback if one of the hottest issues for South Korea’s upcoming presidential election is nuclear weapons—more specifically, the need for South Korea to possess its own. While North Korea has refrained from nuclear weapons testing since 2017, the progress they demonstrated in the past has moved the nuclear debate to the forefront of South Korean society. This year, Kim Jong-un’s remarks about strengthening the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) nuclear arsenal delivered at the recent Eighth Party Congress was enough for South Korean conservatives to once again stand in favor of developing their own nuclear weapons. With the South Korean presidential election in March 2022 quickly approaching, political discourse in Seoul about nuclear armament is a trend not to be ignored by the U.S. government.

Hawkish voices in favor of nuclearization in South Korea are not new. Since 2006, the year of DPRK’s first nuclear test, the South Korean public and right-leaning politicians have consistently voiced concerns about South Korea’s national security in the context of an unpredictable and nuclear North Korea. Key members of leading conservative parties over the years have often cited the tenuous credibility of America’s extended deterrence and the asymmetrical security environment on the Korean Peninsula—with the Republic of Korea (ROK) only possessing conventional weapons—as reasons to pursue nuclear options. Such options range from the redeployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, a “NATO-style” nuclear-sharing agreement with the United States, or even an indigenous nuclear arsenal.

In the past, U.S. nuclear experts have been hesitant to acknowledge ROK’s nuclear debate as part of the mainstream global political discourse. However, recent statements from leading conservatives in Seoul show that the idea of a nuclear-armed ROK has evolved from a fringe argument to now potentially a serious component of the conservative party platform. Last month, Yoo Seung-min, a former member of the National Assembly and one of People Power Party’s (PPP) presidential candidates, proclaimed, “it is unrealistic to prevent us from our own nuclear armament when North Korea has not given up its nuclear weapons yet.” This month, Assemblyman Hong Joon-pyo, another PPP presidential candidate, argued in a recent Facebook post that North Korea’s continuing nuclear developments have South Korea on the verge of “becoming its nuclear slave,” unless ROK pursues a “NATO-style nuclear-sharing policy to correct the inter-Korean nuclear imbalance.”

Low approval ratings of Moon Jae-in’s administration since 2020 and PPP’s victories in the recent mayoral elections for Seoul and Busan, the two largest cities in South Korea, reflect the current political climate in ROK. It consists of a dissatisfied South Korean public with the liberal government and an opposition party leveraging such sentiment to its advantage. The recent mayoral results and current polls may not offer any definite outlook into the outcome of the upcoming presidential bout, but they do preface a competitive contest between the ruling Democratic Party and the opposing PPP, whose leaders champion a dangerous pro-nuclear policy.

Whichever of three nuclear options the country may pursue, the harms of a nuclear ROK outweigh the potential benefits. While the presence of nuclear weapons may provide South Korea a sense of security against the North, it is also likely to make nuclear weapons a permanent reality on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, a South Korea with nuclear weapons plays into Pyongyang’s view of a hostile and imprudent Seoul, fueling tensions in the region. Furthermore, North Korea is likely to view a South Korean indigenous nuclear program as a pretext for further strengthening its own nuclear capabilities.

In addition, ROK’s nuclear armament complicates the continued goal of achieving denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a key concept throughout decades of engagement with DPRK. Past negotiations have delivered key documents on denuclearization, including the 1992 Joint Declaration, the 2005 Six-Party Joint Statement, the Panmunjom Declaration, and the Singapore Summit Joint Statement in 2018. North Korea embraced these agreements with the understanding of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as a reciprocating, two-way streak of both North and South Koreas committing to a nuclear zero. If ROK decides to nuclearize, then North Korea will have one less reason to honor such arrangements and start disarming.

A nuclear South Korea is also likely to upset the U.S.-ROK alliance, a relationship already strained with several points of tension. Such pressure points include Moon’s impatient push to expedite the transfer of operational control authority in wartime (OPCON) to the ROK military, postponement of joint exercises for political reasons, and the broadening scope of the U.S.-ROK military cooperation on a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region and relations with China. Therefore, a new administration pursuing nuclear armament may come off as a sign of distrust toward the United States extended deterrence and by extension, a U.S.-ROK alliance already burdened by recent challenges. In pursuit of a “better” security guarantee, South Korea may ruin its current security guarantee.

If the Biden administration continues to show a lack of diplomatic progress with Pyongyang, then the conservatives’ call for nuclear weapons for a “safer” ROK will not simply fade away.

In order to better assure America’s ally about its extended deterrence, the Biden administration needs to re-examine the current deterrence arrangements and modify it to better address the changing security environment on the Korean Peninsula and East Asia as a whole—before South Korea takes matters into its own hands.

William Kim is a researcher at the Stimson Center’s 38 North Program. A graduate of Boston College, he has previously worked with Congressman Adam Smith and the House Armed Services Committee.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Dangerous Illusions

Policymakers in the United States and Europe have adopted the position that their mission is to promote democracy worldwide, regularly arguing that if they fail, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces.

nationalinterest.org

August 19, 2021
Dangerous Illusions
Policymakers in the United States and Europe have adopted the position that their mission is to promote democracy worldwide, regularly arguing that if they fail, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces.

by Dimitri K. Simes

AFTER MORE than six months in office, the Biden administration seems inclined to adopt the utopian vision of democracy promotion as a guiding principle of U.S. global strategy. This doctrine, or, if you prefer, persuasion, holds that America should, as far as possible, bend the world in accordance with the preferences of the United States and its largely European allies. Fortunately, President Joe Biden is a man of experience and pragmatic instinct. Whatever his impulses, he so far has been careful not to burn America’s bridges and, to the contrary, has taken steps to improve ties with key European allies, to restart dialogue with Russia, and to reduce somewhat the intensity of confrontation with China. Such tactical flexibility, however, does not change the fundamental direction of U.S. foreign policy, which at times is almost Orwellian in its tendency to emulate concepts of the former Soviet Union. It was a core belief of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky that the USSR, for its own security, could not tolerate the existence of the so-called “capitalist environment.” They assumed that capitalists would never accept coexistence with the new communist state and therefore rejected the status quo as an unrealistic option. Today, alongside the European Union, the United States has adopted the position that its mission is to promote democracy worldwide. Leaders in Washington regularly argue that if they fail to take up this mission, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces—not just to undermine American power, but to destroy democracy itself, depriving the United States of its cherished freedoms.

It is remarkable that this concept has become a key tenet of American foreign policy without any serious debate in Congress, in the media, or within the foreign policy community. At the heart of this approach is the presupposition that democracy is inherently superior to other forms of government, both morally and in terms of its ability to deliver prosperity and security. Democracy promotion is assumed to be a longstanding part of the U.S. foreign policy tradition rather than a radical departure from it. The Biden administration talks as though the world at large—apart from evil tyrants—will welcome its push for democracy and accept the self-evident righteousness of America and the European Union, rather than put up powerful resistance that may damage American security interests, American freedoms, and the American way of life.

YET DEMOCRACY does not have a stellar record throughout history. The best that can be said of it, as Winston Churchill once observed, is that under most circumstances it remains superior to all other tested forms of government. But for that to be true, democracy must be truly liberal, based on law, and include credible protections for minority rights. Such safeguards often are not taken. From its very conception, democracy has been marred by the original sin of slavery. Ancient Athens, the earliest known democracy, not only tolerated slavery, but was in fact founded on it. Citizens and slaves formed two sides of the Athenian political system. As historian Paulin Ismard writes, “slavery was the price to be paid for direct democracy.” Slaves allowed citizens to step away from work and to directly participate in government, attending assembly meetings and holding public office.
In the United States, the Founding Fathers similarly tolerated slavery, making its implicit incorporation in the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional concept of relations between the states presupposed the existence of slavery, and it required a civil war to bring about Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves in 1863. The Russian Empire remarkably—and without any bloodshed—abolished serfdom altogether in 1861, unlike in the United States where slavery was, for the sake of political expediency, permitted to exist in some Union states until the end of the Civil War. Even thereafter, American democracy continued to deprive women and African Americans of the right to vote for several more decades. It is not self-evident that a democracy that limits political rights to a minority of white men is inherently so superior to a “benevolent” authoritarian state that possesses some elementary rule of law and embraces the concept of equal protection for its subjects. Contemporary examples include Russia under Alexander II, whose legal reforms introduced for the first time in Russia the concept of equality before the law, or Germany under Otto von Bismarck, who established the first modern welfare state by offering health insurance and social security to the working class. Closer to our own time, the enlightened authoritarianism of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew lifted millions out of poverty and maintained harmony in a multi-ethnic country.

UNTIL THE end of the Cold War, democracy promotion was not a constituent element of the U.S. foreign policy tradition—the term “democracy” does not even appear in the U.S. Constitution. The United States did not wage war to spread democracy, even in its own sphere of influence in the Americas. The NATO alliance, at its very inception in 1949, was directed squarely against the Soviet geopolitical threat and willingly embraced authoritarian members such as Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar, whom many considered fascist. Other American allies of the early Cold War period included South Korea and Taiwan—neither of them a democracy at that time. Why did the United States ensure the protection of these non-democracies? It was to protect them from takeover by U.S. adversaries. In the process, this policy allowed American allies to have the freedom of choice, democratic or otherwise. After World War II, America positioned itself as the true leader of the free world—allowing nations with different interests, systems of government, and traditions to determine their own destiny.

The democracy promotion credo is, by contrast, quite different. It goes far beyond the protection of the international status quo and advocates an openly revisionist policy, one that is designed not simply to contain other top non-democratic nations but to change their systems of government. When it comes to major powers, profound transformations of this nature usually arise through internal change or outright military defeat; economic and diplomatic pressures alone typically do not accomplish that much—unless, of course, as in the case of Japan before Pearl Harbor, they trigger a war with clear winners and losers. The Biden administration does not talk about regime change, but its words and actions contribute to a suspicion in Beijing and Moscow alike that regime change would be precisely the result of yielding to American pressure. At a time when the United States is deeply polarized—not only over its foreign policy priorities, but over its fundamental values—pursuing such an ambitious, setback-prone foreign policy while simultaneously undertaking a transformational domestic agenda is reckless.

Most importantly, democracy promotion is unnecessary (at least on geopolitical grounds) because there is little evidence that China and Russia, when left to their own devices, would be eager to form a global authoritarian alliance. Neither power shows much inclination to view geopolitics or geoeconomics primarily through the prism of a presumed great democracy-autocracy divide. China seems perfectly willing to establish close economic ties with the European Union and, for that matter, even the United States. Chinese objectives appear quite traditional—gaining influence, developing friends and clients, without being particularly concerned one way or the other about their standard of liberty. Unlike the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, China isn’t championing an international network of communist movements. When it comes to bullying neighbors, particularly in the South China Sea and beyond, Beijing makes little distinction between relatively democratic countries like the Philippines and autocratic ones like Vietnam. Despite the common challenge they face from the United States, Beijing and Moscow remain reluctant to conclude a formal political or military alliance. Their actual military cooperation goes little beyond largely symbolic military maneuvers and limited exchanges of military information. Both countries emphasize that they are aligned against the United States and, to some extent, the European Union, but they have not formed any meaningful alliance. China, for instance, did not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea and even became the number one trading partner of Russian adversary Ukraine. Russia is likewise rarely reluctant to sell advanced military hardware to China’s rival, India. It therefore remains a fundamental American interest not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that pushes China and Russia closer together.

EVEN IN the relatively stable U.S. political system—where institutional safeguards have usually functioned under the most difficult circumstances, from Watergate to the Trump-Biden transition—it is widely agreed that foreign meddling is unacceptable. Why then do U.S. officials and politicians expect that China and Russia, without similar democratic legitimacy and without legal safeguards to protect their elites in case of defeat, are prepared to accept foreign interference in their fundamental internal arrangements? China and Russia are hardly natural allies, but this fact does not mean that the creation of an assertive “alliance of democracies” would not push a reluctant Xi and Putin together. The perception of an imminent common threat might force both leaders to conclude that whatever their differences in tactics, political cultures, and long-term interests, in the short run at least, they must work together to oppose the danger of democratic hegemony. If Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin reach this conclusion, it will be increasingly difficult for them to speak to the United States with different voices—even on issues where it would be perfectly logical in terms of their substantive interests to do so.

Quite appropriately, today the United States views China and Russia as adversaries, but there is little appetite for examining the roots of American disagreements with them. Putting aside U.S. distaste for Chinese and Russian authoritarian practices, in the foreign policy domain, democracy is hardly the key issue. In fact, since the Soviet collapse, Moscow has never used military force against any nation to suppress democracy. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, but only after Georgian forces had attacked South Ossetia which was protected by Russian peacekeepers. In 2014, Russia used force to annex Crimea and to support separatists in Donbass, but only after a pro-Western rebellion in Kiev that removed from power the corrupt, but legitimately elected, President Viktor Yanukovych. In each case—with President Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia and the new Ukrainian government—Russia found itself confronted by hostile forces eager to join NATO, intent on exploiting their membership as a protective shield against Moscow. The struggle originated in territorial disputes and grievances over the Soviet inheritance. Democracy itself played, at best, a peripheral role—except in one very important regard. As George F. Kennan warned in 1997, NATO expansion into the former Soviet republics threatened to “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion” and “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy.” Russia itself must bear primary responsibility for its drift from democracy and its move in an autocratic direction. But the way NATO and the European Union handled Russia in the 1990s contributed mightily to its subsequent disillusionment with democracy. It was not difficult to discern that deepening confrontation with Russia would not make it more tolerant or pluralistic but, on the contrary, discredit pro-Western elements and provide more authority to the security forces. The West’s policy of broad sanctions provided Putin patriotic justification to consolidate political control and to bring many educated, successful people—people who would have otherwise been eager for more political and economic freedom—into his camp.

In the case of China, it is similarly difficult to demonstrate any instance when Beijing attacked a neighbor to overthrow democracy. Hong Kong—which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997—is the notable exception. Even here the major crackdown came only after protracted rioting. Certainly, China has been rather heavy-handed with many of its neighbors, but such actions have never been about democracy. They arose from disputes over territory, mineral, and energy resources, and the broader desire to stem American dominance in the region. As in the case of Russia, in the post-Mao period, military interventions have been rare—just once in 1979, when communist Vietnam invaded communist Cambodia.

This history undermines the notion that a global authoritarian challenge now emanates from China and Russia. It is rather the United States and the European Union that aim to make the world “safe for democracy,” to the extent that even great powers like China and Russia would have to abandon their chosen political systems.

SENSIBLE RESTRAINT is not tantamount to appeasement or surrender; quite the contrary, it must become a central element of U.S. global strategy if America hopes to continue to play a leading role in the world for years to come. A leading role does not require hegemony or an attitude of “our way or the highway,” which offends the dignity of countless other nations, even ones that are perfectly democratic. Instead, it requires that the United States maintain its military superiority, strengthen its alliances, and avoid unnecessary disputes with allies—all while being ever mindful of the fact that alliances are instruments of U.S. foreign policy rather than ends in themselves. The enhancement of alliances, in other words, must not become a paramount foreign policy objective that comes at the expense of larger U.S. strategic interests, such as the preclusion of a Chinese-Russian condominium. No help from Ukraine or Georgia can compensate for America being confronted with a new, most dangerous alliance dominating Eurasia. Both China and Russia should be strongly reminded, too, of America’s commitments to its allies, particularly to NATO members protected under Article 5 and to Taiwan. On the issue of trade, it is perfectly legitimate to defend assertively American interests and to push back when necessary. The Chinese, incidentally, understand that this kind of pushback is a normal part of conducting global business. Unlike in the area of democracy promotion, here they are willing to cut deals. Beijing and Moscow would certainly prefer something better than a cold peace with Washington, but given America’s democratic system, it is only appropriate to remind them clearly that brutality at home is not compatible with friendship with the United States. In most cases, this positive leverage may be more effective than sanctions.

At the same time, the American quest for democratic hegemony tends to forget that many governments throughout the world have grievances of their own with Washington and would not necessarily take the U.S. side in a confrontation with China or Russia. Taking stock of the failure of democracy promotion in the Middle East, Brent Scowcroft once aptly observed: “the notion that within every human being beats this primeval instinct for democracy has not ever been demonstrated to me.” Contrary to America’s democratic triumphalism, there is no iron law in history that dictates that democracies will always prevail over their autocratic opponents. Periclean Athens learned this the hard way when it waged war against Sparta and its allies and, in the process, forfeited its regional dominance and its own democratic rule. The pursuit of an unnecessary, even if appealing, triumph at the expense of a nation’s fundamental interests is self-defeating.

Dimitri K. Simes is president of The Center for the National Interest and publisher & CEO of The National Interest.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: A reckoning for Pakistan

This editorial was originally published Aug. 16 in The Wall Street Journal. American strategists will be studying for some time how Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained security forces crumbled so quickly before what appeared to be an inferior Taliban militia. One place they should look for answers is...

www.dailyjournal.net

ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: A reckoning for Pakistan
By Staff Reports -

8/23/21 12:20 AM
This editorial was originally published Aug. 16 in The Wall Street Journal.

American strategists will be studying for some time how Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained security forces crumbled so quickly before what appeared to be an inferior Taliban militia. One place they should look for answers is Pakistan, whose leader cheered the Taliban takeover of its northwestern neighbor.
Afghans “have broken the shackles of slavery,” said Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, according to Indian media. The offhand celebration of the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan came as Khan denounced English education in Pakistan as promoting cultural control.

That a U.S. security partner would say this out loud certainly raises eyebrows. But the sentiment should not surprise. As Walter Russell Mead notes, a key obstacle to American success in Afghanistan was “unrelenting support for the Taliban from our ‘ally’ in Islamabad.” The Taliban safe haven across Afghanistan’s southern border was crucial to the group’s longevity and eventual military success.

Over the last two decades, the U.S. depended on bases in Pakistan for its war-on-terror operations in Central Asia. Yet Islamabad is playing its own great-power games in the region. Its intelligence services want control over Afghanistan and have seen the Taliban as the best vehicle. They want to frustrate the objectives of their greatest regional rival, India, which would prefer a secular government in Kabul.

The U.S. relationship with Islamist-influenced Pakistan has arguably become a devil’s bargain. Americans caught a glimpse of that a decade ago when they found out Osama Bin Laden was hiding in the country, apparently unmolested. Now Islamabad has played a key role in restoring to power the Taliban that the U.S. sacrificed for two decades to keep from power in Kabul.

But Mr. Khan may rue what he wished for. Jihadists want to control Pakistan and its nuclear weapons, which would instantly become a dangerous Islamist caliphate. Mr. Khan’s glib anti-Americanism may be an effort to appease Pakistan’s extremists, but he should watch that they don’t come for him first.

Send comments to letters@dailyjournal.net.

 

[jward]

haaretz.com

U.S. tests Iron Dome missile defense system purchased from Israel
Yaniv Kubovich

3 minutes​

The United States military has successfully conducted its first domestic live-fire test of the Iron Dome anti-missile system, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Monday.
In a statement, the ministry said that the series of tests – which included the interception of what in an accompanying video appeared to be a drone – was the “first firing attempt with an Iron Dome battery in the United States, operated by U.S. Army soldiers.”

Spencer Tunick’s stark warning: A decade after naked photoshoot, the Dead Sea still is dying

Subscribe
The tests were carried out in collaboration with the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure, Israel Aerospace Industries, Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Amprest Technologies. The tests were conducted at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Developed by Rafael and Israel Aerospace, the Iron Dome system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells and has been in use by the Israel Defense Forces since 2011.

The United States said in February 2019 that it planned on buying a limited number of Iron Dome batteries to "be assessed and experimented as a system that is currently available to protect deployed U.S. military service members against a wide variety of indirect fire threats and aerial threats.”

In September 2020, the Americans received the first of two batteries that they had ordered, followed by a second delivery in January 2021. After the United States received the first battery, the Israeli Defense Ministry stated that it would be used "in the defense of U.S. troops against a variety of ballistic and aerial threats.”

Less than a month after the delivery of the second battery, Haaretz reported that security sources had indicated that the U.S. was expected to soon begin deploying Iron Dome at its bases in the Persian Gulf.

• Israel’s Iron Dome mistakenly fired at fighter jet during May’s Gaza fighting
• Israel tested solid fuel missile engine, U.S. expert claims
• Israeli arms exports spiked by 15 percent in 2020, state data shows

Israeli defense sources said that Washington has received the approval of senior Israeli officials to begin deploying the missile defense systems at American military bases in a number of countries, including in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia.

Posted for fair use

U.S. tests Iron Dome missile defense system purchased from Israel

***

www.haaretz.com

 

[doctor_fungcool]

haaretz.com

U.S. tests Iron Dome missile defense system purchased from Israel
Yaniv Kubovich

3 minutes​

The United States military has successfully conducted its first domestic live-fire test of the Iron Dome anti-missile system, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Monday.
In a statement, the ministry said that the series of tests – which included the interception of what in an accompanying video appeared to be a drone – was the “first firing attempt with an Iron Dome battery in the United States, operated by U.S. Army soldiers.”

Spencer Tunick’s stark warning: A decade after naked photoshoot, the Dead Sea still is dying

Subscribe
The tests were carried out in collaboration with the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure, Israel Aerospace Industries, Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Amprest Technologies. The tests were conducted at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Developed by Rafael and Israel Aerospace, the Iron Dome system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells and has been in use by the Israel Defense Forces since 2011.

The United States said in February 2019 that it planned on buying a limited number of Iron Dome batteries to "be assessed and experimented as a system that is currently available to protect deployed U.S. military service members against a wide variety of indirect fire threats and aerial threats.”

In September 2020, the Americans received the first of two batteries that they had ordered, followed by a second delivery in January 2021. After the United States received the first battery, the Israeli Defense Ministry stated that it would be used "in the defense of U.S. troops against a variety of ballistic and aerial threats.”

Less than a month after the delivery of the second battery, Haaretz reported that security sources had indicated that the U.S. was expected to soon begin deploying Iron Dome at its bases in the Persian Gulf.

• Israel’s Iron Dome mistakenly fired at fighter jet during May’s Gaza fighting
• Israel tested solid fuel missile engine, U.S. expert claims
• Israeli arms exports spiked by 15 percent in 2020, state data shows

Israeli defense sources said that Washington has received the approval of senior Israeli officials to begin deploying the missile defense systems at American military bases in a number of countries, including in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia.

Posted for fair use

U.S. tests Iron Dome missile defense system purchased from Israel

***

www.haaretz.com

Great read H.C. keep them coming...we are at the cusp of something big.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Missile Defense Agency director wants less complex, more mobile Aegis Ashore

After problems in Poland and the need for more survivable missile defense systems, the idea of a more transportable Aegis Ashore system could be back on the table.

www.defensenews.com

Space and Missile Defense
Missile Defense Agency director wants less complex, more mobile Aegis Ashore

By: Jen Judson   2 days ago

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Missile Defense Agency director says he’d like to see the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system — which currently requires significant permanent infrastructure — become a less complex and more mobile asset.

The U.S. has had a fully operational Aegis Ashore site in Deveselu, Romania, since 2016, but has struggled to build a second fixed site in Redzikowo, Poland. This location was supposed to be in operation by August 2018, but will likely not be up and running until fiscal 2022 at the earliest.

A fixed Aegis Ashore site looks like the top side of cruiser, essentially a ship built on land that hosts radar arrays and a command-and-control system with launchers nearby.

The contractor in Poland encountered problems that have led to the project sitting for several years at the “last tactical mile,” as Vice Adm. Jon Hill, MDA’s director, has said. The contractor has struggled to configure the auxiliary controls, heating, power and cooling, which feed the combat system and are part of the construction contract.

The Aegis Ashore system is still at roughly 95 percent complete, Hill told Defense News in an update during its SMD Debrief event at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium last week.

At the same time, he said, MDA’s program manager was on the ground in Poland assessing the situation.

“I don’t think I’m ready to make any [schedule] adjustments to the left or to the right until the program manager comes back,” Hill added.

Hill said the agency has learned from the experience of setting up two fixed sites.

For future Aegis Ashore systems, “we have to decide, are we going to have long-term emplacement or are we going to just short-term land it there and pull it out if we need to,” he said.

With a more mobile option, Hill said, “you’re less worried about the ability to survive earthquakes, you’re less worried about surviving through [electromagnetic pulse] attack, if you’re going to be there for a long time.”

The final decision, he added, will influence the complexity of construction.

“I would be an advocate to reduce complexity and maybe even go back to the requirement to be transportable,” Hill said.

He noted Aegis Ashore is already modular because it is built that way in the U.S. and shipped to the sites.

Hill stressed that the way Aegis Ashore is built and deployed is a Pentagon-level decision and not his to make, but said he can see benefits to “the argument that you may want to disaggregate it,” meaning putting the sensor in one place, a command-and-control system somewhere else — possibly in a bunker — and a launcher in another spot.

One thing Hill doesn’t want to repeat is letting “the construction get so complex that when a contractor comes in and bids, then they don’t have the right skill set to go do it.”

The idea of disaggregating missile defense capability is not new. Missile defense analyst Tom Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has spent roughly five years considering it.

“Element distribution, mobility, and other means of deception will be fundamental to adapt the air and missile defense enterprise to the high-end challenge,” against Russia and China, Karako told Defense News.

The 2019 Missile Defense Review and, more broadly, the 2018 National Defense Strategy call for more distributed military assets, but Karako notes, these strategies did not directly apply that principle to active air and missile defense elements.

What’s helping these ideas gain traction are recent calls to defend Guam and establish a robust missile defense architecture there, Karako said, which could serve as a test bed for more mobile, disaggregate capability like a more transportable Aegis Ashore.

MDA has yet to release a plan for the defense of Guam, but Hill said in his recent interview with Defense News that the agency has finished a report due to Congress. It’s now going through a review process within the Pentagon. Hill said the document will inform the FY23 budget request.

A year ago, former INDOPACOM Commander Adm. Phil Davidson called to build an Aegis Ashore facility on Guam by 2026 and renewed that call in testimony before Congress earlier this year.

About Jen Judson
Jen Judson is the land warfare reporter for Defense News. She has covered defense in the Washington area for 10 years. She was previously a reporter at Politico and Inside Defense. She won the National Press Club's best analytical reporting award in 2014 and was named the Defense Media Awards' best young defense journalist in 2018.

 

[jward]

He does an amazing job foreshadowing the future for us, Doesn't he? : )
..Thank you again, House; we appreciate Everything You Do!

Great read H.C. keep them coming...we are at the cusp of something big.

 

[jward]

Is Afghanistan The First Domino To Fall?

by Tyler Durden​

9-11 minutes​

Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It certainly looks like a domino that has been put in position poised to fall waiting for others to take their places in the line.

With America withdrawing from Afghanistan abruptly after some 20 years, one big question is being discussed throughout the strategic sphere by those both in big institutions and laying on their couches – is the American loss in Afghanistan the first domino to fall in the eventual collapse of the Global Hegemon? After all, Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires” probably because it is an expression that sounds nice and because the Soviets fell apart a few years after losing to the locals. So this must be the “beginning of the end” right?
Well, we should never be so quick as to jump onto narrow narratives without looking at the big picture. Side-by-side images of the Americans and their allies fleeing Vietnam and Afghanistan by helicopter are flooding Facebook, posted by those in the Alternative Media who take great joy in any loss by the 21st century’s “Evil Empire” but they seem to forget that just a few decades after losing in Vietnam the United States won the Cold War and took dominance over the planet.

Image: Strategic meme-of-the-year material for 2021.
No single event no matter how photogenic it is, is not going to be a sign of the grand demise of the “Sole Hyperpower”. It really took from the beginning of WWI till the end of WWII for the British to truly fall apart as a geopolitical force. The Soviet Union fell much quicker, but it is very widely believed that Perestroika (or the The Reykjavik Summit) was the real first white flag that devolved into the breakup of the union years later. The Roman Empire was a vastly slower burn than either of these two modern behemoths.

This means we should not be debating if Afghanistan is the first “domino” to fall, but instead we should really take a look at what the rest of the dominos falling would look like. At this point we can surely put together a rough picture of what the next tiles to fall would look like, i.e. what other major failures/events would really be signs of the Monopolar World meeting its demise? The following are a few humble offerings as to what these dominos could be…

Abandoning the Maidan Regime in the Ukraine
The unexpected surrender and soon to be total fall of Kabul has certainly resonated in another city that starts with the letter K. If Washington is finding it necessary to abandon a twenty-year Nation-Building project that they have invested vast sums of money and manpower into, that means that back-burner Kiev could be cut loose in the near future, putting the fate of the region in the hands of the Russians.

Image: We all know who secures Ukrainian “independence”.
The Maidan has been a major roadblock for Russia. As Brzeziński wrote, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire” and Washington has done an absolutely fantastic job of turning the region into an “anti-Russia” as Putin recently called it.
If the Maidan project were to be abandoned, it would become another quite massive domino. Washington giving up on Kiev, resulting in that current political entity probably being divided up, mostly going to Moscow, would symbolize either the USA’s inability to stop the rise of the Russians or their begrudging acceptance of it.

Taiwan, Hong Kong and/or South Korea
The Trump-era State Department Democracy storm that was inflicted on Hong Kong has seemed to fade away, but a total abandonment of the thorns in the side of the Chinese Dragon would also result in another domino being placed into position.

Image: Not State Department = No Professional Protest Organizers in China.
Bailing on Hong Kong activists or failing to maintain Taiwan’s independence would certainly present a strong sign of weakness and inability from the standpoint of Washington. Furthermore, although China has never had a passionate love for the North Koreans, having South Korea as essentially an American beachhead right next door has been a cause of concern for decades for Beijing. The South Korean economy on paper looks amazing and their cities dazzle with progress but what would be the effects of Ameria giving up on them? Is South Korea able to stand as a great nation, or is it really only successful thanks to the American umbrella? The answer to that would reveal itself within two weeks of an America-free Korean Peninsula.
Simply put, if Washington gives up on Hong Kong, Taiwan and/or South Korea it is another sign of the end for sure as China would be more or less rid of these weak points that have been exploited against it for decades.

A Loss of Control Over the “Bigs”
Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agro and so on, have dutifully served Washington’s interests despite their theoretically international nature. But we should never forget that large for-profit entities are quite “whoreish” and will serve whichever master they need to. If Washington cannot control the Bigs as it used to, this would be another domino.
To a small extent this is happening in Hollywood where the Chinese market’s (and its official and unofficial) demands are having a major impact. But if it comes to a point that Hollywood is only making a chunk of the world’s blockbusters rather than nearly all of them it would be the end of the total unobstructed Soft Power dominance of this American institution. Or even worse, if Hollywood can be bought out from under America then a new global narrative could be spun quite quickly.
If the Hegemon fades, the leadership of the Bigs will feel increasing pressure from the Russians, Chinese and Arabs to give up the whole “gay thing” and portray these societies in a positive light whether through bribery or threats of force. Apple may be “designed in California” but if need be they would surely bail for greener pastures rather than living a life of poverty loyal to a failed America.

Mexico, Lakotastan and African-America
The United States has done a fantastic job of fostering independence movements within its rivals while making diverse masses “American” at home. However, as with the Soviets and the British, waves of breakaway republics and successful secessionist movements would be a very big domino indeed.
The Soviets tried to create an African workers uprising in America in the 60’s and failed miserably, but BLM could get out of control, or in the case of a dying USA, could become used by foreign powers. An Afro-American Maidan would certainly be another sign of doom.
The rise of an independent Native-American state like the Lakota Indians’ lands would be yet another tile being stood into place, opening the door for further break-away attempts.
When the Mexicans lost the Mexican-American war they lost the chance to become the dominant power on the continent. Few remember, but the destiny of this New World was not just given to the Americans wrapped in a box. If the Mexicans had won the war they would be the ones with access to the Atlantic (via the Gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific simultaneously, not Washington. It would have been very possible for them to secure the entire West Coast. A Mexico that would begin to take action as an independent actor would certainly be another sign of serious trouble for Washington. Thus far, on the North American continent “there can be only one” but perhaps that isn’t necessarily going to always remain the same “one”.

The death of the Dollar or collapse of the Federal Reserve
If the dollar were to collapse, or there were serious problems at the Federal Reserve, as have been predicted for many years due to insane national debt, this would of course be the biggest domino of all. The West has been able to accumulate bafflingly massive debt with no consequences because of the dominance of Washington. It is very hard to call in a debt from the toughest kid school surrounded by his henchmen. But when the big bully stops growing, and loses his buddies, all of a sudden getting your $5 back with a few whacks from a baseball bat becomes viable.

Image: If you are powerful enough no one can call in your debts.
No one can call in the debt of a Global Hegemon, but Regional Powers have to balance their checkbook. A decrease in power could lead to the national debt prophecy coming true in our lifetimes which would be probably the largest domino of all.

In conclusion
Is Afghanistan “the first domino to fall” in the death of the American Empire? This cannot be proven, but it certainly looks like a domino that has been put in position poised to fall waiting for others to take their places in the line. Other major defeats would be required to say for sure that this “New American Century” is over, not even making it to the one-fourth mark. It is really the other potential signs of the end that are of most concern not squabbling over Afghanistan’s domino status. So the big question is, if Washington is losing its Monopolar World Order, then where will be the next grand retreats?

posted for fair use

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/23/john-bolton-taliban-takeover-pakistan-extremists/

Global Opinions
Opinion: The time for equivocating about a nuclear-armed, Taliban-friendly Pakistan is over

Opinion by John R. Bolton
Today at 4:49 p.m. EDT


1.5k
John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Many profound ramifications of America’s exodus from Afghanistan are competing for attention. Among the top challenges, Pakistan’s future stands out. For decades, Islamabad has recklessly pursued nuclear weapons and aided Islamist terrorism — threats that U.S. policymakers have consistently underestimated or mishandled. With Kabul’s fall, the time for neglect or equivocation is over.

The Taliban’s takeover next door immediately poses the sharply higher risk that Pakistani extremists will increase their already sizable influence in Islamabad, threatening at some point to seize full control.

A description once applied to Prussia — where some states possess an army, the Prussian army possesses a state — is equally apt for Pakistan. Islamabad’s “steel skeleton” is the real government on national security issues, the civilian veneer notwithstanding. Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, has long been a hotbed of radicalism, which has spread throughout the military, to higher and higher ranks. Prime Minister Imran Khan, like many prior elected leaders, is essentially just another pretty face.

During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, ISI extensively supported Afghanistan’s mujahideen against the Soviet military, for religious and national security reasons. Washington made the mistake of funneling much of its assistance to “the muj” through Pakistan, thereby relinquishing control over which politicians and fighters actually received the aid. Pakistan also enabled terrorist groups targeting India, its main regional rival, over Kashmir, a continuing flash point emanating from the 1947 partition and independence from Britain.

After Moscow exited Afghanistan in 1989, ISI unsurprisingly pirouetted to support the Taliban and others who subjugated the country in 1996. Pakistani military doctrine holds that a friendly Kabul regime ensures “strategic depth” against India, which Pakistani leaders believed the Taliban provided. When the U.S. coalition overthrew the Taliban in 2001, ISI provided sanctuaries, arms and supplies inside Pakistan, although Islamabad routinely denied it.

Now, again in power, the Taliban can return the sanctuary favor to Pakistani Taliban — the Pakistani counterpart of the Afghan Taliban — and other radicals. Obviously, the world doesn’t need another terrorist regime, but the risk in Pakistan is of an entirely different order of magnitude, even compared with the menace of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State gaining secure bases in Afghanistan.

While Iran still aspires only to nuclear weapons, Pakistan already has dozens, perhaps more than 150, according to public sources. Such weapons in the hands of an extremist Pakistan would dramatically imperil India, raising tensions in the region to unprecedented levels, especially given China’s central role in Islamabad’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. Moreover, the prospect that Pakistan could slip individual warheads to terrorist groups to detonate anywhere in the world would make a new 9/11 incomparably more deadly.

These dangers provided compelling reasons to sustain the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan. We could have continued overwatch not just of potential new terrorist threats in-country but also observed what was happening across the borders in Pakistan and Iran. Sadly, the Trump-Biden withdrawal policy canceled that insurance policy.

From Cold War conflict against the Soviets in Afghanistan to our own efforts since 9/11, Pakistani-U.S. cooperation has been essential. It led Washington to temper vigorous criticism of Islamabad’s nuclear and pro-terrorist polices. Now, after Kabul’s surrender, America is less dependent on Pakistan’s good will and logistical support. Acknowledging the enormous uncertainty, given Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, the United States must now come down hard on Islamabad if it continues supporting the Taliban and other terrorists. It has been said that Pakistan is the only government consisting simultaneously of arsonists and firefighters. The firefighters need to step up their game. They must convince their fellow countrymen that the government’s recent path has made Pakistan less secure, not more.

Absent clear evidence that Pakistan has terminated assistance to the Taliban, the United States should eliminate its own aid to Islamabad; strike Pakistan from the list of “major non-NATO allies”; impose anti-terrorist sanctions; and more. Our tilt toward India should accelerate.

Most important, we must devote maximum attention to Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles and weapons-production facilities. If a future terrorist regime in Islamabad (or even today’s government or like-minded successors) appears ready to transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, we should take preventive action. This is highly unpalatable, but the alternative of allowing these weapons’ use is far worse. China must be made very aware of our intentions and seriousness, including that Beijing’s long-standing, vital assistance to Islamabad’s nuclear efforts makes China responsible for any misuse.

Is President Biden sufficiently resolute to do the necessary? Probably not. In George Packer’s recent biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, he quotes from Holbrooke’s notes taken during an Obama administration Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan. “Among his notes were private interjections,” Packer writes. “Vice President Joe Biden said that every one of Pakistan’s interests was also America’s interest: ‘HUH?’”

Biden’s assertion was wrong when made and would be dangerously wrong today; Holbrooke was correct, and eloquent in his brevity. Let’s hope Biden has changed his mind.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

A Post-Afghanistan Chinese Push Could Impact Relationship With Israel - Breaking Defense

Israeli government sources tell Breaking Defense that if China attempts to expand its defense technology ties with Iran or other regional players of concern to Israel, then Jerusalem may look to curtail its economic agreements with Beijing in retaliation.

breakingdefense.com

• GLOBAL

A Post-Afghanistan Chinese Push Could Impact Relationship With Israel
Israeli government sources tell Breaking Defense that if China attempts to expand its defense technology ties with Iran or other regional players of concern to Israel, then Jerusalem may look to curtail its economic agreements with Beijing in retaliation.
By ARIE EGOZI
on August 23, 2021 at 1:00 PM

TEL AVIV: As China seeks to use the American withdrawal from Afghanistan to drive a wedge between America and its allies, leaders in Jerusalem are considering their future relationship with Beijing.

Defense officials here believe China will seek to fill the political, economic and, potentially, military vacuum left behind by the US not just in Afghanistan but in the region. But for Israel, which remains locked in with the US military, that could mean a boost to adversarial nations.

“The diminishing status of the US in the region, especially after what happened in Afghanistan, opens that door for China to become a major player in the Gulf and middle east” one Israeli defense source said.

Like many other countries, Israel has economic ties with Chinese firms. That issue was brought up explicitly by CIA director William Burns during a recent visit to Jerusalem; per Israeli outlet Walla News, Burns told Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that the US is very concerned about Chinese intrusion into the Israeli economy, especially in high-tech and large infrastructure projects.

But Israeli government sources tell Breaking Defense that if China attempts to expand its defense technology ties with Iran or other regional players of concern to Israel, then Jerusalem may look to curtail its economic agreements with Beijing in retaliation.

That would mark a serious shift in how Israel balances its longtime relations with the US and the monetary benefits of having ties to China, according to Galia Lavi, a senior researcher in the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

“China continues to support Iran and the Palestinians, with no significant harm to its economic relations with Israel, and at the same time continues its economic relations with Israel while being aware of Israel’s special relationship with the United States,” Lavi explained. “But as the rivalry between China and the US grows, Beijing is expected to step up its efforts to cast Washington as a two-faced and irresponsible power while brushing away any criticisms relating to human rights.

“In this sense, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very useful, and China’s position has broad international support even among some US allies. China’s support for Iran, its increasing assertiveness in international organizations, and its use of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to taunt the United States could create problems for relations between Jerusalem and Beijing, and even lead Israel to re-examine its relations with China.”

That relationship has already been under some strain, thanks both to internal concerns about Chinese investments and due to pressure from Washington.

Several years ago, Chinese companies were rejected multiple times in their quest to buy the Israeli insurance companies Phoenix and Call due to pushback from capital market regulators, who expressed concern over Chinese control of hundreds of billions of shekels in Israeli pension savings. Sources say behind the scenes, regulators were worried that such a sale would come with info about Israeli infrastructure which could be relevant to Chinese security analysts.

The nature and scale of Chinese investments in Israel has raised concerns in the US, said Doron Ella, also with the INSS, as they are often in technological sectors the US views as critical to its national security –computer chips and semi-conductors, IT and software, life sciences (especially medical technologies), or internet and communications technologies. These all have the potential to contribute to China’s future development, including in the military sphere, and to strengthen it in terms of technological competition against the US.

Ella added that China is no doubt aware of Washington’s influence, and has likely “decided not to submit bids for certain tenders, or refrained from making deals” that it knows might be rejected thanks to US opposition.

“For example, in May 2020, a few days before a decision was made on the Sorek 2 desalination plant, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Israel and warned against Chinese investments in critical infrastructure,” Ella pointed out. “In the end, a non-Chinese competitor won the tender, due to price considerations according to government sources.”

Concerns among Israeli officials about China’s military ties to Iran are hardly new; there is a constant belief that China is providing technical assistance to Iran that will allow Tehran to become an exporter of “relatively cheap” weapon systems, specifically marketed towards enemies of the US and Israel.
But it could go beyond that, according to one of Israel’s top defense systems experts, who talked with Breaking Defense on condition of anonymity. The expert warned that China could quickly help Iran build its knowledge on “advanced satellites launchers and advanced cruise missiles,” as well as local production for fighter aircraft and artillery systems.

Israeli defense sources also point to Iran’s efforts to put a high resolution imagery satellite into space as an area China can deepen its access to Iran’s most sensitive issues. “This for commercial reasons, but as it is always with China, this is also a way of getting a tighter grasp of this strategically located country, the top enemy of America” one of the Israeli government sources said.

 

[jward]

Terrorism in South Asia After the Fall of Afghanistan - War on the Rocks
Kabir Taneja and Mohammed Sinan Siyech

17-21 minutes


The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan. America and its allies lost. While the Taliban holds press conferences, thousands of desperate Afghans flank the runway at Hamid Karzai International Airport, desperate for a flight out of the country. Several fell hundreds of feet to their deaths trying to cling to a U.S. military aircraft during take-off.

The short-term imperatives of saving as many Afghans as possible will soon give way to an assessment of what the new Afghanistan means for international security. For countries in South Asia — particularly India — the withdrawal of U.S. forces, collapse of the Afghan military, and ascendance of the Taliban pose a massive counter-terrorism threat. Transnational groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as their affiliates and regional branches, will likely step up their activities from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Anti-India terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed could eventually use the country as a base to launch attacks in Kashmir or other parts of India, as they did in the 1990s. While the Pakistani Taliban has lost much of its strength, it could reconstitute in Afghanistan and launch attacks into Pakistan. All of this will have immense implications for the future of jihadism in South Asia and beyond.

In time, the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan may prove to have been the right one for the United States. It may ultimately free up resources for U.S. political and military leaders to focus on China and Russia. However, the challenge for Washington now is to articulate a counter-terrorism strategy in South Asia with far fewer resources at its disposal. Without thousands of troops in Afghanistan, the United States will no longer have the intelligence capabilities to follow terrorist activities along the border with Pakistan. Future airstrikes against Afghan targets will be a costly logistical challenge and would surely undermine any chance Washington has of convincing the Taliban to dissociate from al-Qaeda. With the exception of India, America’s potential partners in South Asia are all problematic: Pakistan has supported the Taliban and the Haqqani network for decades, Russia has no interest in helping America when it is down, Iran is under heavy U.S. sanctions, and counter-terrorism cooperation with China will likely be limited given the downward trend of Sino-American ties. U.S. troops may soon be leaving Afghanistan, but the terrorist threat from there will endure for the foreseeable future.

Al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent
Al-Qaeda and its South Asian branch, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, will benefit from the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. The country was the birthplace of al-Qaeda and many of its branches. Currently, the leadership of the core group and the South Asian faction are active in the country and have been recorded fighting alongside the Taliban against the United States. Although new estimates suggest that there are no more than 600 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, their latent strength is considerable.

While the Taliban agreed to cut ties with al-Qaeda as part of its agreement with the United States in February 2020, there’s little evidence in the historical record that the Taliban will keep its word. Indeed, al-Qaeda has repeatedly pledged its allegiance to the Taliban. Moreover, its leaders have been discovered in Taliban territory as recently as March 2021. It’s true that the Taliban will have incentives to prevent al-Qaeda from using Afghanistan to conduct attacks around the world. However, those incentives are unlikely to be as powerful as the desire to avoid a direct confrontation with al-Qaeda, the pull of history, and opposition to Western pressure.

In fact, the Taliban appear to be unilaterally revising the understanding with the United States. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has added further caveats to the deal with the United States regarding al-Qaeda, saying that “nowhere in the agreement has it been mentioned that we have or don’t have ties with anyone. In fact, the issue of relations is not considered. What has been agreed upon is that no threat should be posed from Afghan soil to the U.S. and its allies.” According to another account by scholar Asfandyar Mir, “at one point during the negotiations [between the United States and the Taliban], the discussion broke down with the Afghan Taliban insisting that there was no proof that al-Qaeda had carried out the 9/11 attacks.”

The Taliban is unlikely to honor its commitments to the United States regarding al-Qaeda because of historic ties, familial relations via marriages between members of both groups, and a shared outlook on the state of Afghanistan and offensive jihad (i.e., taking up arms to establish the rule of God). Both groups want what they consider the rule of God in Afghanistan. However, while al-Qaeda has a far more global outlook, the Taliban is more inward-looking and is influenced by local customs. The Taliban has released thousands of prisoners from Afghan jails since taking over, including the prison at Bagram Air Base, which reportedly contained al-Qaeda operatives. Moreover, it has also delegated the security of Kabul to the Haqqani network — which has close ties to al-Qaeda and was responsible for some of the deadliest attacks of the Afghan war —further illustrating its closeness to the group.

The enduring relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan will have troubling consequences for regional security. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent had already hailed the U.S. withdrawal as a victory, and changed the name of its magazine from Nawai Afghan Jihad (Voice of the Afghan Jihad) to Nawai Ghazwat-ul-Hind (Voice of the Conquest of India) early this year, indicating where its energies could be focused going forward.
Terrorist groups are active in other countries in South Asia besides Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s affiliates, such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, are still active in India and Bangladesh. As recently as July 2021, Indian authorities arrested two Kashmiris belonging to Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. According to the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad, the two were allegedly planning to conduct attacks in Lucknow, the state capital. In addition, three Bangladeshi members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh were also apprehended in the same month for allegedly setting up networks in Kolkata.

The risk of al-Qaeda supporting and inspiring regional affiliates in South Asia is significant and growing. Bangladeshi authorities have noted that three members of Ansar al-Islam (also known as Ansarullah Bangla Team) have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, potentially opening a renewed interest in jihadist operations.
While most international counter-terrorism efforts in South Asia focus on Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, some of South Asia’s smaller countries (e.g., Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Myanmar) are also a target for al-Qaeda. The group was linked to the 2019 killing of a Maldivian journalist. Moreover, al-Qaeda has discussed the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar and warns of revenge in case of further atrocities. Ataullah abu Ammar Junni, the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, was born in Pakistan and has travelled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan to seek help for his insurgency. Clearly, terrorist networks transcend borders in South Asia.

Islamic State and Other Terrorist Groups in South Asia
The Taliban and Islamic State are rivals in Afghanistan. The Taliban considers the Islamic State an opponent and resents its efforts to operate independently in Afghanistan. The Islamic State’s claims that the Taliban works with Pakistani intelligence are meant to embarrass the Taliban. A recently released U.N. report highlights that differences within the Taliban could make the Islamic State Khorasan Province in Afghanistan a viable alternative for those who did not agree with the Taliban leadership on its negotiations with the United States over the latter’s withdrawal.

The Islamic State has conducted attacks throughout South Asia. In Pakistan, the group has been active as Wilayah-al-Bakistan (or the “Islamic State Pakistan Province”) since 2019. Its rivalry with the Taliban has already shown some spill over effect with the Islamic State claiming responsibility for the killing of a Taliban leader in an attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. Wilayah-al-Bakistan claimed 22 attacks in Pakistan in 2019 and 13 attacks in 2020.
The Islamic State targets South Asian audiences with its propaganda. Sawt-al-Hind (Voice of Hind), an online pro-Islamic State propaganda magazine, targeted Indian Muslims during communal riots in New Delhi in February 2020. The monthly magazine explores controversial regional and local affairs (e.g., developments at the Ayodhya temple, a highly contentious issue between Hindus and Muslims in India since the early 1990s). It regularly features articles by authors from Maldives, a country that, on a per capita basis, once had the highest number of foreign fighters that joined the Islamic State in the region.

The deadliest terror attack in South Asia’s history took place in Sri Lanka. The 2019 Easter bombings killed more than 270 people. Even though the Islamic State claimed the attack, law enforcement has struggled to confirm direct links between the bombings and the group. The bombings came three years after the terror attack in Dhaka, which killed 22 civilians, which was also done in the name of the Islamic State. These attacks highlight the fluidity of the Islamic State brand, which can be co-opted by local terror actors to gain leverage and recognition.

High-ranking Islamic State officials have publicly singled out South Asia as an important region for the group’s activities. The Islamic State’s new spokesperson, Abu Hamza al Qurashi, recently praised Islamic State ecosystems in India and Pakistan. Despite some successful attacks in the region, the group’s strategy remains disjointed. They have not been able to appoint a leader for South Asia, build a strong chain of command in the region, or sustain branches there.

Apart from the Islamic State, India’s greatest concern in Afghanistan is that the Taliban, once back in power in Kabul, would provide space for groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed — and their alleged handlers in Pakistani intelligence — to operate freely. This is effectively what happened in the 1990s, when terrorist violence in Kashmir was at its peak with close to 1,000 casualties per year. The Afghan landscape is reportedly already providing Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed with both training grounds and recruitment opportunities. New Delhi will do its best to watch this development closely, but that may be difficult without an active embassy in Kabul.

The different groups that will now operate with more freedom in Afghanistan have different approaches to certain hotspots. Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Islamic State have very different narratives concerning Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are recognized as Kashmiri nationalists fighting over lost territory. Moreover, their historic links with each other and actors within Pakistan beginning in the 1990s gives each group bona fides with the Taliban, which also sees itself foremost as a nationalist movement. The Islamic State, by contrast, considers Kashmir to be a Muslim majority region and intends to establish itself as an independent entity separate from India or Pakistan.

 

[jward]

continued


The Future of Jihadism in a Post-American Afghanistan
The Taliban’s success in Afghanistan will have far reaching effects on the resilience of other groups looking to conduct attacks across South Asia. Firstly, the Taliban’s perceived victory over the United States will likely inspire jihadist groups. Various groups in Syria and Palestine have celebrated the Taliban’s takeover. Others will be inspired by the Taliban’s new resources and international prestige, especially if other countries begin to formally recognize the government in Kabul.
Second, Afghanistan will almost certainly become an attractive destination for South Asian extremists (and jihadists from other parts of the world) once again. Despite differences with the Taliban, the Islamic State could strengthen its position in Afghanistan from disenfranchised factions of the Taliban and continue to attract more South Asians. Several Indians travelled to Afghanistan and joined Islamic State Khorasan Province in 2016 and 2017. Some former members of disbanded groups such as the Indian Mujahideen and Students’ Islamic Movement of India also joined the Islamic State Khorasan Province. The Taliban victory is sure to make it easier for extremists to enter Afghanistan.

Third, foreign fighters will gain experience in Afghanistan and will eventually go back to their home countries, bringing that experience with them. The Afghan jihad of the 1980s was the progenitor of numerous jihadist movements across South Asia. This was due in part to returning foreign fighters setting up shop back home. A repeat of this dynamic can prove detrimental to not only the security but also the political fabric of the region.
Lastly, the Taliban’s advances have already given it access to major resources and weapons. The Taliban might funnel these to other groups. An increase in financial resources can further help to pay for mid- to high-level operations across South Asia.

What Can the United States Do Now?
In order to secure its counter-terrorism interests after it withdraws from Afghanistan, the United States should increase counter-terrorism cooperation with regional states, especially India. Washington may even find it useful to cooperate or coordinate with Beijing and Islamabad on limited counter-terrorism objectives. The United States should also encourage South Asian nations to work closer on counter-terrorism. Most of these options are suboptimal, but after the U.S. withdrawal, Washington has no other options.

America’s counter-terrorism cooperation with India will be especially important for U.S. interests. New Delhi is Washington’s most capable defense and intelligence partner in South Asia, particularly after the collapse of the Afghan military. Helping India to prevent terrorist attacks will allow New Delhi to focus attention and resources on competing with China.
Despite the fact that Pakistan’s support of the Taliban and the Haqqani network undermined U.S. interests in Afghanistan for decades, the United States may find it necessary to work with Pakistan on some specific regional counter-terrorism efforts. The two countries face common threats from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Tehrik-i-Taliban (or “Pakistan Taliban”) may regroup and threaten Pakistani and U.S. security interests. Pakistan’s insights into the Taliban and developments in Afghanistan may prove valuable to the U.S.-Pakistani intelligence relationship. However, this cooperation can only go so far. U.S. officials will long remember Pakistan’s role in sabotaging America’s efforts in Afghanistan, and Islamabad’s support for anti-India terrorist groups risks a nuclear crisis in South Asia.

Likewise, the United States could attempt to engage with China given its increasing influence in South Asia and strong links with Pakistan. Washington could leverage the recent terror attack against Chinese citizens in Pakistan — allegedly by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, although neither group has taken responsibility — as a starting point to future cooperation on discrete regional issues, if the politics allow it. It is likely that this cooperation may not materialize, however, given the current state of Sino-American ties. Nevertheless, given that terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan threaten the interests of all regional states, there may be some space for collaboration.
The United States could also encourage regional counter-terrorism cooperation. And for this, New Delhi can play a significant role in driving the counter-terror discourse in the region. Such a mechanism would also allow smaller countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Maldives (among others) to achieve their own potential in dealing with terrorism via institutionalized counter-terror solutions from the perspective of local and hyper-local strategies.

Looking Ahead
The end of the U.S. military’s involvement in Afghanistan does not mean the end of terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan. The country will continue to host numerous terrorist groups that threaten the interests of numerous states in the region and beyond. Afghanistan may not prove to be the terrorist safe haven that it was immediately before 9/11, but the United States and its allies will have fewer capabilities and resources to combat the threat that does emerge. After the United States and others respond to the immediate crisis on the ground in Kabul, they will be left to put together a counter-terrorism strategy for Afghanistan with fewer tools than they had before. Crafting new approaches will require a deep understanding of the various groups operating in Afghanistan and throughout South Asia.

Kabir Taneja is fellow and head of the West Asia Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in India. He is the author of The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and its Shadow on South Asia (Penguin Viking 2019).
Mohammed Sinan Siyech is a doctoral candidate at the Islamic and Middle East Studies Department at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, he was a senior analyst with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Image: U.S. Marine Corps (Photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)

Posted For Fair Use

Terrorism in South Asia After the Fall of Afghanistan - War on the Rocks

The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan. America and its allies lost. While the Taliban holds press conferences, thousands of desperate Afghans flank the

warontherocks.com