WAR 10-02-2021-to-10-08-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(490) 09-11-2021-to-09-17-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(491) 09-18-2021-to-09-24-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(492) 09-25-2021-to-10-01-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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Would you buy a used car from these people at Brookings?......(Of course it is a Pakistani on-line source)......

Posted for fair use.....

Pakistan can repel militants, protect nukes, says US report

Brookings report argues that Taliban victory in Afghanistan has emboldened militants in Pakistan, "who might try to seize power".

www.dawn.com

Pakistan can repel militants, protect nukes, says US report

Anwar Iqbal
Published October 2, 2021 - Updated about 7 hours ago
35

WASHINGTON: Pakistan is capable of repelling any ‘jihadi’ attempt to seize power and of protecting its nuclear weapons, says a report by a prestigious US think-tank.


The Brookings report — “The Agonising Problem of Pakistan’s Nukes” — argues that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has emboldened militants in Pakistan, stirring fears of a resurgence of militant activities in the country.


“The fear now includes the possibility that jihadis in Pakistan, freshly inspired by the Taliban victory in Afghanistan, might try to seize power at home,” the report claims.


“Trying, of course, is not the same as succeeding. If history is a reliable guide, Pakistan’s professional military would almost certainly respond, and in time probably succeed,” the author, Marvin Kalb, adds.

But the report warns that even a failed attempt could reopen “the floodgates of a new round of domestic warfare between the government and extremist gangs.”


The Brookings report warns that a resurgent insurgency would “leave Pakistan again shaken by political and economic uncertainty.”


The report then turns to another possibility that Pakistan has often warned against — instability in South Asia increases the possibility of a nuclear conflict in the region. Pakistan uses this argument to strengthen its demand for international arbitration to settle the Kashmir and other disputes in India.


The Brookings report does not mention the Kashmir dispute but it acknowledges that “when Pakistan is shaken, so too is India, its less than neighbourly rival and nuclear competitor.”


Change in Kabul


Going back to the Taliban victory in Afghanistan, the report claims that the development has increased the possibility of a “terrorist regime” in Pakistan “from a fear into a strategic challenge that no American president can afford to ignore.”


The report, however, notes that Pakistan’s political and military leaders have assured a succession of “anxious (American) presidents” that this cannot happen as the country is strong enough to fight back the militants.


The report also notes that Pakistan’s security establishment has always closely watched various terrorist groups operating in the country.


Pakistani officials tell their American counterparts that “whether it be Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehreek-i-Labaik, (they are) under our constant surveillance, checked and rechecked.


“We keep a close eye on everything, even the madrassas, where more than 2 million students are more likely studying sharia law than economics or history. We know who these terrorists are and what they’re doing, and we’re ready to take immediate action.”


Despite such assurances, the report claims, the United States remains concerned about Pakistan’s nukes. “Ever since May 1998, when Pakistan first began testing nuclear weapons, American presidents have been haunted by the fear that Pakistan’s stockpile of nukes would fall into the wrong hands,” the report adds.


The report argues that since the recent debacle in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s alleged role in it “serious questions have been raised about America’s embarrassing predisposition to look the other way.”


Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2021

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

Morocco and Israel to sign kamikaze drone deal

Israel’s defense minister is expected to visit the African country soon and sign defense cooperation agreements that would launch the drone production, among other efforts.

www.defensenews.com

Morocco and Israel to sign kamikaze drone deal
By Agnes Helou

Oct 1, 07:23 AM

Morocco has previously ordered the Israeli-made Hermes 900 drone, shown here in Brazil on Aug. 5, 2021. (Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images)

BEIRUT — Morocco and Israel are expected to sign a deal that would see the two countries co-produce kamikaze drones, according to a Moroccan military and security affairs expert with knowledge of the plans.

Israel’s defense minister is expected to visit the African country soon and sign defense cooperation agreements that would launch the drone production, among other efforts.

“After [the] new government formation in Morocco, it is expected that the Israeli defense minister will visit Rabat to ink a contract for the joint manufacture of defense equipment in Morocco,” Mohammad Shkeir, the military expert, told Defense News.

“The contract is to include short- and medium-range missile systems the Moroccan Army needs to strengthen its military arsenal, as well as armored vehicles and tanks that can be used in any armed conflict that might break out with Algeria or paralyze any Polisario [Front] movements along the Western Sahara wall,” Shkeir added, referring to the armed political organization that wants to end Moroccan control of the desert region.

This is not the first time Morocco has shown interested in unmanned aerial systems. In April, the country reportedly signed a deal to procure 13 Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones, and the first batch was delivered in September.

“It is natural for Morocco to procure Turkish drones after their proven battle efficacy in several theaters of operations, whether in Iraq or Syria,” Shkeir said.

Asked whether Morocco’s separate orders for drones from Israel and Turkey will pose a problem for Rabat, Shkeir said:
“Regardless of the regional rivalry between the two parties, Morocco can procure Turkish drones and can agree with Israel to manufacture drones, given the military alliance between the Hebrew and Moroccan states, as well as the military partnership that brings together the kingdom and the United States, which includes, the manufacture of military equipment in Morocco. In addition, Israel has achieved a technological advance with regard to the manufacture of this type of aircraft.”

Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan began normalizing relations with Israel last year under the American-engineered Abraham Accords.

It doesn’t appear a Moroccan company has been chosen to produce the Israeli drones, but Shkeir expects there will be a joint venture involving Moroccan parties and foreign parties, most likely American.

Shkeir added that four Israeli-made loitering munitions, the Hermes 900, were sent to Morocco, and they’re likely to be used to counter attacks along the Western Sahara Wall. Loitering munitions are also referred to as kamikaze drones because they can be used as weapons by crashing into a target.

That 2,720-kilometer wall separates the areas occupied by Morocco and those controlled by the Polisario Front in Western Sahara.

“If these drones prove their operational capabilities, then Morocco will start production. Within its military strategy, Morocco usually resorts to diversifying its equipment, similar to the diversification of its partners. Therefore, production will not be limited to one model of these drones, but rather it will include other forms for use in various military fields,” Shkeir said.

Morocco-based firm Bio Cellular Design Aeronautics has experience in producing drones. The company displayed the first prototype of the reconnaissance drone MA-1 at the 2018 Marrakech Air Show.

About Agnes Helou
Agnes Helou is a Middle East correspondent for Defense News. Her interests include missile defense, cybersecurity, the interoperability of weapons systems and strategic issues in the Middle East and Gulf region.
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[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Why is Biden doubling down on Trump’s nuclear expansion?

One of the president’s worst budgetary decisions was to substantially increase funding for a new intercontinental ballistic missile known as the ground-based strategic deterrent.

thehill.com

Why is Biden doubling down on Trump's nuclear expansion?

BY WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/02/21 02:00 PM EDT
331 Comments
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

President Biden has disappointed so far in fulfilling his campaign promise to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security policy. Most notably, his administration’s fiscal year 2022 budget fully funded every aspect of the Trump nuclear weapons program. The budget even went beyond what was contained in the Pentagon’s preexisting plan, which could cost up to $2 trillion over the next three decades. Congress is now poised to vote on the elements of that plan as it considers the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

One of the president’s worst budgetary decisions was to substantially increase funding for a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) known officially by the antiseptic moniker ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD). One would hardly know from the name of the system that it risks ending life as we know it.

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” because the president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, increasing the chances of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm. Given the danger posed by ICBMs, why are we poised to spend $264 billion to build and operate a new one?

One reason for the ill-advised rush to procure a new land-based nuclear-armed missile is simple — pork-barrel politics. Senators from the states with ICBM bases and major ICBM maintenance and development work (Montana, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming) have for years coalesced in the Senate ICBM Coalition, a lobbying hub that has successfully blocked efforts to reduce spending on or deployments of ICBMs, or even to study alternatives to building a new generation of them.

ICBM bases create thousands of jobs and significant economic dependency in their host states. But that fact should not be allowed to hold our nuclear policy hostage and prevent efforts to make the world safer by forgoing a new ICBM and reconsidering the need to keep the existing ones.

Past efforts to rebuild local economies in the wake of base closings have had considerable success. One Pentagon assessment found that in three-dozen examples of base closures, communities were able to band together to create a net total of 157,000 new civilian jobs. Perhaps more importantly in terms of the short-term policy debate, pausing the development of the new ICBM while maintaining current deployments would not diminish employment at existing ICBM bases, resulting in little if any negative economic impact.

But there’s another part of the ICBM lobby that is doggedly determined to go forward with the ground-based strategic deterrent — the contractors slated to develop and build it. Last year, Northrop Grumman received a $13 billion-plus sole source contract to develop the new ICBM, joined by a dozen major subcontractors that include heavy hitters such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. Over the past decade, Northrop Grumman and its biggest subcontractors have made over $1.2 million in campaign contributions to members of the Senate ICBM Coalition, and more than $15 million to members of key committees with the greatest influence over funding for the new missile. Northrop employs 57 lobbyists. Not all of them work on the ICBM issue, but their mere existence is a gauge of the kind of leverage ICBM contractors have with members of Congress.

Not everyone in Congress accepts the need for a new ICBM. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have pressed to cut funding for the system and use the savings to invest in COVID-19 response and prevention. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) has argued to pause the new ICBM project and modernize current land-based missiles instead, which would buy 20 years to decide whether they are needed at all, at a savings of $37 billion “without any deterioration of our nuclear deterrence.”

An amendment to that effect was defeated in the House of Representatives’ consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). But even if proposals to reduce funding for or eliminate the new ICBM may not win majority support in Congress in the short-term, they chart the way towards a more sensible, sound and safe nuclear policy in the future.

President Biden and his national security team should take the views of these congressional leaders into account as they craft a new Nuclear Posture Review that will guide U.S. nuclear weapons policy and spending in the years to come.

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But concerns have been raised about the posture review after the Pentagon removed experienced arms control expert and former House Armed Services Committee staffer Leonor Tomero from overseeing it, apparently under pressure from nuclear hawks who want to constrain the consideration of alternatives to the current nuclear weapons modernization plan.

Biden should resist these pressures and push his national security team to take real steps to revise our outmoded nuclear strategy along the lines outlined above. It’s the right thing to do, not only because it will save billions of dollars, but most importantly because it will make nuclear war less likely.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Cartels control these 8 Mexican states. Kidnapping migrants is part of their business.

“I thought Los Zetas were going to kill me," said a migrant, as criminal groups have taken over migration routes and even interrogate children to extort migrant families.

www.nbcnews.com

These are the cartels that capture, extort and torture migrants in 8 Mexican states
“I thought Los Zetas were going to kill me," said a migrant, as criminal groups have taken over migration routes and even interrogate children to extort migrant families.

Oct. 1, 2021, 1:30 AM PDT / Updated Oct. 1, 2021, 11:25 AM PDT
By Aldo Meza, Noticias Telemundo Investiga

PROGRESO, Honduras — Every night, César cleans the manure off his only pair of sneakers. He works at a stable taking care of cows and calves, but he doesn’t get a salary. The owner of the animals pays him with milk, which César sells going house to house. What he earns from the sales, about $5 a day, barely gives him enough to eat.

César, who is being identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation from the cartels, regrets that fate decided his birth in Progreso, Honduras, a village with streets without pavement, drainage or even names.

“I was born poor. We didn’t even have enough to eat. And 50 years later, I am still poor,” he said. “And so I will surely die, without having something of my own.”

His village is a cradle for both gang members and migrants who go north toward the U.S. for a better way of life. César tried it two years ago, when he wanted to reunite with a brother who has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, for two decades. It almost cost him his life.

‘The Zetas were going to kill me’
In the early morning of Sept. 20, 2019, César took a backpack and a change of clothes. He said goodbye to his wife and left to meet the coyote, or smuggler, who would cross him through Mexico to reach the U.S.

César gave him his car as the first payment to pay off the first $2,300 he owed. If he managed to cross, he would pay the rest of the money, $5,500. Coyotes in the area charge $6,000 to $8,000, César said.

In Chiapas, Mexico, they took the train known as La Bestia heading north. In Puebla, officials from the National Migration Institute detained some of their colleagues. From that moment on, he traveled alone.

He crossed the state of Nuevo León and reached Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where he was kidnapped.

“At the bus terminal, there were some young people who told us that on one side those who had a guide should stand and those who didn’t on the other,” he said. “Those of us who were alone, they put us in a tourist van and took us to a safe house there in Reynosa.”

César and 20 other migrants were kidnapped and held for three weeks in a house that belonged to Los Zetas, the cartel to which his kidnappers belonged — as the migrants were told from the moment they were detained.

César already knew the reputation of Los Zetas: “I thought day after day, moment after moment since I arrived, that the Zetas were going to kill me, because they have no heart or soul,” he said.

The constantly threatening tone the criminals used confirmed his fears.

“If your brother wants to see you alive — to refresh his memory — give him a reminder,” César said they told him. “And they pushed me aside and gave me a beating.”

The cartels controlling the territories
Noticias Telemundo Investiga has interviewed more than 30 migrants who report having been kidnapped in different Mexican states by different criminal groups from 2019 to 2021. With these accounts, as well as information provided by sources from the Mexican attorney general’s office and the analysis of two experts on drug cartels, Noticias Telemundo Investiga has drawn up a map of migrant kidnappings in Mexico.

These cartels terrorize migrants in the north of the country.Noticias Telemundo Investiga

• In Tamaulipas, Los Zetas operate under the name Cartel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel) and Tropa del Infierno (Troop From Hell). The Gulf Cartel is also present through local gangs, such as Los Metros and Los Golfos.
• In Chiapas, in the south of the country, those who kidnap and extort migrants and their families belong to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Northeast Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, as well as Mara Salvatrucha cells in the area, near Guatemala.
• In Tabasco, a territory that migrants have to traverse because of its proximity to Chiapas, a state that borders Guatemala, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel operates a cell commanded by a criminal nicknamed El Jardinero (The Gardener), according to several migrants’ accounts.
• On the northern border in Tijuana, in the state of Baja California, and in Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel dominate. The latter also controls the border between Sonora and Arizona.

Interrogating the children
On the third day, César’s kidnappers took him and nine other people out of the Reynosa home across the river to McAllen, Texas. Crossing was very easy, he said.

“They put us on some very nice boats. They seemed luxurious, and there they crossed us,” he said. “Absolutely no one stopped us or told us anything. It seemed that everything was very well organized. With us were five more heavily armed men who were taking care of us.”

In McAllen, they were transferred to a nearby ranch, where 50 other people were already being held. The armed men warned them of the danger if they ran — and if their relatives did not pay the $5,000 ransom.

The criminals, who César said had Mexican accents, locked up the children to interrogate and threaten them. They wanted to know which family members were waiting for them in the U.S. It was a way to confirm that their parents were not lying to them.

“Crying women yelled at armed men, asking why were they taking their children. ‘If you want to know something, ask me,’ they would yell,” César said. “Then the child would come out crying. In his innocence and fear, he told the criminals everything they wanted to know.”

If the kidnappers discovered that information was false, the migrants were brutally beaten and the women were raped. Everyone was threatened with having fingers cut off if they did not tell the truth.

One night, when the ranch lights were turned off so the migrants could sleep, César escaped through a bathroom window. No one dared to accompany him. Outside, several armed men were guarding the house.

For cartels, ‘the perfect business’
In the last decade, drug cartels operating in Mexico have diversified their illicit businesses. One of the most profitable is irregular migration — the crossing of borders without the necessary documentation.

For researcher Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a specialist in drug trafficking and migration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, such activities pose few risks for criminal groups because migrants rarely report attacks.

“They don’t report them because they threaten them if they do so, and they don’t know who to turn to,” Correa-Cabrera said. “Most kidnappers have ties to the authorities, so it’s virtually impossible that they’ll take action against them. It is the perfect business.”

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission uncovered the massive phenomenon of the kidnapping of Central American migrants in the country in 2008, when it recorded 198 kidnappings and 9,857 victims from September 2008 to February 2009.

The commission warned that drug cartels operating in the north of the country found the kidnapping and extortion of migrants to be lucrative.

Nilda García, a researcher at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, said criminal groups have taken good advantage of the circumstances. The flow of migrants at the border has tripled in the last 20 years, according to U.N. estimates.

“It is very difficult for these groups to pass up this profit, this opportunity to earn money with migrants. Kidnappings are one more layer of its structure,” she said.

In states like Puebla, local gangs have also emerged that have seen opportunities, and they operate freely, García said. They go unnoticed because when it comes to fighting kidnappings, the authorities have only the cartels in their sights.

“They are very well organized. Sometimes they have military training and access to high-caliber weapons to terrorize migrants,” she said.

Correa said local kidnappers operate with great efficiency because of their “social intelligence” — the almost perfect knowledge they have of their communities, their areas, the people and the routes, which gives them power and immunity in the territories they control.

What is Mexico doing?
There are no official figures, but Mexican authorities have reported several massive migrant kidnappings in the last month.

On Sept. 5, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard reported the rescue in Camargo, Tamaulipas, of 162 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who had been kidnapped and abandoned for five days in a warehouse without food.

On Aug. 31 in Cadereyta, Nuevo Léon, 327 migrants were rescued from a safe house where they were being held hostage. On Aug. 26, 208 people held captive in a warehouse in Puebla were released.

The total is sobering: 697 migrants kidnapped and rescued in just 10 days.

Claudia Pinto warns that it is only the tip of the iceberg. Pinto, a lawyer, works in Honduras for the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law, an organization based in Mexico that follows hundreds of cases of kidnapped migrants and helps guide families when they are extorted.

“We see two to three cases of kidnapping of Hondurans a week, only from what is known and reported, because many families receive the call, and what they do is seek by their own means to get the money, pay, establish communication and ensure they have knowledge of their relative,” Pinto said. "But the vast majority do not report or make the case known.”

There have also been reports of collusion between Mexican government officials and organized crime.

At the Tapachula immigration station in Chiapas in June, at least 500 men protesting the lack of clarity in their migration processes were reported to have been subjected to cruel treatment and torture by the National Guard and officials from the National Institute of Migration.

The Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Chiapas denounced the treatment.

“It caused severe damage to their physical and emotional health. This is very serious, because those who should watch over their rights and ensure dignified treatment are the first to violate them,” said Yuriria Salvador, an activist with the organization.

Noticias Telemundo Investiga requested interviews with the National Institute of Migration, the navy, national defense officials and the National Human Rights Commission. It did not get a response.

Noticias Telemundo Investiga asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about his government’s strategy to combat migrant kidnappings.

“We have to ensure that the migrants are in the south-southeast, protect them, because letting them transit throughout the country, to cross the entire country without any protection, is very risky,” he said Sept. 9, insisting on the need for cooperation from the Biden administration.

“The United States must make the decision to support poor countries, Central American countries, and address the causes that start the migratory phenomenon so that migration is optional, not forced, that it not be because of a lack of jobs," López Obrador said.

1,500 people investigated for human trafficking
The Biden administration in April launched Operation Sentinel, a strategy involving federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

Asked by Noticias Telemundo Investiga about the results of the operation, CBP said by email that five months after the operation was launched, it is investigating 1,500 people related to criminal groups.

CBP said that more than 15 operations have been suspended or disabled and that it is tracking 900 people involved in illicit money transactions, although no arrests were reported.

Authorities are aware of the cartels’ impact in the area.

“We have had knowledge of ranchers who’ve been threatened when they try to restrict the passage of migrants through their properties,” said Deputy Don White of the Brooks County Sheriff's Office, in Falfurrias. "Not much happens, but it happens enough that they all know that it can happen and that there is risk.”

César was lucky. When he fell from the window of the second McAllen safe house where he had been held, he ran nonstop for 20 minutes until he ran into the Border Patrol. It detained him and transferred him to a center where he remained for two months until he was deported by plane to Honduras.

“I returned defeated, without illusions and still very afraid. I had in my mind the face of the kidnappers when they warned me that they were going to cut off my finger to show me that they weren’t playing games,” he said.

He returned to his native village in Progreso, where the same poverty awaited him.

He works in the same stable and hopes to raise enough money to pay a coyote and try again. He does not mind the risk of again being kidnapped or killed as he travels through Mexico.

“I’d go back, because I know that in America I could get something and die with dignity,” he said. "Honduras only gives enough to survive, not to live."

Noticias Telemundo Investiga reporters Damià Bonmatí, Juan Cooper, Aldo Meza and Belisa Morillo investigated and produced this series of three reports. Albinson Linares and Caleb Olvera contributed to the investigation.
A version of this story was originally published in Noticias Telemundo.

 

[Housecarl]

The knee jerk reaction is "November Sierra"..........

Posted for fair use.....

Is Biden’s Foreign Policy Failing?

The U.S. president’s intentions might be good, but the results so far are another matter.

foreignpolicy.com

ARGUMENT
An expert's point of view on a current event.
Is Biden’s Foreign Policy Failing?
The U.S. president’s intentions might be good, but the results so far are another matter.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021, 3:37 PM

When Joe Biden became president, many assumed his administration would manage America’s relations with other countries in a disciplined, predictable, and sophisticated way. The era of self-defeating swagger and diplomacy-by-tweet would be over, and responsible public servants would be back in charge. Biden’s mantra—America is back—suggested that diplomacy would replace military power as the preferred instrument of U.S. foreign policy, which is exactly what the American people say they want. Biden’s team is an experienced group of mainstream figures, in sharp contrast to the neophytes and oddballs who initially staffed former President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy team. Given all the above, there was every reason to expect a smoothly functioning foreign-policy operation.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. To be sure, Biden & Co. can claim some number of initial successes: rejoining the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, restarting talks with Iran on its nuclear program, spearheading a global agreement to crack down on offshore tax havens, committing more vaccines to the global effort against COVID-19, and mending fences with key NATO allies at the Brussels summit in July. Plus, Biden has done more to actually make a pivot to Asia than either of his two predecessors, which is no small thing in itself. Nobody in Biden’s inner circle had to resign in disgrace after three weeks in office—as Michael Flynn, Trump’s first pick for national security advisor, was forced to do—and the Biden White House hasn’t committed the embarrassing gaffes (such as getting the names of foreign leaders wrong in official communiques or releasing statements filled with spelling mistakes and factual errors) that were a frequent occurrence in the “snake pit” of the Trump White House.

And to be fair, diplomatic successes rarely happen overnight; making genuine and lasting progress on big issues usually requires sustained and patient effort over many months, if not years. By this time in George W. Bush’s presidency, he had done essentially nothing for which he is now remembered (except to be president when the 9/11 attacks occurred), and Trump’s main achievements nine months in were almost entirely negative. Reaching useful agreements with both allies and adversaries almost always requires some degree of give-and-take (to ensure that all participants have a stake in the outcome), and even a powerful country like the United States rarely gets everything it wants. Bottom line: No serious person should expect foreign-policy miracles in a president’s first year in office.

Nonetheless, certain aspects of Biden’s performance are worrying, leading more than a few observers to make unflattering comparisons to his undistinguished predecessor. The talks with Iran have gone nowhere—due to a combination of mutual suspicion, Iranian prickliness, and the administration’s own timidity—and the safe bet now is that no new agreement will be forthcoming. Indeed, Biden seems to be moving toward his own version of “maximum pressure,” a strategy that has been tried repeatedly and has never worked. I’m not as critical of the administration’s handling of the Afghanistan disengagement as some observers are—especially many overwrought Europeans—but a team as sophisticated and skillful as this one was alleged to be could have done a better job of defusing allied concerns while implementing a sensible and entirely predictable withdrawal. The new AUKUS partnership could be an important step toward maintaining a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, but was it really necessary to blindside France in the process? Awkward acronyms aside (try adding an “F” to AUKUS and see what you get), it appears little effort was made to assuage French feelings beforehand. An omission likethat amounts to diplomatic malpractice in anyone’s book.

Moreover, for an administration that says it wants to put diplomacy front and center, Biden’s team has been slow to fill key diplomatic posts. Some of these delays are due to unpatriotic grandstanding by self-interested politicians like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who have held up key appointments in order to indulge their own desire to appear important. But the problem goes beyond a couple of “show pony” Republican senators—to use David Rothkopf’s apt label for Cruz and Hawley—insofar as Biden has been slow to nominate people for key ambassadorships and other policy positions. He has been president for nearly nine months now—close to 20 percent of a presidential term—and he still doesn’t have his full team on the field yet. That’s partly due to the cockamamie nature of the appointments and confirmation process in the United States but not entirely.

Make no mistake that Biden’s less-than-perfect record to date is a far cry from the actively destructive diplomacy of Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Some of Trump’s failures resulted from elementary policy blunders, such as leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, abandoning the Paris climate agreement, and tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran and adopting “maximum pressure” instead. Other failures occurred when Trump had decent instincts but pursued them ineptly, as in his various trade wars or the amateurish reality-show summit meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In Biden’s case, by contrast, we see sensible policies being pursued carelessly by a team that was supposed to be a lot better at managing relations with friends and foes alike.

What ultimately matters are the results, however, and even stalwart supporters of the Biden administration should not hesitate to hold it accountable when it falls short. At the same time, the gap between the administration’s aspirations and its performance reveals a lot about the inherent difficulty of conducting a successful foreign policy, especially given the vaunting ambitions that U.S. administrations find nearly impossible to resist.

For starters, the unipolar moment is over, and we now live in a lopsided multipolar world. As international relations theorists have long understood, relations among the major powers in multipolarity are inherently more complicated, contingent, and hard to manage than relations in bipolarity or unipolarity. With more than two major powers, the interests of significant actors are less likely to line up in a consistent and predictable fashion, and the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment loom larger. Instead of the clear “us versus them” alignments typical of bipolarity (e.g., NATO versus the Warsaw Pact), one expects looser arrangements where partners agree on some issues but not others.

Germany’s somewhat ambiguous position today is a case in point. On the one hand, Berlin is firmly committed to NATO, and German leaders still place a high value on having solid relations with the United States. Trump’s rude bluster and personal disregard for Chancellor Angela Merkel were alarming for precisely this reason. But on the other hand, Berlin refuses to line up fully behind the U.S. position toward Russia and China because building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia and preserving its export markets in China are in Germany’s particular national interest.

One sees a similar dynamic with countries like Turkey or India. Although each shares a number of strategic concerns with the United States, both are also happy to buy arms from Russia and to hedge their bets in other ways. The existence of several great powers gives other states more options and increases their ability to drive harder bargains or to stand up to U.S. pressure, as both Venezuela and Iran have demonstrated. Countries that don’t want to rely on assistance from the United States or the World Bank can always explore what Beijing or Moscow might be willing to provide them instead.

READ MORE
Is Joe Biden Missing a Team of Rivals?
The U.S. president appointed longtime staffers to his most powerful foreign-policy roles—and is now suffering the consequences.
ANALYSIS | JAMES TRAUB

A second challenge arises from global problems that transcend traditional great-power rivalry and that cannot be addressed without extensive cooperation across current geopolitical fault lines. Climate change is the paramount example of this problem, but one could easily add pandemic responses, global macroeconomic management, or international terrorism. Common concerns such as these have sometimes mitigated great-power conflict in the past (for example, the shared fear of revolution encouraged the European monarchies to cooperate during the Concert of Europe), but consequential global issues loom even larger today. Unfortunately, trying to counter a peer competitor is a far more straightforward task when you aren’t simultaneously trying to cooperate with it on expensive, complicated, and politically explosive issues such as reducing carbon emissions. Even a president or secretary of state who combined the best traits of Otto von Bismarck, Dean Acheson, Nelson Mandela, Jacinda Ardern, and Sun Tzu would have trouble walking this tightrope.

And then there’s the perennial problem of hubris. Biden may be pursuing a somewhat more realistic foreign-policy agenda than Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or even Barack Obama did, but he’s hardly playing small ball. He has ended America’s fruitless crusade in Afghanistan and doesn’t seem interested in trying to fix the Middle East, but he wants to do a lot more in the Indo-Pacific, revitalize NATO, solve the climate problem, unite the world’s democracies against authoritarianism, and launch an ambitious social agenda at home that will inevitably affect America’s economic ties with the rest of the world. And didn’t Secretary of State Antony Blinken also say the administration was going to put human rights at the center of its foreign policy? Add it all up and you get a pretty breathtaking agenda, one that would be hard to pull off even if the foreign-policy establishment were united behind every item on the list and the Democrats had comfortable veto-proof margins in the House and Senate.

Which brings us to a fourth, closely related problem. Given America’s many commitments and still considerable ambitions, it is simply impossible to devise a foreign-policy strategy that is free from internal contradictions. As Robert Wright reminds us, steps taken to advance one cherished objective can make other goals harder to achieve; what one hand knits the other unravels. Getting out of Afghanistan freed up resources to balance China, but it complicated relations with other allies and undercut the administration’s human rights position. The new AUKUS deal heralds a stronger position in the Asia-Pacific, but it angered a longtime ally and could undermine nonproliferation efforts. Rallying the world’s democracies could strengthen the U.S. position at home and abroad, but it will also make it harder to cooperate with Russia and China on issues of mutual concern such as climate change. The more goals we try to achieve, the greater the danger that success in one area leads to failure somewhere else.

But wait, there’s more! As I’ve noted before, the U.S. political system remains remarkably open to all sorts of baleful foreign influences, whether via domestic and foreign lobbyists, special interest groups, or social media bots, each of them working to tilt U.S. foreign policy in the direction of their particular concern. Add to that the peculiar U.S. practice (unique among major powers) of giving more than 30 percent of all ambassadorial posts to wealthy campaign donors instead of trained professional diplomats, and a less-than-optimal foreign-policy performance is to be expected.

The United States is also unique in the amount of turnover that occurs whenever the White House changes parties (down to the level of deputy assistant secretaries and below). In practice, this leaves key positions unfilled for months and forces each new administration to do a lot of on-the-job training. To make matters worse, plenty of presidential appointees remain in office for less than four years, so the churn continues for the entirety of a president’s term. This situation is akin to having Apple, Ford, or Amazon replace its entire senior management team every four years (or less), with plenty of key management slots open every single day. Such pathologies might not be a problem if the United States had modest foreign-policy objectives, but they are a stifling liability for a country that aspires to far more.

None of these considerations absolves Biden or his team from getting some things wrong. On balance, I’d still rather have an administration that’s trying to do the right things instead of actively marching in several wrong directions at once, and I’m willing to give them a bit more time to show what they can do. It will help if they set clearer priorities and don’t try to do too much because they also need to reserve some excess capacity (including the scarcest commodity of all, time) for dealing with the surprises that every administration inevitably faces. In foreign policy, as in some other activities, trying to do less can help you achieve more.

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

 

[jward]

Russia withdraws offer to freeze nuclear warhead production
by | October 02, 2021 07:00 AM

4-5 minutes


Russian President Vladimir Putin is no longer interested in a joint freeze of nuclear weapons production with the United States, according to a senior Russian envoy who protested American inspections requests and a recent agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

"No, it was a one-time offer, and it was said so to the U.S. They missed the opportunity,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Geneva Center for Security Policy, per state media . "They didn't want a freeze on all warheads — they wanted an extremely intrusive verification and control at all our nuclear-related facilities.”

Ryabkov aired the withdrawal of that proposal following a meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman for what both sides described as “intensive and substantive” arms control talks. He complained about the U.S. and United Kingdom's decision to partner with Australia on a submarine deal widely perceived as directed at China, and both Russian and American officials underscored that the negotiations are unlikely to produce a deal anytime soon.

“Arms control dialogues take a very long time,” Sherman said Friday. “The dialogue has a value in and of itself because it unveils norms that we both believe in and want to establish as the [two nations with the] largest number of nuclear weapons, so it's very good in and of itself.”

‘INDISSOLUBLE BONDS’: NUCLEAR SUBMARINE DEAL FORTIFIES US-AUSTRALIA TIES AGAINST ECONOMIC PRESSURE FROM CHINA

The Ryabkov-Sherman meeting comes months after President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when the two leaders echoed Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s affirmation that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” That joint statement drew criticism from Marshall Billingslea, former President Donald Trump’s point man for arms control, who observed that Putin “believes that a nuclear war CAN be fought & won” and faulted Biden for making a joint statement while “knowing Putin to be lying.”

Russia has adopted a military doctrine that contemplates the use of nuclear weapons to win a conflict in Eastern Europe before U.S. forces can intervene, according to Western officials, spurring at least one NATO ally to warn publicly that Russian might launch a nuclear “blitzkrieg” against one of its neighbors. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty that banned the development of intermediate-range land-based ballistic missiles after Republicans and Democrats, as well as the rest of NATO, assessed that Putin has developed and deployed such systems in defiance of the treaty.

Putin acknowledged in December that an arms race "has already begun,” but Ryabkov argued a more one-sided case on Friday, when he attributed any arms control tensions to an American quest “for decisive unilateral advantages at the expense of Russia's security.”

He broadened his complaints about NATO member-state decisions to include U.S. and British efforts to upgrade their defenses against Chinese threats.

“We are concerned especially by the statements produced earlier in the year in London on future prospects for expansion of its nuclear capabilities,” Ryabkov said, referring to a British plan to increase its nuclear stockpile in response to “China’s military modernization and growing international assertiveness within the Indo-Pacific region.”

And he maintained that the recent U.S. decision to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia is "a great challenge to the international nonproliferation regime” despite Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s stipulation that the deal will cover nuclear power for the submarines but no nuclear weapons.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

U.S. officials have expressed doubt about whether they’ll be able to reach another arms control deal with Russia, but Sherman and Ryabkov separately touted the launch of two working groups on arms control as a positive step.

“We all hope that we head to achieving some objectives about moving forward,” she said.

Russia withdraws offer to freeze nuclear warhead production - Washington Examiner

Russian President Vladimir Putin is no longer interested in a joint freeze of nuclear weapons production with the United States, according to a senior Russian envoy who protested American inspections requests and a recent agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia."No, it was a...

www.washingtonexaminer.com

 

[danielboon]

Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
JUST IN India's army chief says China is sending troops to their disputed border in "considerable numbers", prompting a matching deployment by New Delhi in a development he calls a "concern".https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1444626627779047425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

[danielboon]

 

[Doomer Doug]

Oh Housecarl you are breaking me up. Is biden's foteign policy failing?

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Lessons From North Korea: Once You Go Nuclear, You Don’t Go Back - Algemeiner.com

The Biden administration has accepted the fact that CVID -- the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program -- will not occur under the Kim Jong-un administration. The time has come to find other realistic options. In a 2021 survey by the Korea...

www.algemeiner.com

October 4, 2021 11:37 am

0

Lessons From North Korea: Once You Go Nuclear, You Don’t Go Back
by Alon Levkowitz

The Biden administration has accepted the fact that CVID — the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program — will not occur under the Kim Jong-un administration. The time has come to find other realistic options.


In a 2021 survey by the Korea Institute for National Unification on South Korean attitudes toward North Korea, a majority of South Koreans expressed the belief that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. Does this mean the concept of CVID is no longer relevant? Are the South Korean people more realistic than leaders who assert that the North Korean regime will give up its nuclear weapons if it gets sufficient security assurances and economic benefits?


The Singapore Summit of June 12, 2018, between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un created euphoria on the US side that Kim had made the strategic decision to give up his nuclear weapons in exchange for a lifting of sanctions and subsequent improvement in the North Korean economy.


This euphoria was based on a misunderstanding between Washington and Pyongyang that was revealed a few months later at the Hanoi Summit on February 27-28, 2019. Did President Trump fail to convince Kim to give up North Korea’s nuclear program? Was it realistic to expect him to give up his leverage for economic benefits? One can argue that Kim was never willing to fully dismantle the North Korean nuclear weapon program, but only to give up those parts of the tactical nuclear program that would be required to lift the sanctions without giving up strategic nuclear capabilities.

Pyongyang has not held any nuclear tests since the Singapore Summit in 2018; nor has it conducted a long-range ICBM missile test for the past three years. Thus, despite the fact that President Trump failed to disarm North Korea, he may have contributed to an environment that prevented military escalation in the Korean Peninsula during his term.


Despite the costs to the North Korean economy of the long-term economic sanctions imposed on North Korea, Kim Jong-un has decided to hold onto his nuclear and missile capabilities rather than maximize the potential benefits of the Singapore Summit.


President Biden has nominated Ambassador Sung Kim as the new envoy to North Korea. Though this appointment has been made, negotiations with North Korea have not moved forward since the summits with President Trump. The ongoing sanctions on North Korea have not led to any change in Kim’s nuclear and missile policy. Washington needs to understand that as long as Kim Jong-un is in power, the CVID is a declarative policy without any essence, because Kim will not give up the nuclear and missile card. He might be willing to give up some tactical elements to ease the sanctions, but he will never agree to CVID.


Dr. Alon Levkowitz, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is an expert on East Asian security, the Korean Peninsula, and Asian international organizations.


A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

 

[jward]

Wanted: A Nuclear Deterrence Strategy That Works

by Peter Huessy​

Following two decades of counterterrorism and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is understandably considerable debate in the United States about the needs of U.S. security. How big should the defense budget be? What nuclear deterrent strategy should the United States adopt? A security and nuclear posture review will examine both issues this year. Part of that effort is built on the hope that America has learned “lessons” from the Global War on Terrorism and redirect the means which we use to protect our country to more achievable objectives.
China’s buildup of nuclear weapons combined with the Russian ongoing nuclear modernization is a big challenge for the United States and its allies. The United States must decide between continuing to modernize its nuclear forces per the agreement it made in December 2010 or repeatedly kick such decisions down the road. Most importantly, the United States must determine if it can sustain and improve its strategic stability.

That 2010 deal appears to be holding. The House of Representatives recently voted 299-118 to focus on the modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and by 286-142 to add $23.9 billion to the defense budget.

To maintain public support for such a deal, the government will have to find a way forward that avoids endless wars, reduces the number of U.S. troops overseas, and prompts U.S. allies to do more for mutual security. At the same time, the government must maintain a strong defense, keep a watchful eye on North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, and promote strategic stability without using nuclear weapons.
The solution to this sprawling problem is in strong integrated deterrent, including nuclear deterrence. For seventy years, a strong U.S. nuclear force has prevented the use of any nuclear warhead against the United States and its allies. Historically, conventional deterrence has not always held. Cross-border wars in Korea, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Vietnam were not avoided. Combined, North Korea’s decision to invade South Korea, the North Vietnamese subversion, guerrilla war, and invasion of the Republic of Vietnam killed nearly 100,000 American soldiers along with six million other allied soldiers and civilians.

A new Rand report shows that from 1946–2018, eleven communist states—all client states of the former Soviet Union and state sponsors of terrorism—led virtually every conflict or war against the United States and its allies including guerilla wars, terrorism, and subversion. These major military interventions grew from fifteen in 1970 to nearly forty annually by 1980. They markedly declined during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and reached thirteen by 1992. Adversary troop involvement also dropping precipitously from 1.7 million annually from 1985–87 to under one hundred thousand by 1992.

However, ironically, to accomplish this decline in enemy aggression, the American use of force from 1981–91, from the height of the Cold War to the end of the Soviet empire, was markedly restrained. Albeit, Grenada was liberated, Libya was bombed, and U.S. “peacekeeping forces” were sent to Lebanon.
But critically important, U.S. conventional and nuclear deterrent forces were markedly strengthened under a strategy of “peace through strength.” This strategy emphasized an across-the-board use of American diplomatic, economic, political, and military power but the restrained use of military power.

The Reagan administration strategy of exhausting the Soviet exchequer utilized an across-the-board array of American power. The strategy worked: the Soviet empire cost Moscow by the late 1980s some eight times its 1980 foreign exchange earnings, creating sharp divisions within the Soviet economy. This eventually led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and with it the end of the USSR empire.
Thus, strengthened deterrence does not require the unconstrained use of U.S. military forces abroad. President John Adams famously said, “Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand.” Deterrence seeks to avoid war—to win the peace—without having to fight dragons. However, strengthening deterrence is not free. It will require great effort because the forces now arrayed against the United States and its allies are formidable. In particular, the extent and breadth of the nuclear forces of China and Russia are formidable.

This warrants the support of a deterrent effort that gives a green light to modernizing our nuclear deterrent and fully supports curbing the aggressive tactics of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
Deterrence is made up of a number of key factors. First, it requires a credible military force. Second, it requires a demonstrated will to build such a force in the defense of U.S. security. Third, it requires improving all of America’s power, including its economic and political strength. And lastly, it must achieve strategic stability.
There is a credible force plan on the table. Congressional representatives of the American people support going forward with the plan. U.S. military planners are beginning to speak intelligently about integrating all the centers of U.S. power.

The Case for Strategic Stability
Franklin Miller, formerly a special assistant to Bush, explained to the Task Force-21 Minot Nuclear Triad Symposium on September 24 that enhancing strategic stability means exploring a new round of arms talks with the Russians—which the United States is now doing. However, he cautioned that Russia poses a looming threat to regional and global stability—particularly from its short-range nuclear forces to U.S. allies in Europe. These Russian forces now being fully modernized are “intended to intimidate our allies in peacetime and threaten the escalation to the nuclear level of any conflict” arising from a Russian land-grab of NATO territory.
Whatever a new arms deal with Russia might yield, it is wholly insufficient to secure deterrence which can only come from building a credible strategic nuclear deterrent on new strategic bombers, land-based missiles, and submarines. Such building will also require a low-level Trident W76-2 warhead, adding fifth-generation dual-capable aircraft to U.S. and allied forces in Europe, upgrading the B-61 warheads, as well as enhancing U.S. and allied missile defenses and conventional long-range strike options.
Miller said that it’s critical to understand that Russia and China are not building up their nuclear forces by accident or due to industrial inertia. President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s attempt to build up its nuclear force in 2008, initiated it in 2014, and is now nearly complete.

While China has never announced the details of its nuclear modernization, satellite photos have recently revealed the construction of at least 350 new ICBM silos, each of which can contain the Chinese Dongfeng-41 ICBMs carrying ten warheads.
What is the extent of the Russia and Chinse build? The Russians are only partially limited in their modernization by the New Start treaty. Even so, their 520 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles could be expanded to seven hundred as long as the associated warheads were limited to 1490, not including whatever warheads and gravity bombs can be included in sixty bombers.

China is under no treaty limits for all of its nuclear forces. Meanwhile, 55 percent of Russia’s nuclear forces—particularly shorter range and exotic new strategic forces—are not curtailed by the 2010 New START.
Will Russia stay within the treaty limits or will China stop once it reaches parity with the United States? Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assumed in 1963 that the Soviets would stop building their ICBM force once they reached parity with the United States. McNamara was only off by a factor of at least 500 percent.
A U.S. deterrent capable of holding at bay the aggression objectives of Russia and China has to be both conventional and nuclear. Miller warns that all scenarios where the U.S. conventional might prevail in a conflict with Russia or China assume that no use of nuclear weapons is introduced into the fight. Otherwise, all conventional assumptions go out the window. As former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl warned some years ago, after having served on the 2018 national security commission studying U.S. security choices, he had never previously served on such a commission where the results of wargaming and multiple scenarios had the United States losing a future fight to our enemies.

This reality requires the United States to enhance its conventional and nuclear capabilities.
Remember that in 2010 when the New START Treaty was signed, the United States assumed that there could be a “reset” with Russia. Although Moscow might be an adversary the country was not necessarily an enemy. On top of that, China was assumed to have a low level of nuclear weapons. America assumed that whatever deterrent it deemed sufficient to deal with Russia was deemed sufficient to deter China too.

Miller noted that the key question for the United States is “given the aggressive policies of Putin and Xi [Jinping], their adventurism, their military building programs, and their nuclear forces expansion, how can an overall U.S. force limited to 1550 [warheads] meet our deterrence and extended deterrence requirements for the present and foreseeable future?”
Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy, described at the Triad Symposium China’s five new ICBMs, two new submarine ballistic missiles, and six new Jin-class submarines. China has a new strategic bomber and cruise missile too, he noted.

Posted For Fair Use

Wanted: A Nuclear Deterrence Strategy That Works

U.S. conventional deterrent strategy assumes no use of nuclear force. The United States has to strengthen its nuclear deterrent capability to ensure that threshold is never broken.

nationalinterest.org

 

[jward]

Morocco and Algeria: Is a military showdown coming?

Aziz Chahir​

Since severing diplomatic ties with Rabat on 24 August, Algeria’s relations with neighbouring Morocco have grown increasingly fraught.
First came the Algerian energy minister’s announcement that the contract for the Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline, which distributes natural gas to Spain, would not be renewed - halting to all intents and purposes gas supplies to Morocco.
Next, Algeria’s High Security Council announced that it was closing its airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircraft as well as those with Moroccan registration numbers.

Morocco's king and Algeria's generals: The standoff continues

More recently, on 28 September, Algerian Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Said Chengriha accused the Moroccan kingdom of plotting a "conspiracy" against his country “to undermine the unity of the Algerian people, by sowing discord and division among them”.
“Algeria’s attachment to its principles and its determination not to deviate from them are a source of irritation to the Makhzen [Morocco’s governing institution], and an impediment to the regime’s questionable regional projects,” the lieutenant general is quoted as saying.
Given the recent turn of events, it is impossible to believe that Morocco’s King Mohammed VI will be content to simply wield the soft power of consensus and regional cooperation once again.
Forget about the speeches of December 2019, when the Moroccan monarch appealed to the newly elected president of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, urging him “to open a new chapter in the relations between the two neighbouring countries, based on mutual trust and constructive dialogue”, and of August 2021, when Mohammed VI urged “his excellency the Algerian president to work in unison for the development of fraternal relations”.

Western Sahara
The Moroccan policy of supposedly "reaching out" is perhaps a mere smokescreen aiming to hide the regime’s true intentions - of forcing the Algerian generals to initiate hostilities.
In short, Mohammed VI, the supreme commander and chief of general staff of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR), appears bent on using military force to defend the kingdom’s claims to what it considers its so-called "southern provinces", the term used by Morocco's government for the section of Western Sahara occupied by it.
In a carefully calculated move aimed at neutralising the reach of the Moroccan military - which had formerly attempted a coup under the rule of King Hassan II - Mohammed VI placed the security of the royal palace and compound in the hands of the country’s armed forces.

Palace security had up till then been overseen by the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie and the General Directorate for National Security. Next, the monarch stepped up the modernisation of the kingdom’s armed forces, in response in particular to the Arab Spring uprisings that saw the toppling of several of the region’s authoritarian regimes.

Algeria-Morocco: Heightened tensions as Rabat receives new combat drones from Turkey

In practical terms, Morocco’s national defence was reorganised under the direction of Lieutenant General Abdelfattah Louarak, named as inspector general of the FAR by the king in January 2017. The monarch did not replace his predecessor, General Bouchaib Arroub, then in command of the country’s southern provinces.
The primary mission of the newly appointed senior officer was to oversee operations for developing and modernising Morocco’s military industry - with a colossal budget representing roughly 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP in 2020.
Numbers released in 2018 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) show that other countries involved in conflict zones spend less on national defence, including Israel (4.3 percent), the United States (3.2 percent) and Turkey (2.5 percent).
Following this first phase, the Moroccan monarch now seems to be wielding the hard power of military and economic pressure, in an attempted strategic play by Rabat to bend the will of Algiers.
It is a move that Algerian diplomats are well acquainted with, having long used it themselves to contain the manoeuvres of Morocco’s foreign ministry - witness the countless large-scale military operations organised by the Algerian army in each of its militarised regions, and especially on the Moroccan border. One such show of military force was conducted in January 2021, with the backing of Russia.

Unmistakable message
According to the Sipri annual report of 2021, Morocco is now the third-largest arms importer in Africa, just behind Egypt and Algeria.
The Moroccan regime seems determined to respond to Algeria’s acts of diplomatic hostility with military action, as Mohammed VI’s recent appointment of Lieutenant General Belkhir el-Farouk’s as inspector general of the FAR goes to show.

Lieutenant General Belkhir el-Farouk (C) greets fellow Moroccan officers during the recent African Lion 21 joint military exercises with the US (AFP)
A laureate of the Royal Military Academy, Farouk began in the infantry, before occupying several key military positions, including commander of the southern provinces, the position he filled for nearly 40 years and that has been virtually vacant since 2017.
The appointment of a senior officer whose credentials include several military campaigns in Western Sahara is an unmistakable message to Algiers: Rabat is ready to respond with military force if Algeria’s generals continue pressuring Morocco and ultimately initiate hostilities.
Reports also suggest that the newly appointed commander of Morocco’s armed forces is a favourite with the Americans. Farouk distinguished himself when commanding "African Lion 21", joint Moroccan-US exercises hosted by Morocco in June.

Diplomatic jockeying
On the diplomatic stage, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra and his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, exchanged sharp words over Western Sahara at the UN general assembly on Monday.
“The organisation of a free and fair referendum to allow the Sahrawi people to determine its destiny and decide its political future cannot remain forever hostage to the intransigence of an occupying state that has repeatedly failed to meet its international obligations,” the Algerian minister said.
But in a pre-recorded video shown at the UN assembly, Morocco’s foreign minister said Algeria needed to “shoulder its responsibility for perpetuating an invented regional conflict”, demanding that Algiers stop protecting “a group of armed separatists in gross violation of international humanitarian law”.

Algeria has openly backed the Polisario Front separatist movement, which defends the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination

Algeria has openly backed the Polisario Front separatist movement, which defends the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.
Morocco meanwhile claims sovereignty over Western Sahara and sees its “extended autonomy proposal” as a solution to the conflict.
Their untimely mediatised exchange just happened to come after the African Lion 21, but also just after the strengthening of military cooperation between Rabat and Washington.
The Moroccan kingdom therefore continues to enjoy the support of the Americans, especially following the recognition by former US President Donald Trump of Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara, in exchange for the normalisation of relations between Morocco and Israel.

Demons of war
The regime of Mohammed VI seems convinced it is sufficiently "covered" by two world powers - the US and Israel - to attempt to stand up to the Algerian generals supporting the Polisario movement.
But memories of the Sand War border conflict of 1963 between Algeria and Morocco have yet to fade.
And so the conflict over Western Sahara continues to plague diplomatic relations between Morocco and Algeria, shaping to this day the policies and tactics of both nations, and potentially awakening the old demons of war.
This is especially true in the run-up to the appointment of the new UN special envoy for Western Sahara, the Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura, with current negotiations between Morocco and the Polisario Front at a standstill, and the voices that preach appeasement and conciliation being consistently ignored.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
This article has been translated from the MEE French edition.
Posted for fair use

Morocco and Algeria: Is a military showdown coming?

The conflict over Western Sahara continues to plague diplomatic relations between Morocco and Algeria. Rabat will not back down if Algiers continues on the warpath

www.middleeasteye.net

 

[jward]

Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile ​

Fact Sheet October 5, 2021 Download Fact Sheet [245 KB]

The United States is releasing newly declassified information on the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to update the information previously released in September 2017. Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, including commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and efforts to address all types of nuclear weapons, including deployed and non-deployed, and strategic and non-strategic.

Stockpile
As of September 2020, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads consisted of 3,750 warheads. This number represents an approximate 88 percent reduction in the stockpile from its maximum (31,255) at the end of fiscal year 1967, and an approximate 83 percent reduction from its level (22,217) when the Berlin Wall fell in late 1989. The below figure shows the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile from 1945 through September 30, 2020.

Warhead Dismantlement
From fiscal years 1994 through 2020, the United States dismantled 11,683 nuclear warheads. Since September 30, 2017, the United States has dismantled 711 nuclear warheads. Approximately 2,000 additional nuclear warheads are currently retired and awaiting dismantlement.

Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons
The number of U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons has declined by more than 90 percent since September 30, 1991.1
1 During the Cold War, the United States possessed large numbers and a wide range of non-strategic nuclear weapons, also known as theater or tactical nuclear weapons. Since 1991, the United States has retired and dismantled nearly all of those weapons. Note, non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons are non-accountable systems under the New START Treaty.



Please see header, or source, for link to d/l the report

Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile - United States Department of State

The United States is releasing newly declassified information on the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to update the information previously released in September 2017. Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, including...

www.state.gov

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

F-35A Completes Final Inert Drop Test Of New B61-12 Nuclear Bomb

The F-35A is now on a trajectory to become fully certified to deliver thermonuclear weapons in the near future.

www.thedrive.com

F-35A Completes Final Inert Drop Test Of New B61-12 Nuclear Bomb
The F-35A is now on a trajectory to become fully certified to deliver thermonuclear weapons in the near future.
BY THOMAS NEWDICK OCTOBER 5, 2021

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The U.S. Air Force is making progress toward fully certifying its F-35A stealth fighters for the nuclear strike role, armed with the new B61-12 nuclear bomb. Flight tests of the jet carrying the weapon were recently completed, involving the release of what the service described in a statement as “the most representative B61-12 test asset” from an “operationally representative F-35A.” The service has said in the past that the F-35A could start carrying the bombs operationally before the end of next year.

The Full Weapon System Demonstration, the first of its kind for the Joint Strike Fighter in the nuclear strike configuration, involved two Air Force F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variants each dropping a single unarmed B61-12 Joint Test Assemblies (JTAs) over the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. This range is part of the wider Nevada Test and Training Range and has a rich history of nuclear weapons testing, as well as other sensitive research and development and test and evaluation efforts. You can see a rare video tour montage of the range in this previous War Zone story.

U.S. AIR FORCE/AIRMAN 1ST CLASS ZACHARY RUFUS
An F-35A carrying a B61-12 Joint Test Assembly sits on the flight line at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on September 21, 2021. The bomb itself is not visible, but the jet also carries a pair of AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles in its weapons bays.

Billed as a “graduation test,” the latest effort was led by the 422nd and 59th Test and Evaluation Squadrons stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Photos released by the Air Force indicate that the weapons launch trial took place on September 21 this year.

“The B61 series weapons are tactical gravity nuclear weapons that can be used on Dual Capable Aircraft [DCA] like the F-15E and F-16C/D,” explained Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Jackson, division chief, Headquarters Air Combat Command Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration. “Having a fifth-generation DCA fighter aircraft with this capability brings an entirely new strategic-level capability that strengthens our nation’s nuclear deterrence mission.”



WATCH AN F-35 DROP A B61 NUCLEAR BOMB IN THIS FIRST-EVER DECLASSIFIED VIDEOBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
F-15E STRIKE EAGLE FIRST JET CLEARED TO EMPLOY AIR FORCE'S NEW B61-12 NUCLEAR BOMBSBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
GET TO KNOW AMERICA'S LONG SERVING B61 FAMILY OF NUCLEAR BOMBSBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
AIR FORCE SHOWS OFF SQUADRON LOGO HIGHLIGHTING STOCKPILE OF NUCLEAR BOMBS IN BELGIUMBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
B-2 FLIES FIRST 'END-TO-END' TESTS WITH NEW NUCLEAR BOMB AMID GROWING COST CONCERNSBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE

Development of the B61-12 has been ongoing since at least 2011, and the new bomb is technically a refurbishment and consolidation of four existing variants, the B61-3, -4, -7, and -10. The B61-12 is characterized by a new tail assembly that features am Inertial Navigation System (INS) precision-guidance package for much-enhanced accuracy. You can read more about the different members of the long-serving B61 family in this past War Zone feature.

According to a statement from the F-35 Joint Program Office, the latest tests involved “high-fidelity, non-nuclear mock B61-12s,” and each weapon was dropped at a different altitude and speed. The actual launch parameters of the tests were not revealed, but we do know that, in the past, at least one F-35A has dropped a test B61-12 at supersonic speed, an event you can read more about here.

Video of a test from last year in which an F-35A dropped a B61-12 test round over the Tonopah Test Range:

View: https://youtu.be/P1JGe1jj9u0


With this latest milestone event, the Air Force has now completed the flight test portion of the nuclear design certification process for the latest B61 series weapon, which involved 10 test drops in total. Now that nuclear design certification has been wound up, the program moves into the nuclear operational certification phase, essentially clearing the aircraft and weapon for frontline service.

In the meantime, data gathered during the latest test at Tonopah will be assessed by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy, to ensure the B61-12 and the F-35A meet all performance requirements.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The red tail of an inert B61-12 is visible inside the bomb bay of this F-35A during an earlier flight test.

The Air Force says that no date has been set for full F-35A nuclear certification, at which point the jet will be determined able to deploy the B61-12 in support of real-world operations. The service does, however, note that the integration process is set to “remain on track for future timelines.”

Back in 2017, it was reported that the Air Force had set a goal of between 2020 and 2022 to introduce the B61-12 capability on the F-35A. However, the service has also said it does not expect to receive the first production B61-12s until 2022, meaning that the F-35As will likely have to wait until then, at least.

U.S. AIR FORCE/AIRMAN 1ST CLASS ZACHARY RUFUS
An F-35A takes off to complete the final test exercise of the nuclear design certification process at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on September 21, 2021.

U.S. AIR FORCE/AIRMAN 1ST CLASS ZACHARY RUFUS
Airmen from the 926th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron watch as an F-35A pilot assigned to the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron performs pre-flight checks before launch at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on September 21, 2021.

However, the B61-12 capability will only be realized by F-35A units that are earmarked for the nuclear mission, likely to be spearheaded by the current F-16C/D units deployed in Europe that will continue their DCA mission when they transition to the Lightning II.

Adaptations for that mission concern not only the hardware and software changes required on the jet itself to prosecute it, but also the appropriate training of aircrew and maintainers, plus various support and security infrastructure at the relevant bases.

U.S. AIR FORCE/AIRMAN 1ST CLASS ZACHARY RUFUS

An F-35A pilot assigned to the 442nd Test and Evaluation Squadron completes pre-flight checks on the flight line at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on September 21, 2021.

The nuclear strike role will likely be performed not only by the U.S. Air Force but also by certain F-35A export customers within NATO, which could be provided with access to U.S.-owned nuclear bombs, as is currently the case for Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Of these, all but Germany are buying F-35As.

Interestingly, the Air Force is also now pitching the nuclear-armed F-35A as a more strategic weapons-delivery platform, as well as being a tactical strike asset. This is likely the result of a few different factors. First, there is the increased accuracy of the B61-12, thanks to its precision-guidance system, combining the aforementioned INS package tail kit and rockets that give the weapon spin stabilization. This guidance also allows the weapon to be launched from dozens of miles away from its target area, increasing survivability. This, paired with the F-35A’s well-reported stealth attributes, allows for better-defended targets to be attacked. It also has a sizeable combat radius for a tactical fighter. Furthermore, unlike its forebears, the B61-12 is designed from the outset for carriage by strategic (bomber) and tactical (fighter) platforms.

Speaking to Air Force Magazine, meanwhile, Air Combat Command deputy director for strategic deterrence Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Kabel said, “It makes our potential adversaries think more about their game plan before launching it. [The F-35A] can get closer to, further inside a combat area that may otherwise be impossible for non-stealth assets.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Air Force is already developing tactics that would see the nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber work alongside the F-35A in contested airspace — using their respective attributes to defeat the air defenses of a potential peer or near-peer enemy.

SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES CAPTURE
A screen capture from an earlier video of an F-35A’s supersonic release of the B61-12 in August last year, showing the bomb’s rocket spin stabilization system in action.

“The B-2 bomber was the prominent nuclear-capable stealth aircraft,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jackson. “Adding ‘nuclear capable’ to a fifth-gen fighter that already brings several conventional-level capabilities to the table adds strategic-level implication to this jet.”

However, the B61-12 won’t just be carried by the F-35A. In June last year, it was announced that the B61-12 had been demonstrated as being fully compatible with the F-15E Strike Eagle, followed by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber later the same month.

Ultimately, the future B-21 Raider bombers will also be armed with the new bombs, and at least a portion of the F-16C/D fleet is also planned to carry them. As part of NATO nuclear sharing commitments, it seems likely that Germany will seek to add the B61-12 to its planned F/A-18E/Fs, as well.

Video of the F-15E Strike Eagle performing B61-12 development work over the Tonopah Test Range:

View: https://youtu.be/cBeDSbafgQA


But the B61-12 program has already suffered notable delays and cost increases, and there are also budgetary considerations, with the entire program costing around $10 billion, making the average cost per bomb at around $27,500,000. To that figure needs to be added potential cost increases. For example, hundreds of millions were needed to pay for commercial-off-the-shelf capacitors for both the B61-12 and the W88 ALT 370 warheads used in the U.S. Navy’s Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. These replaced previous items that had cost just $5 apiece.

With that in mind, although the process of integrating the B61-12 on the F-35A seems to be progressing well, that’s not to say there won’t be more costs involved in getting this new weapon issued to frontline units.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

This Is Our Most Detailed Look At Russia's S-70 Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle To Date (Updated)

A recent official Russian Ministry of Defense television program offered new details about the S-70 drone and how it is expected to further evolve.

www.thedrive.com

This Is Our Most Detailed Look At Russia's S-70 Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle To Date
A recent official Russian Ministry of Defense television program offered new details about the S-70 drone and how it is expected to further evolve.
BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK OCTOBER 5, 2021

• THE WAR ZONE

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
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JOSEPH TREVITHICKView Joseph Trevithick's Articles
@FranticGoat
The Russian Ministry of Defense's official television station, TV Zvezda, recently offered the most in-depth look at the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik unmanned combat air vehicle, or UCAV, as well as the work that has gone into it, to date. This includes new views of various features on the drone, including its internal payload bays and the control setup that operators use to fly it, along with behind-the-scenes looks at various aspects of its design and manufacturing process.

TV Zvezda's "Military Acceptance" program was given an inside look at elements of the Okhotnik, or "hunter" in English, for a segment that aired this past weekend. The title of the episode, which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube in Russian below, says that this is "chapter 1," indicating that that the show already intends to come back to this topic with additional information in the future.

View: https://youtu.be/L0f4CeOGPBA


The Russian military first officially unveiled this very large combat drone, which is really more of a demonstrator than even a prototype, in 2019 after its first flight, though unofficial images had already emerged on social media. Since then, only relatively limited details about the design and its development, as well as accompanying imagery, have been released.




RUSSIA’S OKHOTNIK UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLE TESTS AIR-TO-AIR MISSILES: REPORTBy Thomas NewdickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
NOW RUSSIA WANTS ITS FIRST OKHOTNIK COMBAT DRONE IN SERVICE BY 2024By Thomas NewdickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
WATCH RUSSIA'S S-70 UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLE FLY WITH AN SU-57 FOR THE FIRST TIMEBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
RUSSIA'S SUKHOI SHOWS OFF STEALTHIER VISION FOR ITS "HUNTER" UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLEBy Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE
FULL ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST FLIGHT OF RUSSIA'S 'HUNTER' UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLEBy Joseph Trevithick and Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE
Only one of these drones has been completed so far, but at least three others are reportedly under construction. In the TV Zvezda segment, officials from Sukhoi described this drone, which presently carries the bort number Red 071, as a "laboratory," a Russian term commonly used for testbed assets. Previous Russian state media reports have said that the second example now being built is set to be used primarily as a research and development asset, just like the first one. The third and fourth examples will reportedly be more representative of a final production design.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A view of another S-70 now under construction, as was shown to Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu earlier this year.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
One of the things about the core S-70 design that is most immediately apparent from the footage in the show is just how big this UCAV really is, something The War Zone has highlighted before. TV Zvezda's reporter says that Okhotnik is smaller than Sukhoi's Su-57 Felon advanced combat jet. However, a clip where he walks from the wing of one of those manned aircraft onto the drone shows that the size difference, especially in wingspan, is minimal. The particular Su-57 seen in this portion of the segment, and others, is one that has been used in various testing in cooperation with the S-70. Among other things, the production versions of the Okhotnik are expected to eventually operate as semi-autonomous "loyal wingmen" networked together with Felons.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
TV Zvezda's reporter walks from the edge of the wing of a Su-57 onto that of the only complete S-70 currently in existence, highlighting the size of the drone as compared to a large manned fighter.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
TV Zvezda's reporter walks on top of the S-70, further underscoring its size.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
This view of the S-70's underside, with an individual standing almost fully erect, also gives a good sense of its general size.

We are also treated to new, close-up looks at the exterior of this flying-wing drone. This includes views of its upper body, which is covered in various intakes and exhausts, as well as antennas, and a forward-facing camera system under the central part of the forward fuselage.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A look at the top rear portion of the S-70.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A camera system underneath the central portion of the S-70's forward fuselage.

There are also nice views of the UCAV's very exposed engine exhaust. This is something that The War Zone has noted would limit its all-around stealthiness since the very first images of this unmanned aircraft emerged back in 2019. The Okhotnik's overall surface is hardly flush, either, with various exposed fasteners and seams that would negatively impact its radar-evading qualities.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
We also get a look at the S-70's internal bays, which TV Zvezda's reporter said the channel was prohibited from filming inside. It's unclear what, if any, weapons or other internal payloads have been flight tested on this initial example of the Okhotnik so far, but there were reports that the drone had carried some kind of air-to-air missile surrogate during an experiment late last year.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A payload bay on the S-70 is seen open in the background.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
Another framing showing two payload bay doors open.

Beyond the new views of the design, an official from Sukhoi elaborates more on how technology, and even some entire components, from the Su-57 was leveraged to help accelerate the development of the S-70. The drone uses the same main landing gear assemblies as the manned aircraft, for instance.

Sukhoi says the S-70 is expected to change significantly, inside and out, between the first two examples and the next two. The most notable expected difference will be the replacement of the exposed rear engine exhaust with a shrouded one, as has been seen previously on models. The intake on those models is also revised compared to what is seen on the Okhotnik that is currently flying. The production examples are also expected to make significant use of composite materials. This would all, at least in principle, help reduce the unmanned aircraft's radar signature.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A model of an S-70 showing the revised low observable exhaust configuration that is expected to be found on production examples. Some of the drone's control surfaces are highlighted. The inlet has also been reconfigured.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

THE MASTER FORMS SUKHOI HAS BEEN USING TO SHAPE PARTS, INCLUDING THOSE MADE OUT OF COMPOSITES, FOR THE S-70.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
Sukhoi workers maneuver a large composite structure, which appears to be a wing-body section for an S-70.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
It's also worth noting that it would be highly unlikely that the expected new exhaust configuration on the production-representative S-70s would be able to accommodate an afterburner. Sukhoi representatives did specifically tell TV Zvezda that the UCAV was not expected to be overly fast or maneuverable, relying more on its stealthy characteristics to successfully complete its assigned missions.
Beyond all this, at one point in the segment, the reporter from "Military Acceptance" is shown various computer models related to the S-70 and its aerodynamics, including one that appears to show a deep S-shaped engine intake on the drone. It's not clear if this is a feature on the current demonstrator or the second one in production, or if it is expected to be added to the final design. Either way, this kind of ducting, something that is very prominently not found on the Su-57, helps conceal the engine's fan face, which would otherwise produce a very large radar signature.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A computer model that appears to suggest that the S-70 has, or will have, a stealthy S-shaped main air intake for its engine.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
Another S-70-related aerodynamic model.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A direct screenshot from a Sukhoi computer showing various airflow modeling.
Sukhoi touted its use of modeling and digital simulation in the development of the drone, in general. At one point, a representative from the company showed the reporter from "Military Acceptance" a rig used to test the unmanned aircraft's flight software. The system includes a full physical control system from an S-70 linked to a simulator made up of commercially sourced components. This includes a visual interface with a 3D rendering of a flying wing-type aircraft that Sukhoi insisted was nothing more than a stock graphical asset. The way the system works is that the physical controls are supposed to respond to the tester's inputs in the simulator as they would on the real drone, allowing engineers to see if things work as intended, albeit in a very rudimentary laboratory environment.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A view of the control system test rig for the S-70, with the physical components in the rear and the computer simulator in front.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
Sukhoi says that this flying wing aircraft rendering used for the control rig simulator is just a stock 3D asset and not a representation of any actual design.
Separately from its exploration of the S-70's design and the development thereof, this episode of "Military Acceptance" also offers a look into the current operator arrangement for the drone. It currently takes a three-person team to fly the Okhotnik, consisting of a pilot/operator, navigator, and communications specialist, all of whom work together inside a containerized control van.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
The outside of the control van Sukhoi has been using to operate the S-70.
The pilot-operator sits in a position that is intended, in broad strokes, to mirror the cockpit of an aircraft, with a traditional control column and various multifunction displays. A view of what is in front of the drone is provided via feeds from its two forward-facing video cameras, which have heads-up-display-like iconography overlaid on top. The navigator and communications positions feature more conventional computers, with the navigator notably also able to view many of the same displays as the pilot/operator.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
The pilot/operator station.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
A closer look at some of the displays in the pilot-operator station.

TV ZVEZDA CAPTURE
The communications specialist's station, at left, and the navigator's station, at right. The pilot-operator station is visible in the background behind the divider.

This control arrangement is expected to evolve as time goes on, as well, with many of the more traditional plane-like components of the pilot/operator position giving way to simpler displays and computer screens. No details were given about how a pilot of a Su-57 might be expected to interact directly with one of these drones in flight.

The plan is for the operation of the drone to become increasingly autonomous, as well. The degree of autonomy currently found in the S-70 is not entirely clear, but it does reportedly have the ability to conduct some level of flight without constant human interaction and has an emergency backup mode to help it get back to base if its connection to the operator is lost for any reason. Still, the expectation, at least a present, is that there will continue to be a human in the loop, at least on some level, when operational Okhotniks enter service.

This operating method would severely limit how future S-70s could be employed, potentially forcing them to operate within line of sight to the ground control station or to intermediate communications relay nodes. Russia is not particularly well known for high-speed, beyond-line-of-sight data links, in general. A desktop-like, point-and-click touchscreen user interface that allows various types of commands to be issued would be another key feature for truly semi-autonomous operation of the S-70 in the future.

All told, it very much remains to be seen what the production-ready S-70 design will look like, as well as when Okhotniks may actually start seeing real service. The Russian Ministry of Defense currently hopes to begin fielding its first operational examples in 2024. There is, of course, always the potential for delays due to various reasons, including just basic budgetary realities. It seems clear Sukhoi has been trying to leverage work on the Su-57 to help mitigate such risks. However, the production of those jets, as well as their initial development, has been something of a saga, as you can read more about here, and it remains unclear when, or if, Russia will field any significant number of them or in what capacity.

View: https://youtu.be/fquWMUBO6Ag


With the development of and expected concepts of operation for the S-70 so heavily tied to the Su-57, this can only raise questions about the future of the drone. Using Okhotniks as loyal wingmen could offer one possible way to expand the real combat capacity of what might ultimately only be a small fleet of operational Felons. If the Russians are able to turn the models of the Okhotnik in the stealthier configuration into a reality, then these UCAVs could also help make up for the Su-57's radar-evading shortcomings, as well, a valuable potential synergy that The War Zone has pointed out in the past. It's not clear what impact the expectation that the S-70 will be slower and less maneuverable than its manned partners might have on any future manned-unmanned teaming.

Of course, these drones could also be employed on their own as true UCAVs if the control arrangement eventually allows for it. As already noted, the current focus on human-in-the-loop operation presents obvious limitations on how the S-70 can be used, including how far away it can operate from its controller, whether they're on the ground or in the air.

No matter what, this latest episode of TV Zvezda's "Military Acceptance" program is certainly a fascinating new look into the S-70 program, and we are already very interested to see what details future "chapters" might contain.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

State Department discloses number of nukes in US stockpile

In a reversal of Trump administration policy, the State Department has disclosed the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile.

apnews.com

State Department discloses number of nukes in US stockpile

By ROBERT BURNS
yesterday

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a reversal of Trump administration policy, the State Department on Tuesday disclosed the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile. It said this will aid global efforts to control the spread of such weapons.

The number of U.S. weapons, including those in active status as well as those in long-term storage, stood at 3,750 as of September 2020, the department said. That is down from 3,805 a year earlier and 3,785 in 2018.

As recently as 2003, the U.S. nuclear weapon total was slightly above 10,000. It peaked at 31,255 in 1967.

The last time the U.S. government released its stockpile number was in March 2018, when it said the total was 3,822 as of September 2017. That was early in the Trump administration, which subsequently kept updated numbers secret and denied a request by the Federation of American Scientists to declassified them.

“Back to transparency,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He said the Biden administration was wise to reverse the prior administration’s policy.

Kristensen said disclosing the stockpile number will assist U.S. diplomats in arms control negotiations and at next year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, which will review the disarmament commitment made by nuclear powers who are treaty signatories, including the United States.

The Biden administration is conducting a nuclear weapons posture and policy review that is expected to be completed early next year.

At the Conference on Disarmament last February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “President Biden has made it clear: the U.S. has a national security imperative and a moral responsibility to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.”

 

[vestige]

F****** idiot

 

[jward]

Why China Is Alienating the World
Backlash Is Building—but Beijing Can’t Seem to Recalibrate
By Peter Martin
October 6, 2021

Protesters outside the Chinese embassy in Yangon, Myanmar, February 2021
Panos Pictures / Redux

In early 2017, China appeared to be on a roll. Its economy was beating estimates. President Xi Jinping was implementing the country’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and was on the cusp of opening China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti. Most important, Xi seemed poised to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s determination to pick fights with U.S. allies and international institutions. In a speech in Davos in January of that year, Xi even compared protectionism with “locking oneself in a dark room.”

Nearly five years on, Beijing is facing its biggest international backlash in decades. Negative views of China are near record highs across the developed world, according to a Pew Research Center survey from June, which showed that at least three-quarters of respondents in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States now hold broadly negative views of the country. The European Union, which Beijing worked to court during the Trump era, has officially branded China a “systemic rival,” and NATO leaders have begun to coordinate a common response to Beijing. On China’s doorstep, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States have revitalized the “Quad” grouping of nations in response to concerns over Beijing’s intentions. And most recently, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to share sensitive nuclear secrets with Australia to help it counter China’s naval ambitions in the Pacific.

Yet Beijing shows no sign of shifting course. Unlike previous eras of backlash against China, such as the one that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, this one has not prompted a recalibration in Beijing. For now, China’s leaders appear to have decided that their newfound national strength, combined with the general malaise of the West, means that the rest of the world will have to adapt to Beijing’s preferences.


WOLF WARRIORS

In recent years, China has faced mounting international criticism of everything from its apparent detention of more than one million Muslim Uyghurs in “reeducation” camps to its sweeping crackdown in Hong Kong, its controversial industrial policies, and its role in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But increasingly, it is China’s diplomats who are doing the most damage to the country’s reputation. Popularly known as “Wolf Warriors,” after a series of blockbuster movies that depicted Chinese heroes vanquishing foreign foes, they have picked fights everywhere from Fiji to Venezuela. In March 2020, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian outraged U.S. officials when he claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic began only after American athletes had brought the virus to Wuhan. Last November, Zhao tweeted an illustration of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child, prompting Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to demand an apology. And in September, China’s new ambassador to the United Kingdom, Zheng Zeguang, was banned from the British Parliament over Chinese sanctions against British lawmakers.

China’s foreign policy elites have noticed the problem. As early as 2018, Deng Pufang, the son of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, warned that China should “know its place” and “keep a sober mind” in its foreign policy. In May 2020, Reuters reported that the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations—a think tank affiliated with China’s primary intelligence agency—had warned the country’s leadership that anti-China sentiment was at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And in September 2020, Yuan Nansheng, China’s former consul general in San Francisco, warned against “extreme nationalism” in Chinese foreign policy. Xi himself has at least tacitly acknowledged the problem, warning in a Politburo study session in June that China needed to present a “lovable” image to the world.

Increasingly, it is China’s diplomats who are doing the most damage to the country’s reputation.

But even more striking than the backlash against China has been the country’s inability to recalibrate. Beijing’s response to the rapid deterioration in ties with Canberra was to confront Australia with a list of demands that it said were prerequisites for improving relations. China’s leaders have also repeatedly stressed that any improvement in relations with the United States must begin with concessions from Washington and issued Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman a similar list of demands when she visited Tianjin in July.

Officials in Washington have begun to see Beijing’s inability to shift course as an advantage in the emerging competition between the two countries. During bilateral talks in March, China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, lectured his U.S. counterparts on the United States’ moral failings, including police killings of Black citizens. In response, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reminded Yang of what he called the United States’ “secret sauce”: the ability to acknowledge and fix mistakes. “A confident country,” Sullivan said, “is able to look hard at its own shortcomings and constantly seek to improve.” The implication, of course, was that China seemed unable to do the same, at least in its foreign policy.

FEAR AND AMBITION IN BEIJING

It is tempting to see Beijing’s inability to adapt as an intrinsic feature of the Chinese system. Certainly, individual Chinese officials often fear the consequences of admitting mistakes. But in the past, Beijing has actually been quite skilled at course correction. In the 1950s, China undertook a charm offensive that won it friends in the developing world and helped build support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the internationally recognized government of China. In the period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Chinese diplomats helped rehabilitate their country in the eyes of the world, kick-starting a nearly two-decade run of successes that culminated in China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Rather than an inherent flaw in China’s model of governance, the failure to recalibrate this time is a product of the current political atmosphere in Beijing. Overconfidence is a major part of the problem. In the aftermath of the 2008–9 global financial crisis, Beijing began a shift toward a more assertive style of diplomacy, buoyed by the belief that its system had been validated by its swift response to the financial meltdown. That shift accelerated dramatically after Xi became head of the CCP in 2012: by 2017, top Chinese leaders were pointing to “changes unseen in a century” and Xi had publicly declared that China was “approaching the center of the world stage” and “[stood] tall in the East.”

Paired with Beijing’s newfound self-confidence was a belief in Western—and especially American—weakness and decadence. Washington’s foreign policy mistakes in the Middle East, its indecisive response to the global financial crisis, and its fumbling response to the current pandemic have all reinforced this view. In February 2020, Xi told party cadres that the COVID-19 crisis had demonstrated the “remarkable advantages of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.”

For Chinese foreign policy officials, the safest course is to follow Xi’s lead and to add a little extra zeal for good measure.

Xi has long favored a more assertive posture for China on the world stage. Even before he became president, Xi complained about “foreigners with full bellies who have nothing better to do than point the finger” at China’s human rights record. One of his first acts as leader of the CCP in 2012 was to lay out an agenda for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” signaling his ambitions for the country to retake its rightful place in the world. Since then, he has repeatedly instructed diplomats to defend China more aggressively, even crafting handwritten notes directing them to show more “fighting spirit.” The message for any ambitious Chinese diplomat or propagandist is clear: to get ahead, it is important to match Xi’s assertive tone.

But Chinese officials have followed Xi’s lead out of fear as well as ambition. Since 2012, more than 1.5 million officials have been punished in a sweeping anticorruption campaign that treats political disloyalty as a kind of graft. Diplomats have had to sit through “self-criticism” sessions in the Foreign Ministry and “inspection tours” that test their loyalty to the party and willingness to follow orders. Old rules relating to secrecy and discipline have also been implemented with a new zeal: one dating back to 1949, which forbids Chinese diplomats from meeting alone with foreigners, has been imposed on everyone from ambassadors to junior diplomats in study abroad programs.

Chinese diplomats know how to interpret these signals. Over the decades, China’s foreign policy apparatus has endured multiple rounds of purges in which colleagues informed on one another and were sanctioned for being insufficiently loyal to the regime’s agenda. During the Cultural Revolution, ambassadors were locked in cellars, forced to clean toilets, and beaten until they coughed up blood. Large numbers of Chinese diplomats were sent off to reeducation camps in rural China. For Chinese foreign policy officials, the safest course is to follow Xi’s lead and to add a little extra zeal for good measure.

IN XI’S HANDS

The rise of Wolf Warrior diplomacy in China has rendered regular diplomatic channels with the United States ineffective. Formal meetings have become little more than opportunities for Chinese officials to publicly dress down their U.S. counterparts, while backchannels through former officials or on the sidelines of official meetings have also become less effective, since Chinese officials recite well-worn talking points out of a fear of being labeled weak or even landing in political trouble. Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador in Washington until earlier this year, stopped meeting alone with foreign counterparts in the final years of his posting, always meeting with another diplomat on hand to keep tabs. Today, most in-person contacts have been suspended because of the pandemic, and online Track II dialogues between former officials feature little more than the stilted repetition of talking points.

Not that China’s diplomats have the ability to restore China’s global reputation by themselves. Previous recalibrations of Chinese foreign policy have been backed up by domestic policy changes that made the country more appealing to the outside world. Its charm offensive in the 1990s, for example, was accompanied by a commitment to economic liberalization ahead of its accession to the World Trade Organization, a willingness to set aside border disputes, and even tentative steps toward domestic political reform.

But Xi’s government has shown no sign that it is willing to alter the state-led industrial policies that have alienated multinational companies, to soften the crackdowns in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, or to compromise on territorial disputes from the Himalayas to the South China Sea. That leaves Chinese diplomats and propagandists with a difficult if not impossible message to sell. But as long as they use Wolf Warrior tactics, they don’t even need to try.

Posted for fair use

Why China Is Alienating the World

Backlash is building—but Beijing can’t seem to recalibrate.

www.foreignaffairs.com

 

[jward]

This may not belong here, nor the article above, come to think of it, but they both feel war-adjacent...

Countries Like China, Pakistan Hunting Down CIA's Informants: Report
Press Trust of India

4-5 minutes

US intelligence officials are warning CIA stations across world about "troubling" numbers of informants
New York:
US counterintelligence officials are warning CIA stations around the world about "troubling" numbers of informants recruited from other nations to spy for America being captured or killed, according to a media report which said in recent years "adversarial intelligence services" in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have hunted down the agency's sources and turned them into double agents in some cases.
The New York Times said in a report that "top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed."
The message was sent in an unusual top secret cable and said that "the CIA's counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised."

The cable also highlighted "the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments.
In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA's sources and in some cases turning them into double agents," the NYT report said on Tuesday.
The report also said that sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested, "but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere," the report quoted former officials as saying.

"The collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan's ties to the Taliban government and extremist organisations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks," the NYT report said.
The brief cable had also laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies, the report said, noting that this was usually a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically did not share in such messages.
"Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks - a problem the cable called placing "mission over security"," the report said.
The report said CIA's assistant director for counterintelligence Sheetal Patel has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers and earlier this year had sent a letter to retired officers of the agency warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials.

"The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources," the NYT report said.
With the CIA devoting bulk of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the report said improving intelligence collection "on adversarial powers, both great and small, is once again a centerpiece of the CIA's agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia."
5 Comments (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Posted for fair use

Countries Like China, Pakistan Hunting Down CIA's Informants: Report

US counterintelligence officials are warning CIA stations around the world about "troubling" numbers of informants recruited from other nations to spy for America being captured or killed, according to a media report.

www.ndtv.com

 

[Housecarl]

Why China Is Alienating the World
Backlash Is Building—but Beijing Can’t Seem to Recalibrate
By Peter Martin
October 6, 2021

Protesters outside the Chinese embassy in Yangon, Myanmar, February 2021
Panos Pictures / Redux

In early 2017, China appeared to be on a roll. Its economy was beating estimates. President Xi Jinping was implementing the country’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and was on the cusp of opening China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti. Most important, Xi seemed poised to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s determination to pick fights with U.S. allies and international institutions. In a speech in Davos in January of that year, Xi even compared protectionism with “locking oneself in a dark room.”

Nearly five years on, Beijing is facing its biggest international backlash in decades. Negative views of China are near record highs across the developed world, according to a Pew Research Center survey from June, which showed that at least three-quarters of respondents in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States now hold broadly negative views of the country. The European Union, which Beijing worked to court during the Trump era, has officially branded China a “systemic rival,” and NATO leaders have begun to coordinate a common response to Beijing. On China’s doorstep, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States have revitalized the “Quad” grouping of nations in response to concerns over Beijing’s intentions. And most recently, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to share sensitive nuclear secrets with Australia to help it counter China’s naval ambitions in the Pacific.

Yet Beijing shows no sign of shifting course. Unlike previous eras of backlash against China, such as the one that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, this one has not prompted a recalibration in Beijing. For now, China’s leaders appear to have decided that their newfound national strength, combined with the general malaise of the West, means that the rest of the world will have to adapt to Beijing’s preferences.


WOLF WARRIORS

In recent years, China has faced mounting international criticism of everything from its apparent detention of more than one million Muslim Uyghurs in “reeducation” camps to its sweeping crackdown in Hong Kong, its controversial industrial policies, and its role in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But increasingly, it is China’s diplomats who are doing the most damage to the country’s reputation. Popularly known as “Wolf Warriors,” after a series of blockbuster movies that depicted Chinese heroes vanquishing foreign foes, they have picked fights everywhere from Fiji to Venezuela. In March 2020, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian outraged U.S. officials when he claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic began only after American athletes had brought the virus to Wuhan. Last November, Zhao tweeted an illustration of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child, prompting Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to demand an apology. And in September, China’s new ambassador to the United Kingdom, Zheng Zeguang, was banned from the British Parliament over Chinese sanctions against British lawmakers.

China’s foreign policy elites have noticed the problem. As early as 2018, Deng Pufang, the son of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, warned that China should “know its place” and “keep a sober mind” in its foreign policy. In May 2020, Reuters reported that the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations—a think tank affiliated with China’s primary intelligence agency—had warned the country’s leadership that anti-China sentiment was at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And in September 2020, Yuan Nansheng, China’s former consul general in San Francisco, warned against “extreme nationalism” in Chinese foreign policy. Xi himself has at least tacitly acknowledged the problem, warning in a Politburo study session in June that China needed to present a “lovable” image to the world.

But even more striking than the backlash against China has been the country’s inability to recalibrate. Beijing’s response to the rapid deterioration in ties with Canberra was to confront Australia with a list of demands that it said were prerequisites for improving relations. China’s leaders have also repeatedly stressed that any improvement in relations with the United States must begin with concessions from Washington and issued Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman a similar list of demands when she visited Tianjin in July.

Officials in Washington have begun to see Beijing’s inability to shift course as an advantage in the emerging competition between the two countries. During bilateral talks in March, China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, lectured his U.S. counterparts on the United States’ moral failings, including police killings of Black citizens. In response, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reminded Yang of what he called the United States’ “secret sauce”: the ability to acknowledge and fix mistakes. “A confident country,” Sullivan said, “is able to look hard at its own shortcomings and constantly seek to improve.” The implication, of course, was that China seemed unable to do the same, at least in its foreign policy.

FEAR AND AMBITION IN BEIJING

It is tempting to see Beijing’s inability to adapt as an intrinsic feature of the Chinese system. Certainly, individual Chinese officials often fear the consequences of admitting mistakes. But in the past, Beijing has actually been quite skilled at course correction. In the 1950s, China undertook a charm offensive that won it friends in the developing world and helped build support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the internationally recognized government of China. In the period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Chinese diplomats helped rehabilitate their country in the eyes of the world, kick-starting a nearly two-decade run of successes that culminated in China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Rather than an inherent flaw in China’s model of governance, the failure to recalibrate this time is a product of the current political atmosphere in Beijing. Overconfidence is a major part of the problem. In the aftermath of the 2008–9 global financial crisis, Beijing began a shift toward a more assertive style of diplomacy, buoyed by the belief that its system had been validated by its swift response to the financial meltdown. That shift accelerated dramatically after Xi became head of the CCP in 2012: by 2017, top Chinese leaders were pointing to “changes unseen in a century” and Xi had publicly declared that China was “approaching the center of the world stage” and “[stood] tall in the East.”

Paired with Beijing’s newfound self-confidence was a belief in Western—and especially American—weakness and decadence. Washington’s foreign policy mistakes in the Middle East, its indecisive response to the global financial crisis, and its fumbling response to the current pandemic have all reinforced this view. In February 2020, Xi told party cadres that the COVID-19 crisis had demonstrated the “remarkable advantages of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.”



Xi has long favored a more assertive posture for China on the world stage. Even before he became president, Xi complained about “foreigners with full bellies who have nothing better to do than point the finger” at China’s human rights record. One of his first acts as leader of the CCP in 2012 was to lay out an agenda for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” signaling his ambitions for the country to retake its rightful place in the world. Since then, he has repeatedly instructed diplomats to defend China more aggressively, even crafting handwritten notes directing them to show more “fighting spirit.” The message for any ambitious Chinese diplomat or propagandist is clear: to get ahead, it is important to match Xi’s assertive tone.

But Chinese officials have followed Xi’s lead out of fear as well as ambition. Since 2012, more than 1.5 million officials have been punished in a sweeping anticorruption campaign that treats political disloyalty as a kind of graft. Diplomats have had to sit through “self-criticism” sessions in the Foreign Ministry and “inspection tours” that test their loyalty to the party and willingness to follow orders. Old rules relating to secrecy and discipline have also been implemented with a new zeal: one dating back to 1949, which forbids Chinese diplomats from meeting alone with foreigners, has been imposed on everyone from ambassadors to junior diplomats in study abroad programs.

Chinese diplomats know how to interpret these signals. Over the decades, China’s foreign policy apparatus has endured multiple rounds of purges in which colleagues informed on one another and were sanctioned for being insufficiently loyal to the regime’s agenda. During the Cultural Revolution, ambassadors were locked in cellars, forced to clean toilets, and beaten until they coughed up blood. Large numbers of Chinese diplomats were sent off to reeducation camps in rural China. For Chinese foreign policy officials, the safest course is to follow Xi’s lead and to add a little extra zeal for good measure.

IN XI’S HANDS

The rise of Wolf Warrior diplomacy in China has rendered regular diplomatic channels with the United States ineffective. Formal meetings have become little more than opportunities for Chinese officials to publicly dress down their U.S. counterparts, while backchannels through former officials or on the sidelines of official meetings have also become less effective, since Chinese officials recite well-worn talking points out of a fear of being labeled weak or even landing in political trouble. Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador in Washington until earlier this year, stopped meeting alone with foreign counterparts in the final years of his posting, always meeting with another diplomat on hand to keep tabs. Today, most in-person contacts have been suspended because of the pandemic, and online Track II dialogues between former officials feature little more than the stilted repetition of talking points.

Not that China’s diplomats have the ability to restore China’s global reputation by themselves. Previous recalibrations of Chinese foreign policy have been backed up by domestic policy changes that made the country more appealing to the outside world. Its charm offensive in the 1990s, for example, was accompanied by a commitment to economic liberalization ahead of its accession to the World Trade Organization, a willingness to set aside border disputes, and even tentative steps toward domestic political reform.

But Xi’s government has shown no sign that it is willing to alter the state-led industrial policies that have alienated multinational companies, to soften the crackdowns in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, or to compromise on territorial disputes from the Himalayas to the South China Sea. That leaves Chinese diplomats and propagandists with a difficult if not impossible message to sell. But as long as they use Wolf Warrior tactics, they don’t even need to try.

Posted for fair use

Why China Is Alienating the World

Backlash is building—but Beijing can’t seem to recalibrate.

www.foreignaffairs.com

Yeah, this isn't going to end well.....

 

[danielboon]

Poland says Belarusian services fired towards its troops
By Reuters Staff
2 MIN READ






FILE PHOTO: A view of a vehicle next to a fence built by Polish soldiers on the border between Poland and Belarus near the village of Nomiki, Poland August 26, 2021. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland summoned the Belarusian charge d’affaires on Friday, a foreign ministry spokesman said, after border guards accused the Belarusian side of shooting at Polish soldiers patrolling the frontier.
Poland has imposed a state of emergency on the Belarusian border amid a surge in migrants from countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq trying to cross, in what Brussels and Warsaw say is a form of hybrid warfare designed to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions it imposed on Minsk.
“A Belarusian patrol fired shots at Polish Army soldiers who are patrolling the border with us,” the state-run PAP news agency quoted Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska as saying.

“It was probably using blank ammunition. Nothing happened to anyone.”
Foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina said the charge d’affaires Alaksandr Czasnouski had been summoned to discuss “provocations” from the Belarusian side on the border, including the reported shots.
As he left the ministry Czasnouski denied there had been any shooting at the border.

In August, Poland began building a barbed wire fence along its border with Belarus to curb illegal border crossings despite criticism that some migrants were being treated inhumanely.
Poland plans to strengthen its border with a system of motion sensors and cameras, modelling it on the Greek border with Turkey, its interior minister has

Poland says Belarusian services fired towards its troops

Poland summoned the Belarusian charge d'affaires on Friday, a foreign ministry spokesman said, after border guards accused the Belarusian side of shooting at Polish soldiers patrolling the frontier.

www.reuters.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Addressing Biocrises After COVID-19: Is Deterrence an Option? - War on the Rocks

Hollywood movies and fiction novels have long used disease outbreaks as a nation-ending threat to drive their plots. However, there is nothing like an

warontherocks.com

ADDRESSING BIOCRISES AFTER COVID-19: IS DETERRENCE AN OPTION?
AL MAURONI
OCTOBER 8, 2021
COMMENTARY

Hollywood movies and fiction novels have long used disease outbreaks as a nation-ending threat to drive their plots. However, there is nothing like an actual pandemic to stir the concerns of the American public and politicians about the potential dangers of biological weapons and biological terrorism. A number of public health and national security professionals have pointed to the challenged U.S. response to COVID-19 as evidence that adversaries may be planning a deliberate biological attack against the nation. Given a poorly responding national public health system and recent advances in biotechnology, a nation-state or terrorist group could easily cause tens of thousands of deaths, if not millions. This hypothesis leads to urgings that the national security community needs to take steps to deter this threat if the public health community cannot protect Americans from contagious diseases.

Gen. Mark Milley stated that “We’re at war with COVID-19, we’re at war with terrorists, we’re at war with drug cartels as well.” This particular viewpoint is not uncommon when the national security community looks at public health challenges — in particular, pandemic disease outbreaks that have a significant impact on U.S. national security interests. This idea that “we’re at war with COVID-19” and that we need a “battle plan” to mitigate the coronavirus effects evokes military concepts that people naturally gravitate to. The nation’s shortfalls in addressing this public health threat has led to a concern that hostile nation-states may make the United States its next target in an attack that “could kill millions” and that the Department of Defense has a role to play in “rendering mass-effect biological attacks” to become “so ineffective as to be futile.” But is this a valid concern? And what role should the Department of Defense play to deter attackers from using biological weapons against the nation?

What is Deterrence?
Determining if biological attacks can be deterred requires a quick review of two topics: First, what are the basic tenets of deterrence, and second, how does this theory apply to biological threats? While the national security community has talked about deterrence theory for decades, understanding deterrence still eludes many people who apply its concepts to contemporary security issues. Michael Mazaar defines deterrence as “the practice of discouraging or restraining someone … from taking unwanted actions, such as an armed attack.” The intent is to stop or prevent an action from occurring. This is in contrast to compellence, which is an effort to force an actor to do something. While military force is often at the center of deterrence operations, this is a political concept that can involve diplomatic or economic threats and assurances as well.

Deterrence theory in the 1960s talked about “deterrence by punishment” and “deterrence by denial” as concepts on how nations might use nuclear weapons to protect against a strategic attack on the homeland. This is simple enough to envision — deterrence by punishment means that the defender will retaliate with force to cause significant damage to the attacker so that the costs exceed the value of its goals, while deterrence by denial posits that an attacker will fail in reaching its goals because of measures undertaken by the defender. To be successful in either case, the defender must demonstrate that the capability to deny benefits to the attacker exists, that the defender’s actions are credible given a particular context, and that the attacker perceives the probability of failure so as to be persuaded toward the defender’s preferred outcome. This last part is particularly important — the adversary, not the one threatening to use force, gets to decide whether deterrence is successful based on its views of cost and benefits. As Robert Jervis pointed out in 1982, deterrence can fail if there are misperceptions of the actors’ values, their credibility, or rationality.

There are ample academic writing and defense analyses on nuclear deterrence in particular, but this theory also applies to conventional weapons, space and cyber weapons, and chemical and biological weapons. Different contexts require different approaches — what works for nuclear weapons may not work for space and cyber weapons, but the general theory of how two actors perceive deterrence challenges is sound. Adding to this, there is a great deal of debate as to whether deterrence “works” during crises between two (or three) adversaries. Without going over this well-trodden trail, let’s look specifically at how deterrence theory works in confronting biological threats.

Does Deterrence Work Against Biological Threats?
The efficacy of deterrence against biological threats depends, of course, on what the biological threat is. “Biological threat” has been a catch-all phrase to include natural disease outbreaks, deliberate biological incidents, and accidental releases. The Biden, Trump, and Obama administrations have all used the term “biological threats” in their respective national biodefense strategies. While one can envision a common medical response to all biological threats, this should not be construed as one strategy to prevent or protect against all biological threats against the nation. Within the context of a national biodefense strategy, biological threats can take the form of anti-human, anti-crop, or anti-animal. The Federal Select Agent Program identifies 67 biological threats that pose a severe threat to humans, animals, and plants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a prioritized list of about 20 biological threats for use in preparing for biological terrorism.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

Assuming the political objective is to deter an actor from using biological threats against the nation to cause mass effect, we can rule out natural diseases and accidental releases in biological laboratories. Because a deterrence posture needs to be understood by a reasoning actor, one cannot deter natural disease outbreaks or accidents at biological research laboratories as they have no human actor with malign intent to cause harm. On one hand, there is no way to use force to deter or compel good behavior. You can’t win a war against a pandemic outbreak, but you can manage it. On the other hand, deterrence could reduce the possibility of deliberate biological incidents, since nation-states and terrorist groups both have leaders who might be persuaded by robust deterrent strategies.

Throughout history, U.S. policy has been to rely on deterrence by punishment to discourage nation-states from using chemical or biological weapons in strategic attacks against the nation and its military. In the opening phase of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the policy of using biological weapons in retaliation against any Axis use. During the Cold War, every presidential administration developed policies on using chemical and biological weapons in retaliation to adversary use. Every president up through Nixon retained this retaliatory policy. Following the U.S. government’s unilateral abandonment of an offensive biological weapons program, the U.S. policy shifted to the threat of nuclear weapons as an option for retaliating against biological weapons. That was the policy in 1991 when U.S. forces were preparing to invade Iraq. This policy remains in place today.

Relying on deterrence by denial as a strategy to prevent biological weapons attacks has some significant problems because of technological challenges involved with biodefense. To be successful with a deterrence by denial approach, one would have to openly demonstrate that a nation or its military force is so resilient and has such a strong defensive posture that an adversary would not succeed through the use of biological weapons. The U.S. government has two FDA-approved vaccines against the top 10 list of biological warfare agents. Current biodetection capabilities remain limited to “detect to treat,” which means that a significant population cannot avoid exposure. “Early warning” actually means 24–48 hours after a biological release. There are so many biological weapons and so many scenarios for attacking critical infrastructure across the nation that this approach would be impossible to execute to the degree of convincing an adversary that any deliberate biological attack would fail.

Deterring terrorists from using harmful biological organisms against the unprotected public is a little more difficult to parse, but terrorist organizations can be deterred by threats of retaliation. It is often due to the lack of confidence that terrorists are rational actors, and the desire that some level of defense is necessary, that the U.S. government feels compelled to emplace additional measures to provide early warning and response to a potential bioterrorist incident. These measures by no means cover the entire United States against all biological threats, but the U.S. government has not chosen to fund a more robust effort. However, academics suggest that a deterrence by denial strategy may be effective against terrorists if used to deny them the resources they need, such as weapons material, money, and support by state sponsors. As a result, U.S. strategies to counter weapons of mass destruction terrorism have often included both deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial.

The Right Funds to the Right Organization
Over the past ten years, this idea of “health security” has emerged to suggest that a nation has a responsibility to take appropriate measures to prepare for and respond to external and catastrophic health threats to the public. Given criticisms of the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19, one might anticipate calls for a more muscular, preventive approach to pandemic outbreaks from the national security community. The Trump administration put the Department of Health and Human Services as the lead for national biodefense. The Department of Homeland Security has a significant national biodefense role as well. However, there should be no question that the Department of Health and Human Services is the designated lead and is funded for biological incident response and emergency preparedness.

The public health community likes to use the threat of bioterrorism as a rationale for asking for more funding. To that point, U.S. health care spending has risen to $3.8 trillion in 2019, while defense expenditures were about $1.2 trillion. Within those budgets, annual public health spending for infectious diseases is about $20 billion, as compared to about $2 billion in the U.S. defense program’s biodefense efforts. Obviously, this spending is not just about biological threats, and the public health community’s concerns are not soley focused on deliberate threats. This comparison should, however, demonstrate as to who in the federal government is leading the medical response to biological threats. The public health community has definite ideas as to where funding for bioterrorism should go, and it’s not to overseas laboratories working under the Biological Threat Reduction Program, a Department of Defense initiative that seeks to improve the security of medical biological research facilities in other countries.

The Department of Defense Chemical and Biological Defense Program focuses on biological defense for U.S. forces with the understanding that deterrence may fail. The U.S. Army has a medical biological defense program for biological warfare agents and a medical infectious disease research program for natural infectious diseases. The two programs are separated due to budgetary reasons, but they collaborate on research with the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Defense CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear) Response Enterprise supports the federal response to weapons of mass destruction incidents, but its ability to provide assistance at biological incidents is largely limited to assessment and advice. Operation Warp Speed wasn’t a deterrence by denial program — nor was “Able Response” in its efforts to improve the Republic of Korea’s health surveillance program (both Department of Defense-led efforts). On the other hand, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease does have a significant national medical biodefense research program. None of these are deterrence by denial capabilities, but rather, mitigation measures to reduce mass casualties.

For deterrence to work, there must be communication between the defender and attacker as to expectations and consequences, and it requires the accurate perception of both to maintain stability and a balance of power. A deterrence by denial strategy for countering biological threats will not work given the disparity between the significant number of biological warfare agents and hundreds of unprotected U.S. cities and available defensive countermeasures. U.S. political leaders have never formulated a deterrence by denial concept for biological attacks. Department of Defense leadership hasn’t advocated for this area as other government agencies already have the role for responding to deliberate biological incidents. As such, these reasons require that the United States retain deterrence by punishment as its primary approach to discouraging deliberate biological attacks.

BECOME A MEMBER

Al Mauroni is the director of the U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies and author of the forthcoming book, BIOCRISIS: Defining Biological Threats for U.S. Policy. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Air University, U.S. Air Force, or Department of Defense.

Correction: An earlier version of this article contained an example of compellence that could be subject to conflicting interpretations. That example was removed for clarity.

 

[Housecarl]

I guess everyone is doing it now...........

Posted for fair use.....

Making Sense of SADAT, Turkey’s Private Military Company - War on the Rocks

Alternately described as “cannon fodder” and “terrorists,” Syrian fighters working at Turkey’s behest have generated headlines from the Maghreb to the

warontherocks.com

MAKING SENSE OF SADAT, TURKEY’S PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANY
MATT POWERS
OCTOBER 8, 2021
COMMENTARY

Alternately described as “cannon fodder” and “terrorists,” Syrian fighters working at Turkey’s behest have generated headlines from the Maghreb to the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh. As Turkey continues to employ these proxies in conflicts abroad, it’s important to examine the close alignment between the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and an enigmatic private military company called SADAT International Defense Consultancy.

Despite a diverse and often provocative body of reporting, SADAT is best understood as a modern example in the evolution of the privatized military industry, serving as an indigenous Turkish alternative to both Western and Russian companies. Appropriately scoping SADAT not only identifies its strengths and vulnerabilities, but also the broader risks accompanying Turkey’s employment of mercenaries.

SADAT is a facilitator between Ankara and Syrian proxy fighters, complementing the efforts of the Turkish military and security services while affording it opacity and seemingly limitless protections. This dependency on the state and Erdoğan’s favor, however, constrains the company’s autonomy and entrepreneurialism. Moreover, SADAT’s close association with Syrian proxies of varying discipline, credibility, and volatility could expose Ankara to a variety of unintended consequences. Understanding these factors is critical to evaluating the company’s potential role in future security situations.

Turks, Mercs, and Networks

A number of Turkey watchers have been warning about SADAT and its controversial founder, Adnan Tanrıverdi, for years. Some have compared the company to state-sponsored irregular revolutionary armies, like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while others believe Turkey’s use of mercenaries harkens back to the Ottoman Empire’s Janissaries. In 2018, a network analysis of presumed Erdoğan proxies stated that pseudo-military groups like SADAT “function formally as security contractors … and informally as secretive armed forces.” And, as part of a broader study early this year, the conservative Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security stated “SADAT can be considered the continuation of the pre-Erdoğan period’s ‘deep state’ informal units.”

There has been a recent boom in Turkey’s private security market and a trend toward industry indigenization. But SADAT is distinct from traditional Turkish private security companies, which focus on executive protection, transportation, and risk assessments. According to its website, the firm was founded in 2012 and boasts to be “the first and the only company in Turkey, that internationally provides consultancy and military training services at the international defense and interior security sector.” SADAT promotes itself as a military enterpriser, advertising consultancy services, conventional, unconventional, and special forces training, and ordinance and maintenance expertise. However, it does not appear to publicly offer a direct action or combat arms capability, like the former Executive Outcomes or the existing Wagner Group. And, while it is assumed most private military companies are driven by economic motivations, SADAT is an outlier because of the overt political and religious aspirations of Tanrıverdi himself.

A retired brigadier general in the Turkish armed forces, Tanrıverdi’s Islamist views reportedly led to his dismissal from active service in the late 1990s and are captured in a corporate manifesto marketing SADAT services alongside indictments of foreign hegemony and Muslim persecution. Deeming the privatized military industry as “under the control of Western Capitalism,” the manifesto details SADAT’s aspiration to be an alternative to the “colonist countries of crusade mentality.” Its original cadre were retired commissioned and non-commissioned officers, “who will attach primary importance to the national interests of such countries and the joint interests of the World of Islam, [and] who have the profound experience of [the Turkish Armed Forces].” In the long term, the company will “contribute to the emergence of the World of Islam as a Super power and to promote an environment of cooperation in [the] field of Defense and Defense Industry among Islamic Countries.”

Under the Erdoğan administration, Tanrıverdi has sought to fulfill his vision. Indeed, both men’s relationship extends back to 1994, when Tanrıverdi served as a brigade commander in Istanbul during Erdoğan’s mayorship of the city. Reflecting on that time, Tanrıverdi remarked, “I found that his achievements in politics and state administration have clearly the qualities of courage, foresight, consultation, and determination, which are the most important ones of leadership qualifications.” But Erdoğan is also a fellow Islamist whose control of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) platform has transitioned Turkey away from the Kemalist tradition of secularism while embracing his own version of highly militarized nationalism. Whether it’s neo-Ottomanism or not, Erdoğan has set Turkey on a foreign policy course motivated by overtly Islamist themes, a desire for increased regional influence, and a consistent antagonism to American and European interests. Thus, it is unsurprising that men like Tanrıverdi would offer Erdoğan a unique base of support, thereby positioning SADAT to serve as an extension of regime security and influence.

Following the attempted coup in 2016, Erdoğan appointed Tanrıverdi his chief military counselor, effectively granting Tanrıverdi both a private and government role. Reinforcing security institutions with trusted agents is characteristic of many autocratic regimes and, by elevating his public association with Tanrıverdi and his network, Erdoğan enabled SADAT to bolster the offshore viability of his own agenda.

An Expanding Presence…

Consider Libya. In summer 2020, the U.S. Department of Defense’s lead inspector general released its quarterly report to Congress on counter-terrorism operations in the U.S. Africa Command theater. Its findings included an assessment of the eroding security situation in Libya, following the Turkish military intervention to reinforce the ailing Government of National Accord (GNA). With Turkish-supported mercenaries being one of the key destabilizers, it notes, “U.S. Africa Command estimated that several dozen military trainers from a Turkish private military company, [SADAT], were deployed to Tripoli to train both GNA-aligned militias and Syrian fighters. Sadat maintains supervision and payment of the estimated 5,000 pro-GNA Syrian fighters in Libya.”

Yet, the company’s roots in the country actually extend back to at least 2013, as evidenced by a photo of Tanrıverdi shaking hands with a Libyan military officer while holding a plaque depicting the Ottoman coat of arms. Though these connections may have shaped Erdoğan’s decision to deploy forces, they also reflect a baser capability: first-mover advantage. By establishing brand recognition, customer loyalty, and/or early purchase of services, SADAT has the potential to enter conflict markets and set conditions for follow-on Turkish actions. Prior to Libya, the company was routinely dogged by allegations it was training Syrian proxies on behalf of Turkey, charges it refuted. Regardless, the company’s explicit involvement in North Africa, alongside Syrian proxies, confirmed that the company was prepared to be a regional, expeditionary private military company.

In 2020, Tanrıverdi is believed to have signaled a greater role for SADAT in Africa when he noted Turkey’s success in signing several defense cooperation agreements with African states to train their troops. He’s also advocated for Turkey to create a private military contractor — akin to Blackwater or Wagner — for dedicated foreign operations, capable of providing a force more useful than the Turkish military in select situations. Understandably, the company’s actions in Libya, the increasing Turkish military footprint in Africa, and Tanrıverdi’s aspirations justify concerns that Erdoğan is using SADAT as one means to export military force abroad.

SADAT’s reputation has also led it to be implicated in other regional conflicts. In October 2020, news outlets detailed the deployment of Syrian fighters to support Ankara’s interests in Azerbaijan. Ostensibly serving under generous contract terms with the promises of doing benign guard duty for a private Turkish security company, these proxies were quickly embroiled in fighting on the ground in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. Reports allege Syrian fighters suffered anywhere from dozens to hundreds of casualties. In November 2020, the U.N. Working Group on the use of mercenaries affirmed these reports, including “Turkey’s large-scale recruitment and transfer of Syrian men to Azerbaijan through armed factions, some of which are affiliated with the Syrian National Army.” While correlation is not causation, the similarity in Turkey’s deployment of Syrian mercenaries to both Libya and Azerbaijan prompted allegations of SADAT’s role in the conflict. Despite the company’s denial of involvement and a lack of a direct evidence to the contrary, an Armenian investigative group (using Russian reporting) stated the company used its own planes to transport fighters. Another media asserted “SADAT … might have played a role in the recruitment operations,” although the original source it quoted merely claimed “It seems likely that the recruitment is being carried out by a Turkish private security company that is also involved in shipping Syrians to fight in Libya.”

Likewise, in Afghanistan, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in July that Turkish intelligence and Syrian faction leaders reached a deal to transfer Syrian fighters to Afghanistan under official private security company contracts. With the Taliban’s seizure of the state and NATO’s withdrawal of forces, Turkey subsequently scrapped its plans to take over security for the Kabul airport. It’s not a stretch, however, to assume SADAT could have played a supporting role under more favorable conditions.

…With Exceptions

In sum, SADAT’s actions abroad — both proven and purported — seemingly demonstrate sufficient private military capabilities to warrant concern. However, some of the company’s underlying strengths also reveal vulnerabilities that may curb SADAT’s potential.

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The company’s opaque profile is one perceived advantage, affording SADAT greater flexibility in how it pursues objectives. For example, reports of an “unnamed Turkish security company” in Nagorno-Karabakh follow a pattern of accusations that SADAT masks recruitment and training through front companies and local partners. Paradoxically, Tanrıverdi denies SADAT’s involvement in foreign conflicts and training Syrian proxies, while boasting of the company’s early efforts in Libya and its potential to serve in new client states.

The company’s opaque nature makes it hard to accurately assess its relationship with other elements of Turkey’s security services. In Syria, the company supposedly helped recruit, quickly train and provide logistical support for proxy fighters — but the significance of SADAT’s role compared to other Turkish agencies involved is unclear. In Libya, SADAT facilitated operations with Syrian mercenary recruitment, training, and potentially transportation — but only after Turkey had overtly committed military forces in support of the Government of National Accord. Moreover, beyond simply supporting Turkish military and proxy forces, there is likely a nexus between SADAT and Turkey’s national intelligence organization. Despite Tanrıverdi’s attempts to distance the company from the intelligence service, his son — and SADAT’s current CEO — publicly admitted the company coordinates with Turkish intelligence, in addition to the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Ministry, when considering requests from potential clients.

The company’s protections within Turkey is another perceived advantage. Internationally, Turkey is not a party to agreements or codes of conduct seeking to regulate mercenaries. These include 1949’s First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, specifically Article 47; 1989’s International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (the U.N. Mercenary Convention); 2008’s Montreux Document; and the growing International Code of Conduct Association. Domestically, SADAT stresses its compliance with Turkish national security laws as its activities technically fall outside the scope of acceptable defense industry production. More important, however, is Tanrıverdi’s personal relationship with Erdoğan, whose authority lends an air of legitimacy to the group while likely shielding it from attribution and legal scrutiny. A recent case in point: Sensational accusations of SADAT’s role in equipping al-Nusra Front terrorists spurred attempts by Turkish parliamentarians to investigate SADAT. These attempts failed, though, due to rejection by the AKP and Erdoğan’s political allies.

Unilateral patronage and protection create dependency, though, eroding the company’s autonomy and its vision. The company seeks to assess “the threats against the countries it serves, by considering the geopolitical status of such countries, and organizes the Armed Forces of the same with the aim to ensure the national defense by meeting the most efficient and contemporary needs.” Yet, by and large, SADAT’s publicly known operational history in other countries has been solely in support of Ankara’s objectives, not independent of, or even parallel to, it. With close ties to the military and potentially the intelligence service, can future clients trust SADAT to act as a legitimate broker in their interests if not unequivocally aligned with Turkey?

Tanrıverdi’s relationship to Erdoğan also creates potential political complications for the company. There are dark allegations that SADAT deployed a network of armed affiliates onto the streets in support of the administration during the attempted coup and, with Tanrıverdi’s subsequent ascension into Erdoğan’s inner circle, these unresolved charges have provided consistent fuel for critics of both the company and its founder. Furthermore, Tanrıverdi’s outspoken religious beliefs have inflamed tensions with Israel and have drawn unnecessary attention to the company, ultimately forcing him to resign from his security advisor position. And this all comes at a time when Erdoğan is trying to carefully court retired senior military officials’ support while countering their own ambitions when contrary to his agenda.

Additional Risks

It is also possible that the risks associated with SADAT could eventually lead Ankara to distance itself from the company. The Turkish government might rethink its use of proxy groups, or conversely take over managing them more directly.

What are the risks? First, introducing private military companies into conflicts with low barriers to entry may not always yield desired effects. In Libya, the injection of Syrian mercenaries reinforced the ailing Government of National Accord, but was also met with a corresponding increase in Wagner mercenaries and Russian military equipment, aiding both the Government of National Accord’s opposition and prolonging the conflict. And, despite often being managed by former military personnel, private military companies and the proxies they support don’t always possess effective command and control mechanisms. Coordination between headquarters and advisors can be misconstrued, ignored, or exceeded by mercenaries or proxies on the ground. This risks unintended military confrontations with competing states operating in the same area. Wagner’s disastrous engagement in eastern Syria in February 2018, when Russian mercenaries miscalculated the resolve of threatened American military and partner forces, illustrates this danger.

Second, the recruitment of future proxies rests on the credibility of private military contractors as militarily effective and disciplined organizations. Of course, one of the attractive features of these organizations for clients is their perceived deniability. This includes select governments, particularly those wary of domestic concerns about military casualties or unpopular campaigns abroad. But company reputations defined by mismanagement and high casualties will likely not endure, undercutting the immediate utility of these groups for authoritarian regimes. State sponsors must also contend with the fallout from private military company-associated tragedies. Beyond temporarily stymieing Russian objectives in Syria, Wagner’s 2018 defeat provoked a small, but unnecessary, domestic distraction prior to another assured presidential electoral victory for Putin. For Turkey, its proxies in Syria have been accused by U.N. investigators of war crimes including hostage-taking, torture, rape, and unlawful deportation of prisoners back to Turkey.

Third, disenfranchised mercenaries can turn volatile. Reports of Syrian proxies betrayed by failed Turkish promises not only strain future recruiting for expeditionary campaigns but can warp volunteers’ underlying motivations and ideologies. Already facing domestic recoil to over 3.5 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Erdoğan can ill-afford for jaded extremists to cause problems at home. This is also true, albeit to a lesser extent, for extremists returning to North American or European states of origin, undercutting Turkey’s attempts to bolster its image as a credible NATO partner in counter-terrorism.

An Uncertain Future

SADAT is part of a new race for private military capabilities. As seen in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, the proliferation of conflicts with negligible Western engagement may create continued opportunities for Turkey to employ mercenaries. And, if Turkey’s mixed domestic appetite for military interventions abroad persists, it is easy to see the appeal in augmenting Turkish military forces or its partners with Syrian proxies. But this should not lead Turkey watchers to exaggerate SADAT’s reach or ignore the constraints it faces.

Despite its Islamic orientation and private military capacity, SADAT’s narrow operational history and opaque relationship with the Turkish security services may encumber outreach with wary client states. Barring a diversification of Turkey’s private military industry, Western and Russian private military companies will still continue to offer competitive services to potential clients while Ankara’s sole patronage (and de facto control) of SADAT will limit the company’s ability to exercise any true “mercenary” spirit. Additionally, the performance and conduct of those mercenaries even loosely associated with SADAT could potentially result in embarrassing failures abroad, unintentional military escalation, and increased instability at home. SADAT’s viability, and by extension Erdoğan’s tolerance for the company, is directly linked to its success in managing these risks.



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Maj. Matt Powers is an active duty Army officer currently assigned to the Joint Staff. He has served in various Army and interagency assignments covering Russian, European, and Eurasian portfolios. He earned master’s degrees from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and the National Intelligence University. He would like to thank Col. Doug Jones, Maj. James Kwoun, and others for their guidance and support in drafting this article. The views in this article are entirely the author’s and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Staff, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

 

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Lessons from the Philippines: Irregular Warfare in Action - Modern War Institute

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world watched as the United States began a punitive expedition to Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, oust the Taliban, […]

mwi.usma.edu

LESSONS FROM THE PHILIPPINES: IRREGULAR WARFARE IN ACTION

David Maxwell | 10.07.21

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world watched as the United States began a punitive expedition to Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, oust the Taliban, and prevent the use of Afghanistan as a continued terrorist safe haven. But the counterterrorism missions triggered by 9/11 were not limited to operations in Afghanistan, and on the other side of Asia, US forces simultaneously prepared for a counterterrorism mission of an entirely different character. Here, 1st Special Forces Group and Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) leveraged existing relationships and conducted intensive planning to support the government of the Philippines—a sovereign nation—in operations against terrorists and insurgents within its borders.

Though Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines (OEF-P) is one of the lesser-known efforts in the global war on terrorism, it had relative success in achieving the US objectives of reducing terrorist operations and improving local governance. The security environment in the Philippines—and the role of US forces there—had distinct characteristics from that of Afghanistan, and it is difficult to say that the counterterrorism approach in one theater should be applied directly in another. However, OEF-P offers some enduring lessons for the US national security community. As the United States considers the lessons of the past twenty years, with no indication that terrorist threats are decreasing worldwide, strategists and policymakers should study OEF-P as they prepare for future irregular warfare campaigns against terrorists and insurgents around the globe.

New Plans Built on Years of Engagement

Throughout Philippine history, election violence, clan conflict, and separatist insurgencies have threatened stability. Beginning in the 1970s, insurgent groups such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front leveraged the grievances of the Moro population to pursue independence in the southern region of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Other terrorist and insurgent groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group—which formed in the early 1990s as an offshoot of MNLF—and Jemaah Islamiyah led violent attacks and abductions in the region with a similar aim of establishing an Islamic state. The United States assisted Philippine forces in countering these groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and after 9/11, US interest in Philippine operations increased due to the Abu Sayyaf Group’s and Jemaah Islamiyah’s close links to al-Qaeda. These US advisory efforts evolved into Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines (JSOTF-P), which began operations under the OEF-P campaign in January 2002.

It was soon apparent to US policymakers that OEF-P was a critical component of the global war on terror. Thus followed an expansion of US assistance to execute OEF-P, which was made possible not only by high-level decisions by national leadership, but by close cooperation among multiple stakeholders within the US government and between the US and Philippine governments and militaries.

OEF-P was built on years of relationships between US special operations forces (SOF) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. This planning effort included a strategic assessment that identified the full range of threats to stability and sovereignty in the Philippines and ensured understanding of the problems the Philippine government faced in the south in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. The result was a campaign plan that conducted foreign internal defense through a special warfare approach and employed all of the major elements of special operations, including Special Forces, psychological operations, civil affairs, naval special warfare, and special operations aviation (Army and Air Force). In addition, enabling elements from all of the services, the US intelligence community, US law enforcement, the US Agency for International Development, the US embassy country team in Manila, and civilian contractors supported the operation.

The campaign plan employed four lines of effort executed by JSOTF-P. First, JSOTF-P trained, advised, and assisted host-nation security forces (military and law enforcement) in their defense against lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism. Second, it conducted targeted civil-military operations to gain access to contested areas and to reduce the population’s support of insurgents and terrorists. Third, it provided intelligence support to enhance the effectiveness of host-nation operations. Fourth, JSOTF-P conducted influence operations to separate the population from insurgents and terrorists and to ensure the legitimacy of both the host nation and US support.

Sustained operations continued throughout Mindanao through 2014, at which point the effort transitioned to a steady state of US SOF advice and assistance and JSOTF-P stood down. While threats continue to persist in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia from violent extremist organizations, the Armed Forces of the Philippines have matured with the support of the United States and, in particular, US SOF.

Success Hinges on Individual People

This operation would likely never have happened if not for those working behind the scenes. The late Ambassador Michael A. Sheehan and the late General Wayne A. Downing each played a unique role in making OEF-P possible. In addition, personal relationships between US and Philippine military personnel provided important foundations for trust.

When Ambassador Sheehan was the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, he recognized the persistent terrorism problem in the Philippines and the inability of the Philippine government to effectively counter the threat. He took the initiative and secured funding to stand up a Philippine national counterterrorism force in 2000–01. SOCPAC received the mission and ordered the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group based in Okinawa to plan and conduct a mobile training team mission to organize, train, and equip what came to be called the Light Reaction Company. This company then deployed to Basilan—the northernmost island of the Sulu Archipelago—to participate in operations against the Abu Sayyaf Group. At that time, US advisors were prohibited from deploying with them and were therefore unable to continue advising and assisting the Light Reaction Company through its mission. However, this training and the continued development of close working relationships both with the Light Reaction Company and throughout the Philippine military paved the way for the eventual execution of OEF-P, which did include advisors assigned to the Light Reaction Company.

Meanwhile, the OEF-P campaign plan likely would not have been executed without the influence of General Downing. Once the strategic assessment was complete and Colonel David Fridovich, commander of 1st Special Forces Group, briefed the campaign plan to the combatant commander, it was sent to the Pentagon and then ultimately to the White House for approval. At that time, General Downing was the counterterrorism advisor to the national security advisor, and he recommended approval of the campaign plan in the Philippines to Dr. Condoleezza Rice. However, when the plan was presented to the president, the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued against execution. Rice reminded the president of the US-Philippine mutual defense treaty and prior US commitments to the Philippines, and the president ultimately approved the plan based on a promise he had made to then Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that he would assist her with the fight against terrorism.

Thus, without the vision and behind-the-scenes support of both Sheehan and Downing, OEF-P would likely not have been approved and executed.

In addition, US Special Forces noncommissioned officers built the foundation for trust through their long-term, on-the-ground relationships. As military officials made plans for training the Light Reaction Company, a noncommissioned officer who had relationships with Philippine general officers facilitated the agreements that led to the successful establishment of the national counterterrorism force. In another case, a relationship established through the International Military Education and Training program in the United States fifteen years prior to the mission between a US commander and a future Philippine general officer was instrumental in providing initial access during the post- 9/11 planning and assessment efforts and later for support to JSOTF-P operations. Such local-level personal relationships, not only with tactical military leaders but also with civilian village officials, also resulted in superior force protection through early warning from the local population.

Lessons for the Future

Although the Department of Defense appears to be shifting away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency due to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and a growing emphasis on great power state competitors, the National Defense Strategy’s Irregular Warfare Annex highlights the need for the United States to sustain irregular warfare capabilities and employ them as a component of great power competition. This competition is really a form of political warfare, and irregular warfare is the military’s contribution to a whole-of-nation political warfare effort. OEF-P provides many lessons that can be applied to irregular warfare in the context of great power competition.

First, when working with a host nation, respect for and protection of sovereignty is key to sustaining the legitimacy of the host nation, its military, and the US military and interagency commitment. The JSOTF-P mission statement stressed this and guided operations, and it may provide a template for future irregular warfare operations.

Second, operations in the Philippines took place in the human domain, and irregular warfare is first and foremost a human endeavor—and training efforts should reflect this reality. The pre-9/11 focus on developing unconventional warfare capabilities through Special Forces, psychological operations, and civil affairs unit-level training enabled US advisors to assist the US interagency and the host nation in solving complex political-military problems. It was this unconventional warfare training that allowed the force to deploy into a complex political-military environment, develop a campaign plan, and support US national security objectives.

Third, all planning for OEF-P was based on thorough and continuous area assessment, which is a fundamental SOF capability. From developing the initial campaign plan to extending operations in conflict areas throughout the southern Philippines, assessments provided the deep knowledge and understanding necessary for effective operations. Host-nation training, targeted civil-military operations, and influence operations all relied on these detailed assessments.

With the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State could seek to expand their presence in Southeast Asia and try to replicate al-Qaeda’s efforts from the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the Islamic State’s activity after the drawdown of JSOTF-P in 2014. Lessons from OEF-P provide a starting point to support not only the Philippines against these threats, but also to support other countries in Southeast Asia if these threats expand again.


Further details on the execution of OEF-P can be found in chapter 21, written by David Maxwell, of the Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations, edited by Michael A. Sheehan, Erich Marquardt, and Liam Collins. The book is the topic of discussion in an episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, “An Un-American Way of War: Why the United States Fails at Irregular Warfare.”


David Maxwell is a retired US Army Special Forces colonel who commanded the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, in Okinawa and on Basilan Island, and later the Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines. He is the editor of Small Wars Journal and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. David was also a guest, along with Deak Roh, on an episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, “Breaking the Boom-Bust Cycle of Irregular Warfare.”

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.