WAR 11-05-2016-to-11-11-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(240) 10-15-2016-to-10-21-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...21-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(241) 10-22-2016-to-10-28-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
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(242) 10-29-2016-to-11-04-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...04-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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Jordan: 2 American trainers killed in shootout at air base
Started by*geoffs‎,*Yesterday*06:55 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...rican-trainers-killed-in-shootout-at-air-base

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-jordan-shooting-idUSKBN12Z1LD

World News | Fri Nov 4, 2016 | 5:27pm EDT

Three U.S. trainers shot dead at Jordan base - military source

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN

Three U.S. military trainers were shot dead in Jordan on Friday when their car failed to stop at the gate of a military base and was fired on by Jordanian security forces, a Jordanian military source said.

The incident occurred at the Prince Faisal air base in the south of Jordan, which is a close strategic ally of the United States. Two trainers died immediately and the third later in hospital. A Jordanian army guard was also shot and wounded.

"There was an exchange of fire at the entrance to the base after an attempt by the trainers' vehicle to enter the gate without heeding orders of the guards to stop," the military source said. "An investigation is now under way to know exactly what happened."

Another Jordanian security source said it was not possible to rule out political motives in the incident at an air base, where dozens of U.S. trainers work alongside Jordanians.

A third Jordanian source who requested anonymity said authorities were examining reports of friction among the U.S. trainers and Jordanian army officers that might offer clues helping to explain the shooting. He did not elaborate.

The base where the incident occurred is in the heart of the traditional Bedouin region of Jordan where radical Sunni Muslim influence has grown over the last decade.

Several incidents over the past year have jolted the Arab kingdom, which has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011.

In November 2015, a Jordanian army officer shot dead two U.S. government security contractors and a South African at a U.S.-funded police training facility near Amman before being gunned down.

The incident embarrassed Jordanian authorities, who did not publicly disclose the motive of the assassin. The gunman was later said by security sources to have been a sympathizer of the Islamic State militant group with strong anti-Western feelings.

WORRYING INCIDENT

"What is worrying is that if this (Friday's shooting) turns out to be deliberate it would be much more damaging than if this was a suicide or terror attack on a base because it was perpetrated by someone within the Jordanian military," another security source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters they were reviewing the incident and could not rule out the possibility of a deliberate attack. One said there were Americans in the convoy who were unharmed in the incident.

The White House said on Friday that it would work with Jordan to determine the circumstances around the shooting.

"We will certainly want to draw on the kind of cooperation that the U.S. has with Jordan to get to the bottom of what exactly happened," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters during a briefing.

Many ordinary Jordanians harbor strong anti-American sentiment over Washington's strong support for Israel and its military interventions in the Middle East.

Jordan is among a few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants holding territory in Syria. But many Jordanians oppose their country's involvement, saying it has caused violent deaths of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Officials worry about radical Islam's growing profile in Jordan and support in impoverished areas for militant groups.

Apart from the fatal shooting carried out by the Jordanian army officer a year ago, six Jordanian border guards were killed in June by an IS suicide bomber who drove a car at speed across the border from Syria and rammed it into a U.S.-funded military post.

Jordan hosts several hundred U.S. contractors in a military cooperation program which includes the stationing of U.S. F-16 fighter jets that use Jordanian airfields to hit Islamic State positions in neighboring Syria.

Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Washington has spent millions of dollars to help Jordan set up an elaborate surveillance system known as the Border Security Programme to stem infiltration by militants from Syria and Iraq.

U.S. officials say that aid to Jordan, one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign military assistance, is expected to rise to $800 million in 2016 and grow in future years.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Related Coverage
U.S., Jordan probing shooting deaths of U.S. trainers: White House

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-military-idUSKBN1300EY

World News | Sat Nov 5, 2016 | 8:00am EDT

German military investigates 60 potential Islamists in Bundeswehr

The German government plans to carry out security investigations of all military recruits beginning in July 2017 after its military counter-espionage service (MAD) identified 20 Islamists in the Bundeswehr, according to German media group Funke.

A spokesman for the agency confirmed that number, and said 60 additional potential cases were under investigation.

Draft legislation to be considered by the German parliament in coming weeks would mandate investigations of all recruits to counter efforts by the Islamic State jihadist group to infiltrate the military and obtain weapons training, Funke Mediengruppe reported.

The MAD spokesman said recruiting offices had received an undisclosed number of queries from people who wanted to join the military for only a few months and expressed a keen interest in intensive weapons and equipment training, the spokesman said.

In a statement provided to the Funke media group, the agency said it was concerned about a July 2014 Internet posting by Islamic State in which the group urged those with military training to join its ranks, and other calls for supporters to learn to shoot and to become familiar with weapons.

German security services are on high alert after two Islamist militant attacks this summer.

Almost 900,000 migrants arrived in Germany last year and while many Germans initially welcomed them, security concerns have since increased.

Last week, German police arrested a Syrian man in Berlin on suspicion of being a member of a foreign terrorist organization.

In October, another Syrian refugee was arrested on suspicion of planning a major attack in Berlin after police discovered explosives in his apartment.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold,; Writing by Andrea Shalal,; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Also In World News
Iraqi troops on southern front battle for last town before Mosul
Turkish military says hits 71 Islamic State targets in northern Syria

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-trafficking-militants-idUSKBN1300H4

World News | Sat Nov 5, 2016 | 9:02am EDT

Italy links people trafficking to militants in detention of Syrian

Italy's tax police said they had found a clear link between people trafficking and militants after detaining a Syrian man who entered Italy on a migrant boat who they allege to be a member of the al-Nusra group.

A series of deadly attacks carried out by militants across Europe over the past year have fueled a debate about how to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and other migrants propelled by civil war in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

"Today's operation is one of the few investigations which establishes a direct link between people who plan trafficking of migrants and Islamic terrorist organizations," the police said in a statement on Saturday.

The man landed on the coast of Calabria, southern Italy, in September 2014, the police said in a statement on Saturday.

Over the past three years, more than 470,000 migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, have reached Italy by boat. At least 3,750 have died this year alone while making the crossing.

The detained man was previously kept in custody for helping smuggle migrants, the police said, adding a probe conducted immediately after his arrival revealed he was responsible for organizing and managing the crossing.

Further investigations, an extensive analysis of digital files such as videos and photographs taken from a notebook and phones and questioning of the man showed he was a member of the Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda offshoot, they allege.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Alexander Smith)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-drugs-idUSKBN13007A

World News | Sat Nov 5, 2016 | 9:18am EDT

Detained Philippine mayor on Duterte's drug list killed in prison shootout

By Enrico Dela Cruz | MANILA

A mayor on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's list of top drugs suspects was killed during a shootout at a prison on Saturday, police said, in the latest high-profile killing in his bloody war on narcotics.

Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera town in central Leyte province, turned himself in to the national police chief in August after Duterte asked him and his son, Kerwin, to surrender over their involvement in the drug trade.

Espinosa was later allowed to go home but on Oct. 5 was arrested on charges of illegal possession of drugs and firearms. He is the second local government executive on Duterte's so-called "narco-list" killed during police operations.

The shootout took place after Espinosa and inmate Raul Yap fired at a team from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group who was on a mission to serve a search warrant against the detainees for firearms and illegal drugs, police said.

"As a matter of procedure, this incident will undergo investigation to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident," Eastern Visayas Regional Police Chief Superintendent Elmer Beltejar said.

Some lawmakers expressed alarm over the killing of Espinosa inside his detention cell, with the chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Senator Richard Gordon, describing it as a "slap in the face" of the country's criminal justice system.

Gordon said he may file a resolution to look into such drug-related killings, while Senator Panfilo Lacson was quoted by local media as saying that Espinosa's death was "a clear case of EJK (extrajudicial killing)."

"There's got to be a lot of questions that must be answered," Gordon said in an interview with news channel ANC.

Police said they recovered a .45 caliber pistol and a .38 Super pistol from the cells of Yap and Espinosa. A small sachet containing suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia were also found inside Espinosa's cell, police said.

The presidential palace described Espinosa's death as "unfortunate" and said an investigation was ongoing.

Espinosa had publicly denied any part in the drug trade but said his son was peddling "shabu" (methamphetamine), which he gets from a jailed Chinese drug trader.

Espinosa's son, Kerwin, was arrested by Abu Dhabi police last month, according to Philippine National Police chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa.

In October, Samsudin Dimaukom, a powerful mayor in Duterte's troubled home province of Mindanao, was also killed along with nine of his guards in a shootout, according to police.

More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte took office on June 30.

Duterte said on Friday his war on drugs had cut back the supply to "very low" levels and thanked China for supporting his crackdown, but swore repeatedly at ally the United States for criticizing it.


(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Stephen Powell)

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://38north.org/2016/11/pungsoh110416/

A US Election Surprise? Possible but Unlikely

By 38 North
04 November 2016

A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Jack Liu

While there has been speculation of a North Korean satellite launch or nuclear test occurring during the run-up to the US Presidential election, the evidence from commercial satellite imagery of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station and the Punggye-ri nuclear test site suggests it’s possible but unlikely.

Of the two facilities, the Punggye-ri nuclear test site requires more careful observation. Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that activity continues at the North Portal, the location of the September 9 nuclear test. However, the purpose of this activity remains unclear and could include collecting post-test data, sealing the portal or preparing for another test. While there does not appear to be activity at other areas around the test complex, the presence of tunnels at the West and South Portals also means that North Korea could possibly conduct another test at these sites with little notice.

Conducting a satellite launch seems less likely in the near future. Imagery indicates that there has been little activity at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station during the month of October since the large liquid-fuel engine test in September. While it is impossible to observe whether a space launch vehicle is hidden within the gantry tower’s environmental cover, imagery suggests that the launch pad is clear. The movable environmental shed at the vertical engine test stand has remained in place since September indicating that the North could either be preparing for another engine test or simply cleaning up after the previous test. Finally, there are no observable activities at other facilities at Sohae that would be involved in supporting an impending space launch or rocket engine test.

Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
North Portal

In commercial satellite imagery from October 29, the large canopy in front of the North Portal, first spotted in August, remains in place. There has been notable movement of probable boxes or material around the canopy and the main building throughout the month, the purpose of which is unclear. In the period from October 26 to 29, the amount of material around the North Portal increased, and there appears to be mining carts near the entrance. It is possible that this material is crushed rock or sand that could be used to seal off the tunnel used for the September test. Other possibilities include tunnel maintenance or preparations for another nuclear detonation.

Figure 1. Increased activity around the North Portal throughout October.


Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.


Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.


Image © 2016 DigitalGlobe, Inc. All rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

Previous
Next

Other Areas

The mining cart positions and furrows on the West Portal spoil pile appear unchanged since early October, indicating that tunnel excavation operations have not yet restarted. The South Portal is now in now deep in shadow making it difficult to observe.

Little activity has been seen at either the Main Support Area or the South Command Center throughout the month of October.

Sohae Satellite Launching Station
Launch Pad

Throughout October, there has been no evidence of launch preparations underway and as of October 29, the pad appears clear. While it is impossible to tell from satellite imagery if a space launch vehicle hidden inside the gantry tower’s environmental cover, it is unlikely this is the case given the lack of general activity around the Sohae facility.

Figure 2. No activity seen at the Sohae launch pad.

Image © 2016 DigitalGlobe, Inc. All rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.
Vertical Engine Test Stand

The environmental shed has been set up against the vertical engine test stand since the September. This could indicate continued cleanup or refitting operations from the previous test or a new test is being prepped.

Figure 3. Environmental shed remains adjacent to the vertical engine test stand.

Image © 2016 DigitalGlobe, Inc. All rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

Found in section: Satellite Imagery

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://38north.org/2016/11/clee110116/

North Korean and Chinese Nuclear Weapons Development: Two Peas in a Pod?

By Charles Lee
01 November 2016

North Korea’s rapid nuclear and missile development has intensified the debate over the efficacy of US and South Korean policies toward Pyongyang.[1] Comparing North Korea’s weapons development to China’s own arms activities can contextualize these discussions, in part by highlighting the remarkable speed with which North Korea has accomplished its recent technical milestones. Moreover, two other considerations drive this comparison: allegations of recent Chinese technical assistance to the North and their common geopolitical interests. While both China and North Korea share the need to project a nuclear deterrence capability against the US in the Pacific, it appears that Chinese assistance in this process has been largely indirect. The picture that emerges from this discussion also suggests that rather than being dependent on Chinese technology, Pyongyang’s tremendous progress may in fact be the result of persistent trial-and-error on overdrive, an effort which will accelerate the emergence of new and dangerous threats.

Side-by-Side: North Korea and China

By comparing North Korea’s and China’s key nuclear and missile development milestones, we can benchmark Pyongyang’s progress to date and assess its future development trajectory (figure 1).[2] The framework below incorporates four key events: 1) commencing nuclear development; 2) conducting an initial nuclear test; 3) developing the means to deliver a nuclear payload; and 4) attaining recognition as a nuclear weapons state. The timeline further expands the third phase—developing a means of delivery—into four additional components: successful initial testing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), a space launch vehicle (SLV), a re-entry vehicle (RV), a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and a road-mobile long-range missile platform. This broad comparison yields several important insights discussed in the next section.

Figure 1. Timeline of DPRK/PRC nuclear/missile development milestones.

http://38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Fig1_DPRK-PRC-Timeline-1024x512.jpg
Note: Highlighted numbers represent achievements only attained to date by the PRC.

Two Peas in a Pod?

North Korea’s and China’s nuclear and missile development programs are similar in their sequencing of key milestones, but differ in their rates of progress. The first and most striking difference between the two timelines is the significant acceleration of North Korea’s advances in the past year. The passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270 in March 2016 may have helped to precipitate this dramatic surge in development. Political opportunity could be another contributing factor.[3] Pyongyang may be intentionally consolidating its gains within a short timeframe to exploit political gridlock stemming from a lame-duck presidency in Seoul and a presidential election in Washington. However, it is still unclear how the North has significantly outpaced China’s historical nuclear and missile development.

Some analysts are skeptical that Pyongyang could have achieved success at such an impressive rate without aid from a more technologically capable benefactor—namely, China. These analysts have noted similarities between the KN-11, North Korea’s indigenous SLBM, and the Chinese-made JL-1.[4] Nevertheless, it is unlikely that China offered the North direct technical assistance in recent years.[5] As Henry Kissinger once stated, Beijing is fully aware of the costs of complicity in helping advance Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. A nuclear North Korea risks the nuclearization of East Asia—most notably, Japan and South Korea.[6] Such proliferation would shift the balance of military power in Asia, boding poorly for Chinese interests. China has, however, tolerated indirect assistance to North Korea that likely helped to accelerate its nuclear and missile program. The recent US indictment of Ma Xiaohong, the CEO of Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Company, demonstrates both the scale and nature of Chinese complicity.[7] By one estimate, the Hongxiang Group’s trade with North Korea totaled in excess of $500 million over the last five years. The concern is that the company’s subsidiaries have exported dual-use commodities with nuclear and missile applications.[8] Beijing’s early cooperation on this matter suggests that it may not have provided direct support to Pyongyang’s weapons program and that it is willing to enforce the US Treasury Department’s sanctions against North Korean companies, at least for the time being.[9]

Another distinguishing feature of North Korea’s arms development is the long period between the initiation of its nuclear program and its first nuclear weapons test. From a policy perspective, this makes sense. Developing a credible strategic nuclear deterrent was not a core objective for Pyongyang during Kim Il Sung’s rule. The elder Kim first promulgated the byungjin line of parallel economic and military development in the 1950s. Under Kim Jong Il, songun politics began in the 1990s to emphasize the centrality of military strength to the regime’s survival. Nuclear weapons therefore factored heavily into realizing songun policy. The prevailing belief among North Korean leadership was that only nuclear capabilities could counterbalance the tremendous weight of the US and South Korean military alliance. Kim Jong Un’s approach is something of a hybrid of the two preceding generations. His revival of the byungjin line restored Kim Il Sung’s emphasis on dual military and economic development, but it also specified the necessity for developing more capable nuclear means.[10]

A third difference, and a major source of contention and speculation, is whether North Korea has mastered re-entry vehicle technology. China developed and successfully tested an RV prior to its successful launch of the JL-1 SLBM in 1979, and North Korea claims to have completed similar testing in March 2016.[11] However, there are significant differences between each nation’s RV development. Chinese scientists spent over a decade improving missile nosecones to protect nuclear payloads. Moreover, this was accompanied by robust in-flight testing.[12] North Korea has so far only conducted ground-testing of RVs, and many analysts speculate that its trials to date may not have achieved the conditions necessary to demonstrate workable RV technology.[13] Of course, outside observers have long underestimated North Korea’s technical abilities.

With the exception of its steps to master RV technology, North Korea has yet to test its elusive road-mobile KN-08. Notably, Chinese technicians were able to effectively convert an earlier land-based version of its JL-1 into a solid-state, road-mobile DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM).[14] In August 2016, North Korea’s KN-11 achieved flight success using similar solid-state fuel technology. Could North Korea’s promising results lead to success for its road-based missile system as in China? If so, how soon? Much like its accomplishments so far, it may only be a matter of time. The US and South Korea should certainly be wary of this outcome. Successful development of a KN-08 could offer North Korea a significant and valuable coercive bargaining tool in any discussion regarding the status of its nuclear weapons program. Worse still, systems like the KN-08 could embolden North Korea to turn its attention to a new generation of capabilities, perhaps again following in China’s footsteps.

Assessing the Road to Future Progress

As the comparison above illustrates, North Korea’s core weapons capabilities are reaching an apex. Even more concerning is the fact that North Korea’s relentless trial-and-error—not Chinese technical assistance—is principally generating its positive momentum. For policymakers in Washington and Seoul, the comparative analysis of Chinese and North Korean weapons development highlights the urgency of reevaluating North Korea policy before it has perfected its nuclear and missile technologies. While Pyongyang seems to be headed rapidly down the track Beijing has already traversed, this comparison is not meant to suggest a single culminating point in weapons development. One should hope though that the comparative timeline used here does not continue into the future, or else the US will be faced with significantly greater challenges.
*
________________
[1] Jane Harman and James Person, “The U.S. Needs to Negotiate with North Korea,” Washington Post, September 30, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...123e-85b2-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html.; Jay Lefkowitz, “A North Korea Strategy for the Next U.S. President,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-north-korea-strategy-for-the-next-u-s-president-1475169715.

[2] For purposes here, the first step in the timeline is defined as joint nuclear research with the Soviet Union, a step that precedes the construction of the first nuclear reactors within both countries; “China,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/china/nuclear/.;* “North Korea,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/nuclear/.; John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China’s Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).; Jae Ho Chung, Assessing China’s Power, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).; Zhihua Shen and Xia Yafeng, Mao and the Sino–Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History, (Lexington Books, 2015). See page 210 for a discussion on Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev offering initial support for the Chinese nuclear program.; Russian joint cooperation began with the North Koreans shortly thereafter. See Richard Stone, “North Korea’s nuclear shell game.” Science 303, no. 5657 (2004): 452-454. Correspondence from Kim il-Sung also supports the view that North Korean interest and cooperation began as early as the 1950s. See “Journal of Soviet Ambassador to the DPRK V. I. Ivanov for 20 January 1956,” January 20, 1956, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, RGANI Fond 5, Opis 28, Delo 412, Translated by Gary Goldberg. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120790.

[3]“Assessing the North Korean Hazard,” Stratfor, May 23, 2016, https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/assessing-north-korean-hazard.

[4] “China could have provided N. Korea with submarine missile: U.S. expert,” Yonhap News, September 2, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2016/09/02/0401000000AEN20160902000400315.html.

[5] Beginning in 1971, China signed a cooperative weapons transfer agreement which resulted in North Korea’s development of a number of coastal defense missile capabilities. See “A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK” by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr.

[6] John A. Bosco, “China’s Complicity in North Korea’s Nuclear Program: Henry Kissinger for the Defense,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 15 (2015), http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa...Vol15_Korea_China’sComplicityInNorthKorea.pdf.

[7] Jay Solomon and Chun Han Wong, “U.S. Indicts Chinese Businesswoman, Trading Company for Helping North Korea Evade Sanctions,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sanctions-chinese-company-for-aiding-north-korea-1474904418.

[8] “In China’s Shadow: Exposing North Korean Overseas Networks,” C4ADS, August 2016, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/in-chinas-shadow/.

[9] Jay Solomon and Chun Han Wong, “U.S., China Move Against Firm Suspected of Aiding North Korean Nuclear Program,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-chi...iding-north-korean-nuclear-program-1474300834.

[10] Seong-Whun Cheon, “The Kim Jong-un Regime’s ‘Byungjin’ (Parallel Development) Policy of Economy and Nuclear Weapons and the ‘April 1st’ Nuclearization Law,” Korea Institute for National Unification, http://www.kinu.or.kr/upload/neoboard/DATA01/co13-11(E).pdf.

[11] “N. Korea has yet to master re-entry technology for ICBM: Defense minister,” Yonhap News, March 18, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2016/03/18/0401000000AEN20160318009100315.html.

[12] Lewis and Litai, p. 180.

[13] “N. Korea has yet to master re-entry technology for ICBM: Defense minister,” Yonhap News, March 18, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2016/03/18/0301000000AEN20160318009100315.html.; Ha Young Choi, “North Korea claims successful missile re-entry technology,” NK News, March 15, 2016, https://www.nknews.org/2016/03/north-korea-claims-successful-missile-re-entry-technology/.

[14] Chung.

Found in section: WMD

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

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http://www.defenseworld.net/news/17...O_Standard_For_Defence_Equipment#.WB3xsYWcHmJ

China Adopts US/NATO Standard For Defence Equipment

Our Bureau
11:51 AM, November 4, 2016

Chinese military equipment such as tanks, aircraft and helicopters has US/NATO standard fitments for accessories and weapons to ensure sales in the global arms market.

“We found out that many Chinese military equipment for export have adopted the US standard, and this gives Chinese products an advantage in the market. Clients from developing countries can purchase a vehicle from China as a platform, and then buy weapons from the US or other NATO countries for use on this platform," Kevin Cheng, the editor-in-chief of Taiwan-based military magazine Asia Defense Magazine was quoted as saying at the on-going Airshow 2016 in Zhuhai by Global Times Thursday.

Chinese firm, NORINCO is displaying main battle tanks such as the VT2 and VT4 and other ground equipment for special missions, including counter-terrorism, hostage rescues and VIP protection at the airshow.

Norinco held a demonstration on Thursday on VIP protection and eliminating terrorists which included four vehicles: the VN1 8x8 Wheeled Armored Vehicle (WAV), VN2C 6x6 Mine-Resistant WAV, VN4 4x4 WAV and VP11 4x4 Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected Vehicle.

The Chinese arms exports are competing with those of the US and Russia, Cheng said.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/11/03/army-to-deploy-1700-paratroopers-to-iraq.html

Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq

Military.com | Nov 03, 2016 | by Matthew Cox

The U.S. Army announced Thursday it will deploy 1,700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division this winter to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces currently trying to retake Mosul from Islamic State fighters.

The 82nd Airborne's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will deploy to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to take part in Operation Inherent Resolve, according to an Army press release.

The unit will replace the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, in training, advising and assisting the Iraqi forces.

"The 2nd Brigade Combat Team is highly trained, disciplined and fit," said Col. James "Pat" Work, commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne.

"Readiness is our top priority; our paratroopers are prepared for this deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. Our team looks forward to this important mission and our opportunity to assist our Iraqi partners."

In mid-October, the Army announced it will deploy about 500 soldiers from the Big Red One to Iraq this fall.

The 1st Infantry Division Headquarters troops will assume the role of Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command-Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

Meanwhile, about 100 U.S. advisers, mostly Special Forces, and forward air controllers are moving with Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes and rocket artillery fire, in the ground offensive to drive the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria from Mosul.

Army engineers have also pushed closer to the city, searching for improvised bombs just west of the Great Zab River, about halfway between the Kurdish city of Irbil and Mosul.

The troops, wearing 101st Airborne Division patches, said they weren't allowed to talk to the media, Stars and Stripes reported. When a loud explosion rocked a nearby village, soldiers who had been scouting a roadside compound ran back to their armored vehicles.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

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[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-militants-idUSKBN1310C0

World News | Sun Nov 6, 2016 | 4:44am EST

Bangladesh arrests four Islamist militants

Bangladesh police on Sunday arrested four suspected Islamist militants, including two linked to the slaying of a Japanese man one year ago, in a raid on their hideout in an abandoned brick kiln.

The Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants threw home-made bombs, wounding three police, before they were overpowered, according to police. Guns, explosives and other weapons were found at the scene.

The arrests were made some 300 km (186 miles) north of Dhaka in Rangpur district, where Kunio Hoshi, a 65-year-old agriculturalist, was killed while working on a farming project in the impoverished, mostly Muslim country.

Mizanur Rahman, a police superintendent in Rangpur, told reporters that two of the men arrested, Belal Hossain and Ershad Alam, had helped train the militants who had killed Hoshi.

The other men arrested, Ashraful Islam and Al Amin, were JMB activists, he said.

In July, police lodged a charge sheet against eight JMB members, including ringleaders Saddam Hossain and Masud Rana, who were said to be involved in Hoshi's killing.

A JMB splinter group, that has aligned with Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attack in July on a restaurant in an upscale neighborhood of Dhaka that killed 22 people, mostly foreigners. Two police and five gunmen were also killed during the gunbattle at the restaurant.

(Reporting By Serajul Quadir and Hasibur Rahman Bilu; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Also In World News:
German ministry wants migrants returned to Africa: report
Suicide bombers in ambulances kill 21 people in Iraq: officials

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-mali-attack-idUSKBN1310BY

World News | Sun Nov 6, 2016 | 4:43am EST

Militant attack behind French soldier's death in Mali: minister

A French soldier killed in Mali died after an attack by militants on Friday, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Sunday.

"...Fabien Jacq died in the night of Friday to Saturday after an attack by a terrorist group in northern Mali in a zone that is still fragile," Le Drian told Europe 1 radio.

The French authorities had announced the soldier's death on Saturday, citing an explosion that hit a military convoy.

Islamist militant group Ansar Dine claimed responsibility for the attack, but the French defense ministry had said it was not able to corroborate the claim.

(Reporting Gus Trompiz; editing by John Irish)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-france-idUSKBN1310CG

World News | Sun Nov 6, 2016 | 4:55am EST

U.S. coalition should begin Raqqa offensive while Mosul ongoing: France

France said on Sunday the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State should begin the battle on the group's Syrian bastion Raqqa while the offensive on Mosul is underway, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

"I believe it will be necessary," he told Europe 1 radio.

Le Drian, whose country is the second-biggest contributor to the coalition, added that the battle on Mosul would be long and complicated given that Islamic State was embedding itself within the local population.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Gus Trompiz)

 

[Lone_Hawk]

Bump

 

[vestige]

Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq


Wonderful just effin wonderful... bump

 

[Medical Maven]

Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq


Wonderful just effin wonderful... bump

Well, look on the bright side, if our guys are over there, they won't have the quandary of whether to follow illegal, unconstitutional edicts here when TSHTF.

I could see whole units going rogue, if the worst transpires here. Maybe they could then drop in on Mordor on the Potomac at the proper time to help us out.

 

[Shacknasty Shagrat]

Thanks to all for keeping this thread active.
The US election is not the only news going on in the world.
We are getting lost in the sandstorm again.
SS

 

[vector7]

Lots happening.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.ibtimes.com/north-koreas...ill-south-korean-leaders-wife-missing-2442305

North Korea's Kim Jong Un Orders Military To Kill South Korean Leaders: With Wife Missing And Elderly Committing Suicide, Pyongyang Turns To Violence

By Cristina Silva @cristymsilva On 11/05/16 AT 11:18 AM

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cheered on a military unit tasked with killing*South Korean politicians this week in a rare visit with soldiers. Kim ordered*the*North Korean special operation battalion Friday to*"eliminate the human filth occupying the [South Korean] presidential Blue House, military and the puppet government, all who have committed crimes that cannot be forgiven for all of eternity,"*Pyongyang's state-controlled news agency KCNA reported.*

The speech marked Kim's*first military-related inspection since September and came as South Korea and the United States have vowed to stop Kim from completing his mission of achieving a nuclear arsenal. South Korea said it viewed Kim's visit to the military unit as a*provocation, according to Newsis.

Kim told the soldiers they have been tasked with an "important mission," to "put a sharp dagger in the enemy's heart and to break its back." Kim also observed the troops during*shooting drills, helicopter rope suspension training and tactical raids.

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His visit could signal that North Korea is preparing its*guerrilla warfare capabilities ahead of a potential crisis,*Yang Moo-jin, a South Korean professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told UPI.*North Korea has one of the world's largest militaries, with 1,170,000 troops for*2002-2012 from its population of 25 million. The United States, in comparison, has*1,410,000*military personnel.

North Korea has made headlines in recent months for its nuclear tests, but also for its growing famine crisis. With Kim spending nearly a*quarter of the nation's gross domestic product*on weapons, families have taken to urging senior citizens to kill themselves to avoid high costs such as medicine or other basic needs, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, Kim's wife has reportedly gone missing after not being seen in public in seven months.*

World
North Korea Calls Obama Administration A Failure
South Korea's military said Monday it was on high alert over concerns Pyongyang could fire an intermediate-range ballistic missile around the U.S. presidential election.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-india-kashmir-idUSKBN13211Q

World News | Mon Nov 7, 2016 | 5:30am EST

Indian shelling kills three in disputed Kashmir: Pakistani officials

By Abu Arqam Naqash | MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan

Three people were killed and five wounded on Monday in Indian shelling across the disputed border with Pakistan in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, Pakistani officials said, as tension simmers between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Feelings have run high since July, when Indian security forces killed a young Kashmiri fighter in Indian-administered Kashmir, prompting months of protests and a corresponding security crackdown that has claimed more than 80 lives.

"There has been intense shelling in Nakyal sector since morning," said Pakistani official Sardar Zeeshan Nisar, confirming the death toll. Two people were wounded, he added.

Nisar accused Indian forces of targeting civilians in their firing across the disputed border.

Shelling also took place in the Neelum Valley of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, hitting a vehicle near the village of Danjar and wounding three people, said local official Sardar Waheed.

The Indian military said that it had fired in response to Pakistani firing in the Poonch district on Monday morning, but did not comment on reports of casualties.

An Indian defense spokesman said Pakistani forces had fired 120mm and 82mm mortars, as well as automatic weapons, across the Line of Control, and alleged they had targeted Indian posts and civilian areas.

Both countries claim all of Kashmir, but administer separate parts, divided by a defacto border. They have fought two of their three wars since independence from the British in 1947 over the territory.

Tension built further in September, when 18 Indian soldiers were killed at an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir, in an attack Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

Pakistan denied that it was involved in that attack.

Several days later, India said it had carried out "surgical strikes" on militant bases across the border, a claim Pakistan termed "an illusion".

Last week, both countries expelled each others' diplomats, and named a number of others as being involved in spying.

Violations of a 2003 ceasefire on the defacto border have regularly occurred in the last two months. In the latest major violence, at least 19 people were killed on both sides in shelling last week.

(Additional Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in SRINIGAR; Writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-china-politics-idUSKBN13204P

World News | Mon Nov 7, 2016 | 4:58am EST

China moves to bar Hong Kong activists as fears grow over intervention

By Venus Wu and Sue-Lin Wong | HONG KONG/BEIJING

China's parliament passed a ruling on Monday that effectively bars two elected Hong Kong pro-independence politicians from taking office, Beijing's most direct intervention in the territory's legal and political system since the 1997 handover.

The rare move by Beijing came after Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, pledged allegiance to the "Hong Kong nation" and displayed a banner declaring "Hong Kong is not China" during a swearing-in ceremony for the city's Legislative Council in October.

The National People's Congress in Beijing ruled that lawmakers must swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China and that candidates would be disqualified if they changed the wording of their oath of office or if they failed to take it in a sincere and solemn manner.

The prospect of the ruling sparked protests in the former British colony on Sunday and it is now on high alert for any repeat of the weekend clashes. Members of the city's legal profession are planning a rare silent march on Tuesday night amid pressure for them to take even stronger action.

Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gives the territory wide-ranging autonomy, including judicial freedom guided by a mini-constitution called the Basic Law.

The protests on Sunday night were reminiscent of pro-democracy protests in late 2014 that paralyzed parts of the Asian financial center and posed one of the greatest political challenges to the central government in Beijing in decades.

"This incident shows us the Basic Law is a handicapped legal document and the so-called mini-constitution can be amended and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party at will," said Joshua Wong, 20, one of the leaders of the 2014 protests.

Foreign diplomats were watching closely, stressing the importance of the rule of the law to the city's international reputation.

While the controversial decision effectively bars the two pro-independence Hong Kong politicians from being sworn in, a court in the city must still rule on the case in a judicial review, taking Beijing's decision into consideration.

The promotion of independence has long been taboo in Hong Kong amid fears in Beijing it could spread among other activists and challenge the central government's rule.

"GRAVE DANGERS"

"The nature of Hong Kong independence is to split the country. It seriously violates the 'one country, two systems' policy," said Li Fei, chairman of the parliament's Basic Law Committee.

"The Central Government is highly concerned about the grave dangers the Hong Kong independence forces bring to the country and to Hong Kong."

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying, who has governed during some of the city's most violent and divisive times in decades, said his government would fully implement China's interpretation of the mini-constitution.

But Legislative Council president Andrew Leung said the Hong Kong judicial review needed to be completed before confirming if the pair were disqualified.

Simon Young, a professor at Hong Kong University's law school, said he was still evaluating the ruling but it did seem to bar Leung and Yau from taking office.

"I do worry we are only going to see more interpretations, and attempts by the NPC to flesh out local laws, if they really want to stop the separatists," Young told Reuters, referring to China's parliament.

Darragh Paradiso, a spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau, said by phone the United States strongly valued Hong Kong's independent judiciary.

"It is unfortunate that this particular situation was not resolved within Hong Kong's Legislative Council or within its well-respected courts," she said.

The Basic Law grants China's NPC a power of interpretation above Hong Kong's highest court. While it has made four other rulings since 1997, this ruling is its first move to preempt an ongoing Hong Kong court case.

Hong Kong Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen said he still believed the oath-taking controversy could be resolved locally, but he also had every confidence that the city's judiciary would uphold the rule of law.

Beijing's decision represents some of the worst privately held fears of senior judges and some government officials in Hong Kong, according to sources close to them.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular press briefing he hoped the international community would see the decision reflected the will of the Chinese people.

James To, a lawmaker with the Democratic Party, said the central government had undermined Hong Kong's judicial process.

"In future, people's confidence in 'one country, two systems' will worsen," To said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and Sue-Lin Wong in BEIJING, Greg Torode, Venus Wu and Donny Kwok and James Pomfret in HONG KONG; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion...ntary/chinas-sole-ally-asia-might-get-wished/

Commentary / World

China’s sole ally in Asia might get more than it wished for

by Brahma Chellaney
Nov 7, 2016
Article history

BERLIN – When China joined hands with the United States earlier this year at the United Nations Security Council to approve the toughest new international sanctions in two decades against North Korea, it implicitly highlighted that Beijing now is left with just one real ally in Asia — Pakistan. Indeed, China has forged with Pakistan one of the closest and most-enduring relationships in international diplomacy.

Mao Zedong famously said China and North Korea were as close as lips are to teeth. Similarly, Beijing now compares its strategic nexus with Pakistan to the closeness between lips and teeth, calling that country its “irreplaceable all-weather friend” and boasting of an “iron brotherhood” with it.

In reality, this is largely a one-sided relationship that is turning Pakistan into China’s client and guinea pig.

For example, Beijing has sold Pakistan outdated or untested nuclear power reactors and prototype weapon systems not deployed by the Chinese military. The two AC-1000 reactors currently under construction near the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi represent a model China has adapted from French designs but not built at home.

According to a recent Pentagon report, Pakistan is not just “China’s primary customer for conventional weapons,” but also is likely to host a Chinese naval hub geared toward power projection in the Indian Ocean region. It is well documented that China helped build Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, with covert Chinese nuclear and missile assistance still persisting.

Pakistan is the linchpin of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s dual Silk Road projects, officially known as “One Belt, One Road.”

By launching work on a $46 billion “economic corridor” stretching from Xinjiang to Pakistan’s Chinese-built and-run Gwadar port, Xi has made that country the central link between the twin Silk Road initiatives, which aim to employ geoeconomic tools to create a “Sinosphere” of trade, communications, transportation and security links. The corridor will link up Beijing’s maritime and overland Silk Roads, thereby shortening China’s route to the Middle East by 12,000 km and giving it access to the Indian Ocean, where it would be able to challenge India in its own maritime backyard.

Not surprisingly, Xi has gone out of his way to shield Pakistan, including from accusations that its intelligence service was behind recent grisly terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. For example, Xi ensured that the final communique issued at the end of the Oct. 14-15 summit of the five BRICS countries — Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa — omitted any reference to state sponsorship of terror or to any Pakistan-based terrorist group, even as it mentioned organizations like the Islamic State and al-Nusra.

A more potent reminder of such support was China’s action last month in blocking proposed U.N. sanctions on a Pakistan-based terrorist leader Masood Azhar, who heads Jaish-e-Mohammed, a covert front organization for Pakistani intelligence service. It was the sixth time since September 2014 that China single-handedly thwarted sanctions against Azhar, despite support for the move by all other members of the Security Council’s Resolution 1267 committee, including the United States, Britain and France. Resolution 1267 mandates U.N. sanctions on the Islamic State, al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities.

The Security Council proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed way back in 2001, yet the group operates openly from its base in Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab. The need for U.N. sanctions against the group’s chief has been underscored by evidence linking him and his group to two terrorist attacks this year on Indian military bases that killed 27 soldiers.

Despite repeatedly vetoing U.N. action against Azhar, China seems unconcerned that it could be seen as complicit in the killing of the Indian soldiers.

Previously, China also blocked U.N. action against some other Pakistan-based terrorist entities or individuals. For example, it came in the way of the U.N. proscribing United Jihad Council chief Syed Salahuddin and probing how U.N.-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed is still able to raise funds and organize large public rallies in major Pakistani cities. With China’s help, Pakistan escaped U.N. censure for freeing on bail Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes.

In fact, with China boosting its strategic investments in Pakistan, Beijing is stepping up its diplomatic, economic and military support to that country. In the process, it is seeking to cement Pakistan’s status as its client.

For example, China has already secured exclusive rights for the next 40 years to run Gwadar, which could become a hub for Chinese naval operations in the Indian Ocean. The Shanghai Stock Exchange, for its part, is poised to take a 40 percent stake in Pakistan’s bourse.

Some analysts like the American author Gordon G. Chang believe that the tide of new Chinese strategic projects, including in divided and disputed Kashmir, is turning Pakistan into China’s “newest colony.”

Indeed, Beijing has persuaded internally torn Pakistan to set up special security forces, including a new 13,000-strong army division, to protect the Chinese projects. Still, the growing security costs of the “economic corridor” to the Indian Ocean prompted a Chinese state paper in September to warn that China “be prepared for potential setbacks,” adding that “it would be unwise to put all its eggs in one basket.”

The fact is that the corridor will cement Pakistan’s status as Beijing’s economic and security client. By tightening China’s grip over the country, it will preclude Pakistan from possibly emulating the example of Myanmar or North Korea to escape Beijing’s clutches.

Indeed, several years before China unveiled its plan to build the corridor, it started stationing its own troops in the Pakistan-held part of Kashmir, ostensibly to shield its ongoing highway, dam and other projects in the mountainous region.

The implications of China’s growing strategic penetration of Pakistan are ominous for the region and for Pakistan’s own future. Concern is increasing in Pakistan that, thanks to the Chinese projects, the country is slipping into a massive debt trap that could compromise its sovereignty and future.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including “Asian Juggernaut,” “Water: Asia’s New Battleground,” and “Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.” He is a long-standing contributor to The Japan Times

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.rt.com/news/365646-muslim-germany-show-scandal/

German talk show slammed after Muslim guest allegedly ‘justifies jihad’

Published time: 7 Nov, 2016 15:41
Comments 351

The German public has been outraged by the latest edition of talk show ‘Anne Will’. Discussing why more and more young people radicalize, one of the guests – a niqab-clad Muslim woman – justified young Muslims going to Syria to fight alongside jihadists.

The show, broadcast at prime time on German ARD channel on Sunday, started off calmly, with a number of experts invited to discuss the alarming trend of youth radicalization. Among them were a father who lost his daughter to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), an expert on Islam, a Berlin-based imam and a CDU politician who lobbies for a ban on Muslim full-face veils.

Another guest was Nora Illi, Muslim women’s commissioner for the Islamic Central Council Switzerland (IZRS). She came to the show niqab-clad and this became the first thing that aroused public discontent, as the niqab is a Muslim piece of clothing that obscures both body and face, and is largely viewed as “a symbol of radical Islam.”

Illi described how at the age of 18 she, a common girl from Zurich, converted to Islam and found “diversity and respect” in the religion. She spoke of it being a right of every Muslim to practice their religion, for instance by wearing traditional attire and being allowed to pray at the appropriate time, whether at work or in a public place.

The Swiss national complained that in Germany and generally in non-Muslim states, Muslims are largely excluded from society by attempts to prevent them from practicing their religion in public. Illi claimed that this is the turning point for the youth to radicalize: when young people are not allowed by society to practice their beliefs freely, disoriented, they turn to more radical manifestations of their religion.

Читать
A.n.n.a @anna_IIna
#annewill #ARD bietet einer Vollverschleierten eine Bühne für Ihre Propaganda. Es kann nicht sein, dass Deutsche dafür #GEZ zahlen! #krank
13:38 - 6 ноября 2016
153 153 Ретвита 422 422 отметки «Нравится»

However, what caused the public to explode was the news anchor’s decision to read out an excerpt from an essay by Illi published on the Council’s website back in 2014. In it, Illi justified the choice of Muslims who travel to Syria to fight against the regime of President Assad, as this choice is made because Muslims are, she claims, repressed in most non-Muslim countries and join jihad in an effort to break free from this repression.

The reaction to these words from Illi’s fellow-guests was immediate shock. The CDU’s Wolfgang Bosbach and Islam expert Ahmad Mansour both called the speech “terrorism propaganda on TV,” slamming the news anchor for allowing such statements to be broadcast on-air and heard by millions of Germans.

Читать
Ralf Schuler @drumheadberlin
Niqab-Trägerin bei #annewill hat theologisch Verständnis für Teenager, die in heiligen Krieg ziehen. Langsam wird es skandalös
13:35 - 6 ноября 2016 · Berlin, Germany, Germany
521 1 Ретвит 1 120 1 120 отметок «Нравится»

The German public has vented its outrage at the program online. Some people decried ARD for providing “a platform for Islamist propaganda,” others simply called Illi’s statements scandalous.

Читать
Patrick Kunkel @Patrick_Kunkel
Warum gibt man islamistischen Hetzparolen Woche für Woche in deutschen Talkshows eine Plattform?

Heute wieder bei #annewill
Warum @ARDde?
13:58 - 6 ноября 2016
184 184 Ретвита 535 535 отметок «Нравится»
Some, however, took it all in a humorous vein.

“Fully veiled women representatives. What irony.”

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Alex Ru @AlexFRAOfficial
Vollverschleierte Frauenbeauftragte. Welch Ironie. #annewill
12:45 - 6 ноября 2016
12 12 Ретвитов 75 75 отметок «Нравится»
“Next week at #annewill: Erdogan, Duterte and a member of the Ku Klux Clan will be discussing human rights.”

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Gregorius @BalazsGabi
Nächste Woche bei #annewill : Erdogan, Duterte und ein Mitglied des Ku Klux Klans diskutieren über Menschenrechte.
23:25 - 6 ноября 2016
10 10 Ретвитов 23 23 отметки «Нравится»

Nora Illi replied on Monday to the wave of “aggressive to hate-filled discussions on social media,” as she put it. In a Facebook post, she wrote that she never meant to advertise jihad, but merely attempted to “provide an explanation for the phenomenon” of youngsters joining radicals, concluding “that Islamophobia is an important push factor” for this trend.

Illi also denied any association with Islamic State, while her husband, IZRS spokesman Qaasim Illi, denied any such links between the terror group and his organization.

READ MORE: ‘Burqa ban’ comes into force: Swiss region imposes first fines

It is not the first time Illi has been in media spotlight. This summer her name was in the headlines when she became the first woman in Switzerland fined for sporting a traditional Muslim burqa after it was outlawed.

And less than two weeks ago, she took part in a debate on the burqa ban with an Austrian private broadcaster Ösi-TV, also sparking quite a debate with her fully-veiled appearance and claims that Islamophobia is the cause of radical Islamism.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...eds_realistic_goals_toward_russia_110319.html

NATO Needs Realistic Goals Toward Russia

By Andrew A. Michta
November 08, 2016

The next U.S. administration needs to recognize that the lack of consensus in Europe vis-à-vis Russia remains a key obstacle to crafting a workable strategy.

These days, Europe is a place where uncertainty seems to be the norm. Regional differences over how to deal with Russia are fast becoming enduring rifts, with fissures emerging across Europe’s political map. While this fragmentation could be blamed in part on the renationalization of politics across the continent, the most potent external factor is the resurgence of Russia and Europe’s inability to reach a consensus on how to respond to Moscow’s ambitions.

Russia’s pressure along NATO’s Eastern flank has generated different threat perceptions across Europe, and it continues to test the limits of allied solidarity. NATO’s response has so far addressed only partly the military dimension of this challenge, and absent a larger strategy, the current regime of rotational exercises and deployments may prove to be a temporary fix.

Europe’s internal divisions over how to respond to Russia’s challenge have stoked national resentments and reawakened historical narratives thought by many to be a thing of the past. This is bad news for NATO, for if this trend accelerates, there is a risk that the larger commitment to collective defense will be called into question.

So far, the debate over how to deal with Russia has not moved beyond the immediate need to augment deterrence and strengthen NATO defenses, and even this has been constrained by competing priorities and limited resources. NATO has not fully articulated the political dimension of its Russia strategy, for condemnations and expressions of outrage do not make it any more likely for Russia to return Crimea, which it annexed in March 2014, to Ukraine or terminate its operations in Syria.

NATO is facing a revanchist regime in Moscow that is determined to pursue its objectives with all the levers of power at its disposal, including its increasingly capable military. Since President Vladimir Putin came to office, Russia has sought to reclaim a sphere of privileged interest along its periphery, heightening the risk that a confrontation between NATO and Russia could escalate into an all-out war, even if by miscalculation. Hence, NATO needs a strategy that is not simply reactive but that realistically weighs the national interests of the West against those of Russia to avoid extreme scenarios.

It falls to the United States, as the largest NATO member and a country that provides 70 percent of the alliance’s budget and three-quarters of its capabilities, to outline the parameters of such a strategy.

The next U.S. administration should ask why NATO’s response to Russia’s resurgence since 2014 has not fundamentally altered Moscow’s course of action. In fact, the West’s sanctions regime and Washington’s European Reassurance Initiative seem to have had the opposite result of what was intended. Russia’s increased deployments in the exclave of Kaliningrad and in Crimea constitute a direct challenge to NATO’s ability to operate in the Baltic and the Black Sea. Russia’s presence in Syria also has impacted on NATO’s operation in the Eastern Mediterranean. And Russian pressure and influence has increased in Moldova and the Western Balkans as well as in Central Asia.*

This changing strategic landscape continues to rattle the European allies, with recent turbulence in Turkey compounding the problem. In January 2017, the incoming U.S. administration will inherit a relationship with Russia that, if anything, will be tenser still than in the immediate aftermath of the Russian seizure of Crimea. What’s more, the European allies are ever less unified in their collective response to Putin’s adventures.

In this context, the clustering among EU members and the regionalization of security should send a warning to Washington, for they show the absence of consensus on what the core parameters for NATO’s strategy vis-à-vis Russia should be. The current trend toward fragmentation is not strictly a matter of resources, even though Europe continues to significantly underspend on defense. If an agreement on the objectives of any future Russia strategy can be reached, with over $1 trillion in combined defense spending and a population of over 700 million, NATO will have more than enough power to deter Russia.

Preaching either containment or détente will take NATO only so far. For an enduring consensus to emerge within the alliance, a realistic assessment is needed of how far the United States and its allies should go in confronting Russia, and where a degree of compromise with Moscow could be reached. A NATO consensus on Russia requires not only firmness on core U.S. values but also a willingness to think of the long-term implications for U.S. interests worldwide if trends continue on the current trajectory.

Putin has played a weak hand well, while the United States and Europe have struggled despite having a much stronger deck. The next U.S. administration needs to recognize that although it operates from a position of relative strength vis-à-vis Russia, the lack of consensus in Europe remains a key obstacle to crafting a workable strategy.*

Andrew A. Michta is the dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Views expressed here are his own.

This article originally appeared at Carnegie Europe.

--------

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...cant_be_complacent_on_afghanistan_110316.html

The Next Administration Can’t Be Complacent on Afghanistan

By Michael Goldfien
November 08, 2016

It’s the battlefield of America’s longest war. It’s the country in which the 9/11 attacks were plotted. It’s known as the “graveyard of empires.” Despite the United States’ ongoing military presence in the country, Afghanistan has had little political salience this election season. But while the conflict in Afghanistan has received little attention on the campaign trail or in the media, it will require immediate attention from the next administration.

The threat environment facing Afghan forces remains challenging and appears to be getting worse. Shifting their tactics away from brazen attacks on government buildings, the Taliban has focused on cutting off supply routes until villages are forced to surrender, allowing the insurgents to expand the territory under their control. This, combined with low morale in the Afghan security forces, has allowed the hardline Taliban movement to make alarming gains. According to the UN, the Taliban has gained more ground in 2016 than during any other year since 2001 and, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, the insurgency now controls or influences 33 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, with another 116 contested. Recently, the Taliban has put pressure on government forces in population centers like Kunduz in the north and Lashkar Gah in the south. In the east, an Islamic State (IS) offshoot has gained a foothold in Nangarhar Province. Over the summer, the IS affiliate carried out an attack against minority Hazara protesters in Kabul, killing at least 80.

It’s not just Afghan security forces that are struggling; the political situation in Afghanistan is similarly challenging. Constitutional and electoral reforms required as part of the power-sharing deal that followed disputed presidential elections in 2014 have been delayed, as have parliamentary elections. Moreover, the National Unity Government itself is under strain. Over the summer, chief executive Abdullah Abdullah suggested that President Ashraf Ghani’s reluctance to engage with key stakeholders made him unfit to lead, an opinion seemingly shared by many of Ghani’s colleagues in government. Recently, vice president and militia leader Abdul Rashid Dostum appeared to threaten the government in a press conference where he complained that his Uzbek constituency in the north had been marginalized. Democratic transitions are notoriously messy, and Afghanistan remains beset by endemic corruption and a fractious politics that is often seen through the lens of ethnicity.

The lack of political unity and good governance in Kabul exacerbates the challenges faced by Afghan security forces. With severe resource constraints and an expanding Taliban offensive, Afghan forces see high casualty and attrition rates. However, as Afghanistan expert and former U.S. Army officer Christopher Kolenda has noted, “when soldiers are well-led and fighting for a government that they believe in, they are willing to endure enormous sacrifices.” The problem, he argues, arises when troops lose faith in their leaders. In fact, General John Nicholson, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan, recently described the trickle-down impact of these governance failures:

“One of the principal factors for the high casualties has been the leadership, the failures of leadership at certain levels...the failure is not the young soldier on the ground, the failure is the ability to properly supply them and lead them.”

For all of the hardship that Afghanistan has endured, there is some cause for optimism. Afghan forces, with U.S. support, have been able to beat back Taliban efforts to seize major population centers. Over the summer, the Obama administration rightly decided to further slow the withdrawal of troops, as well as expand the rules of engagement for U.S. military personnel so that American soldiers are better able to support Afghan forces. And in October, the international community came together in Brussels to pledge a much needed $15 billion in aid for the country through 2020--just a slight annual decrease compared with what was pledged at Tokyo in 2012.

However, the next administration must ensure that Afghanistan remains a priority through the transition. It is a core interest for the United States that Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorists; yet Afghanistan’s military and political travails could see it become just that. The next administration should engage energetically with the Afghan government to act as an honest broker among rival stakeholders so that political leaders can focus on delivering services and supporting Afghan soldiers and police in their fight against insurgents and terrorists. Afghanistan has made important progress over the past 15 years and it’s not too late to stanch the bleeding and turn things around. But the next administration must avoid complacency and devote high-level attention to Afghanistan before it’s too late.


Michael Goldfien is a Campaigns Fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, and has an MA in International Policy Studies from Stanford University.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.atimes.com/article/china-expands-military-projection-capabilities/

China flexing its military muscle

The Chinese military is developing ships, submarines, aircraft, intelligence systems and foreign bases in a bid to be a global military power: report

By Bill Gertz for Asia Times November 6, 2016 12:10 PM (UTC+8)

China’s military is developing ships, submarines, aircraft, intelligence systems and foreign bases in a bid to become a global military power, according to a forthcoming congressional China commission report.

The late draft of the annual report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission contains a chapter on Beijing’s power projection development and warns that once fully developed, the weapons and forces could contribute to a regional conflict in places like the South China and East China seas.

“China is building military capabilities to deal with hostile air, surface, and subsurface operational environments in the ‘far seas,’” the report states, noting that the operations expand the focus beyond the two island chains off China’s eastern and southern coasts.

The new military capabilities will “expand or improve the ability of the People’s Liberation Army to conduct a range of externally focused operations, to include combat insertion, island landing operations, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations, noncombatant evacuation operations, and peacekeeping missions,” states the report.

The report also warns that expanded military power projection capabilities could “also strengthen China’s traditional war-fighting capabilities against weaker neighbors.”

“Given its enhanced strategic lift capability, strengthened employment of special operations forces, increasing capabilities of surface vessels and aircraft, and more frequent and sophisticated experience operating abroad, China may also be more inclined to use force to protect its core interests,” the report says.

The final report will be released Nov. 16. A commission spokeswoman described the chapter as a late draft.

Expeditionary warfare capabilities outlined in the chapter include six large amphibious transport docks and a new class of amphibious assault ships, new aircraft carriers, and advanced guided missile warships as escorts for far seas operations by China.

The naval expeditionary forces will also be bolstered by three types of attack submarines, including nuclear-powered, diesel electric and air-independent powered submarines. All three types were recently deployed to the Indian Ocean to support Chinese anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

Its six nuclear-powered Type-093 submarines are being augmented by two even more advanced nuclear submarines that by 2020 will make China the third most powerful state for attack submarines, behind the United States and Russia.

New aircraft also are being added to the PLA for long-range operations. China is deploying a new Y-20 transport that is similar to the US C-17 and Beijing will co-produce a version of the Russian An-225 transport, the largest cargo aircraft in the world.

To fill out its logistics network, China’s military is building new fueling ships and will have 10 oilers by 2020.

Overseas bases will also contribute to the power projection capability, including a new military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. Civilian ports constructed by China in Sri Lanka and Pakistan also will provide for strategic power projection.

To keep tabs on threats to long-distance forces and provide them with intelligence, China is also developing global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. They include long-range drone aircraft, space-based sensors, and shore-based radar and intelligence-gathering ships.

The commission suggests that China’s deployments for international peacekeeping operations – 27,000 troops were sent on UN missions over the past 15 years – will provide valuable experience for future long-range combat, as well as for internal security.

In a section on implications for the United States, the report states that the pursuit of long-distance warfare capabilities “coupled with the aggressive trends that have been displayed in both the East and South China seas, are compounding existing concerns about China’s rise among US allies and partners in the greater Asia,” the report states.

Despite the development of far seas capabilities, the Chinese war planning will remain devoted to preparing for regional conflicts with Taiwan or over maritime disputes in the South China and East China seas.

Analysts say the commission’s focus on PLA expeditionary warfare is welcome – after years of intelligence analysis that incorrectly argued China had no interest in long-range power projection.

“While the Obama Administration has been overwhelmed trying to respond to Chinese aggression growing almost daily in the Asia-Pacific region, the US China Commission is correct in its most recent annual report to highlight the future threats to US interests in the coming decades from China’s ambitions for global power projection,” said Richard Fisher, a China military analyst.

“Early in the last decade, there were many PLA analysts who derided the idea that the PLA would develop global power projection capabilities, but these have been well described by the latest US China Commission report,” said Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

Fisher urged greater American investment in new high-technology and asymmetric warfare capabilities to meet the emerging Chinese threats.

“Continued American global leadership for the future will also depend on much large US investment in power projection capabilities to stay ahead of China,” Fisher added.

Among the recommendations of the commission are to fund greater Pentagon and US intelligence analysis of PLA power projection capabilities, and for the US Navy and Marine Corps to conduct more joint exercises with Japan, Philippines and Vietnam focused on countering amphibious landing operations, like those anticipated by China.

The commission also recommended that the Pentagon conduct an assessment of Chinese long-range warfare capabilities with the goal of developing “non-kinetic options for the department to pursue that counter the emerging PLA expeditionary logistics capabilities in peacetime.” This is aimed at eroding “the effectiveness of PLA expeditionary logistics capabilities in support of Chinese offensive operations in the Indo Pacific in the future.”

Greater Chinese far seas military deployments will increase the risk of US-China naval and other confrontations. The report included a list of Chinese harassments of US Navy ships and aircraft since 2001, when a Chinese jet collided with an EP-3 spy plane.

In the South China Sea, the 3,200 acres of new Chinese islands will give Beijing “persistent civil-military bases to enhance its long-term presence in the South China Sea significantly,” the report said.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-aleppo-idUSKBN133125

World News | Tue Nov 8, 2016 | 7:25am EST

Syrian army says takes Aleppo area, rebels say battle continues

The Syrian army said it had taken a strategic district of Aleppo on Tuesday, in what would be the most important advance in the divided city by Damascus and its allies in weeks, but rebels said the battle was not over.

The 1070 Apartments district is located on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo and lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of the district, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September.

A Syrian military source said the army and allied forces were in complete control of the area and surrounding hills. They have made repeated efforts to oust rebels from the 1070 Apartments area since the summer.

A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah carried a similar report. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group, is fighting in support of Damascus.
But officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo said the battle was still raging. Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost on Monday.

"There is still a battle and the result has absolutely not been decided," added the second official, Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Fastaqim rebel group.

Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September, after besieging the area that the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people.

Insurgents launched a counter attack aimed at breaking the siege on Oct. 29, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included jihadist groups and insurgents fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.
But their progress slowed after early gains.

Russia says its air force has been observing a moratorium on air strikes on the rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo since Oct. 18. The Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo said heavy air strikes had killed hundreds of people, and hit hospitals and other civilian facilities prior to that.

Insurgent shelling of government-held western Aleppo has meanwhile killed dozens of people, the United Nations said last week in an update on the humanitarian situation in the city.

(Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-defence-idUSKBN1322GH

World News | Mon Nov 7, 2016 | 2:56pm EST

German defense minister wants EU military to match NATO

By Andrea Shalal | BERLIN

Germany's defense minister said on Monday the European Union must modernize its military defense and security to match NATO's drive to beef up its own security forces in the wake of a major Russian build-up.

France, Germany, Italy and Spain are calling for a common European defense policy after Britain's vote to quit the bloc, an initiative that marks the EU's biggest push since the 1990s.

"We have seen an enormous modernization drive by NATO over the past three years because of the Kremlin's behavior," Ursula von der Leyen told a security conference hosted by the conservative Christian Democrats.

"That was correct and important, but I believe that we must invest at the least same energy into a modernization of the European security and defense union," she said.

Von der Leyen, keen to assuage concerns raised by the United States and Britain, said the increase should occur "knowing that one cannot build up competition between the two bodies, but that they should work in a complementary fashion".

For instance, she said, the EU had a clear mission in working with Africa to stem the steady flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, but that was not NATO's job.

"I see a big mission for the European Union, which must work for a solution together with the African countries," von der Leyen said. "But to do that, it must better organize and bundle the many instruments it has in the civilian and military realms, actually implement them, and offer a joint European response."

In a joint letter, Germany, France, Italy and Spain have argued that the EU should be able to respond to external crises without the guiding hand of the United States.

Proposals include increasing European spending on military missions, jointly developing assets such as helicopters and drones, expanding peacekeeping abroad and building stronger defenses against state-sponsored hackers.

NATO, and especially the United States, has long argued that Europeans should increase defense spending and strengthen their militaries to ensure their own defense.


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Von der Leyen has been pushing hard to revamp the German military, improve its procurement process and boost personnel. Last month she said Germany was ready to play a larger military role in the service of closer European defense cooperation.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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[Housecarl]

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http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/how-will-jihadist-strategy-evolve-as-the-islamic-state-declines/

How Will Jihadist Strategy Evolve as the Islamic State Declines?

Colin Clarke and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
November 10, 2016

Jihadist strategy has always been dynamic and opportunistic. Militant groups, which are typically outgunned and outspent by their state opponents, have long sought to exploit both adversaries’ errors and also changes in the operating environment. Seismic strategic shifts by these groups have been common, not because they lack strategy, but rather because — like start-up firms in the economic sphere — their strategy relies on acting decisively in response to new opportunities. We are about to witness a major, and in many ways distinctive, shift in jihadist strategy spurred by the ongoing battlefield losses experienced by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). (Donald Trump’s election as the next U.S. president is likely to have further strategic impacts, but it is too early to analyze them comprehensively.)

The main challenge that confronts ISIL is sustaining itself as an organization even as its “state” becomes non-viable, and as its claims to being a universal caliphate appear increasingly outlandish. As Mosul comes under assault at the same time that U.S.-backed forces have launched an offensive to retake Raqqa, one obvious path for ISIL is leveraging its spectacularly successful terrorist attacks throughout the globe to try to sustain itself as a preeminent jihadist brand. But ISIL faces a dilemma: The group’s state made it so potent at planning and executing major terrorist attacks, and as its state declines, so too will its terrorist capabilities.

As it tries to find a way to thrive despite this problem, ISIL will no doubt return to the age-old jihadist debate about the relative merits of centralized and decentralized militant models. In doing so, one place ISIL will look is to the principles articulated by some of the movement’s most prominent strategists, including Abu Musab al-Suri. But ISIL is in a very different place than al-Qaeda was when the latter group had to adapt to the loss of its Afghanistan safe haven just after the 9/11 attacks. ISIL has operated across a larger contiguous geographic area than anything we have seen previously from jihadists, and has been able to take advantage of advanced encryption that did not exist in 2001. Thus, if it survives as an organization, ISIL will almost certainly forge its own unique twist on the question that proceeds from a position of strength relative to what Suri envisioned, and that anticipates a faster return to territoriality.

Leaderless Jihad vs. Leader-Led Jihad

Jihadists have long debated whether a centralized or decentralized organizational model is optimal. This debate extends also to terrorist attacks: Is it more effective when they are conceptualized and planned by a central organization, or are “lone wolf” attackers a greater threat?

ISIL employed and publicized both centralized and somewhat (though often not entirely) decentralized attacks abroad when it stood at its apex as a state. In addition to headline-grabbing attacks in places like Paris, Brussels, and Istanbul, the group has claimed responsibility for dozens of less sophisticated strikes — including, recently, a stabbing spree at a Minnesota shopping mall, another stabbing attack in Sydney, and a failed plot by several young Frenchwomen whom an ISIL planner “guided remotely” to attack Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. ISIL’s continuing decline will likely cause it to place greater emphasis on smaller scale strikes, which require less central direction and organizational backing.

A key architect of a more decentralized approach to terrorism and jihadist militancy is the aforementioned Abu Musab al-Suri, who wanted militants to engage in smaller but more frequent attacks against their enemies, and to launch these attacks not through a central organization but through numerous decentralized and disconnected cells. While it may be tempting to paint Suri’s approach as now being powerfully reasserted, a careful reading of his life and the evolution of jihadist strategy reveals a more complex picture. Jihadist groups rarely, if ever, wholesale re-embrace their strategists of yesteryear. Rather, these strategists’ principles might be re-examined, and applied in new ways to new circumstances. Such will be the case for ISIL’s read on the newly-relevant Suri, who articulated his principles against a strategic backdrop that no longer holds true.

Put simply, the world that prompted Suri to write his 1600-page magnum opus The Call for Global Islamic Resistance is a distant memory. At the time Suri wrote his treatise, the United States had recently dislodged the Taliban from Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks. America stood tall as an unrivalled military, economic, cultural, and diplomatic superpower; the countries of the West, despite their internal squabbles and differences, remained a relatively cohesive bloc boasting shared interests and values. Jihadists’ enemies were so strong that trying to openly declare and sustain a jihadist state was unwise, perhaps even suicidal. Indeed, even organizational ties could be deadly, as intelligence services — with overwhelming surveillance capabilities that jihadists still didn’t fully comprehend — could quickly unravel militant networks, killing or capturing the members.

The past couple of years dramatically illustrate how much the world has changed. ISIL’s dying caliphate aside, the United States and its allies stood by helplessly as dictators aligned with the West fell in Tunisia and Egypt. The United States and its NATO allies intervened to topple Muammar Qaddafi, who had been a bulwark against Islamist gains in Libya. Jihadist insurgencies are gaining steam in Mali and Somalia. And al-Qaeda continues to control significant territory in coastal Yemen. The pace of jihadist attacks in Europe is unprecedented, and a confluence of factors have allowed jihadist networks in Europe to emerge that are broader and more deeply interconnected than analysts would have thought possible even five years ago (that is, prior to the boom in end-to-end encryption, such networks would surely have been detected and disrupted). The United States and its allies are simply no longer in a position to crush jihadist forces wherever and whenever they assemble.

As the world changes, so too does jihadist strategy. So as ISIL tries to transition from jihadist state to insurgency or transnational terrorist group and eventually back into a state, a new strategic doctrine will likely be born. An examination of Suri, his ideas, and their application illuminates the likely emergence of this new jihadist doctrine.

Suri’s Journey

Suri is closely tied to ISIL’s bitter adversary, al-Qaeda — with whom he had a falling out due to strategic disagreements, but eventually reconciled with and had rejoined by 2004. Born Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Suri is a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, and one of al-Qaeda’s most prolific authors on insurgent and terrorist strategy and tactics. Suri’s writings significantly influenced other high-profile jihadist leaders, including ISIL’s father figure Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Released from a Syrian prison in 2012, Suri’s current whereabouts are unknown.

When al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks, Suri condemned them. He argued that by striking the United States, Osama bin Laden had invited the American response that removed the Taliban from power. Suri explained that jihadists were incapable of winning prolonged battles against conventional forces from Western militaries, or even the Arab world’s professionalized forces. His ideas about jihadists’ inherent military weakness were shaped by his experience in 1982 in Hama, Syria. There, Hafez al-Assad — father of current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad — and the Syrian military crushed a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising with brutal efficiency.

As Thomas Friedman documented in his classic book From Beirut to Jerusalem, the devastation at Hama was overwhelming, with “whole neighborhoods of crushed apartment buildings bearing silent witness to the remarkable events that transpired.” The number of those killed in the Syrian onslaught is unknown, but Friedman notes that estimates range from 10,000 to 25,000 dead — mainly civilians — with thousands more displaced. The brutality with which the Syrian military crushed the Hama uprising was meant as a stark warning to others who might defy the regime.

Despite this bleak demonstration of the massive advantages that jihadists’ foes enjoyed, the 1980s were actually a heady time for Islamist militants. Islamists’ biggest military accomplishment of the decade, of course, was when Afghan mujahedin, with an over-mythologized assist from the “Afghan Arab” foreign fighters, expelled the occupying Soviet army from their country following a bloody decade-long fight. Suri didn’t think, though, that this meant Islamist fighters could regularly go toe-to-toe with their foes. He wrote that the Afghan mujahedin were only able to repel the Soviet occupation with the help of substantial funding and materiel from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Suri knew, following the 9/11 attacks, that no such aid would be forthcoming from any of the world’s powerful nation-states.

Thus, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance urged that individual terrorist acts carried out by small cells replace al-Qaeda’s old structure. He argued that the centralized, hierarchical model of jihadism could not overcome the U.S.’s technologically advanced military, and that regional security cooperation and intelligence sharing made a hierarchical structure dangerous. Suri suggested that, in contrast, decentralization would immunize terrorist cells from detection through the capture and interrogation of members of other cells. Suri believed that a looser, decentralized network would present more problems for the West, resulting in “thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Muslims participating in jihad.”

Though Suri’s strategic writings did a great deal to shape al-Qaeda’s approach during its post-9/11 nadir, eventually Suri’s influence within al-Qaeda was eclipsed by another strategist who also provided an influential blueprint for ISIL. As al-Qaeda gained new operating space in Pakistan and elsewhere, it looked to the work of Abu Bakr Naji, whose book The Management of Savagery argued that once jihadists hold territory, they should erect a governing apparatus to enforce Islamic law and provide security, food, and medical care. Naji believed that a high command should oversee these efforts.

The preference of al-Qaeda’s leadership for Naji’s approach over Suri’s reflects a long-standing inclination for centralization, along with two other factors. First, shifting events made a robust role for central leadership increasingly viable, as al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Pakistan allowed the leadership’s reassertion. Also, far from Suri’s vision of thousands or hundreds of thousands answering his call, al-Qaeda never received an overwhelming reaction when it urged Muslims to carry out lone-wolf attacks.

Later, an al-Qaeda cleric whom Suri influenced would fuse the leaderless and leader-led jihad models. Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) official and propagandist whose YouTube sermons frequently cite Suri’s teachings, called for individual attacks even as AQAP organized centrally-directed terrorist plots. Awlaki seemingly received a greater response to his calls for lone wolf attacks than any other al-Qaeda leader. According to the Counter Extremism Project, Awlaki has influenced as many as 88 known extremists in the United States and Europe.

An era of jihadist centralization — albeit with continuing calls for lone-wolf attacks and support for loosely-connected cells — followed Awlaki’s death in 2011, driven both by ISIL’s establishment of a jihadist state that was unrivaled in geographic breadth and also al-Qaeda’s quiet but no less real control of territory. But now ISIL will be forced to adapt its tactics and operations in response to its mounting losses.

While Suri will reemerge as a thinker of some significance for ISIL, ultimately the course ISIL charts will reject some of his core assumptions. The group is likely to find a new approach that relies on some of Suri’s ideas but does not adopt them wholesale.

Leaderless ISIL?

In 2014, the late ISIL spokesman and nominal external operations chief Abu Muhammad al-Adnani provided somewhat of a CliffsNotes version of Suri’s work when he admonished Muslims who were prevented from joining the jihad in Iraq and Syria to target Westerners in their home countries. “Smash his head with a rock,” Adnani implored, “or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.”

Adnani’s call to arms — and the calls of ISIL’s broader, once-potent social media machine — did not fall on deaf ears. In addition to a seemingly endless stream of ISIL-connected attacks in Europe, over 100 individuals have been charged in the United States with ISIL-related offenses since March 2014. Nearly one-third of those arrested stand accused of involvement in plots to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

Many ISIL attacks were centrally directed through its external operations apparatus, known as the amniyat al-kharji. While the amniyat is likely to decline significantly due to attrition within the group’s caliphate, ISIL may not really go away even in places where it is ousted as a governing force. As Patrick Ryan and Patrick B. Johnston recently noted in War on the Rocks, ISIL has “gone underground” in response to previous clearance operations, and in places like Mosul it is likely to adopt the approach of “deactivating and dispersing its military units and reinforcing its intelligence, security, administrative, and financial groups.” One potential obstacle it faces in making this adaptation is that, in contrast to Maoist-style insurgencies that try to win over the population, ISIL has instead taken on a Focoist model of revolutionary warfare, and has alienated many of the people upon whom a transition to insurgency would rely.

Regardless of its success in building an insurgency, ISIL has achieved a level of mass mobilization internationally that al-Qaeda never did. This makes the strategic use of truly disconnected cells more feasible than it has ever been for jihadists. Much like Awlaki before them, ISIL is unlikely to view its options as a binary, and will probably employ leader-led and leaderless attacks in tandem as complementary elements of a broader strategy. Further, ISIL knows — because it showed the world this fact — that jihadists can capture significant territory and hold off the world’s most powerful militaries for years. This was a particularly impressive feat for ISIL because the group’s flawed strategy caused it to fight a multi-front war almost from the outset. Thus, ISIL’s goals will likely be more expansive, and more immediately so, than those advocated by Suri.

ISIL may similarly fuse this hybrid model with other strategic objectives. One defining feature of the group’s military strategy has been that it doesn’t want to have the time and place of violence dictated to it. Pressure against ISIL in Mosul may yield a counterattack in Kirkuk. It is possible that, consistent with this doctrine, losing in Iraq and Syria will prompt ISIL to channel more resources into attacking Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf or Europe. But merely having the will to attack is not the same as the means: ISIL has created sky-high expectations about its capabilities, and it may experience a drier period than it has known to date, where it can no longer carry out attacks throughout the globe at will.

One X factor in all of this is the boom in end-to-end encryption. It used to be that poor ability to communicate was a factor in relative decentralization. But the obstacles to secure communication are declining globally. This is a big difference from 2001, and a big difference even to the obstacles that ISIL’s predecessor faced in 2007-2009.

All of these threads provide an indication of the strategic doctrine that ISIL is in the midst of forging. “What’s past is prologue,” Shakespeare famously wrote. A close examination of the strategists of yesteryear provides a prescient guide for what is to come, but does not tell the entirety of the tale. Reading Suri’s works can help us to anticipate ISIL’s next moves, but a full understanding of the strategist’s life reveals that we need to look beyond his words alone. Much of ISIL’s adaptations will be wedded to the broader changes in the environment in which ISIL will be attempting its rebound.
*
Colin P. Clarke is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where his research focuses on terrorism, insurgency and the future of political violence. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the chief executive officer of Valens Global.

 

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/11/09/the_prompt_launch_scare_110326.html

The Prompt Launch Scare

By Peter Huessy
November 09, 2016

There is little doubt that using nuclear weapons is the most awesome decision an American president would have to make.** *

But recent news stories about how, in a crisis, a president would have to quickly launch nuclear-armed missiles are dead wrong.

For many years we have heard concerns our nuclear weapons are on a “hair trigger” status, ready to be launched upon computer warning of an enemy attack. It has even been claimed that our nuclear systems are required by policy to launch in just minutes from the time our warning systems detect a nuclear attack on the United States.

Now public and government literature contain a number of references on how long it would take our missiles to be launched once an authentic launch order is received from the president. Without expressing a view as to what the exact number is, suffice to say a president’s order could be executed in an extremely timely manner.

However, if there is confirmation the United States is under attack from missiles from Russia or another adversary, the idea has taken hold that since a president could launch our nuclear missiles in a matter of minutes, somehow a president has to launch our nuclear-armed missiles in such a manner in order to effectively deter our adversaries.

If true, this would certainly place any American president under intense pressure to order a launch quickly once informed an attack is imminent. And if we assume our nuclear posture requires a “prompt” launch response, it is also assumed a president could recklessly launch our nuclear missiles accidentally or by miscalculation.

None of these assumptions are valid. The prompt launch of our nuclear missiles is not required nor is it U.S. policy. There is also no U.S. policy to launch our missiles upon receipt of computer warning or even receipt of a confirmation of an attack. *And it has been this way for decades.

Not only that, we now have alternatives to retaliation. As President Reagan argued three decades ago, “Would it not be better to save lives than avenge them?” Thus. since 2004 we have had the capability to stop a limited nuclear missile attack using either our current national missile defenses in Alaska and California or the new regional missiles defenses we are building in such countries as Poland and Romania. To emphasize, retaliation is not our only option.*

For decades, U.S. strategic deterrent policy has been designed to provide an American president, during a crisis, considerable time for consultations with military and civilian commanders. Since the establishment of the Triad and in the 35 million minutes during which our land and sea-based missiles have been on alert, no American president has ever ordered these missiles to be fired, despite the myriad serious crises we have encountered, including those involving our nuclear-armed adversaries. Additionally, there have been only a few times the United States has even gone on a higher nuclear alert level during a crisis.

Our nuclear Triad of bombers, submarines, and land-based ICBMs are deployed in a manner that makes the expeditious use of nuclear weapons unnecessary. Although these missiles can be launched by a presidential order in a matter of minutes, we spend many tens of billions of dollars annually to make our nuclear systems highly survivable. Thus there is no imperative requiring the president to launch on warning.

For example, the design of our Triad also means an enemy attack on our submarine, bomber, and ICBM assets are impossible to execute in a way that would disarm the United States. Consequently, there is no rush for an American president to launch “promptly” because our nuclear deterrent forces will survive an initial attack in sufficient numbers to be able to effectively retaliate. In short, there is no fear of “Use ‘em or lose ‘em.” At least 400 land-based missiles will survive. Our submarines in transit to their patrol area and those in their patrol “box” will be fully able to retaliate. And our bombers that get airborne during a crisis are available.

Consequently, there is no “inevitability” of use, as during a crisis we can take prudent measures to expand the airborne deployment of our bombers, put more of our submarines to sea, or put more ICBMs on alert. *

Ironically, many of the same critics who worry about the supposed unstable “hair trigger” status of our nuclear forces, are simultaneously proposing to eliminate upwards of 80% of our nuclear deterrent assets, all in the name of “stability.”

But such a reduced force would have the ironic effect of making it easier for an attacker to disarm the United States. Such cuts would reduce our nuclear forces to roughly 10 targets, a dangerously small number which might very well tempt our adversaries to attack us first in a crisis, putting their forces on a “hair trigger”. Ultimately such a small force makes it more difficult for the United States to maintain a secure, survivable second strike retaliatory nuclear deterrent capability. *

This all should be well understood. Much of today’s deterrent strategy was laid out by President Reagan in his detailed plan for nuclear deterrence and nuclear reductions in late 1981. The National Security Defense Directives issued by the administration at that time are examined in detail in Sven Kraemer’s new book “Inside the Cold War from Marx to Reagan.”

Kraemer explains the Reagan administration laid out five key principles that guided our strategic nuclear deterrent strategy then and still do today. First, nuclear modernization is the critical partner with arms control reductions. Second, arms control counting rules favor strategic bombers, enhancing stability as these forces are recallable and man operated. Third, land-based missiles are limited to one warhead, further diminishing the temptation to use them as first strike weapons. Fourth, a significant percentage of our nuclear deterrent goes to sea, also increasing crisis stability and emphasizing the retaliatory nature of nuclear deterrence. And fifth, missile defenses are deployed in a robust fashion to deal with small scale nuclear attacks for which massive retaliation makes no sense.

The U.S. has followed these principles in every area, but to varying degrees. Russia and China have not. That resulting strategic imbalance—where Russia has a huge inventory of multiple warhead land-based missiles—requires the U.S. to continue its strategic modernization effort that this administration and Congress, on a bi-partisan basis, have repeatedly endorsed.*

Some critics support killing key parts of this modernization effort, specifically the cruise missile carrying bomber, or have said the nuclear modernization effort—at 4% of the defense budget—is too expensive.

Incongruously, these same critics have worried about a nuclear deterrent that once fired cannot be called back—but the manned bomber, the one weapon leg of the Triad which may be recalled, is the very weapon system they wish to truncate.

We know Russia has repeatedly threatened the U.S. and its allies with nuclear weapons, particularly those of a regional nature. We also know the previous “reset” strategy didn’t work with Russia.

But despite that, the current overall nuclear modernization strategy is the right one. And we should also emphasize our strategy relies on a modernized credible retaliatory response and not on any kind of unnecessary “quick launch” strategy.

Thus, during the 70 years of the nuclear age, no adversary has attacked the U.S. with nuclear weapons. Why? Well, our nuclear strategy works, and has worked perfectly. Every adversary knows we have the capability and the will to retaliate with devastating force to any attack on our country.

In addition, no president has ever been put in a position where we had to launch our nuclear weapons in a crisis because we did not have the time to carefully consider our security options.

No use has been the best use. *No launch has been the best launch.

Because of the complementary legs of the American Triad—more than 500 highly survivable multiple platforms spread out over land, sea, and air—a modernized force would ensure that during a crisis, no immediate decision to launch would be required. Our deterrent force and strategy are thus jointly designed precisely to avoid any prompt launch pressures. That is why the system works. As General Larry Welch, former SAC Commander has noted, “It has worked perfectly—for 70 years.”


Peter R. Huessy is President of Geostrategic Analysis and a guest lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy. He was formerly Senior Fellow in National Security at the American Foreign Policy Council.

 

[Housecarl]

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Aircraft

US Air Force Seeks Hypersonic Cruise Missiles

TOPICS:air force DARPA HAWC Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept

Posted By: Brendan McGarry November 9, 2016

The U.S. Air Force is moving forward with plans to develop hypersonic cruise missiles.

The service has teamed with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA — the Pentagon’s research arm — to fund development of the technology as part of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC.

The agency in recent weeks awarded Raytheon Co., the world’s largest missile maker, and Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s largest defense contractor, with contracts valued at roughly $170 million a piece to help develop the air-launched hypersonic weapons.

Weapons capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, could operate farther away from targets and with faster response times, according to DARPA’s website on the project. At such speeds — 3,400 miles per hour — a missile could travel from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta in just several minutes.

“These demonstrations seek to open the door to new, responsive long-range strike capabilities against time-critical or heavily defended targets,” the DARPA website states.

Lockheed earlier this year touted a “breakthrough” in hypersonic technology and has floated the idea of developing a hypersonic spy plane for the U.S. military.

The Air Force wants to build on its research from previous efforts. In 2013, the service conducted its fourth and longest flight of the so-called X-51 WaveRider. After separating from a rocket launched beneath the wing of a B-52 bomber, the hypersonic vehicle built by Boeing Co. climbed to 60,000 feet, accelerated to Mach 5.1 and flew for about three and a half minutes before running out of fuel and plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

The WaveRider program, which had a couple of failed tests, came several years after a similar NASA effort called the X-43, which in 2004 shattered speed records when it flew at nearly Mach 9.7, or about 6,600 miles per hour, for 10 seconds. But the engine couldn’t withstand the temperatures involved.

Other companies such as the British defense giant BAE Systems and other countries such as China and Russia are also working to develop hypersonic cruise missiles and similar technology.

 

[Housecarl]

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Leadership: China Misreads The Lessons Of Iraq

November 3, 2016: China has gradually confirmed that they were indeed surprised and shocked by what happened to the Iraqi Army during the 1991 Gulf War. That was a conflict in which the Iraqis were equipped with similar, and often superior, Russian type equipment the Chinese had. But watching the Iraqi armed forces demolished in a few weeks of air attacks followed by five days of ground combat was demoralizing. It has now become clear that the lessons the Chinese learned from studying the 1991 Gulf War were what led to the massive reorganization and reequipping of the Chinese military since the early 1990s. Not only did the Chinese shrink the size of their army by nearly half but they expanded the navy and radically reorganized and modernized the air forces.

These moves were long suspected because even though this assessment of the 1991 war was a secret the details of the reforms were not. Moreover China likes to publish a lot of stories in the state controlled mass media about their modern military. This is partly propaganda and partly to reassure the military and the population that the massive changes in the military since the 1980s are a good thing and not just another opportunity for corruption. There are also a lot of military publications put out for military professionals. While much of this material doesn’t get translated from Chinese it is openly available and confirms a lot of the trends illustrated in the mass media articles.

One of the things the Americans used successfully in 1990 was wargames. So China had also revived the use of military staff analysis capabilities in the early 1990s and one of the first things studied was the 1991 Gulf War. The results of that study made it obvious that the West had used modern technology, new training techniques and wargaming to create armed forces of unprecedented capabilities. From this point on China decided to reform their armed forces to be able to do what the Westerners did in 1991. One of the more obvious results of that are Chinese troops wearing combat uniforms similar to those of Western troops and Chinese made weapons that were also similar to Western designs.

There were less dramatic but equally important signs of all these changes in 2009 when Chinese media ran stories, with photos, of Chinese developed professional wargames in action. The photos and text included enough detail for Western military wargamers to discern what was going on. The wargame shown was the TCCST (Tactical Command and Control Simulation Training System), and it was being used by members of the 6th Armored Division for a training exercise. It's a typical "blue versus red" (where "red" is the good guys and "blue" is the enemy) type game but few in the West expected China to be developing and producing stuff like this on their own. Over the next few years more Chinese wargames for media attention, if only because these were now widely used in the Chinese military and there was no point in trying to keep them secret.

One thing the Chinese have not yet been able to change is the quality of their officers. In part this is because the pre-1990 officer selection and training was based on the Russian model that put more emphasis on loyalty (to the Communist Party) than professional skills. China did try adding more officers selected for skills rather than loyalty but since 2010 have shifted back to the “loyalty first” model. This was necessary because of problems eliminating the corruption in the military and the realization that the military would more likely be needed to deal with an internal threat rather than an external one. It is easier to fake combat competence with new uniforms and weapons than to assure political loyalty when it is needed the most. The Chinese discovered that they had more in common with Iraq than their analysis revealed. The dictatorship that had run Iraq since the late 1950s learned to put a priority on loyalty when recruiting officers and avoid fighting an external foe.

 

[Housecarl]

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World News | Thu Nov 10, 2016 | 11:31am EST

Iraqi forces preparing advance on south Mosul

By John Davison and Dominic Evans | SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq

Iraqi security forces are preparing to advance toward Mosul airport on the city's southern edge to increase pressure on Islamic State militants fighting troops who breached their eastern defenses, officers said on Thursday.

The rapid response forces, part of a coalition seeking to crush the jihadists in the largest city under their control in Iraq or Syria, took the town of Hammam al-Alil, just over 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, on Monday.

Officers say they plan to resume their advance north, up the western bank of the Tigris River towards the city of 1.5 million people who have lived under the ultra-hardline Sunni Islamists for more than two years.

More than three weeks after the U.S.-backed campaign to retake Mosul was launched, the city is almost surrounded by the coalition of nearly 100,000 fighters. But troops have entered only a handful of neighborhoods in the east of the city.

"We need to put wider pressure on the enemy in different areas," said Major-General Thamer al-Husseini, commander of the elite police unit which is run by the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry.

He said operations would resume within two days.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dhiya Mizhir said the target was an area overlooking Mosul airport, which has been rendered unusable by Islamic State to prevent attackers using it as a staging post for their offensive.

Army officers told Reuters in September the militants had moved concrete blast walls onto the runway to prevent planes from landing there.

Satellite pictures released by intelligence firm Stratfor also showed they had dug deep trenches in the runways and destroyed buildings to ensure clear lines of sight for defenders and to prevent advancing forces from using hangars or other facilities.

On the southern front, security forces took cover behind a mound of earth and fired at Islamic State positions from armored gun turrets.

 

[Housecarl]

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World News | Thu Nov 10, 2016 | 9:39am EST

Iran says has options if nuclear deal fails

Iran wants all parties to stick to an international nuclear deal but has options if that does not happen, its foreign minister said on Thursday after the U.S. election victory of Donald Trump, who has vowed to pull out of the pact.

"Of course Iran's options are not limited but our hope and our desire and our preference is for the full implementation of the nuclear agreement, which is not bilateral for one side to be able to scrap," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

President Barack Obama's outgoing administration touted the July 2015 deal reached between Iran and six world powers as a way to pre-empt Tehran's suspected drive to develop atomic weapons by curbing its enrichment of uranium. In return Obama, a Democrat, agreed to a lifting of sanctions on Iran.

The Republican Trump called the nuclear pact a "disaster" and "the worst deal ever negotiated" during his election campaign and said it could lead to a "nuclear holocaust".

The accord removed sanctions in return for Iran reducing the number of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges by two-thirds, capping its level of uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile, and accepting U.N. inspections to verify compliance.

"Our strong preference as a party that has remained fully committed and implemented its side of the bargain (...) is for every member and participant and for international community to continue to remain committed to the agreement," Zarif a news conference in Bratislava after meeting his Slovak counterpart Miroslav Lajcak.

"But it doesn't mean we don't have other options if the USA unwisely decides to move away from its obligations under the agreement," he said when asked whether Tehran would start enrichment again if the Trump administration ditched the deal.

When asked whether he hoped for a similarly good working relationship with Trump's future secretary of state as he had with the outgoing John Kerry, Zarif said it would not be necessary.

"We had a long nuclear negotiation between Iran and the United States. I do not expect another negotiation, certainly not on the nuclear issue, but nor on any other subjects so that I would need to establish a same type of contact with the new secretary of state, whoever that may be," he said.

Former U.S. House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich - who has said he would renegotiate the nuclear deal with Iran, has been floated as a potential secretary of state under Trump, political sources said.

(Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[Housecarl]

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THE PERILS OF CONVENTIONAL DETERRENCE BY PUNISHMENT

MICHAEL PETERSEN
NOVEMBER 11, 2016
Comments 1

Too often, discussions of how to conventionally deter Chinese or Russian aggression occur in the absence of any thinking about whether a stated deterrence strategy is feasible if a war were to break out. In other words, there is frequently a disconnect between deterrence theory and real-world war fighting practice. Only very rarely do planners and strategists explicitly link the two in ways that are workable from the diplomatic, strategic, and operational viewpoints. Even then, they do so in incomplete ways. If conventional deterrence is to be credible and successful – if it is to mean anything – it must be tied to a realistic, workable military solution that is clearly communicated to a potential enemy. To deter an adversary, that adversary must understand that its enemy has a viable military answer to the adversarial challenge.

Deterrent or kinetic counters to aggression revolve around notions of either punishing or denying the enemy its objectives. Punishment involves inflicting a level of pain (or “cost,” in Thomas Schelling’s formulation) on an attacker that exceeds the benefits of attacking. Put another way, the aggressor will suffer a strategically unfavorable outcome that is disproportionate to the potential gain. Frequently, this concept includes retaliating against military forces as well as the enablers of military aggression, such as infrastructure and industrial targets. Denial, on the other hand, involves efforts to make the target of aggression indigestible and therefore too difficult to take and hold. Rather than make the imposition of cost the focus of effort, it instead attempts to lower the benefits of aggression.

It is worth taking a moment to consider what punishment actually means in the real world of military operations. While most Cold War methods of deterrence by punishment rested on U.S. and allied nuclear capabilities, by the 1980s, NATO could conceivably deter Soviet conventional aggression in Central Europe with the threat of deep strikes into Warsaw Pact nations and simultaneous retaliatory offensives aimed at splitting Eastern European nations from the Soviet Union. In this way, as Samuel Huntington pointed out in 1983, NATO could punish Moscow by turning a liability, the Soviet Union’s strategic depth, into an advantage by using that depth to destroy the cornerstone of the Soviet Union’s security structure. All of this could be done without the prospect of military strikes on Russian territory. Huntington’s ideas were admittedly conceptual, and AirLand Battle remained the conventional warfighting strategy of choice, but his notion was nonetheless a practical possibility from a pure warfighting standpoint.

That option does not exist today. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and NATO’s eastward expansion means that Western nations are no longer able to punish Moscow by capitalizing on the fears and weaknesses of its allies. Likewise, the geography of the Taiwan Straits and the East China Sea limits options for deterrence by punishment. In practical terms, this means that a military strategy focusing on punishment makes it necessary to strike the aggressor nation’s sanctuary, that is, Russian or Chinese soil, in order to destroy its military power and ensure that it pays enough cost to forego further aggression.

The Challenges of Conventional Deterrence by Punishment

Today, conventional deterrence by punishment is increasingly risky for several inter-related reasons. In the first place, both countries make their strategic determinations based on investment risk and reward, and by evaluating U.S. and allied commitments to defending the international status quo by force. While the U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) have challenged China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, Beijing might reasonably come to the conclusion that Washington would balk at going to war in defense of the Philippines’ claims to the Second Thomas Shoal, the unoccupied Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, or its new South China Sea island bases, especially if such a conflict automatically meant carrying the war to the Chinese mainland, seemingly the logical endpoint of a punishment strategy. Given a deterrence posture predicated on this risky strategy, Beijing might rightly ask, as The Economist has, “Would anyone go to war with us over these?”

Put another way, would the United States really bomb Shanghai in response to a seizure of the Senkakus, or St. Petersburg because Russia opened a land bridge to its Kaliningrad enclave? Moreover, southern and eastern NATO countries are already split on the relative scale of the Russian threat, with many southern European countries focused more on the burgeoning refugee crisis. President-elect Donald Trump’s more sanguine stance on Russia not only reveals a split in the U.S. approach to managing Moscow, but also seemingly makes the threat of punishment even less credible. Thus, many objects of Chinese and Russian aggression fall below a deterrence threshold that is based on punishment, and there is no clear consensus that the United States or its allies have the stomach for such an approach.

Furthermore, even if Washington were to go to war to punish Moscow’s or Beijing’s aggression, it is not clear that China and Russia find any level of conventional punishment to be a deterrent, given the potential payoff of an offensive military operation. For example, Beijing has long claimed that reunification of Taiwan with the mainland government is a Chinese core interest. If the U.S. Navy were to sink the entire East Sea Fleet, and yet Beijing still controlled Taiwan, the Chinese might still count that as a strategic win. Moscow has not similarly articulated its so-called core interests is such explicit ways. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that if Russia forcibly placed friendly or neutral governments in the Baltic countries, it would do so with the understanding that the strategic achievement of dividing NATO and expanding Moscow’s sphere of influence westward was worth the loss of the Baltic Fleet and perhaps even the destruction of the port of Baltiysk. Thus, the value of the contested object is quite different to each of the belligerents, so it is nearly impossible to know how much or what kind of punishment is actually necessary to both deter and to end a conflict.

There are also many reasons to be skeptical of the chances of operational success in pursuit of a strategy of punishment. Such an approach implies that not only would the aggressor’s forces conducting offensive operations be struck, but also that other military, political, industrial, and other targets that enabled the aggression would be destroyed. This raises significant operational challenges by requiring the United States and its partners to, at a minimum, conduct strikes both on the forward edge of the battle area and on heavily defended areas inside Chinese and Russian mainland borders. It is also not clear how much punishment would be enough to make a potential enemy cry uncle, feel sufficiently chastised to the point that it sees the errors of its ways, and agree to give up on future aggression. In any case, in the event that such a threshold could be determined, U.S. conventional capabilities are likely insufficient to punish Russia or China to a level that would convince either nation to forego the object of its aggression. Leaders in Moscow and Beijing are not stupid, and they understand how tall an order this actually is, even for the most powerful military on the planet. Therefore, the threat of military punishment, given the operational realities of executing the punishment, may not function as a credible deterrent.

Assuming that these operational challenges could be overcome, another and perhaps most important obstacle to a war fighting strategy based on punishment is that it risks rapid and uncontrolled escalation. Both governments rely to great extent on their respective militaries as a source of their legitimacy and a tool by which they can assert state prerogatives. Thus, removing their ability to conduct national defense on their own soil removes an essential element of legitimacy and state power, presenting a grave threat to the government itself and risking massive escalation. While China has declared a “no first use” nuclear policy, its doctrine of active defense leaves room for what it calls a “post-emptive” strike in those cases in which the prerogatives of the Chinese Communist Party are threatened.

Russia’s nuclear thinking is even more worrisome, as it contemplates the notion of “escalating to de-escalate,” that is, conducting tactical nuclear strikes to convince an enemy to back down. While Russia’s doctrine may well not be on such a hair-trigger behind closed doors, this is, in any case, an idea that has purchase inside the Kremlin and the Russian military. No matter what, both nations have announced unambiguously that they would use nuclear weapons to ensure the survival of the state. Unless they wished to suffer a major strategic defeat, the United States and its allies would be forced into their own nuclear response.

Thus, conventional strategic approaches based on punishing an enemy for its transgressions are unnecessarily escalatory, lack credibility from a deterrence perspective, and are loaded with operational unknowns. So what is to be done? The answer lies in an approach that starts with the operationally feasible and informs a war fighting strategy that can, in turn, fill in the deterrent picture.

Deterrence, Denial, and Operational Feasibility

A specific approach focusing on denial, both deterrent and kinetic, may be the answer. Rather than punish transgressions by conducting military operations that carry grave risk of escalation and that may not work anyway, the United States and its allies in NATO and the Pacific can embark on approaches that prevent the enemy from profiting from aggression by denying them the ability to achieve their strategic objectives. In short, they can turn the proverbial tables on Russia and China in wartime by imposing anti-access/area denial regimes over their objects of military aggression. Such an approach is more limited in its own objectives and therefore stands a better chance of success, is operationally more feasible, and carries with it less risk of escalation because it minimizes the need for homeland strikes unless absolutely necessary. For these reasons, it also constitutes a serious and credible conventional deterrent threat by providing limited, and therefore more achievable objectives.

This approach may vary depending on the theater. In Europe, as studies by RAND and the Center for a New American Security have pointed out, most NATO member nations are not currently optimized for conducting a large-scale, high-end ground war, nor does geography work in its favor. Russia’s contiguous borders with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (the latter through its enclave at Kaliningrad) and nominally cordial relationship with Belarus make geography Russia’s friend and NATO’s enemy. The answer to this conundrum cannot simply be a heavier ground force in the Baltics. Such a gesture may serve useful signaling purposes, but ground forces are an unrealistic way to practice denial. While ground troops are still essential in order to complicate Russian conventional and so-called hybrid warfare solutions, a heavy forward ground presence in the Baltics may make conflict with Russia a self-fulfilling prophecy and will put those forces in the crosshairs of Russia’s considerable force of surface-to-surface strike capabilities. Ground troops complicate Russia’s problem and are important, but in a conventional conflict fought with long-range munitions, their ability to survive and to deny Russia the ability profitably occupy and hold territory must be questioned.

Instead, the United States and NATO must go with their strengths. A contest with Russia, as it did in Cold War scenarios, is going to hinge on whether or not air and naval air power can penetrate Russian air defenses in time to defeat Russia’s vulnerable troops at the forward edge of the battle area, as well as follow-on forces as they cross the border. While Russia’s air defense is formidable, there are a variety of tactical strike tools already in the NATO arsenal that, when used in concert, can enable this sort of strategic approach. Ultimately, NATO must make the object of Russian aggression too difficult to occupy, or even risk occupying, through use of its unmatched ability to strike and destroy targets on the ground.

As a deterrent mechanism, a denial strategy that is backed up by this more operationally feasible approach based on air power, denial from a distance, and, yes, a contingent of ground troops, might force Moscow to ask if the juice is worth the squeeze in the first place. After all, while Russia’s ground forces look impressive on paper, only about 300,000 active-duty, professional contract military personnel (“kontraktniki”) are spread across the Russian military (by comparison, the U.S. Army alone has approximately 450,000 active duty professional soldiers). There is also reason to believe that the actual number of combat-effective units is much lower than Moscow would have the West believe, as the same forces show up in Ukraine and Syria, and even the professional troops are showing serious signs of strain.

Russian conventional forces are undoubtedly dangerous. However, their challenge is that while they are a threat to their militarily inferior neighbors in the post-Soviet space, their exposure to a wisely employed near-peer or superior military force is extremely risky. The prospect of losing their few effective troops to a vigorous defense may very well make Moscow think twice. Militarily, the task would be extremely difficult for NATO, given Russia’s excellent anti-access/area denial capabilities, but a strategy aimed at punishment would be doubly so.

In the far east, the same approach is more practical from the operational and strategic perspectives. In this case, the proximity of Taiwan and the East China Sea to China’s formidable mainland-based anti-access/area denial architecture makes a military strategy based on denial equally urgent. Full control of these areas would be difficult if not impossible to maintain, given the massive distances and vulnerabilities confronting U.S. forces, but continuously denying them to the enemy using air, surface, and undersea assets until a diplomatic solution can be worked out is a properly calibrated deterrence goal precisely because it is well within U.S. operational capabilities to achieve. Punishing the Chinese by destroying the foundations of their military power may not be, and Beijing undoubtedly knows this.

How? In Europe, the $3.4 billion European Reassurance Initiative is a good start, but these funds must be translated into sensible action. Certainly, investments in weapons that turn the Baltics into a painful-to-seize strategic porcupine are wise, as are efforts to engage and train both the conventional military and police forces in at-risk states. However, large-scale joint exercises that practice suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), close air support (CAS), and even anti-submarine warfare (ASW) are absolutely necessary as well, both from the perspective of sharpening tactical proficiency and deterring Moscow. Moreover, a more extensive forward stationing of surface naval and naval air assets, not only in U.S. bases at Rota and Souda Bay, but perhaps even in British ports such as Portsmouth, would also effectively project mobile, long-distance power from the sea to the land. Such efforts would communicate a more realistic deterrent mechanism and complicate Moscow’s military planning.

In the Western Pacific, a U.S. military pivot to Asia has already put significant resources at U.S. Pacific Command’s disposal. U.S. and partner naval forces should exercise joint counter-blockade and counter-invasion techniques that include SEAD and ground strike missions for potential contingencies in either Taiwan or the Spratly Islands. Added to this mix should be vigorous anti-surface warfare and ASW exercises, but also exercises that demonstrate the ability to quickly reinforce and resupply via maritime means areas that are potentially at risk of Chinese aggression.

Thus, it is air and naval forces that will have to carry much of the burden in an era when long-range precision guided munitions rule and geography favors the aggressors. Of course, the U.S. Army will have an important role to play in a European scenario, but as Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Army Europe has pointed out, Russia could overrun the Baltic more quickly than ground forces could be there to defend them, and positioning troops forward only plays to Russia strengths, not NATO’s.

In short, conventional deterrence doctrine, if it is to be credible, should be predicated on operational and strategic realities. It is unrealistic to expect that the United States and its partners can sufficiently punish an aggressor nation or do so in a way that does not lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, a strategic and operational approach that denies the enemy the object of its aggression and makes that object indigestible is militarily efficacious and, in being so, offers a much more improved prospect for deterrence in the first place. Operational warfighting realities make denial the only feasible option against Russia and China, and therefore, the only credible deterrent mechanism.


Dr. Michael Petersen is the Director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. government, Department of Defense, or the Department of the Navy.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.thecipherbrief.com/dead-drop/dead-drop-november-11

Dead Drop: November 11

NOVEMBER 11, 2016| ANONYMOUS

PLAN B: The Dead Drop was prepared to speculate this week about who would fill significant national security positions in a Hillary Clinton administration. Yeah, we didn’t exactly nail that one either. We are FAR less prepared to suggest who will play what role in a Trump administration. We hear that a national security advisor and White House chief of staff will be named quickly – perhaps before we have a chance to get this online. Retired General Michael Flynn is rumored to be a likely candidate to fill Susan Rice’s shoes at the NSC. For the CIA’s top job, we hear former Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI)—and once chairman of HPSCI—is the leading contender to be Director. He’s well-respected at Langley. Rogers is currently leading the Trump intelligence transition team. And what about the other jobs? Among the potential candidates are Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Senator Jeff Sessions and…and…well, we are sure there are fine folks out there. Other names we have heard bandied about include former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, former NSC and State legal advisor John Bellinger, retired LTG Keith Kellogg, Russian energy wonk and hedge fund guy Carter Page, scholar Walid Phares, and former CIA officer Clare Lopez (who once said that the Obama administration “switched sides” in the war on terror.)

Oh, and for what it’s worth, had Hillary Clinton won, there were only two candidates still standing for CIA Director—former Acting and Deputy Director Mike Morell and former Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. There were also two candidates for the DNI job: Morell and former Congresswoman Jane Harman.

ONE AWKWARD TRANSITION AVOIDED: On the eve of the election, CNN opined that in a Clinton administration, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was a possible candidate for CIA director. Feinstein has clashed memorably with current CIA director John Brennan (as colorfully illustrated by these Taiwanese animators.) If Feinstsein had been picked to replace Brennan, there probably would have been some frosty transition sessions. That won’t happen – but who goes to Langley? One possibility is Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, and longtime aide to the John Bolton.

BAD SPECULATION: To show how little thought the media put into who would get jobs in a Trump administration – late last week, MSNBC reported that General Flynn might be in line to be the Donald’s Secretary of Defense – forgetting that in order to maintain civilian control of the Pentagon, the law prohibits those who have worn the uniform in the past seven years from becoming SECDEF.

COMEYGATE: There’s been lots of chatter about the impact of FBI Director James Comey’s statements and letters may have had on the outcome of the presidential election. During the race for the White House, Comey managed to annoy just about everyone at one time or another. One senior former FBI official told The Dead Drop that while he didn’t think Comey’s actions changed the outcome – he viewed the letter to the Hill, suggesting that the email investigation had been reopened, as a stupid mistake which politicized the FBI. According to our source, the Director should have written out his recommendations and walked across the street and handed them to someone in DOJ to handle. Sure, AG Loretta Lynch had recused herself from the matter given her ill-advised tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, but somebody at DOJ should have made the decision on what to do. “I don’t care if it was the janitor at the DOJ,” our source said, preferring that anyone other than the Bureau make that call. Our source speculates that Comey may recognize that he has rendered himself ineffective and elect to turn in his badge. If that happens, we’re told it is likely to be a sudden announcement without any warning.

COMING HOME: Showtime has put out the first trailer for season six of Homeland. This year, Carrie Mathieson returns to the U.S. where a female candidate has just been elected president. Alex Gansa, the showrunner for the program, has described the president-elect as “a little bit Hillary Clinton, a little bit Donald Trump, and a little bit Bernie Sanders,” which may explain why so many characters in the trailer are shown holding their heads in their hands. The series returns January 15th.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: One of the positive aspects of a Trump win (if you ask us) is that a number of annoying celebrities had previously promised to leave the country (or the planet) should Donald beat Hillary.

MEOW MIX: Apparently, when you have a book out, you must go to great lengths to promote it. Case in point: Douglas Laux, whose book “Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” was published in April. Laux is featured in Catster magazine in an article called, “So You’re a Spy and You Have a Cat: How Does That Work?”

That, admittedly, is a question we have never pondered. We DID learn something from the article, however. Laux says he named his Russian Blue cat “Mr. Oleg Penkovsky” after the Soviet colonel who spied on behalf of the CIA in the 1960s. Being a good spy, the cat generally goes by a pseudonym, “Bubbins.” No doubt this helps preserve his cover.

POCKET LITTER: Stray threads of possible interest:

SECRET SPOTS: The Wall Street Journal had an article November 5 called, “A Traveler’s Guide to Washington, D.C.’s Top Secret Spots.” Sounds interesting – but the WSJ hid it behind their paywall – so unless you are a subscriber, don’t bother clicking on the link.
6TH SENSE: The website Collective Evolution has an article about the CIA’s old “Stargate” remote viewing program. It talks about an Air Force psychic who reportedly discovered a downed Soviet bomber in Africa after going into a trance. The article says the telepathy program ended suddenly, when “men in suits walked in and shut the program down.” Hey, shouldn’t some psychic have seen that coming?
FACECROOK: According to The Intercept, a private intelligence firm called IntelCenter, is exploring partnering with Morpho, a facial recognition outfit, to create an internet-based tool that would facilitate law enforcement, the military, and intelligence agencies “searching for the face of a terrorist as easy as running a Google search.”
ZERO DARK DIRTY: Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit to get their hands on all the porn Osama bin Laden was hording when Navy SEALs arranged for him to meet his maker back in 2011. Per Secrecy News, the CIA is fighting the request, since the material is stashed in their “operational files,” which are exempt from FOIA.
WHAT’S ON THEIR NIGHTSTAND? (Our contributors tell us about what they’re currently reading)

Kevin Hulbert, former CIA Station Chief:

“The Old Man and the Sea (for about the 20th time) by Ernest Hemingway because my 11-year old has to do a book report on it! But, I’m also reading, Afghanistan Decoded: Perspectives in Domestic and Foreign Affairs, written by Mahmud Kaber Khalili, about an Afghan whose father was in the Northern Alliance and who fought with Ahmed Shah Massood back in the day.”

SECURITY QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“I’m convinced the feelings he (President-elect Donald Trump) may have had about Russia during the campaign will be somewhat mitigated by the understanding of the depth of Russia’s aggression and intent.”

-Retired General Jack Keane

BE A DEAD DROP ‘INSIDER.’ If you have your own Dead Drop intel to share, drop us a note at thedeaddrop@thecipherbrief.com

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/11/11/us-japan-rok_security_partnership_110335.html

U.S.-Japan-ROK Security Partnership: The Concept of a "Virtual Alliance"

By Christopher Lee
November 11, 2016

“Virtual alliance” still remains practically non-existent among the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (hereafter, South Korea). With new leadership on the horizon for the United States and South Korea, it is time to revisit the idea of a “virtual alliance” among the three nations. The United States, Japan, and South Korea all share strong democratic values, and the United States is a security partner of both South Korea and Japan, committed to their security as a result of defense treaties ratified in 1953 and 1960, respectively. Nuclear threats from North Korea and the rise of China provide the primary basis for these relationships, and U.S. support remains high in both countries all but assures the continuation of these alliances in the future. Despite historical and territorial disputes, the current maritime security situation in Southeast Asia affords a strong motivation for increased cooperation between South Korea and Japan. Therefore, a virtual alliance can be achieved through a revitalized US-Japan partnership, the continuation of a sound US-South Korea security relationship, and most importantly, a strong security cooperation linkage between Tokyo and Seoul.

What has remained an issue is the bitterness of Japan-South Korea relationship. As the weakest link of the “virtual alliance,” Japan and South Korea is the greatest obstacle the United States faces. This is truly disappointing as South Korea persists its sense of historic distrust for its neighbor. To South Korean policymakers, Japan and Prime Minster Shinzo Abe remain a major concern of today and future threat of tomorrow. Seoul’s viewpoint repeatedly collides with Washington’s, whose national security strategy rests upon the establishment of robust US-Japan-South Korea relations. What is more, the United States wants a greater Japanese involvement in regional security affairs within the framework of Japan’s Peace Constitution, but Seoul perceives Japan’s latest security and defense reforms only as a dangerous re-militarization.

Evidenced by remarks made by former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Vice President Joseph Biden during their trips to the region in 2013 and President Barack Obama’s attempt as an intermediary role in the nuclear security summit at The Hague in 2015, the United States is highly interested in a more cooperative Japan-South Korea relationship. President Obama acted as a mediator in order to bring Washington’s two biggest allies in the region—Japan and South Korea—together. Yet, their longtime bitterness over the issue of comfort women and their constant territorial dispute over Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) in the East Sea continue to severely damage their relationship. That being said, in order to achieve rapprochement between Prime Minster Abe and President Park Geun-Hye of South Korea, President-elect Donald Trump should act more decisively to repair relations.

During future visits to Japan, President-elect Trump needs to practice great diplomacy so as to unite, rather than affront his fellow ally state. While showing compassion towards the Korea fatigue in relation to the comfort women issue, the President should persuade Prime Minister Abe to discontinue Tokyo’s provoking rhetoric regarding the matter, such as revising the so-called Kono Statement or visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine. When President-elect Trump visits Tokyo, while highlighting the alliance, he should strive to further deepen their economic ties, including through the latest Trans-Pacific Partnership. Moreover, he must highlight that the cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea may resolve a range of political challenges against China.

Likewise, when visiting South Korea, President-elect Trump needs to reaffirm the U.S.’ commitment to a stronger alliance with South Korea and remind President Park that repeated nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches from North Korea call for a more ferocious pursuit of denuclearization. Moreover, the President-elect should persuade Madam Park that Japan’s latest security and defense reforms do not signal re-militarization. It is crucial that the President-elect clarify Tokyo’s decisions are merely defensive measures taken against Beijing’s coercion and intimidation of late. He should continue to explain that Japan’s reinterpretation of its right to collective self-defense and its reversal on the ban on exporting weapons are actions forced by China in order to protect Japan’s Senkaku Islands (Daioyu Islands in Chinese). Moreover, the President-elect should encourage Park to accept Japan’s sincere apology regarding comfort women and move on from this troubling part of history. The President-elect should also reinforce Park that a volatile, yet nuclear North Korea still exists in the Korean Peninsula to date and is the most dangerous threat to her country. Additionally, in case of the North’s demise, South Korea should review collapse scenarios and develop joint contingency plans with Japan to best respond. The President-elect should convince Park that one cannot indefinitely dwell on the past without jeopardizing the future.

As aforementioned, historical issues, as well as differences in strategy serve to keep relations between Japan and South Korea on an unstable footing. Significant challenges still remain as how to bring the three sides closer in a way that fulfills all three countries’ security interests and ensures a broader regional stability. Ralph Cossa’s use of an old Russian proverb best sums up the current challenge: “forget the past and lose an eye; dwell on the past and lose both eyes.” It is time for the people of Japan and South Korea to concede their resentments and advance towards rapprochement with both eyes wide open. As the Japan-South Korea bilateral relationship strengthens, US-Japan-South Korea can present a sense of unity in the U.S. led block against North Korea’s nuclear brinksmanship and China’s belligerence in Asia, thus naturally rebooting the “virtual alliance.”

Christopher Lee is an active duty Major in the U.S. Army. He holds a B.S. from West Point and an M.A. from Columbia University. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in International Cooperation from Yonsei University. He has served for eight years as an intelligence officer, and is currently serving as a Foreign Area Officer for the Northeast Asia region. Chris can be reached via Twitter @chrislee733.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/201...-growing-backlash-against-an-iron-grip?page=2

November 10, 2016 12:00 pm JST

The growing backlash against an iron grip

Discontent on the mainland is less open but seems almost as pervasive.

As things stand, there is no political organization that could replace the Communist Party. What Xi fears is not that the party will be ousted but that it will lose its iron-clad control over the state.

For that reason, his regime has been clamping down on just about all aspects of society. In July 2015, it launched a crackdown on hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists, and its grip on the media shows no sign for loosening.

Even Yanhuang Chunqiu, a prestigious reformist magazine once praised by Xi's own father, fell victim to the clampdown, with its entire management team being forced to resign in July.

Though media outlets are expected to act as the "mouth" of the Communist Party, some journalists have managed to criticize this state of affairs through photographs or poems. But now even this limited freedom of expression seems to be rapidly disappearing.

SILENT SABOTAGE While it may be too early to write the Communist Party's eulogy, the backlash against Xi's heavy-handed style is undoubtedly eroding his regime.

Since taking power, Xi has implemented a sweeping anti-corruption campaign as a way to take down political foes and consolidate his power.

Many central and local government bureaucrats, to avoid being targeted in the campaign, have started putting in less effort at work.

"I have nothing to do today again," said Liu Ping (not his real name), a 49-year-old local government worker in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

For the past two years, Liu has arrived at work at 8:30 a.m., passed the time by reading a newspaper, had a free lunch at the cafeteria and then taken a nap before leaving for the day at 3:00 p.m.

Liu works for a division tasked with attracting companies to boost the local economy, but the types of activities this sort of work usually involves has come under scrutiny in Xi's anti-corruption drive.

"It's better for me to do nothing than to do my job and fall under suspicion," he said, adding that his colleagues are all slacking off to varying degrees.

Officials across the country are doing likewise, even some of those at major state-owned oil company China National Petroleum Corp.

Members of CNPC's overseas business team have repeatedly been told by their superiors not to find any more projects. They have been put on notice that they will be dismissed immediately if they are suspected of wrongdoing.

Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top decision-making body, fell victim to Xi's anti-corruption campaign.

Before his fall from power, Zhou was widely seen as the head of China's "oil faction." CNPC was also targeted in Xi's corruption crackdown, with many of its executives being detained.

Because of the great risk involved in publicly defying Xi, many bureaucrats and officials feel their only option is to keep their heads down and avoid rocking the boat until the political storm passes. Their intentional slacking off, however, constitutes a kind of sabotage, which just goes to show that the more tightly Xi squeezes, the shakier his grip on power becomes.

(Nikkei)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-blast-idUSKBN1352LD

WORLD NEWS | Fri Nov 11, 2016 | 8:34am EST

Taliban storm German consulate in Afghan city, four killed

Video

By Abdul Matin and Sabine Siebold | MAZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN/BERLIN
Taliban militants stormed the German consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, ramming its outer wall with a truck bomb before battling security forces in a late-night attack that killed at least four people, officials said.

The explosion, triggered by a suicide bomber, caused extensive damage to the building and shattered windows as far as 5 km (3 miles) away, a NATO spokesman said. A local doctor said the blast and subsequent firefight also wounded 120 people.

No consular staff were among the victims, but Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germany would review its lead role in the international mission in northern Afghanistan, where violence has escalated sharply during 2016.

Thursday's attack also underlines one of the tougher foreign policy challenges facing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office in January. U.S. combat operations against the Taliban largely ended in 2014, but thousands of its soldiers remain in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.

The Taliban said the attack was in retaliation for NATO air strikes against a village near the northern city of Kunduz last week in which more than 30 people, many of them children, were killed.

Heavily armed fighters, including suicide bombers, had been sent "with a mission to destroy the German consulate general and kill whoever they found there", the Islamist militant movement's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said by telephone.

Taliban forces came close to over-running Kunduz last month, a year after briefly capturing it in their biggest success in Afghanistan's 15-year-long war.

HUGE BLAST

The NATO spokesman said at least one vehicle packed with explosives was rammed into the high outer wall surrounding the consulate, but authorities were investigating if a second car had been involved.

"The extent of damage to the city is huge," said Abdul Razaq Qaderi, deputy police chief of Balkh province. "This kind of an attack, bringing a truck full of explosives and blowing it up in the city, had never happened before.

"The city is still recovering from the shock."

Noor Mohammad Faiz, the head doctor in Mazar-i-Sharif hospital, said four bodies and 120 wounded, most hurt by flying glass, had been brought to the hospital.

Qaderi said German troops had shot two men on motorcycles who did not comply with orders to stop. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that incident was being investigated.

Foreign Minister Steinmeier said six people were killed. All German consular employees were safe and uninjured, he added.

After coordinating the response on Thursday, the government's crisis task force was meeting again Friday and would review Germany's role in the Afghan mission.

"It was only possible to defeat the attackers and beat them back after fighting that occurred at the compound and in the building," Steinmeier said.

Germany, which heads Resolute Support in northern Afghanistan, has about 850 soldiers at a base on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, with another 1,000 troops coming from 20 partner countries.

INTO THE EARLY HOURS

The explosion occurred about an hour before midnight local time, a spokesman for the German military joint forces command in Potsdam said.

Witnesses reported sporadic gunfire from around the consulate and said the blast had shattered windows in a wide area around the compound.

"It was a prepared attack for which we made all arrangements," the Taliban's Mujahid said. "First a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden vehicle rammed the main building of the consulate and that enabled other fighters to move in and kill all the foreigners there."

He said dozens of German soldiers and intelligence personnel were killed in the attack. The Taliban often exaggerate casualties caused by its operations.

After Afghan special forces, German security personnel and NATO's quick reaction protection force intervened, fighting was over by the early hours of the morning, said Sayed Kamal Sadat, police chief of Balkh.

At least one suspect was arrested from the area of explosion, officials said.

The heavily protected consulate is in a large building close to the Blue Mosque in the center of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Indian consulate was also attacked by militant gunmen earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in BERLIN, James Mackenzie, Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by John Stonestreet)

RELATED COVERAGE

VIDEO: Taliban claims German consultate attack
German foreign ministry sees no change in commitment to Afghan mission after attack

 

[Housecarl]

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http://time.com/4568280/paris-attack-france-terrorism-isis-muslims/

WORLD FRANCE

One Year After the Paris Attacks France Is More Frightened—and Exhausted—Than Ever

Vivienne Walt/Paris @vivwalt 4:13 PM ET

French Muslims feel unfairly targeted, while police are under the gun

The doorbell rang at 4.30 a.m., politely at first and then more insistently. When Drisia, a French Muslim citizen, finally staggered out of bed and opened the door, she faced 10 armed police officers in riot helmets. They stormed into her apartment in a town in the French Alps, rifling through her drawers while her seven-year-old daughter cowered nearby. Days after that police raid on Dec. 3 last year, her employers fired her—after 10 years of service—from her administrative job with the company that manages the Mont Blanc Tunnel connecting France to Italy, on the suspicion of links with potential Islamist terrorists. “I asked what had happened, but they said the decision was made at a level far above them,” Drisia told TIME on Thursday, adding that she was still too shaken to have her full name in print. “There was no explanation,” she says. “They marched me out like a suspect.”

Read More: Putin Cancels France Trip After President Hollande Accuses Russia of War Crimes in Syria

Drisia is hardly alone. France has been under a state of emergency since ISIS sympathizers mounted the deadly Paris attacks last November 13, massacring 130 people in the bloodiest terror attack in years. President François Hollande imposed the raft of supposedly temporary security measures within hours of the attacks, while the country was reeling from the bloodbath. The new rules allowed police to raid houses across the country for the first time during nighttime hours, and with little judicial oversight; place suspects under house arrest for months; ban street demonstrations; and monitor millions of people’s communications. Since then pieces of these supposedly temporary measures have migrated into French law, including a broad expansion of surveillance powers for police and intelligence agencies. “We are in a changed time, and in many ways, we also have a changed people,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the architect and overseer of the new tactics, told local magistrates and police chiefs at a gathering in Paris on November 7.

This Sunday, France marks the first anniversary of the Paris attacks with solemn ceremonies to honor the dead and finally move beyond grief and unease. And yet, one year on, it is far from clear whether the government’s anti-terrorism strategy is working. In interviews with regular French people over the months, almost all say they are resigned to the fact that another terror attack is inevitable, somewhere, sometime. Desperate to avoid a repeat of the Paris massacre, the government has reassured few people that they are capable of averting assaults especially from lone-wolf attackers—and indeed some believe its anti-terrorism campaign might even have inflamed the situation.

Read More: Dismantling the Calais ‘Jungle’ Camp Won’t Be Enough

In a report released last week, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights, or FIDH, says France’s anti-terror tactics have been “a serious setback to the rule of law,” but asserts that the country is no safer from jihadist attacks. Describing dozens of police raids on seemingly innocent people, the report notes, “There is little evidence that this approach is working and it comes at a cost to fundamental rights.”

Lawyers tackling cases under the state of emergency say police have largely targeted Muslims who look conservative—men with long beards or women in long dresses and headscarfs. Many, they say, are regarded in the streets and at work as potential jihadists—a feeling they believe the state of emergency has only helped to cement. “The government created a theory that when you are becoming more and more religious, in an orthodox way, you can become a terrorist, or make an allegiance to terrorism,” says Arié Alimi, a Paris lawyer, who is suing the government in about 15 different cases of wrongful arrest or police abuse under the state of emergency. “These people have nothing to do with terrorism,” says Alimi, himself an observant Jew. “They are just Muslims.”

Read More: The ‘Left Behind’ Refugees of the Jungle in Calais

Indeed, the state of emergency has targeted almost entirely the 5 million or so French Muslims—the biggest Muslim population in Europe. That is hardly surprising, since the jihadist attackers have all been Muslim, and have acted in the name of aAl-Qaeda or ISIS. “There is this kind of witch hunt where you are looking for anybody related to conservative Muslim movements,” says Marwan Mohammad, executive director of the French Collective against Islamophobia, or CCIF. He his group has received 320 reports of police abuse since the Paris attacks. “The vast majority involved are innocent families with no reason to suspect them.”

Alimi says several of the clients suing for police abuses or wrongful arrests under the state of emergency are French converts to Islam. Those converts are frequently more religious than Muslim-born French people. The converts Alimi represents include Willy Benali, a 30-year-old , a sniper for the French military who has fought in Gabon, Central African Republic and Kosovo, and whom police raided shortly after the Paris attacks. Another is a man in the Val D d‘Oise region northwest of Paris, who runs an import-export business, and who did not want to be named in print; he too is a convert to Islam, whose Jewish grandparents were killed in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. Shortly after the Paris attacks local authorities, and placed him under house arrest for four months, eventually clearing him after Alimi sued the government. In the court findings, the magistrate describes what led authorities to suspect the businessman, saying that ISIS has instructed French Muslims to adopt “techniques of dissimulation,” in order to hide their jihadist allegiances. “When you read the conclusions of the administrators, there are very racist, disciminatory remarks,” Alimi says.

Gallery

At the heart of these accusations are the police themselves—and they aren’t happy either. Heavily criticized for failing to stop a series of terror attacks, they are on a constant lookout for the next eruption of jihadist violence—a terrifying prospect that is always in the back of many French people’s minds. “We have the means now, but it is not sure that they won’t be further attacks,” says Christophe Crépin, spokesman for the national police trade union, UNSA. “There is a savagery that is very, very strong now.”

Crépin says police feel deeply rattled, even burned out, in the face of a cryptic and nimble enemy that has outmaneuvered them. “The state of emergency has helped us in terms of raids,” he says. “But it mobilizes a lot of police. And if you never have a vacation, and you are always under stress, you cannot function.”

The limitations of the police tactics were starkly clear last July 14—Bastille Day. That day President François Hollande trumpeted his anti-terrorism success in a televised holiday address and said he would soon end the state of emergency. Hours later, however, a Tunisian immigrant delivery man, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, rammed a giant truck into a holiday crowd on the Nice promenade, killing 87 people—France’s second-biggest terror attack, after Paris.

After the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015, which killed 17 people in separate incidents over a few days, the Nice attack was the third jihadist assault in 18 months. Worse, it appeared to emerge from nowhere. Despite months of police raids, intelligence monitoring, and hundreds of arrests, Bouhlel, 31, had no police record and no known jihadist connections or sympathies. While ISIS claimed him as its “soldier,” that was news to the police, and his friends. “He didn’t do Ramadan, he didn’t pray,” one acquaintance told TIME in Nice. Within hours of the Nice massacre, Hollande immediately reversed himself, reimposing the emergency measures; days later, the French parliament made some of those measures law.

Now it is left to lawyers like Alimi to sort out the consequences—and to those targeted to prove their innocence. Drisia, the woman fired from her job at the Mont Blanc Tunnel in the French Alps, has yet to find new employment. With the help of the organization CCIF, she won a six-figure compensation package in court from the company—the exact figure remains secret under the settlement—and a small sum from the regional authorities. While that has helped, she says she has struggled to find new work, especially since local newspapers widely publicized her firing, saying she was “on the path to radicalization.” Drisia, who is a single mother of a girl recovering from a brain tumor, believes police targeted her as a suspected jihadist, because “I was someone who adhered to religion even though my daughter had cancer,” she says. “It has affected me a lot. This has been a very difficult year.”

For France, there are likely to be more tough times to come.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-fears-outright-ethnic-war-south-sudan-163218380.html

UN fears 'ethnic war' in South Sudan, EU boosts refugee funding

AFP
November 11, 2016

Juba (AFP) - The UN's special advisor on preventing genocide, Adama Dieng, said he feared escalating ethnic violence in South Sudan, as the EU offered emergency aid for the swelling number of refugees on Friday.

Speaking in Yumbe in neighbouring Uganda, the EU 's humanitarian aid commissioner offered 78 million euros ($85.2 million) to help the refugees, with 30 million earmarked for Uganda.

"I am truly alarmed by what I saw today," said Christos Stylianides. "I think that the crisis is largely underestimated. The needs are huge and they continue to grow."

Uganda, one of the world's poorest countries, currently hosts 530,000 South Sudanese refugees, 330,000 of whom fled fighting in the world's newest country this year alone.

The UN's Dieng meanwhile warned of "extreme polarisation among some tribal groups, which has increased in certain places" since July's fierce fighting in Juba between President Salva Kiir's largely Dinka soldiers, and his arch-foe Riek Machar's mostly Nuer rebels.

"Inflammatory stereotyping and name-calling have been accompanied by targeted killings and rape of members of particular groups, by violent attacks against individuals or communities on the basis of their perceived political affiliation," the UN advisor said at the close of a week-long visit.

Dieng said that "what began as political conflict has transformed into what could become an outright ethnic war".

"There is a strong risk of violence escalating along ethnic lines with potential for genocide," he added.

"With the stalling of the implementation of the peace agreement, the current humanitarian crisis, stagnating economic and proliferation of arms, all the ingredients are there for escalation of violence."

South Sudan, the world's newest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011 but plunged into civil war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and displacing more than 2.5 million people.

A peace deal between Kiir and Machar in August last year had raised hopes of peace, until clashes erupted once again in July in the capital.

Dieng said that in Yei, in the southwest, he had "heard reports of violence that included targeted killings, assault... mutilation and rape by armed men, some in uniform and others not.

"There are cases of barbarous use of machetes which reminds (us) of Rwanda," he added, referring to the 1994 genocide there.

"Genocide is a process, it doesn’t happen overnight. And because it is a process and one that takes time... it can be prevented," he added.

"I urge the people of South Sudan to reconcile."

Stylianides urged donors to step up aid while thanking Uganda for its help to the rapidly increasing numbers of people seeking shelter from conflict.

Touring Bidibidi refugee settlement which, since its establishment in August, has swollen to become the third biggest refugee camp in the world, Stylianides said: “I promise to continue assistance as long as it takes. You are not alone.”

Bidibidi is home to more than 215,000 refugees who each receive a plot of land to cultivate and materials to build a basic shelter. An average of about 2,400 new refuges arrive each day.

 

[Housecarl]

DOT....

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/world/india-japan-nuclear-deal/

India and Japan sign civil nuclear deal

By Sugam Pokharel and Chandrika Narayan, CNN
Updated 12:42 PM ET, Fri November 11, 2016

(CNN)India and Japan signed a landmark civil nuclear energy agreement in Tokyo on Friday that was six years in the making.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe inked the deal during the annual India-Japan Bilateral Summit in Tokyo.

The deal -- which was firmed up during the 2015 visit of Abe to India -- will allow Japan to export nuclear power equipment and technology to India.

"Today's signing of the agreement for cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy marks a historic step in our engagement to build a clean energy partnership," Modi said in a joint press conference after the accord was signed. "Our cooperation in this field will help us combat the challenge of climate change. I also acknowledge the special significance that such an agreement has for Japan."

Vikas Swarup, India's Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, tweeted that it was a landmark deal for a cleaner, greener world. "Without doubt, our destinies are interlinked," he said.

"This agreement is a legal framework which will ensure India will take a responsible action regarding the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Abe said at the press conference.

"It leads to India virtually taking part in the international regime. It matches with our country's stance to promote nonproliferation and a world without nuclear weapons."

The deal has a separate "nullification clause" that will cancel the pact if India conducts a nuclear test - a guarantee for Japan to limit its technology for peaceful and commercial purposes.

There has been political resistance to the deal in Japan, especially after the disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. The meltdown, the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl incident, increased safety concerns.

India is also the first country that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty to have such an agreement with Japan, where two atomic bombs were detonated during World War ll. But other nations have signed civil nuclear deals with India - including France, Australia and the United States, which inked a similar deal a decade ago.

The two leaders also underscored the rising importance of the Indo-Pacific region as a key driver for prosperity in the world, according to a joint statement released by India's Ministry of External Affairs.

In addition to the nuclear deal, the two nations have agreed to explore plans to build high-speed rail lines in India based on Japan's bullet train technology, and increase cooperation in engineering and manufacturing.

 

[vestige]

post election bump