My Blog http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.in today has crossed 8 Million views.

http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.in

On 21 July 2018 my blog crossed seven million mark. It took three and half months to reach from seven million to 8 million hits. 

The page views of last month is as under : 

My observations on the page views are : 

Language Issue. Latin America does not view this blog probably for language reasons. Same for Russia, Japan. 

China has banned my site for viewing. When in China I could not access. 

No idea why hits from Africa is very less. 

In India very few people read serious issues. A blog on Bollywood would have attracted much more eyeballs. Same is the condition in South Asian countries. Many a times Singapore has more page views than India. 

Google is not willing to put ads because of some policy issues. I don’t want to make it a paid site. Any idea how can I generate some revenue so that I can employ some people to carry this forward. Doing it alone is a tough job. 

I am not getting younger!

India Faces New Political Configurations in the Neighbourhood

Arvind Gupta

Source Link

Many unexpected but important developments are taking place in India’s neighbourhood. New political dispensations with new agendas have emerged in Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan. Besides, one would have to await the elections in Bangladesh in the next few months. Presidential elections are due in Afghanistan next year. India’s “Neighbourhood First” policy will have to take into account these changes and tweaked, if need be.

The United States' Perpetual War in Afghanistan

By Tanisha M. Fazal and Sarah Kreps

Source Link

In October, the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan will turn 17. The human and material costs of what has become the United States’ longest-ever war are colossal. More than 2,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed and over 20,000 have been injured. The UN estimates that nearly 20,000 Afghan civilians have been killed and another 50,000 injured since 2009 alone. The United States has spent some $877 billion on the war. The Trump administration’s recent initiative to seek direct peace talks with the Taliban—a first since the start of the war in 2001—highlights that Washington is actively looking for new ways to wind down its involvement in the conflict. But why has the U.S. intervention lasted so long in the first place?

Southeast Asia’s Populism Is Different but Also Dangerous

by Joshua Kurlantzick

Source Link

While populism is sweeping through Europe, North America, and now Brazil, it is also making gains in Southeast Asia. The region’s autocratic-leaning populists—those who have already ruled and those who are attempting to win power—use similar strategies: positioning themselves as outsiders who can solve problems where elites have failed, offering brutal approaches to crime, and targeting vulnerable groups within societies. Ultimately, these actions undermine democracy. The Philippines and Thailand, two of the region’s six biggest economies, already have autocratic-leaning populist leaders, and a third, Indonesia, could be run by one after a presidential election next year. The emergence of such populism could further erode democracy and stability in a region that had, until the past decade, been growing freer.

How Southeast Asian Populism Is Different

China's Number of Births Just Keeps Dropping

By Shannon Tiezzi

Source Link

China officially approved a two-child policy in October 2015, ending decades of generally allowing families to have only one child (though there were many exceptions added throughout the years). Faced with a rapidly aging population, China’s government hoped the new two-child policy – coupled with a blitz of government propaganda encouraging more births – would help boost the birth rate.

Three years later, and that hope, as many experts predicted, is unfulfilled.

America's Imaginary China Threat

by Amitai Etzioni

Source Link

There are many reasons to criticize China: Its human-rights record is abysmal; it still does not respect intellectual property; and it pressures smaller nations to follow its policies. For example, China is known for applying that pressure on issues concerning Taiwan and Tibet. However, the charge that it is out to become a global power seeking to replace the United States and impose its own world order is not nearly as self evident.

Media reports in recent days have find that the United States is sliding toward a Cold War with China as its ambitions have risen and it is increasing throwing it weight around. Mark Landler, writing for the New York Times , reports that Trump’s trade policies have put the United States and China on the cusp of a new Cold War. Four Wall Street Journal reporters find the Trump administration is “taking aim at military, political and economic targets in Beijing and signaling a new and potentially much colder era in U.S.-China relations.” John H. Maurer recently revealed in the National Interest that China plans to conquer the world with its navy. Vice President Mike Pence stated that Beijing “ is attempting to advance its strategic influence across the world to tilt the international order in their favor.” Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that “China’s goal is world supremacy.”

The Trump Curveball: This Is What China Didn't Expect

by Gordon G. Chang

Source Link

A long-planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping, scheduled for the sidelines of the G20 meeting at the end of next month in Buenos Aires, looks like it might not occur. And even if the get-together takes place, it does not appear it will be productive. There may even be no discussions on the topic of the moment, the so-called “trade war.”

The U.S. won’t talk to Beijing about trade until the Chinese, in the words of the Wall Street Journal , submit a “concrete proposal to address Washington’s complaints about forced technology transfers and other economic issues.” For many reasons, China’s officials are unlikely to do that.

Call it, as the Wall Street Journal does, an “impasse.”

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: EXTREMISTS’ EVOLVING STRATEGY

Source Link

The U.S. State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism recently released its annual report on terrorism. Thereport concludes that despite the success of efforts to dismantle ISIS, “the terrorist landscape grew more complex.” Extremist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates are proving resilient and adjusting to heightened counterterrorism pressure with new attempts to destabilize, seize, and govern territory in fragile states. This shift in extremist strategy underscores the need for the kind of “preventive” approach outlined in the interim findings of the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States.

The State Department’s report finds that even as ISIS lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, it regrouped, spreading decentralized networks of foreign fighters to fuel insurgencies in other fragile states like Libya and in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Why Jordan Is Next for ISIS

by Emily Przyborowski

Source Link

The Islamic State may be receding in Iraq and Syria, but its militants may soon find safe harbor nearby—in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Jordan’s reputation as a stable nation and a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has positioned it at the forefront of the U.S.-led “War on Terror.” But growing signs within the Kingdom suggest that the country, for all of its ties to the West, could soon become a serious post –Syrian target for the Islamic State.

In August 2018 , a terrorist attack in the city of Al-Salt killed four Jordanian security officers and injured sixteen civilians. Five Jordanian nationals subscribing to the radical ideology of the Islamic State were arrested following the attack. The attackers had large amounts of homemade explosives buried nearby, which were intended for future attacks on civilians and security installations.

REMARKS BY SECRETARY MATTIS AT INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES MANAMA DIALOGUE

James Mattis - United States Secretary of Defense

Source Link

Thank you, Dr. Chipman, and Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. It's truly a pleasure to be back here at the Manama Dialogue. A special thank you for the foreign minister of Bahrain for its traditional and well-known warm hospitality to borrow the words of a former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, Bahrain has and I quote here, "pound-for-pound." So, thank you very much to Bahrain for its continued leadership in this regard.

Hosting the Manama dialogue is I think a prime example of Bahrain's leadership making clear that the size of a nation's territory does not determine the impact of its commitment to regional security. And now in its 14th iteration this worthwhile forum, the Manama Dialogue, brings together from across the Middle East and across the globe those committed to crafting a better future and exchanging ideas and sharing best practices.

The Economic Crisis Is Over. Populism Is Forever.

BY JAMES TRAUB 

Source Link

Angela Merkel couldn’t have remained Germany’s chancellor forever. Even Helmut Kohl, who was chairman of the Christian Democratic Union and Germany’s longest-serving postwar chancellor, had to step down after 16 years. Kohl’s tenure ended in the usual way: In 1998, with unemployment and economic dissatisfaction rising, voters chose the left-of-center Gerhard Schröder over the right-of-center Kohl. But today, unemployment is at an almost historic low of 3.4 percent. Both youth unemployment and long-term unemployment, typical drivers of the anti-incumbent spirit, are low (though so is annual growth, at 2 percent).

Yet Merkel announced this week that she is stepping down as party chair, which strongly suggests she will not serve out the remainder of her term. She has been done in, above all, by the refugee crisis, for which a growing number of German voters have blamed her ever since she famously told them, in the late summer of 2015, “Wir schaffen das”(“We can do this”). Many of those voters want to reclaim what they have suddenly come to regard as an endangered identity.

The Present and Future of Layered Missile Defense

By RAYTHEON

Source Link

In the face of expanding global threats to U.S. national security from North Korea and elsewhere, layered missile defense has become more important than ever. This vital capability requires that numerous cutting-edge technologies function together seamlessly to protect against catastrophe. And with the entire U.S. mainland in range of a potential intercontinental ballistic missile, there is precious little room for error.

The Department of Defense has a multi-pronged approach to this complex problem. Administered by the Missile Defense Agency, each layer of missile defense has unique capabilities and specific objectives designed for each type of threat, and these must be integrated to protect the homeland, partner nations, foreign military bases, and forward-deployed U.S. and allied forces.

BREAKING: Trump Orders DoD To Take Surprise $33B Budget Cut

By PAUL MCLEARY

Source Link

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has been ordered to slash its 2020 budget request by $33 billion, about five percent, the military’s No. 2 official said Friday. The surprise cut comes at a critical time for the department, which has enjoyed two years of budget growth under the Trump administration, and raises questions over key modernization programs.

“We are building two budgets concurrently,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told the Military Reporters & Editors conference here Friday morning. The two budgets — a long-planned $733 billion topline and another for $700 billion — will provide Defense Secretary Jim Mattis options, Shanhan said, and then “we will go back to the president and give him a $700 billion budget.”

FORGET RUSSIA: IS FINLAND THE HYBRID WARFARE CHAMPION?

By Michael Peck

Source Link

Russia is supposed to be the master of hybrid warfare, that shapeshifting amalgamation of regular and irregular war.

But has Russia met its match in little Finland?

… “The lessons from Crimea were by no means lost on the Finnish defense establishment,” note Swedish researchers Michael Jonsson and Johan Engvall. Since 2014, improving the readiness of the Finnish Army has been a major priority. A government Defense White Paper of February 2017 outlines a system of rapid reaction forces and swift-mobilization units among all services and troop types.

America's Economy Is Moving the Country In a Positive Direction

by Samuel Rines

Source Link

Yes, the headline seasonally adjusted annual rate real GDP figure was stronger than expected at 3.5 percent versus expectations for 3.3 percent. That would appear to be a good thing. Not to mention there was a larger than expected cooling of consumer price pressures (inflation). But looking a bit deeper into the data, the picture becomes a bit more blurry. Like a Picasso painting, you can see whatever you want to see.

What drove GDP? To start with the positive piece, consumption. Of the 3.5 percent headline, consumption was 2.69 percent of the print. The consumer showed up with its wallet open in the third quarter. After that data point, the data becomes a bit more blurry. Inventories, which are highly volatile, contributed 2.03 percent of the 3.5 percent, and net exports, which represent the drag from imports, subtracted 1.78 percent. Both of these are wildly volatile and tend to reverse from large contributions in coming quarters. So, it should be expected that inventories will be a drag to coming GDP reports and net exports should be less of a drag or even a contributor.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: EXTREMISTS’ EVOLVING STRATEGY

Source Link

The U.S. State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism recently released its annual report on terrorism. Thereport concludes that despite the success of efforts to dismantle ISIS, “the terrorist landscape grew more complex.” Extremist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates are proving resilient and adjusting to heightened counterterrorism pressure with new attempts to destabilize, seize, and govern territory in fragile states. This shift in extremist strategy underscores the need for the kind of “preventive” approach outlined in the interim findings of the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States.

The State Department’s report finds that even as ISIS lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, it regrouped, spreading decentralized networks of foreign fighters to fuel insurgencies in other fragile states like Libya and in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

PeaceCon 2018 - To Better Halt Wars, Does America Need a ‘Crisis Command’?

Source Link

A string of violent crises since the 1990s—from Somalia to Iraq to others—has underscored America’s need to coordinate better among military forces, relief and development organizations, diplomats and other responders, retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni said this week. The United States should consider creating a standing “interagency command” for such crises, Zinni told listeners at USIP.

Zinni, who headed the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000 and later served as the U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace, spoke to PeaceCon 2018, a gathering of the peacebuilding community. USIP and the Alliance for Peacebuilding convene the conference each year among conflict resolution specialists, diplomats, scholars, military strategists and others. Many such conferences, Zinni noted, repeatedly have declared America’s need for better coordination of its governmental and non-governmental responses to crises from Afghanistan to Syria to Libya and elsewhere.

Read on.

Forget Russia: Is Finland the Hybrid Warfare Champion?

By Michael Peck

Russia is supposed to be the master of hybrid warfare, that shapeshifting amalgamation of regular and irregular war.

But has Russia met its match in little Finland?

… “The lessons from Crimea were by no means lost on the Finnish defense establishment,” note Swedish researchers Michael Jonsson and Johan Engvall. Since 2014, improving the readiness of the Finnish Army has been a major priority. A government Defense White Paper of February 2017 outlines a system of rapid reaction forces and swift-mobilization units among all services and troop types.

Russia’s Network-Centric Warfare Capability

By Roger McDermott

Source Link

Since initiating the reform of the Russian Armed Forces in 2008, Moscow has paid close attention to the development of its own network-centric warfare capability. Elements of this version of network-centric approaches to combat operations have involved strengthening electronic warfare (EW) capacity, modernizing infrastructure, reforming structures, as well as boosting and streamlining command and control, among other features. A related emphasis has been placed upon force enablers and force multipliers. As the integration of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) has advanced, Moscow has also experimented with network-centric operations during its involvement in the complex conflict in Syria (Versia.ru, October 1). Facilitating its network-centric operations in Syria involves unifying reconnaissance and intelligence along with command-and-control (C2) structures in the central hub of the National Defense Management Center (Natsionalnomu Tsentru Upravleniya Oboronoy—NTsUO), in Moscow. The NTsUO was created in December 2014 and lies at the heart of Russia’s burgeoning network-centric capability (see EDM, April 19, 2016; November 4, 2014).

General: Project Maven Is Just the Beginning of the Military’s Use of AI

BY MARCUS WEISGERBER

Source Link

A top Air Force general said the military needs to expand its use of artificial intelligence — like that being used in the controversial Project Maven effort — if it wants to stay ahead of peer competitors and deter war. Gen. James Holmes, who leads Air Combat Command, is among the first flag officers to publicly defend the Pentagon’s algorithmic-image-analysis program since Google said it would not renew its contract following an outcry by its employees.

“The benefit of this will be: it will free up people to focus on thinking about what they see and what it means in the intelligence field and on passing that information to decision makers more timely because you’re able to do it faster,” Holmes said Thursday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “That’s a big part of our future and you’ll continue to see that expanded, with Project Maven being one of the first steps in bringing learning machines and algorithms in to be able to allow people to focus on things that people do best and let the machine do that repetitive task.”

92% of External Web Apps Have Exploitable Security Flaws or Weaknesses: Report

By Kevin Townsend 

Source Link

According to new research, 98% of leading companies across the U.S. and Europe are vulnerable to cybercriminals through their web applications. While this figure may seem high, it will surprise neither the companies themselves nor independent security experts.

Most large companies readily admit that they have shadow IT and legacy applications they do not know, and that this at least theoretically makes them vulnerable. It is generally considered to be an acceptable risk.

The purpose of this research from High-Tech Bridge (HTB) is designed to show that the problem is far bigger and less acceptable than most companies imagine. It was prompted, at least in part, by HTB's experience with one particular U.S. government agency client.

Understanding Data Privacy

By Alan McQuinn

Source Link

With Europe passing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a significant piece of data protection legislation with global implications — and now California implementing a new privacy law, coupled with several high-profile incidents involving companies exposing consumer data, there is a growing push for federal data privacy legislation in the United States.

What Is Data Privacy?

The West Holds A Cyberwar Trump Card, But Victory Would Be Pyrrhic

Davey Winder

Source Link

Who would win if cyberwar were to break out between Russia and the West?

Given the fragile nature of the geopolitical landscape, along with the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of nation states to launch cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and businesses alike, the question of cyberwar has never been more relevant. But what do we mean by cyberwarfare and who would likely win in the event of a cyberwar between Russia or China and the West?

As I reported earlier this week the Royal Navy's biggest ever aircraft-carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, has been in New York hosting the inaugural Atlantic Future Forum. On Monday, aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Atlantic Future Forum Accord was signed to formalize a commitment from the UK and US to work with industry leaders in the fields of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. UK Defense Secretary, Gavin Williamson, has referred to this as "combining our technical excellence, our professionalism, our war fighter ethos to design and increasingly use our offensive cyber capability."

The Internet Will Be the Death of Us

By Frank Bruni

Source Link

Nora Ephron once wrote a brilliant essay about the trajectory of her and many other people’s infatuations with email, from the thrill of discovering this speedy new way of keeping in touch to the hell of not being able to turn it off.

I’ve come to feel that way about the whole of the internet.

What a glittering dream of expanded knowledge and enhanced connection it was at the start. What a nightmare of manipulated biases and metastasized hate it has turned into.

Before he allegedly began mailing pipe bombs to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others, Cesar Sayoc found encouragement online — maybe not in the form of explosives instructions, but in the sense that he could scream his resentments in a theater that did the opposite of repudiating them. It echoed them back. It validated and cultivated them. It took something dark and colored it darker still.

The Failed Thermostat: The Illusion of Control In an Information-Rich Age

Jonathan E. Czarnecki

Source Link

INTRODUCTION 

The concept of command and control is central to modern warfare. Command is a legal and behavioral term referring to a designated individual leader’s responsibility and accountability for everything the leader’s unit of command does and does not do.[1] Control is a regulatory and scientific term denoting the ability to manage that which is commanded.[2] Command and control together is considered a doctrinal operational function of military units.[3] The concept is concrete and essential for all organizations to successfully conduct their business; for the military the primary business is combat operations in contested environments. 

This article investigates the use of certain types of command and control in operational environments that overwhelm the ability of commanders to do their primary job—lead and succeed in operations. It provides perspectives on the ability of military organizations to actually implement command and control and concludes the nature of current and future operational environments condemns the idea and language of control to obsolescence. In its place, alternative terms that fit and work in those environments may be a better fit.

Army Wants to Use Robots to Help Conduct Precision Strikes on the Enemy

By Matthew Cox

Source Link

Army maneuver officials are hoping that a consortium of experts in non-military robotics can find new ways for combat units to defeat the enemy, especially in dense urban terrain.

The Army's Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate, or CDID, at Fort Benning, Georgia, recently partnered with the National Advanced Mobility Consortium to conduct an outcome-based innovation workshop -- an approach to challenges that has been "proven in the commercial industry sector but never potentially used in a partnership with the military to get after some of the military's problems," according to Col. Tom Nelson, the head of CDID's Robotics Requirement Division.

Mattis Turns to Tech Advisers for Help to Modernize Military

By Sandra Erwin

Source Link

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis plans to embark on a listening tour later this summer to gain a better grasp of the technological challenges facing U.S. military forces.

“He is interested in learning more about innovation and technology,” said Joshua Marcuse, executive director of the Defense Innovation Board, a Pentagon advisory panel of government and private-sector officials.

Marcuse said Mattis wants to visit military installations and hear first hand about what’s working and not working in the technology arena.

Mattis, since day one as defense secretary, has communicated his concerns that U.S. forces might be losing their technological edge, and he is looking at what specifically could be done to turn things around. The Defense Innovation Board is “helping him think through this,” Marcuse told RealClearDefense.

Minsk Resisting Moscow’s Latest Scheme to Acquire Military Base in Belarus

By: Paul Goble

Source Link

A serious conflict has arisen between Moscow and Minsk over a proposed joint military defense strategy document. The Russian side declares that it will treat any attack on Belarus as an attack on itself (see EDM, October 23) and thus needs to have a Russian military base on Belarusian territory—something it wants to write into the proposed new doctrine. Yet, the Belarusian side has strongly resisted, not only because it fears that Russia might use such a base to undermine Belarusian sovereignty, but also because Minsk does not view the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as its only threat.

The existing military doctrine of the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus was adopted in 2001, and both sides agree it needs to be updated. But their views fundamentally diverge on what the new doctrine should contain, even though each side is making a public show of unity. Illustratively, four days ago (October 26), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union State agreed to forward a draft updated joint military doctrine to a December 13 session of the Union State’s Council of Ministers for approval. If that body signs off on the document, it will be forward to Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka for their signatures (Soyuz.by, October 26).

Minsk Resisting Moscow’s Latest Scheme to Acquire Military Base in Belarus

By: Paul Goble

Source Link

A serious conflict has arisen between Moscow and Minsk over a proposed joint military defense strategy document. The Russian side declares that it will treat any attack on Belarus as an attack on itself (see EDM, October 23) and thus needs to have a Russian military base on Belarusian territory—something it wants to write into the proposed new doctrine. Yet, the Belarusian side has strongly resisted, not only because it fears that Russia might use such a base to undermine Belarusian sovereignty, but also because Minsk does not view the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as its only threat.

The existing military doctrine of the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus was adopted in 2001, and both sides agree it needs to be updated. But their views fundamentally diverge on what the new doctrine should contain, even though each side is making a public show of unity. Illustratively, four days ago (October 26), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union State agreed to forward a draft updated joint military doctrine to a December 13 session of the Union State’s Council of Ministers for approval. If that body signs off on the document, it will be forward to Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka for their signatures (Soyuz.by, October 26).

The U.S. Military Has a Management Problem

Source Link

The U.S. armed forces are good at many things, but conspicuously bad at managing talent. As a result, many good officers are quitting. The Army’s latest leadership survey found that fewer than half of active-duty junior officers hoped to stay in the military after 20 years of service, when their pensions kick in, and only half of active-duty leaders say morale is high or very high. In the Air Force, which has a shortfall of some 2,000 pilots, the problem is acute. The Defense Department recognizes the problem, but hasn’t done enough about it. Perhaps Congress can do better. Its latest defense policy act calls for change — including reform of the services’ longstanding “up-or-out” promotion system. Together with a few other reforms, that would help a lot.

After years of fighting insurgencies, the Army pivots to training for a major war

Sean D. Naylor

Source Link

WASHINGTON — In mock battles at the Army’s massive combat training centers in California’s Mojave Desert, Louisiana’s pine forests and Germany’s mud, the service is spending less time preparing troops for meetings with village elders and more time training soldiers how to respond to artillery barrages and attacks from enemy fighter bombers.

After spending the last 17 years fighting grinding counterinsurgencies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is shifting its gaze. This year’s National Defense Strategy charged the military with preparing for high-intensity conflict against major nation-state threats like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. The Army is falling in line.