North Korea Ready to Test Fire a NODONG Long-Range Missile

March 3, 2015

N. Korea ready to fire medium-range Nodong missiles: military source 

SEOUL, March 3 (Yonhap) — North Korea appears prepared to fire medium-range Nodong ballistic missiles amid heightened inter-Korean tensions over the ongoing South Korea-U.S. military exercises, a source here said Tuesday.

On Monday, Pyongyang fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea in an apparent protest against the start of the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle drills. 

“We’ve detected signs that North Korea has deployed two transporter erector launchers (TELs) since a few days back in its Nodong missile station in North Pyongan Province,” the military source said on condition of anonymity. “We are closely monitoring their movements bearing in mind chances of their actual launches.”

North Korea last fired two Nodong missiles in March last year using the launchers, the first launch in nearly five years.

The single-stage ballistic missile has an estimated range of 1,300 kilometers with a payload capacity of 700 kilograms, according to South Korea and the U.S. intelligence.

“It would not be easy for us to detect missiles in a swift manner in case they are fired from a mobile launcher,” said a military officer, saying the authorities have been operating the crisis management system against possible military provocations by the communist country.

During a press briefing, defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said the military “has been closely watching North Korea for possible additional rocket launches,” without further elaboration.

Shards of Truth in MH17 Investigation

Nadette De Visser

03.04.15 

Piece by piece, the Dutch-led investigation into the downing of a 777 over Ukraine last summer is focusing on a Russian-made ground-to-air missile. 

GILZE RIJEN, The Netherlands—The investigators looking into the downing offlight MH17 last July over Ukraine say it probably was hit by a Russian-made"Buk’ missile." They have not drawn any solid conclusions about who fired it, but they are firm in their conviction that it was not shot out of the air by a warplane, as some Russian media claimed. 

As the investigators made clear when they opened up to a press visit, there is now, or eventually will be, enough evidence to assign guilt. 

A huge military hangar here houses the war-torn pieces of what once was a Malaysia Airlines flight bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 people aboard. All of them were killed. 

Inside the lonely dome in an empty military field, families of the victims viewed the debris of the pulverized shell of the Boeing 777. A paper-thin sheet of metal, draped like sculpted cloth, holds the remnants of windows through which tourists once marveled at the landscape below. It seems immensely fragile to be carrying all these lives. (Is this actually what we travel in, so high above the ground?) For some family members this was the last physical reminder of their loved ones. “ 

Who Are Modern Korea's 'Founding Fathers'?

By Steven Denney

March 04, 2015

A look at the figures Koreans see as emblematic of their independence movement. 

Sunday, March 1 was Independence Movement Day in South Korea. This public holiday, which commemorates the March 1 Movement of 1919, is a good representative of a nationalistic celebration in a new era nationalism in Asia. The movement in 1919 was triggered by the oppressive colonial regime and the galvanizing idea of national self-determination, inspired by Woodrow Wilson.

Yet, whom do the Koreans see as the symbol of the country’s independence movement?

Gallup Korea has the answer(s). In a nation-wide poll conducted February 24-26 respondents were asked who comes to mind when they think about the anti-Japanese independence movement. The top three people chosen were (1) Ahn Jung-geun, (2) Kim Gu, and (3) Yu Gwan-sun.

Ahn was an independence fighter, member of the “Righteous Army,” and (arguably) a pan-Asianist visionary. In 1909, Ahn fatally wounded the first governor-general of Korea (and Japan’s first prime minister), Ito Hirobumi, on a train platform in Harbin (now the capital of China’s Heilongjiang province).

Kim was a Korean nationalist and teacher who served as the sixth president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (based in Shanghai and Chongqing). Kim was also a reunification activist (after 1945). In addition to his anti-Japanese struggles before liberation, Gu is well known (on both side of the 38th) for his efforts to reunify the peninsula after the division. Gu was assassinated in 1949.

Yu was a student activist who, because of her participation in the March 1 Movement, found herself in a Japanese prison. She would die there at the age of 18.

Brooklyn Man Found Guilty of 2009 Terrorist Plot in UK

Stephanie Clifford

March 4, 2015

Abid Naseer, Terror Suspect, Is Found Guilty on All Counts in 2009 Bomb Plot

Abid Naseer was convicted on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of supporting terrorism and conspiracy to set off a destructive device in a plot by Al Qaeda.

Mr. Naseer’s conviction for his participation in a plan to bomb a shopping center in Manchester, England, adds to a changing understanding of terrorists. Like Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State executioner known in the news media as “Jihadi John,” Mr. Naseer was a middle-class student in Britain as he involved himself in an extremist group.

Well educated and charismatic, from a family he described as “wealthy,” Mr. Naseer, 28, declined to have his case argued by a court-appointed lawyer, instead representing himself during the two-week trial in Brooklyn. He told the jury, “I wanted the people to hear my voice and hear my story.”

The government argued that he had helped organize a plot to bomb the shopping center in 2009. Prosecutors said he had updated his Qaeda handler via email, using code words like “marriage” for the bombing plot, and women’s names for specific types of bombs.

Mr. Naseer said he did not know the person he was corresponding with was a Qaeda member. He was simply updating an Internet friend on his love life, he said.

Still, the email address Mr. Naseer was sending messages to was the same address that another man who testified, Najibullah Zazi, was writing to. Mr. Zazi, who pleaded guilty to participating in a Qaeda plot to bomb the New York City subway system, said that the email address was that of his handler and that he was told to use the code word “marriage” when talking about the plot. That was a difficult fact for Mr. Naseer to overcome.

GAO Report Says FAA Air Traffic Control Computers Still Vulnerable to Cyberattack

Amanda Vicinanzo

March 4, 2015

FAA Air Traffic Control System Vulnerable to Cyberattacks 

Significant security weaknesses in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) information security program have placed the nation’s air traffic control system at risk of being hacked, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit report released Monday.

“While the FAA has taken steps to protect its air traffic control systems from cyber-based and other threats, significant security control weaknesses remain, threatening the agency’s ability to ensure the safe and uninterrupted operation of the national airspace system (NAS),” the GAO audit report said.

The FAA is responsible for overseeing the development of the air traffic control system which the agency uses to track flights around the world. According to FAA, the system includes more than 19,000 airports, nearly 600 air traffic control facilities, and approximately 65,000 other facilities.

In light of the critical role of NAS and the growing interconnectivity of information systems, GAO was requested to review whether the FAA has effectively implemented information security controls to protect air traffic control from a number of threats including criminals, foreign nations, terrorists and other adversarial groups.

Although the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 requires federal agencies to implement a security program that provides a framework for implementing controls at the agency, FAA’s implementation of the program is incomplete.

Will we ever see a Thatcher of the left? Peter Hain and Will Hutton on Labour’s potential for reform

BY GEORGE EATON 

PUBLISHED 26 FEBRUARY, 2015 

In new books, both Hain and Hutton recognise Labour as the only vehicle for reform – but what kind will emerge remains to be seen. 

An LED screen displayed the word "Labour". Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Back to the Future of Socialism

Peter Hain

Policy Press, 304pp, £19.99

How Good We Can Be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country

Will Hutton

Little, Brown, 304pp, £16.99

The financial crisis was a moment of optimism for the left. The form of capitalism that had reigned for three decades was held to have been so discredited that change was inevitable. Just as the postwar consensus evaporated in the 1970s, it was thought that the long wave of neoliberalism would retreat. The ensuing seven years have shown how misguided these hopes were.

After the initial shock to its standing, the market reasserted itself with remarkable ease. Through a supreme act of political conjuring, the right redefined a crisis of banking as one of debt. Ever since, the left has struggled to contest this narrative. Since the abandonment of socialism and the discrediting of “the Third Way”, it has lacked an alternative account of the economy and society. In those few countries where it has taken power, such as France, it has invariably disappointed expectations.

It is against this backdrop that the former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain and the Observer columnist Will Hutton ask how the left can be regenerated, offering their manifestos for the transformation of Britain’s economy and its governance.

THE SEDUCTIVENESS OF SPECIAL OPS?

Michael Noonan

March 3, 2015

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In a prescient article in Foreign Affairs in 1994 entitled “The Mystique of U.S. Air Power,” the historian and strategist Eliot Cohen, writing in the wake of the Gulf War, argued, “Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.” If he were writing such an article today, he might substitute special operations forces (SOF) for air power. And, in fact, Cohen has written about SOF in the past, stating,

By their mere availability and past successes elite units may subtly distort policy-makers’ perspectives on politico-military problems. This does not imply that policies are undertaken just because the tools to execute them exist. Rather, elite units sometimes seem to offer an easy way out of a serious problem, and in so doing mislead political decision-makers….

But even that was written before the revolution in U.S. SOF capabilities that took place after the aborted Operation Eagle Claw hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980 and the further increases in capabilities over the past decade-plus of war.

Today, SOF is widely viewed as a primary tool in both contemporary and future American foreign and defense policy. As retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and War on the Rocks contributor Douglas Ollivant wrote last week,

An elite consensus on the “New Way of War” has been emerging for some time now. Among defense policy experts, think tanks, echoed at Aspen and Davos, the way forward seems clear. The future belongs to cyberwarfare and includes a terrorism problem that will be dealt with by drones and SEALs, and the need to be prepared for the possibility, however remote, of a large-scale naval and aviation campaign in the Far East against a rising China.

Perhaps this should not be surprising. Writing on U.S. strategic culture, Carnes Lord has noted that,

Americans are a pragmatic people, with a tendency to seek technical solutions to isolated problems and a preoccupation with the here and now at the expense both of the past and the future. This means, among other things, that Americans tend to lack the historical memory that is critical for understanding other cultures, as well as the future orientation and holistic thinking that are the preconditions for strategy.

Special Operations = Surgical Strike + Special Warfare

MILITARY RETIREMENT: TOO SWEET A DEAL?

Tim Kane

March 2, 2015 

Retiring from the U.S. military is a sweet deal for the 17 percent of veterans who are allowed to serve for twenty years on active duty. Too sweet.

For decades, critics and top brass have warned that the Pentagon’s defined benefit pension (earned after 20 years of service) is growing exponentially more expensive. Annual outlays for military pensions exceed $50 billion and will double before today’s lieutenants become generals. Liabilities of the program are $1.3 trillion (roughly one tenth of size of the U.S. GDP) and will rise to $2.8 trillion in 2035.

As alarming as those numbers might be, fiscal woes are not the real problem. The real problem is that the military services need to modernize talent management, but they are stuck with this anachronistic pension structure.

As the Gates commission noted in 1970, the all-or-nothing vesting of the retirement benefit at 20 years isn’t fair and hinders talent management. Another problem is that benefits pay out immediately upon retirement instead of at 65 or some other fixed age. These sweet features distort work incentives on both sides of the cliff. Too many personnel stay in uniform before the 20-year cliff, and too few stay after.

Twenty years until vesting is four times longer than what is legally allowable in a private sector pension. Why? It is coercive. And it’s not just distorting the behavior of the employees, but the employers as well. In 1978, a few years after the All Volunteer Force was enacted into law, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was calling for an end to the 20-year cliff in a clearly titled report, Retirement Security: The 20-Year Military Retirement System Needs Reform:

Twenty-year retirement, in conjunction with present personnel management policies, is an inefficient means of attracting new members, causes the services to retain more members than are needed up to the 20-year point, provides too strong an incentive for experienced personnel to leave after serving 20 years, and makes it impossible for the vast majority of members to serve full careers.

What if two Chinese colonels think that warfare is changing, even if you don’t?

BY THOMAS E. RICKS 

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

There has been a great deal of discussion lately regarding how political and technological developments have impacted our understanding of war.

More than a decade of frustration combating weaker insurgent forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the likelihood of future frustration to ensure political stability in developing nations and U.S. access to critical markets and infrastructure has led many to question whether we still adequately understand what war is. Central to this discussion has been a debate over whether the nature of war has changed or simply its character. At stake in this debate is not only how we develop, organize, and employ military forces, but also our doctrinal view of war, which has important implications for how we justify the use of those forces. How we justify the use of those forces has equally important implications for how often we find ourselves using it.

In a recent article on “War on the Rocks,” Christopher Mewett described war’s nature as “violent, political and interactive.” His concern, rightfully so, is that if we do not get the nature of war right, we will not properly prepare for it. However, this view of war is not necessarily shared by at least some possible U.S. adversaries. In their oft-cited 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, two Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, argued that the United States narrowly defined war and this narrow understanding exposed it to a vulnerability that weaker states, like China, could exploit. In fact, they stated the U.S. military does a poor job of deliberating upon future fights, adding “lucid and incisive thinking … is not a strong point of the Americans.” If only they knew.

The Open-Source Spies of World War II

By Adam Rawnsley

March 3, 201

The ubiquity of cell phones, cameras and the Internet has unleashed a bounty of open-source material for spies to understand the world. Today, American spies patrol web forums for shots of China’s latest jet fighters or information about jihadis in the Middle East.

Though the technology to hemorrhage data about yourself has made the job easier, it’s by no means a new practice. For as long as we’ve had open sources, we’ve had open-source spies.

And that was especially true during World War II, when the job of open-source intelligence analysis fell principally to the men and women of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

OSS chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan believed in collecting secret intelligence by covert means. But he also saw value in hoovering up as much information from open sources as possible, and charged the R&A branch with analyzing it.

The fascist bent of the Axis powers didn’t lend itself to a freewheeling media climate, but Donovan believed that, properly analyzed, publicly-available foreign material could yield valuable insights.

“Even a regimented press will again and again betray the national interest to a painstaking observer,” Donovan wrote after the war.

That painstaking observation fell to R&A specialists drawn from a myriad of social science disciplines. In Donovan’s words, they were “highly implausible operators,” tweedy specialists whose bookish, bespectacled pedigrees earned them the nickname “the bad eyes brigade.”

The Inside Story of Iran’s Stealth Jet Thief

Jacob Siegel

03.03.15 

How a 60-year-old naturalized American tried to get a job in Iran by sending potential employers secret specs of the Air Force’s F-35 and F-22—and now faces up to 20 years in jail. 

Before Mozaffar Khazaee’s arrest, he had access to high-tech military hardware through his jobs with leading defense contractors. The work he did in the engineering field showed a technical acumen missing from his foray into espionage. When federal agents caught up to him at Newark Airport in January 2014, he was carrying a plane ticket to Iran, more than $59,000 in cash, and technical information on U.S. fighter jets. 

Last month Khazaee pleaded guilty in federal court to “violating the Arms Export Control Act,” according to a statement from the FBI, by attempting to ship documents to Iran that covered technical details about the engines of the Air Force’s F-35 and F-22 fighter jets. 

Now 60 years old and a naturalized American citizen once comfortably employed in Connecticut, the Iranian-born engineer is awaiting sentencing. According to the terms of his plea deal, he could face up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine. 

Both the U.S. attorney’s office in Connecticut, where Khazaee was charged, and his defense lawyers declined to comment for this article. 

Malaysian Peacekeepers Could Face Toughest Challenge Yet

By Prashanth Parameswaran

March 04, 2015

The country’s armed forces chief signals rough road ahead for peace monitors. 

As a new batch of Malaysian peace monitors prepare to be deployed to the southern Philippines amid an imperiled peace process between the government and Muslim rebels, they are being warned that they may face their toughest test yet.

Speaking at the sending-off ceremony for the Malaysian members of the new International Monitoring Team-Mindanao 10 (IMT-M10), which will take over from the current team beginning March 14, Chief of Defense Force of the Malaysian Armed Forces General Zulkifeli Mohamad Zin warned that the personnel could face some challenges due to spoilers looking to disrupt the ongoing peace process.

“This is a critical time, as the peace process is nearing its conclusion, there are many detractors who may try to derail and sabotage the peace process,” he said according to the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times(NST).

As The Diplomat has reported previously, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front reached a peace deal in March last year which signaled a potential end to nearly a half-century of bloody conflict. But just as the current government led by President Benigno Aquino was about to move forward with passing a key enabling law this year, the Philippine national police suffered one of the highest casualties in its history following a major clash in MILF territory. In response, the Philippine legislature has suspended hearings on the Bangsamoro Basic Law, and the army is now in the midst of an offensive against an MILF splinter group called the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

In his remarks, Zulkifeli reportedly reiterated the fact that there are two circumstances where the IMT can be recalled: first, when either the Philippine government or the MILF stops heeding IMT’s advice; and, second, when the safety and security of IMT members is jeopardized.

“My concern is that, in order to derail this mission, the detractors may try to make the situation unsafe for IMT’s mission, especially in areas like Tawi-Tawi and Sulu, among others,” NST quoted him as saying.

He also suggested that the outcome would depend wholly on the resolve of the government and the MILF to ensure that detractors “are dealt with effectively.”

To Shoot or Not to Shoot?: Japanese Legislators Debate SDF Weapons Use

By Ankit Panda

March 04, 2015

Japanese lawmakers in the ruling coalition are debating the merits of allowing greater weapons use by the Japanese military. 

Earlier this week, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported on an emerging debate within Japanese lawmakers in the ruling coalition. The debate concerns the changing role of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF), specifically over the question of how much leeway should be given to Japanese troops in using their weapons during international cooperation activities. The debate is in part made necessary by the Abe government’s decision last year to pass a resolution reinterpreting the Japanese constitution’s post-war ban on collective self-defense. According to the Yomiuri’s report, legislators in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — the prime minister’s party — are eager to relax restrictions on the use of weaponry by the SDF while their junior coalition partners in the New Komeito party urge restraint, citing constitutional concerns.

The minutiae of the debate revolve around the specific conditions under which SDF troops would be able to discharge their weapons. According to the Yomiuri‘s reports, there are two primary categories. Under the first, SDF troops would only discharge their weapons in “self-preservation” scenarios, otherwise minimizing the use of weaponry. Under this set of rules, SDF troops would be permitted to use their weapons to save their own lives or the lives of civilians under their protection.

The second category — “mission execution” — would allow SDF troops to discharge their weapons more liberally in eliminating resistance to any potential mission, or suppressing targets during an operation. Until today, Japanese SDF troops have used their weapons in line with the first category. The LDP is keen to expand this to include “mission execution” scenarios. New Komeito continues to insist that short of a formal constitutional amendment, the SDF cannot radically alter its current “self-preservation” stance on the use of weapons. ”We are far from a conclusion,” one Komeito member told the press.

The debate highlights some of the frictions within the ruling coalition that will make complete constitutional overhaul, as per the LDP’s latest proposals, a challenging endeavor. Following December’s snap election, the LDP-New Komeito coalition won a supermajority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Diet, and a simple majority in the House of Councilors. While the current coalition’s influence in Japanese politics is unquestionably high, there remain considerable disagreements on national security issues and particularly the role of the Japanese military.

Australia to Send Troops to Iraq

By Helen Clark

March 05, 2015

A contingent of Australian troops are to be dispatched on a training mission. 

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is getting at least one of his wishes: Australian troops will be deployed to Iraq in the fight against ISIS. By May, at least 300 Australians will be helping to train the Iraqi army, working together with troops from New Zealand. They will be sent to Taji, outside Baghdad.

This “building partner capacity training mission” was approved by the Cabinet and will run for two years, with a review at the end of the first year. In fact, there are already Australian troops in Iraq, helping train local troops.

This “next phase” of Australian engagement came after Iraqi and American requests to Australia, though Abbott has never needed much arm twisting in this fight. The Australian recently reported that Abbott was keen to send Australian troops to fight ISIS single handedly, something the defense chiefs saw as utterly untenable.

“This is a training mission, not a combat mission. Nevertheless, it is a mission which is necessary, because obviously in the face of the initial death cult onslaught, the Iraqi regular army melted like snow in summer. That’s been a disaster for the people of Iraq, millions of whom now live in a new dark age,” said Abbott. This was not a decision taken lightly, added the prime minister, who recently praised his New Zealand counterpart John Key’s decision to deploy troops to Iraq, despite reservations among the New Zealand public. New Zealand’s troop contributions will be smaller than Australia’s, however.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, from Tasmania, said “500 Australian soldiers on the ground is boots on the ground. They will be on the frontline… Their lives will be at risk and you’ve got to ask why.” All the varied Western spending in Iraq in the last 12 years has “amounted to worse than nothing” and this was a “virtually unilateral decision” to go back to war and Iraq would not find its natural political level as long as it was being propped up by Western troops. Iraq’s prime minister, who has begged for Western support, obviously disagrees.

Abbott seems to be framing this in two ways: as part of Australia’s international obligations, but also as a domestic security issue. Some one hundred Australians have joined ISIS and more may be supporting the group from within Australia. Quite how troops on the other side of the world will contribute to counterterrorism measures in Australia was not made fully clear by the prime minister, although Australia has recently brought in new national security measures and a tranche of anti-terror laws from the mandatory retention of citizens’ metadata by ISPs for two years to stronger moves against “hate speech” (by Muslim clerics and the like).

NATO Unleashed: Stopping Russia in Its Tracks

Marik String

March 5, 2015 

Time for a pivot back to Europe.

The United States and its NATO allies continue to monitor the nearly collapsed “Minsk II” ceasefire over eastern Ukraine, with the threat of U.S. arms for Kyiv still looming.

But ceasefire or not, an equally urgent task still lies before the NATO alliance: enhancing capacity to deter similar Russian incursions into allied territory in Eastern Europe.

Earlier this month, the United States and NATO allies rolled out key elements of a new military architecture in Eastern Europe, setting the terms for U.S. military engagement in Europe for the next decade and beyond. The problem, however, is that these changes amount to a temporary, rotational—and thus easily reversible—force structure. It is time for the alliance to transition these decisions into a more enduring forward defense on NATO’s frontier that has a proven record of deterrence.

Since 1990, the United States has drastically reduced its military footprint in Europe from 300,000 troops then to approximately 67,000 today, based principally in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. Earlier this decade, the Obama administration cut two of the four remaining deployable brigade combat teams stationed in Europe. Then, in January, the administrationannounced a further closure of fifteen military installations in NATO nations through an infrastructure consolidation review. Although some consolidation has been a result of legitimate budget constraints, these cuts have reinforced the unfortunate theme of a reduced U.S. forward-deployed military presence in Europe—one of Moscow’s longtime strategic objectives.

5-Step Guide to Building a World-Class Navy

Robert Farley

March 5, 2015 

No seafaring nation can live without these five capabilities.

Analysts and politicians throw around the term “blue-water navy” as if it has a single, fixed meaning. Broadly speaking, having a blue water navy means having the capacity to deploy a task force of ships across the open ocean, and to support them at great distance from their bases. Having a blue water navy means that a nation has the potential to play a big role on the international stage. Indeed, developing a blue water navy may be more complex, expensive, and useful than building a nuclear weapon.

In Mahan’s day, what countries needed to count as having a blue water navy was a series of coaling stations that they could access during war. This could mean colonies, friends, or a healthy set of financial accounts. Times have changed, but much of the basic logic of blue water deployment remains the same.

Undersea: A blue water navy needs protection from enemy submarines. The most convenient means of such protection is through submarines of its own, either long-range diesel-electric boats or nuclear fleet subs. Nuclear submarines have the advantage of not requiring replenishment while serving as part of a task force, which tends to increase their ability to conduct the most important parts of their job. Submarines can also provide eyes for the fleet, and can contribute to the strike portion of the mission by firing their own land-attack cruise missiles.

Pakistan's Terrorism Accusations Against India: Bizarre But Calculated

By Rohan Joshi

March 03, 2015

Amid a declining domestic situation, senior Pakistani officials see it fit to blame India — an unproductive endeavor. 

The Director-General of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Rizwan Akhtar arrived in Washington, D.C. for talks with intelligence and defense officials on a possible “peace settlement” between the elected government in Afghanistan and the Taliban. The Pakistani Urdu daily Jang also reports that Lt. Gen. Akhtar planned to complain to his hosts about India’s alleged support to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its activities in Afghanistan, which the Pakistani military establishment considers inimical to its interests.

In the days and weeks leading up to Lt. Gen. Akhtar’s visit to the U.S., Pakistan’s complaints were reinforced in Pakistan’s English and Urdu dailies. The far-right newspaper Ummat ran an article asserting that Pakistan was planning to present evidence of Indian “terrorism” through diplomatic and global media circles. The newspaper claimed that “evidence” had been unearthed of India’s involvement in terrorism in Balochistan, Karachi, and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Not to be left behind, the conservative daily Nawa-i-waqt, in aneditorial, appealed to the Nawaz Sharif government to counter India’s alleged interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs and demanded that Mr. Sharif declare that India is an enemy of Pakistan.

Accusations of India’s “involvement” in Pakistan have been leveled not only by the military establishment and media houses sympathetic to General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, but also by members of the inner coterie of Nawaz Sharif’s government. These include statements by Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s Minister of Defense, whosuggested that separatists from the restive province of Balochistan travel on Indian passports and “take trips to India to get directions.”

Minister of the Interior and trusted aid of Nawaz Sharif Chaudhry Nisar Ali effectively blamed India for spreading terrorism in Pakistan upon his return from Washington D.C. last week. Yet another confidant of Sharif, Sartaj Aziz, has spent much of his tenure as Advisor on National Security and Foreign Affairs toeing a particularly hawkish line on India.

The accusations from Pakistan — deemed not credible in Washington, D.C., and refuted outright in New Delhi — are hardly new. Pakistan’s leaders, whether civilian or military, have a history of leveling accusations on India’s alleged involvement in everything from sectarian violence in Pakistan to terrorism perpetrated via proxies from Afghanistan. These accusations are typically accompanied by claims of possessing evidence that incriminates India, although, unsurprisingly, none is ever publicly presented. A combination of factors could potentially explain Pakistan’s aggressive posturing and the somewhat bizarre accusations.

Is India's Defense Budget Adequate?

By Franz-Stefan Gady

March 03, 2015

New Delhi’s defense spending will rise modestly in the new fiscal year. 

India is modestly increasing its defense spending by 11 percent to around 2.47 trillion rupees ($40 billion) for the fiscal year 2015-2016 starting on April 1, according to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s federal budget speech last Saturday. The allocation for defense in the current fiscal year is 2.2 trillion rupees ($35 billion).

The core message in the Indian Finance Minister’s statement was the push to become less dependent on foreign military know-how and imports and to revive the Indian defense industry.

“We have been overdependent on imports, with its attendant unwelcome spin offs. We are thus pursuing the ‘Make in India policy’ to achieve greater self-sufficiency in the area of defense equipment,” Arun Jaitley stated during his speech.

India is already the world’s largest weapon’s importer (in 2013, New Delhi spent $6 billion on buying equipment), largely due to a moribund domestic defense industry. India is expected to spend $100 billion over the next decade on a defense upgrade program.

The Modi government, which made military modernization one of its top priorities, in August 2014 increasedthe stakes that foreign defense contractors were allowed to hold in joint defense ventures from 26 percent to 49 percent.

According to the Wall Street Journal, India only received $5 million in direct foreign investment in the defense industry over the last 14 years, in comparison to the $10 billion each that the telecommunications and automobile industries sectors were able to attract over the same period.

Whether Modi’s “Make in India” policy will be successful remains to be seen. One principal problem is that India’s arms procurement process requires offsets and technology transfers, which some Western defense contractors (notably from the United States) are not willing to do. However, there are already some encouraging signs.

India's 2015 Budget: Neither 'Big Bang' Nor Bust

By Ankit Panda

March 03, 2015

While falling short of expectations, India’s 2015 budget charts a gradualist path to reform. 

The dust appears to have settled around India’s $290 billion 2015 budget, a significant milestone for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s government, marking its first full fiscal year budget since coming to power in India’s general elections last May. More so than usual, this budget reveal was particularly dramatic. Modi’s battle cry last spring, before the general elections, was focused squarely on delivering much-needed development and economic growth. In his first 9 months in office, his pace on economic reform was unsatisfactory for many of his supporters. The 2015 budget was supposed to send a signal to international investors and to government’s critics that “big bang” reforms were on, and that India was truly back. Amid economic growth slowdowns in China, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa, this was perhaps India’s best chance to heave itself at the top of the BRICS grouping as the world’s most promising major emerging economy. So did the budget deliver?

Ultimately, this budget fell short of that magical silver bullet many emerging markets investors were hoping for. However, by the same token, the government did demonstrate a willingness to get its feet wet with reform. The general consensus among most level-headed analysts of the Indian economy is that this budget is a business-friendly approach to government finances that does not entirely leave behind in the dust the many populist programs of the Congress era. As usual, the Indian elephant will not take any sharp turns, lest it tip over entirely. This budget is evolutionary, and not revolutionary. With tax cuts for businesses (a declaration that immediately drove up Indian markets), a modest targeted 0.3 percent raise in the fiscal deficit, expanded public sector investment, and a decentralization of public spending from the central government to India’s states, the 2015 budget is a move toward fiscal creativity by the BJP government. With a comfortable infrastructure spending budget of $11 billion and new social security proposals, the BJP did not entirely sideline welfare considerations.

A major expected feature of this budget that didn’t quite turn out the way many had expected was its focus on fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction. India’s fiscal deficit as a share of its GDP ballooned after the global financial crisis of 2008. The 2015 budget, with an eye on keeping the Indian investment cycle healthy, actually targets a slight increase in the deficit. The budget could have faced harsher criticism on this count had it not established its pro-growth reputation elsewhere, notably with tax cuts for businesses and a simplified Goods and Services Tax (GST), to be implemented by April 2016. India’s corporate tax rate will be slashed from 30 percent to 25 percent. The government is raising income taxes for top earners by a modest amount to accommodate for the cut.

Why RCEP Is Vital for India

By Bipul Chatterjee and Surendar Singh

March 03, 2015

The regional trade deal could boost India’s strategic and economic position in the Asia-Pacific. 

Mega regional trade deals are in vogue in an otherwise fragile global economy. In an environment of falling aggregate demand, these trade deals are seen as a means to insulate economies from market uncertainties. Three important mega regionals are currently under negotiation: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership of Asia and the Pacific (RCEP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It is expected that these agreements, once concluded and implemented, will set the stage for a new generation of global trade and investment rules.

From India’s point of view, the RCEP presents a decisive platform which could influence its strategic and economic status in the Asia-Pacific region and bring to fruition its “Act East Policy.” It is expected to be an ambitious agreement bringing the five biggest economies of the region – Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea – into a regional trading arrangement.

It would be the world’s largest trading bloc covering a broad spectrum of issues such as trade in goods, services, investment, competition, intellectual property rights, and other areas of economic and technical cooperation. Together, the RCEP group of countries accounts for a third of the world’s gross domestic product, and 27.4 per cent and 23.0 per cent of the world’s goods and services trade, respectively.

It is interesting to note that, compared with the TPP and TTIP groups of countries, India’s trade share with the RCEP group of countries as a percentage of its total trade has increased over the past decade and half, underlining the importance of its trade with key countries in this group.

For India, the RCEP offers ample opportunity. There are three immediate benefits that its trade policymakers should note. First, the RCEP agreement would complement India’s existing free trade agreements with the Association of South East Asian Nations and some of its member countries, as it would deals with Japan and South Korea. It can address challenges emanating from implementation concerns vis-à-vis overlapping agreements, which is creating a “noodle bowl” situation obstructing effective utilization of these FTAs.

In this respect, the RCEP would help India streamline the rules and regulations of doing trade, which will reduce trade costs. It will also help achieve its goal of greater economic integration with countries East and South East of India through better access to a vast regional market ranging from Japan to Australia. The RCEP can be a stepping stone to India’s “Act East Policy.”

Terrorism Case in NYC Against Pakistani Man Goes to the Jury

Stephanie Clifford

March 3, 2015

Terrorism Case Against Pakistani Man Is Going to Jury

As arguments in Abid Naseer’s trial on terrorism charges came to a close on Monday, jurors had heard from British intelligence officers in disguise, an F.B.I. attaché who observed Osama bin Laden’s dead body and Mr. Naseer himselfarguing that he was an innocent man.

Mr. Naseer, 28, a Pakistani, is accused of planning to attack a Manchester, England, shopping mall in a plot by Al Qaeda that would have also included the New York City subway system and a Danish newspaper. But the alleged plot was never carried out.

The strongest link between Mr. Naseer and terrorist activity was in emails: a series of messages that he wrote to the address sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com that discussed women and marriage in often-awkward phrases. The Yahoo account was that of a Qaeda handler who also corresponded with an admitted Qaeda supporter and terrorist plotter, Najibullah Zazi. Like Mr. Naseer’s emails to sana_pakhtana, Mr. Zazi’s were full of references to his “marriage,” which Mr. Zazi testified was code for a bombing plot.

Mr. Naseer argued that his emails were innocent chatter about girls with a friend he met in an Internet chat room — who he had no idea was a Qaeda affiliate.

Now, jurors in Federal District Court in Brooklyn will decide which side to believe. Was Mr. Naseer going into Tesco stores because that is what a typical student in England would do? Or was he scouting for bomb ingredients? Was he returning home to Pakistan to see his family, or to train with Al Qaeda? Did he delete all emails from his account the day he sent his final email to the sana_pakhtana address because he needed more space, or because he was covering his tracks as the attack neared?

In the government’s closing argument, a prosecutor, Zainab Ahmad, hit on the danger of the alleged plot.

“That man wanted to drive a car bomb into a crowded shopping center and watch people die,” she said.

Warning Signs: 20,000 Afghan Soldiers Were Killed Or Deserted in 2014, Pentagon

Matthew Rosenberg and Azam Ahmed

March 3, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Afghan Army lost more than 20,000 fighters and others last year largely because of desertions, discharges and deaths in combat, according to figures to be released Tuesday, casting further doubt onAfghanistan’s ability to maintain security without help from United States-led coalition forces.

The nearly 11 percent decline from January to November 2014, to roughly 169,000 uniformed and civilian members from 190,000, is now an issue of deep concern among some in the American military. For example, the former No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, called the rate of combat deaths unsustainable before he departed at the end of last year.

Concern over how soon Afghan forces will be ready to stand on their own is one reason that the Obama administration is weighing whether it should slow the withdrawal of American troops, the bulk of whom are supposed to be out by the end of 2016.

The newly available numbers also lay bare the challenge faced by the 10,000 American troops and thousands of private contractors who have remained in Afghanistan since the end of the combat mission in December to help prepare Afghan forces to fight the Taliban on their own.

The American-led military coalition, citing internal figures, said the Afghan Army’s size had inched back up in the past few months, reaching about 173,000 in January. But that would still put the army at its smallest level since the fall of 2011, when the American project to build viable Afghan security forces was still in its early stages and the coalition did almost all the fighting against the Taliban militants.

Pentagon Declassifies Information on Afghan Security Forces

By Franz-Stefan Gady

March 04, 2015

ANA soldiers resting after a raid on a Taliban-occuppied village.

SIGAR draws attention to discrepancies in ANSF force strength. 

Today, the U.S. government watchdog for tax dollars spent in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), released a supplement to the January 2015 quarterly report to Congress. As I noted in a previous article, at the end of January 2015 SIGAR announced in its 26th Quarterly Report to Congress that it could no longer publicly report on many aspects of the $65 billion effort to build up the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

The supplement published today contains information that received classified or otherwise restricted responses from the Pentagon, which has now been declassified. However, some information concerning corps-level Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) personnel strength data, future requirements for Afghan Air Force (AAF) equipment, the number of trained AAF pilots, and operational data on the Afghan Special Mission Wing remains classified.

Nevertheless, the report has two interesting findings.

First, the U.S. military’s inconsistent reporting on ANSF strength numbers indicates long-standing and ongoing problems with accountability and personnel tracking. For example, SIGAR has seen large quarter-to-quarter fluctuations in the ANA numbers — sometimes 20,000 personnel or more — without supporting documentation for the sudden change.

Second, the Afghan National Army (ANA) has declined by 15,636 (or 8.5 percent) since February 2014 to 169,203 personnel, the lowest assigned ANA force strength since August 2011. Attrition continues to be a major challenge for the ANSF. Between September 2013 and September 2014, more than 40,000 personnel were dropped from ANA pay rolls. Also, SIGAR analysis indicates a change in how Afghan National Police (ANP) numbers are calculated that raises questions about the accuracy of these numbers and the validity of the reported increase in personnel this quarter.

The report also states that none of the $25 million in authorized funds for programs for women in the ANSF have been used.

Russia Tops China as Principal Cyber Threat to US

By Franz-Stefan Gady

March 03, 2015

A recent report singles out Russia as one of the most sophisticated nation-state actors in cyberspace. 

“While I can’t go into detail here, the Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed,” the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during the 2015 presentation of the “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

The report lists sophisticated cyberattacks as the principle national security threat facing the United States. “Cyber threats to U.S. national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact,” the assessment notes.

Russia is singled out as one of the most sophisticated nation-state actors in cyberspace. The report notes that Russia’s Ministry of Defense is establishing its own cyber command, responsible for conducting offensive cyber activities (similar to the United States Cyber Command).

The report says that Russia’s cyber command will also be responsible, again similar to its U.S. counterpart, for attacking enemy command and control systems and conducting cyber propaganda operations. Furthermore, “unspecified Russian cyber actors” have developed the capability to target industrial control systems and thereby attack electric power grids, air-traffic control, and oil and gas distribution networks.

However, the report points out that the United States will not have to fear debilitating strategic cyberattacks on a large scale:

“Rather than a ‘Cyber Armageddon’ scenario that debilitates the entire U.S. infrastructure, we envision something different. We foresee an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.”