Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape

Geopolitical Weekly

MAY 6, 2014

Source Link

Stratfor

By George Friedman

I will be leaving this week to visit a string of countries that are now on the front line between Russia and the European Peninsula: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan. A tour like that allows you to look at the details of history. But it is impossible to understand those details out of context. The more I think about recent events, the more I realize that what has happened in Ukraine can only be understood by considering European geopolitics since 1914 -- a hundred years ago and the beginning of World War I.

In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman wrote a superb and accurate story about how World War I began. For her it was a confluence of perception, misperception, personality and decisions. It was about the leaders, and implicit in her story was the idea that World War I was the result of miscalculation and misunderstanding. I suppose that if you focus on the details, then the war might seem unfortunate and avoidable. I take a different view: It was inevitable from the moment Germany united in 1871. When it happened and exactly how it happened was perhaps up to decision-makers. That it would happen was a geopolitical necessity. And understanding that geopolitical necessity gives us a framework for understanding what is happening in Ukraine, and what is likely to happen next.

The German Problem

The unification of Germany created a nation-state that was extraordinarily dynamic. By the turn of the 20th century, Germany had matched the British economy. However, the British economy pivoted on an empire that was enclosed and built around British interests. Germany had no such empire. It had achieved parity through internal growth and exports on a competitive basis. This was just one of the problems Germany had. The international economic system was based on a system of imperial holdings coupled with European industrialism. Germany lacked those holdings and had no politico-military control over its markets. While its economy was equal to Britain's, its risks were much higher.

Economic risk was compounded by strategic risk. Germany was on the North European Plain, relatively flat, with only a few north-south rivers as barriers. The Germans had the Russians to the east and the French to the west. Moscow and Paris had become allies. If they were to simultaneously attack Germany at a time of their choosing, Germany would be hard-pressed to resist. The Germans did not know Russo-French intentions, but they did know their capabilities. If there was to be war, the Germans had to strike first in one direction, achieve victory there and then mass their forces on the other side.

It’s Not Just About Obama

OP-ED COLUMNIST

MAY 3, 2014

Thomas L. Friedman

Continue reading the main story

THERE has been a festival of commentary of late bemoaning the pusillanimous foreign policy of President Obama. If only we had a president who rode horses shirtless, wrestled a tiger or took a bite out of a neighboring country, we’d all feel much safer. Your Honor, I rise in — partial — defense of Mr. Obama.

Let me start by asking a question I’ve asked about other countries: Is American foreign policy today the way it is because Obama is the way he is (cerebral, cautious, dispassionate) or is Obama the way Obama is on foreign policy because America is the way America is today (burned by two failed wars and weakened by a great recession) and because the world is the way the world is (increasingly full of failed states and enfeebled U.S. allies)?

The answer is some of both, but I’d put a lot more emphasis on the latter. Foreign policy, our ability and willingness to act in the world, is about three things: interests, values and leverage. Do we have an interest in getting involved in Syria or Crimea, are our values engaged, and — if either is true — do we have the leverage to sustainably tilt things our way at a price we can afford? Leverage is a function of two things: the amount of economic and military resources we can bring to bear and the unity of purpose of our partners on the ground and our allies elsewhere.

I’d argue that a lot of what makes America less active in the world today is a product first of all of our own diminished leverage because of actions taken by previous administrations. The decisions by the Bush I and Clinton teams to expand NATO laid the seeds of resentment that helped to create Putin and Putinism. The Bush II team not only presided over two unsuccessful wars, but totally broke with American tradition and cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for those wars, weakening our balance sheet. The planning for both wars was abysmal, their execution worse and too many of our “allies” proved to be corrupt or used our presence to prosecute old feuds.

Anyone who thinks that the American people didn’t notice all this, please raise your hand. As someone who wanted us to partner with Iraqis to try to build a democracy there — in the heart of the Arab world after 9/11 — I sure noticed, and I learned several things: Where we have real partners, who share our basic values and are ready to fight for them themselves — like the Kurds, who have built an island of decency that is the great unsung success story of the Iraq war — limited U.S. help can go a long way. Indeed, has anyone noticed that the two biggest reform successes in the Muslim Middle East today — Tunisia and Kurdistan — are places where our recent involvement was nil. They wanted it, and they built it.

The President Strikes a Nerve

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on May 5, 2014): http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/the-president-strikes-nerve-10389

May 5, 2014 

Paul R. Pillar 

President Obama has gotten much attention from a single extended response he gave to a question about his foreign policy from Ed Henry of Fox News in a press conference [4] last week in Manila. The apparently strongly felt need, on the part of some of the president's hardline critics, to strike back at his remarks and to try to discredit them indicates that he spoke some embarrassing truths. Garden-variety disagreement with the substance of the president's policies and what he has said to support them would never have stimulated this kind of response. 

The president made several perceptive observations about the less productive aspects of current discourse in Washington about Ukraine, Syria, and other difficult issues, but if there was a single “ouch” line that made the critics most uncomfortable it may have been Mr. Obama's comment that “for some reason many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven't really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again.” It must be painful for Mr. Obama's opponents to be reminded how right he was about this issue while so many others—Democrats as well as Republicans—were wrong. 

Some of the rest of us who have commented repeatedly on the lessons of that war could be accused (although the president, who is not a serial gloater on the subject, cannot) of playing our own note over and over again. It ought to be played—because the Iraq War was the biggest and costliest U.S. endeavor ever in the Middle East, because we continue to suffer from the domestic as well as the regional consequences of that misadventure, because what was bad about that war has parallels in what could easily happen with some current issues if they are not properly handled, and because it is astounding that the biggest promoters of the Iraq War somehow still seem to have an audience even though they have been proven to be guilty of gross malpractice as policy analysts. 

If there is any ground for criticizing what the president said at the press conference in Manila, it is that he seemed implicitly to accept some of the simplistic frames of reference that characterize not only what his critics are saying but more general discussion in the United States of foreign policy. There is the tendency in that discussion, for example, to register anything good or bad happening in the world as a success or failure of the incumbent U.S. president. Thus Mr. Obama pointed to how security relations between the United States and the Philippines are far better today than they were a decade ago, without mentioning that some of the reasons for that really don't have much to do with his own foreign policy [5]. There also is the tendency, amid the slapping on of sanctions against adversaries hither and yon, to treat someone else's pain or isolation as if it were an end in itself. Thus Mr. Obama stated that “Russia has never been more isolated,” without quickly pointing out that any isolation of Russia is only a means to try to induce certain changes in Russian behavior. But the president was, after all, only giving an impromptu response to criticism, and he did not make any specific claims about the meaning and significance of Filipino cooperation or Russian isolation. 

Is America's "Rebalance" to Asia Dead?

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on May 5, 2014): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/americas-rebalance-asia-dead-10330

April 24, 2014 Dustin Walker

Tom Donilon’s April 20 [3]op-ed [3], “Obama Is on the Right Course with His Reorientation Toward Asia,” Washington Post, is another example of how defenders of the Obama administration have sought to pivot away from important questions about the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. Rather than cite concrete evidence of America’s increased commitment to the Asia-Pacific, Donilon offers incomplete arguments and retreats to well-rehearsed explanations of the strategic origins of the rebalance. 

To his credit, Donilon recognizes from the outset that there have been questions about the “sustainability” of the rebalance. “The costly cancellation of President Obama’s trip to the region during the U.S. government shutdown last fall fueled that skepticism, which has only grown as urgent foreign policy challenges have required U.S. leadership in the Middle East and Europe,” he writes. 

Showing up matters in the Asia-Pacific, and President Obama’s trip to the region this week is indeed long overdue. On this score, Donilon gets it right. But he understates how unfolding events around the world are impacting Asia’s view of the rebalance. 

Our regional allies are worried because our leadership has been “required” in the Middle East and Europe. Even after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the U.S. presence in the Middle East is not likely to shrink. And in the aftermath of Ukraine, there are calls for a [4]pivot to Europe [4] as more U.S. troops are sent to NATO’s eastern frontiers. 

But our allies are also worried because of the perceived failure to demonstrate such leadership. In particular, the handling of the crisis in Syria [5] left security experts and government officials in the Asia-Pacific wondering how much America’s security commitments mean when challenged. Among America’s Asian allies, there was no appetite for American intervention in Syria, particularly military intervention. If America were to become too involved, many feared the rebalance would be over before it began. 

Nonetheless, the credibility of the United States was hurt because it appeared that America was going soft on its commitments. President Obama’s red line on chemical weapons in Syria never had the same force as the mutual defense treaty with Japan, for example. But the importance and weight of the president’s public statements on matters of war should never be trivialized. The president set forth the conditions under which the United States would become militarily involved in Syria, and when those conditions presented themselves, he got cold feet. So, too, did many in Congress. Even for countries like Japan and South Korea who didn’t want the United States to become embroiled in Syria in the first place, that is a worrisome precedent. 

South Africa election: Does the ANC deserve to stay in power?

Election campaigns are exhausting things. But Mmusi Maimane seemed to be wrestling with more than the usual sore throat, as he considered the opposition's non-existent chances of unseating South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) after 20 years in power.

"It's been a very, very difficult campaign," said the 33-year-old national spokesman for the Democratic Alliance (DA), with a mixture of frustration and impatience, as he described the "onslaught we face from the ANC".

Citing a few incidents of alleged violence, the blocking of advertisements on the public broadcaster, and the co-option of state institutions by the ANC, Mr Maimane suggested "the incumbents are starting to use the same practices as we've seen in other African states, more specifically in Zimbabwe. These trends are beginning… as the ANC start to demonstrate the tendencies of [President Robert Mugabe's] Zanu-PF."

Sour grapes, or spot on?

The ANC has governed since white-minority rule ended 20 years ago

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille and spokesman Musi Maimane have been trying to appeal to black voters

It is set to win a fifth term despite corruption allegations against President Jacob Zuma

Inside The Secret Digital Arms Race: Facing the Threat of a Global Cyberwar

TechRepublic

Steve Ranger

Apr 24, 2014 -- The team was badly spooked, that much was clear. The bank was already reeling from two attacks on its systems, strikes that had brought it to a standstill and forced the cancellation of a high profile IPO. 

The board had called in the team of security experts to brief them on the developing crisis. After listening to some of the mass of technical detail, the bank's CEO cut to the chase. "What should I tell the Prime Minister when I get to Cobra?" he demanded, a reference to the emergency committee the government had set up as it scrambled to respond to what was looking increasingly like a coordinated cyberattack. The security analysts hesitated, shifting in their seats, fearing this was the beginning, not the end, of the offensive. "We think this could just be a smokescreen," one said, finally. And it was. 

Before the end of next day, the attack had spread from banks to transport and utilities, culminating in an attack on a nuclear power station. The mounting horror of the analysts, the outrage and lack of understanding from the execs was all disturbingly authentic, but fortunately, none of it was real. 

The scene formed part of a wargame, albeit one designed by the UK's GCHQ surveillance agency among others to attract new recruits into the field of cybersecurity. As I watched the scenario progress (hosted in a World War II bunker under London for added drama) it was hard not to get just as caught up in the unfolding events as the competition finalists played the security analysts tasked with fighting the attack, and real industry executives took the role of the bank's management, if only because these sorts of scenarios are now increasingly plausible. And it's not just mad criminal geniuses planning these sorts of digital doomsday attacks either. After years on the defensive, governments are building their own offensive capabilities to deliver attacks just like this against their enemies. It's all part of a secret, hidden arms race, where countries spend billions of dollars to create new armies and stockpiles of digital weapons. This new type of warfare is incredibly complex and its consequences are little understood. Could this secret digital arms race make real-world confrontations more likely, not less? Have we replaced the cold war with the coders' war?

Even the experts are surprised by how fast the online threats have developed. As Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security company F-Secure, said a conference recently, "If someone would have told me ten years ago that by 2014 it would be commonplace for democratic western governments to develop and deploy malware against other democratic western governments, that would have sounded like science fiction. It would have sounded like a movie plot, but that's where we are today."

Taking Out The Space Trash; A Model For Space Cooperation

By JOAN JOHNSON-FREESE on May 02, 2014

Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security at the Naval War College and a member of our Board of Contributors, is one of the world’s experts on international space cooperation. Decoding this stuff can get very complicated since many of those involved in international space issues toss around terms like COPUOS, IADC, apogee, LEO, GEO and conjunction and expect everyone to know what they’re talking about. Most people know about space debris because of the infamous Chinese anti-satellite test (most of them forget about the US shoot-down of its own satellite, US 193, which did NOT create debris). But few people really comprehend how dangerous it can be and how it can complicate the lives of the global scientific, commercial and national security communities. To learn more, read on. The Editor.

From the Cold War space race to the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space, to holding China at arms length from International Space Station involvement, domestic politics have determined the tone and extent of our international space cooperation.

That is both disheartening and frightening. Disheartening because space is an inherently international domain which hosts assets providing and transmitting information key to personal, corporate and national well being in a globalized world, and it doesn’t work well without cooperation for the sustainable use of all. Frightening because of the willingness of some politicians to sacrifice space cooperation as a whipping boy for other issues, from personal religious views to disapproval regarding types of government or geostrategic land grabs, or to ignore the need for cooperation altogether.

The US is not the only country that politicizes space, with some countries still unwilling to engage in the kind of transparency needed as a prerequisite for space cooperation. But one organization has managed to rise above those politics and work productively toward space sustainability; the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), set to hold its next meeting May 12 to 15 in Beijing. The question is whether its laudable work on maintaining space as a sustainable environment can clear inevitable future political hurdles.

Space agencies have worked together since 1993 as an inter-governmental forum for the coordination of activities related to issues created by man-made and natural space debris, debris with the potential to wreck havoc on or destroy vital space assets. The primary purposes of the IADC are: the exchange of information on space debris research activities between member space agencies: facilitating opportunities for cooperation in space debris research; reviewing the progress of ongoing cooperative activities; and identifying debris mitigation options.

With 12 IADC members – the US, China, Russia, Canada, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, India, Japan, Ukraine, and the European Space Agency (ESA) — it might seem as though political bickering would be standard operating procedure, but that has not been the case.

U.S. Contractors Scale Up Search for Heartbleed-Like Flaws

Source Link 

By Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley - May 2, 2014

On Florida’s Atlantic coast, cyber arms makers working for U.S. spy agencies are bombarding billions of lines of computer code with random data that can expose software flaws the U.S. might exploit.

In Pittsburgh, researchers with a Pentagon contract are teaching computers to scan software for bugs and turn them automatically into weapons. In a converted textile mill in New Hampshire, programmers are testing the combat potential of coding errors on a digital bombing range.

Across the U.S., a new league of defense contractors is mining the foundation of the Internet for glitches that can be turned to the country’s strategic advantage. They’re part of a cybermilitary industrial complex that’s grown up in more than a dozen states and employs thousands of civilians, according to 15 people who work for contractors and the government. The projects are so sensitive their funding is classified, and so extensive a bid to curb their scope will be resisted not only by intelligence agencies but also the world’s largest military supply chain.

“We’re in an arms race,” said Chase Cunningham, the National Security Agency’s former chief cryptologic technician. The competition to find exploitable bugs before an enemy does is as intense as “the space race and the Cold War combined.”

Zero-day Exploits

The U.S. has poured billions of dollars into an electronic arsenal built with so-called zero-day exploits, manipulations of missteps or oversights in code that can make anything that runs on a computer chip vulnerable to hackers. They go far beyond flaws in web encryption like SSL and OpenSSL, which the NSA has exploited for years without warning the public about it, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The agency’s stockpile of exploits runs into the thousands, aimed at every conceivable device, and many are not disclosed even to units within the agency responsible for defending U.S. government networks, people familiar with the program said.

Under a directive made public April 11, after Bloomberg News reported the NSA’s utilization of the infamous Heartbleed bug -- a use the agency denied -- the White House said exploits should in most cases be disclosed so computer users can protect themselves.

Huge Stockpile

Michael Daniel, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, said in a blog post this week that “building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest.”

He said the U.S. would continue to develop and use those vulnerabilities to protect the country, however, and that the administration has established “a disciplined, rigorous and high-level decision-making process” when it comes to deciding whether to keep the flaws secret or disclose them so they can be fixed.

Leadership: Fire In The East

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20140504.aspx

May 4, 2014

For the second year in a row global defense spending declined. In 2013 the global total for defense spending was $1.75 trillion, down 1.9 percent from 2012. Spending was down .4 percent in 2012. What’s leading this decline are sharp cuts in the West (especially the U.S. and Europe). Actually if you exclude the United States, defense spending went up 1.8 percent in 2013. That’s because there’s an arms race going on in the Persian Gulf and East Asia. This is all about oil-rich Arab states buying the latest and most expensive military tech in an effort to deal with increasing aggressiveness by Iran. In East Asia China is the leading spender and the neighbors, under threat by growing Chinese claims on their territory, are also increasing their spending. 

Another factor is that a decade of heavy defense spending, to replace a lot of the elderly Cold War era equipment is coming to an end. Also ending, for the United States, are the expensive war on terror operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military, especially the army and marines, used the demand for new weapons and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan as an opportunity to replace a lot of aging Cold War gear. The air force and navy did not do as well and now, with American defense spending shrinking, there will be fewer American warplanes and warships because the money and popular support for replacing a lot of the Cold War era warships and aircraft is not there. 

Most Western nations deliberately shrank their armed forces after the Cold War ended. This included China and Russia, although both of these nations are still buying a lot of modern gear. Russia does it now because it was too broke in the 1990s to buy much and the Chinese because they didn’t have a modern force at the end of the Cold War and are determined to take the lead in this area. 

This recent decline in military spending is in contrast to years of growth. Since September 11, 2001, global defense spending increased nearly 50 percent, to over $1.7 trillion. That's about 2.5 percent of global GDP. After the Cold War ended in 1991, defense spending declined for a few years to under a trillion dollars a year. But by the end of the 1990s it was on the rise again. The region with the greatest growth has been the Middle East, where spending has increased over 60 percent in the last decade. The region with the lowest growth (six percent) was Western Europe. Five years of world-wide recession and the decline in spending by most Western nations has helped stall global defense spending at $1.7 trillion a year. Western defense firms are feeling this the most, as their sales have been flat for the last three years. 

The Best World War II Documentary Was FakedBut that doesn't make it any worse

BY DAVID THOMSON

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117175/battle-san-pietro-what-makes-war-documentary-true

An exceptional movie book has just been published. It is called Five Came Back: AStory of Hollywood and the Second World War, by Mark Harris. It is a history of American documentary films made during World War II as told through five feature-film directors who felt compelled to serve a just war, endangering their lives, their family stability, their bank balances, and their artistic souls. The five are John Ford, George Stevens, John Huston, William Wyler, and Frank Capra. I recommend the book for its narrative sweep, its revelation of character, and for the many ironies that attend the idea of “documentary.”

It is a book about idealism and muddling through—and about how awkwardly the ideals and the muddles co-existed. Harris does a fine job recounting the competition between American and British interests, and he does not stint on the vanity of some film-makers, the stupidities in military command, or the often craven efforts to believe that all our guys were brave. Time and again, the book returns to the question of how one can film combat, especially when there is a conflict of interests between journalism and propaganda, or truth and morale-building.

One of the films that Harris examines is the thirty-two-minute The Battle of San Pietro, which was released in May 1945 (though it had been shown to troops earlier). There are no names credited on the film itself. It is a product of the War Department, and that is how it was funded. But the guiding force on the picture, and the narrator’s voice, was John Huston. In Time, James Agee called it “as good a war film as any that has been made,” and writing in this magazine, Manny Farber recognized the daring innovation of war being “confused, terrifying, surprising and tragic.” The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1991, and that unreliable arbiter Wikipedia says of it: “Unlike many other military documentaries, Huston’s cameramen filmed alongside the infantrymen as they fought their way up the hills to reach San Pietro. These cameramen were in just as much danger as the soldiers on the ground, often within a few feet of mortars and shells exploding and bullets ricocheting nearby.” 

Illustration by Clay Rodery

Mark Harris says such claims are a pack of lies about a film that is largely composed of “reenactments.” I think he is correct, and I suspect any soldier or cameraman would know it from just a few shots. Can this reporting be reconciled with Wikipedia’s error? Suppose I offer another response: thatThe Battle of San Pietro has a case for being the most powerful film made by the American documentary effort during World War II. It might be stronger still if the War Department had not cut out many of the scenes of the dead.

One truth of war, maybe the most important one, is that nobody wants to be there. That includes cameramen as well as infantrymen, and it underlines how hard it is to film gunfire and its results. In Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder filmed aspects of the killing of John Kennedy only because he was there to get souvenir footage of the president driving past. Even if he had been in the plaza, with the camera at his side, it is unlikely that he could have covered the unexpected event without being aimed and focused already. This argument has nothing to do with courage. It comes from the speed of bullets.

Since the publication of Richard Whelan’s biography of the photographer Robert Capa, in 1985, I have questioned the reliability of Capa’s famous picture, from 1936, of a Republican militiaman on the Cordoba front in the instant of his being shot. I was not the first to raise such doubts, and the skepticism has continued to grow. It seemed fanciful that Capa happened to be ready for the split-second demands of such an event. He had seen men shot down and killed, and was moved by the sight. So he staged such a death and made an emblematic image, the Falling Soldier, which served as propaganda in the Spanish Civil War and remains a symbol of resistant courage under fire. Of course, it could as easily have been a picture of a soldier on the Franco side. It’s not that the shot is artfully composed, though it does have a fully visible, movie-like angle—it could not be improved. But Capa made it feel instantaneous as well as epic. Try as you might, you will not catch such an event on a camera unless you are setting it up and cueing it. And this doesn’t matter, unless you believe that photography has to be the Word of God.

For a clear nuclear doctrine

Published: May 6, 2014

Jayant Prasad

For a credible deterrent, constancy of doctrine in its core essentials has definite merit

For India, nuclear deterrence is defensive and a means to secure its sovereignty and security. Its strategy of assured retaliation, combined with “no first use,” provides adequate guarantee for this purpose. The strategy was unveiled concurrently with its 1998 nuclear tests, which ended the determined U.S. bid to prevent India from acquiring nuclear deterrent. Ironically, India’s nuclear weapons tests, together with the rapid expansion of its economy, transformed its global outlook and relations with the U.S. and the world.

The Chinese nuclear weapons test of 1964, on the heels of the 1962 war, had always rankled in Indian minds. K. Subrahmanyam and K.R. Narayanan, at the time in the early years of their public service, advocated a matching Indian response. This did not then have resonance at the top, as India was facing the twin crises of food and finance.

The P-5 states treated non-proliferation as their default foreign and security policy objective, but this was invariably trumped by national interest. India’s restraint and decision not to weaponise its nuclear capacities after the 1974 test were well known. Yet, when Pakistan accelerated its nuclear proliferation, it was not stopped in the wake of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter designated Pakistan a “frontline” state.

The Chinese transferred nuclear materials and technology to Pakistan, including the weapons design and the means to deliver them — the solid fuel 300-kilometre range M-11 ballistic missiles. In a paper published in 1972, Professor Wayne Wilcox of Colombia University, then working as cultural attaché in the U.S. Embassy in London, perceptively recognised that India’s policy concerning China and Pakistan “is to hedge all bets and cover all contingencies.” India was compelled to acquire nuclear weapons to deter nuclear blackmail in its contiguity.

Unlike Pakistan or Israel, India could not have a “recessed” deterrent or bomb in the basement, given India’s governance practices. Contingent factors delayed India’s nuclear weapons tests, such as the persistent external pressure on India, and arguments by internal agnostics who claimed that such testing would betray India’s long-held principles, diminish its international standing, and reduce future GDP growth rates by up to two per cent annually. In 1995 came the perpetual extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, without linking it to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The conditions attached to the 1996 Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, which could foreclose India’s nuclear weapons option, became the final point of conviction. From then on, the question was not whether to test but when.

Ending Afghanistan’s Drug Addiction Is Looking Like ‘Mission Implausible’

http://time.com/85017/ending-afghanistans-drug-addiction-is-looking-like-mission-implausible/

Mark Thompson  May 1, 2014
Afghan farmers tend to their poppy fields outside Jalalabad last month.Noorullah Shirzada—AFP/Getty Images
The Pentagon watchdog overseeing American efforts in Afghanistan says that the country’s booming opium industry is enjoying unprecedented growth that will fuel Taliban insurgents and challenge the government in Kabul

As U.S. troops continue to pull out of Afghanistan, the country’s booming poppy crops and the opium they yield have reached unprecedented levels that will fuel Taliban insurgents and challenge the government in Kabul, the Pentagon watchdog overseeing Afghanistan says.

“We don’t really have an effective strategy” to counter Afghanistan’s expanding narcotics industry, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said in an interview Thursday. “Cultivation is up, drug usage is up, production is up, seizures are down, eradication is down, corruption is up—if you look at all those indices, it’s a failure.” And the U.S. is running out of time to change course.

The U.S. has spent $7.5 billion trying to eradicate Afghanistan’s poppy crop since invading the country on Oct. 7, 2001, shortly after Osama bin Laden oversaw the 9/11 attacks from his sanctuary inside the country. But since 2008, the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in eliminating less than 4% of it, according to satellite imagery. Seizures of opium are even less, accounting for about 1% of production.

Pak triggers global polio emergency

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140506/jsp/foreign/story_18311956.jsp#.U2g8nvmSzyQ

- Islamabad’s failure to stem virus spread prompts WHO to call for urgent curbs

A Pakistani girl shows her thumb which was marked after she received her polio vaccine in Lahore. (AP) 

Geneva, May 5 (Reuters): Pakistan’s failure to stem the spread of polio triggered global emergency health measures today, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommending all residents must show proof of vaccination before they can leave the country.

The emergency measures also apply to Syria and Cameroon, which along with Pakistan are seen as posing the greatest risk of exporting the crippling virus and undermining a UN plan to eradicate it by 2018.

Pakistan is in the spotlight as the only country with endemic polio that saw cases rise last year. Its caseload rose to 93 from 58 in 2012, accounting for more than a fifth of the 417 cases globally in 2013. The virus has recently spread to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Syria, and has been found in sewage in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and greater Cairo, said WHO assistant director general Bruce Aylward.

It also appeared in China two years ago.

“In the majority of these reinfected areas, the viruses circulating actually trace back to Pakistan within the last 12-18 months,” Aylward told reporters on a conference call.

Pakistan has called an emergency meeting of senior provincial and federal health officials for Wednesday to finalise how to implement the new requirements.

“The best option would be vaccinating the passengers at the airport departure where polio vaccination cards would be issued to the passengers. Human resource and vaccines would have to be worked out for the purpose,” state minister for health services Saira Afzal Tarar said in a televised broadcast.

“It would be most practical as people often have to fly in emergencies.”

Aylward said Pakistan had done “tremendous” work to restore security in Peshawar after deadly attacks on health workers had impeded the fight against polio. The race to meet a target to eradicate polio by 2018 was still feasible, he said.

Siachen is not low hanging fruit

By Vikram Sood

Issue Net Edition | Date : 03 May , 2014

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/siachen-is-not-low-hanging-fruit/

History’s lessons, the immutability of geography and the politics of any region will determine how nations behave with each other. Nations cannot up and away and change location from a difficult neighbourhood to somewhere more congenial. This takes millions of years and there is no guarantee that there will be a change for the better! India Pakistan history and politics are too well known to be recounted here. It is our history that we forget ansgeography and its strategic relevance that we ignore. We suffer as a consequence. Given our relations with both Pakistan and China we are essentially a landlocked country unless we use our maritime routes extensively and look at South East Asia through Bangladesh and Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal and at West Asia through the Arabian Sea.

Access to Karakoram Pass would have given Pakistan not only extra territory but also access to Tibet via Aksai Chin held by China.

India-Pakistan relations invariably throw up Pakistani demands to discuss issues like Siachen. It is a good idea, though, to have a close look at the map of Jammu and Kashmir, including occupied Gilgit and Baltistan, Pak Occupied Kashmir and then all of Pakistan and areas of Tibet bordering India. The Siachen Glacier runs northwest to southeast from just below Shaksgam, (territory illegally ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963) to just north of the LOC. The Saltoro Ridge was occupied by Indian forces in 1984 preempting Pakistani attempts to move up to the Karakoram Pass just north of Daulet Beg Oldi. Access to Karakoram Pass would have given Pakistan not only extra territory but also access to Tibet via Aksai Chin held by China.

1965 War: General Chaudhury did not order withdrawal behind River Beas

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/1965-general-chaudhury-did-not-order-withdrawal-of-western-army-behind-river-beas/ 

Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Date:02 May , 2014

Lt Gen Harwant Singh Former Deputy Chief of Army Staff. He also commanded a corps in J&K.

Forty seven years have passed since the 1965 war with Pakistan, still controversies and confusion on many issues and events persist. It is so because the official history of this war is shrouded in secrecy. The documents with the MOD, MEA, RAAW, IAF and army formations are yet to be declassified. Given this blanket blackout of authentic information, hearsay, gossip, speculation, calumny continue to be floated and controversies abound.

The one controversy that seems to have nine lives is the alleged order by General Chaudhury, the then COAS to Lt-Gen Harbaksh, Western Army Commander, to pull his troops behind Beas river

The one controversy that seems to have nine lives is the alleged order by General Chaudhury, the then COAS to Lt-Gen Harbaksh, Western Army Commander, to pull his troops behind Beas river. Inder Malhotra, in an article in a national daily, added his bit to this controversy. He records that, once General Chaudhry came to know that Pakistan has two armoured divisions, ‘he panicked and ordered Harbaksh to withdraw his troops behind Beas, and the latter refused.’ He goes on to add that it was the Maharaja of Patiala who prevailed upon Chaudhry not to insist on Harbaksh to carry out this order. However, Malhotra does not elaborate as to how a maharaja ( then a captain and ADC to Harbaksh ) came in between the army chief and his army commander concerning an order of far reaching consequences at a critical stage of the battle. He also does not seem to know that, the existence of second armoured division with Pakistan was known to army HQ well before the war.

K Subramanyam, a defence commentator of considerable repute and former director of IDSA, in an article, stated that Gen Chaudhuri had sought Prime Minister Lal Bahadhur Shastri’s permission to withdraw troops behind Beas and that the PM did not permit him to do so. This version too, is seriously flawed and contradicts one by Malhotra. If Chaudhuri first approached the PM and drew a blank, he could not have passed such an order to Harbaksh. If he had spoken to Harbaksh first and got a response that there was no need for such a move, he could not have approached the PM on this issue. A catch 22 situation!

This story of Chaudhury’s order and Harbaksh’ refusal is baseless and to support it is to display complete lack of understanding of conduct of operations.

Employment of INS Vikramaditya for Military Diplomacy and Power Projection

Source Link

By Maj Gen Rajesh Singh

Issue Net Edition | Date : 29 Apr , 2014

INS Vikramaditya a $2.33 billion refurbished aircraft carrier was acquired recently from Russia in November 2013 and is based at Karwar Naval Base on India’s Western Sea Board. This 44,500 ton Kiev Class aircraft carrier having a range of 7000 nautical miles is the biggest ever warship inducted in the Indian Navy and packs a formidable punch carrying 24x MIG-29 supersonic fighter aircrafts having a range of 1300 Km and 10x Kamov-31/Kamov-28 anti submarine warfare and maritime surveillance helicopters. INS Vikramaditya, besides providing a strategic capability to the IN, meets the IN’s requirements of having a viable carrier battle group in a true sense and is ideal for military diplomacy and power projection roles.

INS Vikramaditya led carrier battle group besides making port calls in this region, must conduct quadrilateral joint naval exercises involving Australian, Indian, Japanese and South Korean navies and also have joint naval exercises with the navies of ASEAN States.

The IN besides its primary war time role, like all other navies has traditionally been employed for military diplomacy. Basically military diplomacy is the use of military in diplomacy as a tool of the nation’s foreign policy and is the soft usage of hard power. As part of the military diplomacy the tasks which are generally undertaken by the Navy are goodwill visits by warships by making port calls in friendly foreign countries and participating in joint naval exercises. The other peace time operational deployments being undertaken by the navies are maintaining order at sea, security of SLOCs, anti piracy operations, deterrent patrols, disaster relief, rendering humanitarian assistance, evacuation of own diaspora in times of distress and providing military assistance to friendly regimes in a crisis situation.

India’s areas of strategic and maritime influence and interest range from the Eastern Coast of Africa through the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), Malacca Straits, South and East China Seas, Eastern Pacific Ocean and up to the Southern Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific Region comprises the area of Malacca Strait and East up to Japan-New Zealand. This region is fast emerging as the world’s new centre of gravity, its importance is further enhanced due to the heavy volume of merchant marine traffic flowing through this area, there are large trade and economic interests for India and it is part of India’s Look East Policy; and stability in the region is essential for the security of SLOCs. The IOR is an area of concern for India as this region plays a key role in determining India’s policy perceptions and is an important element in her security calculus. The world’s busiest trading routes pass through the Indian Ocean as 35% of global trade takes place involving 100,000 ships transiting the sea lanes of the region annually. India’s interests in the IOR are energy security, ensuring influence/leverage in OIC, maintaining strong strategic ties with Iran as it provides land access to Afghanistan and CAR and safety interests of the large Indian diaspora in the Middle East. Thus there is a need for India to ensure the stability of the region from non conventional threats, ensure security of the SLOCs, be part of anti piracy operations and maintain order at sea. India’s initiative in this regard has been the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) organised in February 2008 which provides the forum for maritime confidence building measures and capacity building to address various asymmetric and transnational threats in the IOR. Since 2008 IONS is being held biennially.

Who planted the bombs in Chennai train?

Paper No. 5695 Dated 02-May-2014

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1511

By Col R. Hariharan

Two low-intensity improvised explosive devices (IED) exploded in two adjacent sleeper coaches of the Bangalore – Guwahati tri-weekly super fast express just as the train streamed into the Chennai Central station around 7.15 AM on May 1.

One young woman was killed and 14 others were wounded in the explosions. The city waking up to May Day holiday was stunned. And national media fed on increasingly stale diet of election news went hammer and tongs to dissect it.

But the question, who planted the bombs in the train, still remains unanswered.

The Chennai police (CB CID) assisted by a NSG team is investigating the blasts. Preliminary investigation has revealed that ammonium nitrate, favoured by terrorists because it is commonly available as a chemical fertiliser was probably used with a timer device in the IEDs. The media called the IEDs a professional job, leaving no doubt it was a terrorist handiwork. However, so far no terrorist organisation has laid claim to the heinous act.

As the train started in Bangalore, police are also looking for leads at their end. The police both at Chennai and Bangalore are also examining CCTV footages of the day recorded in the two stations for possible clues.

The train was running 45 minutes late and that probably saved more lives and damage to the train. Had it been running on time the train would have neared Nellore where Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant, was addressing an election rally on that day! Already a security alert has been issued to Southern States regarding possible terrorist attack on the Gujarat Chief Minister during his electioneering in South India. According to railway sources, security arrangements in the two stations in Chennai were tightened after the alert was received.

The train was headed for Guwahati, capital of not only Assam state but Northeast militancy as well. The train would have passed through parts of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa that were hunting grounds of Maoists and other Left Wing Extremist (LWE) groups. These complications have generated a lot of speculations about the terrorist body responsible for planting the bombs.

Despite some spectacular ambushes of paramilitary forces by Maoists, during the run up to the general elections their activities have been substantively restricted thanks to the tight security arrangements beefed up by additional forces. Same is the case in the Northeast where general elections have been conducted peacefully. Moreover, North-eastern militant groups which are ethno-centric rarely operate outside their beat. Considering this, it is reasonable to remove both the LWE and Northeast insurgents from the list of suspected perpetrators. And that leaves only Jihadi terrorist groups as the suspects.

In this context, the arrest of a Sri Lankan national Mohammed Zakir Hussain in Chennai in a joint operation by Central intelligence and state police two days before the blast is of special interest. According to media reports, Hussain is said to have confessed to the police of working for Pakistani intelligence. He was on an assignment to recruit people for terrorist activities in Southern states and circulate fake Indian currency. Based on the information provided by him the Tamil Nadu Q Branch Police have arrested two of his associates suspected of working for the Pakistan ISI.

India’s Security Concerns

By Maj Gen Afsir Karim

Issue Courtesy: Aakrosh | Date : 04 May , 2014

Once the United States and NATO forces leave the Afghanistan– Pakistan region, the ongoing conflict in the region is likely to be exacerbated. The Taliban is undefeated and waiting to reestablish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The Chinese offensive posture in border areas and the Indian defensive posture have created a dangerous situation for Indian troops on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). There is a clear military imbalance on the India-China border that needs to be set right without delay.

The increasing influence of India and its military support to Karzai’s regime raises serious apprehensions in the minds of Pakistani military leaders who consider it an extended regional threat.

Cyber wars pose a serious challenge to India’s national security as our traditional adversaries have an ability to cause web defacements and intrude into systems related to sensitive national security issues.

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN REGION

The clash between the Afghan government and the Taliban is likely to intensify once the full responsibility of insurgency operations is taken over by Afghan National Security forces (ANSF). Pakistan’s hidden role in Afghanistan and proxy war against the Afghan government will tilt the balance in favour of the Taliban and the ANSF may not be able to defend Kabul in these circumstances without external assistance. In this context, Pakistan is greatly concerned about the growing cooperation between India and Afghanistan in the wake of American withdrawal.

Much to the discomfort of Pakistan, Hamid Karzai had permitted India to open consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Mazar-e- Sharif, creating the fear in Pakistan that India’s influence will spread in these areas and will come in the way of its ambition of establishing the Taliban regime in Kabul.

The increasing influence of India and its military support to Karzai’s regime raises serious apprehensions in the minds of Pakistani military leaders who consider it an extended regional threat. India’s increasing footfall in Afghanistan is raising Pakistan’s fear of regional envelopment and revival of the idea of Pashtunistan, which Pakistan considers an existential threat.

Understanding the Wisdom of NFU

03/05/2014

http://www.claws.in/understanding-the-wisdom-of-nfu-manpreet-sethi.html

Manpreet Sethi

E-Mail- manpreetsethi07@gmail.com

The Indian nuclear doctrine clearly articulates a no first use strategy. This implies that India would not initiate a nuclear attack but would retaliate when subjected to one. This apparent ‘loss of initiative’ causes great angst, especially in some quarters of the military and the strategic community. The NFU is criticized for leaving India open to a nuclear strike and projecting the country as weak and passive. This, however, is a complete misreading of the NFU strategy.

Pakistan seeks to deter through a first use strategy. It projects a low nuclear threshold which suggests that it would use nuclear weapons if faced with a major conventional onslaught from India. This policy of brinkmanship raises uncertainty and cost of escalation for India, thereby forcing a certain caution on New Delhi. This has led to the impression that Pakistan’s first use deterrence doctrine has been more effective.

Such arguments, however, tend to overlook the actual incredibility of a first use strategy when it faces an adversary that has a secure second strike capability because then retaliation will have to be suffered too. In a nuclear dyad, first use is not just about one’s own use, but has to factor in a nuclear response too. Is it then useful, and more importantly, credible to threaten first use of nuclear weapons? Can/should Pakistan’s first use threat be taken seriously as long as India has the capability and resolve to inflict assured, punitive retaliation?

To take the analysis further, let’s examine two situations that are often considered worthy of nuclear first use. The first shows the dilemma of Pakistan and the second illustrates the dilemma India could face if it too chose to have a first use. In the first case, it is argued that if Pakistan were to face the prospect of conventional defeat, it would be left with no option but to use nuclear weapons. But, even in such a situation how does the country gain by using this weapon because once it has done so, its fate shifts from being defeated-now-but-living-to-fight-another-day to one of severe damage/annihilation. Jonathan Schell asked, “how can it make sense to “save” one’s country by blowing it to pieces? And what logic is there in staving off a limited defeat by bringing on unlimited, eternal defeat?” The choice rests with the first user.

Muzzling Pakistan's Media

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By HASAN ZAIDIMAY 4, 2014

Paying tribute in Karachi to Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who was shot and injured.CreditShakil Adil/Associated Press

Karachi, Pakistan — Pakistan’s media is in upheaval these days. But it’s not because of the stuttering “talks” between the government and militant groups, who have publicly vowed to target journalists.

The current upheaval began with the attempted assassination in Karachi on April 19 of Hamid Mir, arguably Pakistan’s most recognizable talk show host and journalist. Mr. Mir survived despite taking six bullets. The real furor came not in reaction to the attack but to Mr. Mir’s employer — Geo Television — which broadcast Mr. Mir’s distressed brother’s statement accusing the country’s premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, of being behind the attempted murder.

Most Pakistanis were stunned by these blunt accusations. Even with stronger proof, charges against the I.S.I. or serving military officers are unheard of in a country that has spent half of its existence under military rule and where the intelligence services still exert a powerful and often-intimidating influence.

There have been allegations of military complicity in the targeting of journalists before — most notably in the killings of Hayatullah Khan in 2006, Syed Saleem Shahzad in 2011 and Abdul Razzak Baloch in 2013 — but the difference this time was that the accusations were being made by family members of a man who had survived and could corroborate them.

The military’s spokesperson, while sympathizing with the Mir family’s distress, termed the allegations “emotional” and Geo’s conduct in continuing to air them, “irresponsible.” But far more remarkable was the conduct of some of Geo’s competitors. Attempting to be more loyal than the king, they jumped into the fray, criticizing Geo for its “lack of editorial control” and “flouting of journalistic ethics” in allowing the accusations to be broadcast.

In normal circumstances, Pakistan’s boisterous TV channels are loath to even mention competitors’ names. But efforts to curry favor with the military combined with commercial interests and petty personal issues between owners — Geo News is three times as popular as its closest competitor and attracts up to 70 percent of advertising revenue on news channels — seem to have trumped all previous restraint.

The vitriolic attacks on Geo and its parent company, the Jang Group, have increased with each passing day. One competitor devoted all its talk shows and 20 minutes of every hourly news bulletin for several days to Geo’s faults. Despite the veneer of discussing journalistic ethics, the underlying message was that accusations against a military agency were unacceptable.

Then the military moved in for the real kill. It petitioned Pakistan’s media regulators to ban Geo for defaming the military as well as its associated newspapers, Jang and The News. It also called for unprecedented criminal prosecution of Geo’s owners and journalists.

Cable operators were informally pressured to take Geo off the air. Demonstrations, often by militant religious parties, suddenly began springing up all over Pakistan in support of the I.S.I. and against Geo — probably the first time anyone in the world has rallied to defend an intelligence agency. Now even some mainstream political parties, including the one led by former cricket star Imran Khan, have raised the banner against Geo.