The Origins of Boko Haram

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-origins-boko-haram-10609?page=show

How a fanatical militant group grew to terrorize Africa’s most-populated country.

John Ford

June 6, 2014

Boko Haram appeared in the consciousness of most Westerners for the first time in April of this year. But the group is not a new arrival on the scene. It has been a growing force in Nigeria for over a decade and has deep roots in the country’s social development going back even further. Its rise is not an accident and signals the emergence of a dangerous, militant religious movement that threatens Nigeria’s survival as a nation-state.

Boko Haram’s story begins with a preacher named Mohammed Marwa, born in 1927. At about age eighteen, he moved to Kano, in what is today northern Nigeria, and began a career as a preacher. His sermons were extreme and often bizarre. He raged against Western culture and its popularity in Nigeria so virulently that he became known as Maitatsine, meaning “The one who damns.” He declared that reading any book other than the Koran was sinful and a sign of paganism. This included a prohibition on reading the Hadiths or Sunnah, the doctrinal equivalent of a Catholic Priest telling parishioners not to read the works of St. Augustine because they do not appear in the Bible. Near the end of his life, he came dangerously close to declaring that he, not Muhammad, was Allah’s true prophet.

At first, Maitatsine was ignored by Nigeria’s political leaders, but as his sermons became increasingly antigovernment in the late 1970s, the government cracked down. The crackdown culminated in an uprising in 1980, where Maitatsine’s followers in Kano began rioting against the government. The city descended into what scholar Elizabeth Isichei described as “virtually civil war.” The death toll from the 1982 riots and subsequent military crackdown was over 4,000 and Maitatsine himself was among those killed.

His movement, however, lived on. Maitatsine’s followers rose up against the government again in 1982 in Bulumkutu and 3,300 people were killed. Two years later, Maitatsine’s followers rose up around Gongola State in violence that killed nearly 1,000 people. Hundreds more were killed a year later in a rising in Bauchi State.

From independence, Nigeria had experienced strife along ethnic and religious lines, but this tension had been the result of different communities fighting over resources and power. In the north, the majority of the population is made of Muslims of the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups. In the south, the population is predominantly made up of Christians belonging to the Igbo and Yoruba ethnic groups. The fact that the country is nearly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and this division closely corresponds to the country’s ethnic and linguistic divisions has been a recipe for political turmoil. But religious fundamentalism has not been a defining characteristic of this strife. Maitatsine’s movement was a sign that the dynamic was changing, and the Islamic fundamentalism that was becoming more prominent in the Middle East in the 1970s was also finding a home in Nigeria.

Winning: How Syria Was Lost

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20140601.aspx

June 1, 2014

Not too long ago the expert opinion was that the Assad dictatorship of Syria was doomed because of a widespread rebellion that got started in 2011 and kept spreading. But now the experts have to admit they were wrong and it appears that the Assads will win. The key to the Assad victory was discipline and effective foreign intervention by Iran and Russia. The Assads were also ruthless and single minded while the rebels were divided by religious, political and ethnic differences. The Assads have shown that they are willing to see over 200,000 Syrians killed and over ten percent of the population driven from the country in order to win. 

The Assad discipline was partly habit, as the Assads had controlled the country since 1971 via ruthlessness, discipline and making the most of minority support. But the main reason for the discipline of the army was self-preservation. While many Assad supporters lost heart and fled the country many pro-Assad Syrians did not have the money or inclination to forsake their homeland. 

The main support of the government was mainly religious. Some 75 percent of the population is Sunni Moslem and the Sunnis have long been the main victims of the Assad dictatorship. Most of Syria's neighbors are Sunni, and this has kept anti-Assad attitudes alive. The rebellion allowed all this hatred to express itself violently. 

The Assad dictatorship was basically Shia Moslems, dominated by Alawites (12 percent of the population), along with the Druze and Christian minorities, joining together to dominate and control the Sunni majority in Syria. The Shia were always wary of the fact that Sunni conservatives openly call Shia (particularly Alawites) heretics and subject to extermination. It has been that way for centuries. 

Despite the religious angle some Shia, even some Alawites, initially sided with the rebels despite trust issues. Before too long the Islamic radical rebel groups, who consider all non-Sunnis as the enemy, demonstrated a hostility and inflexibility that destroyed most minority support for the rebels and made these minorities even more staunchly pro-Assad. Thus the Islamic terrorist rebel groups have not only made the usual Assad followers more loyal, but they eventually (by late 2013) forced many other rebels into a growing civil war within the rebel movement. 

Not all the minorities support the Assads. The Kurds (ten percent of the Syrian population) want more autonomy and will fight anyone who comes after them. The Palestinians (1.7 percent of the population) are considered unreliable by rebels and the Assads. A large number of Palestinians are pro-rebel but many are still loyal to the Assads, who have given the Palestinian refugees refuge for decades. Other minorities, like Turkmen (4 percent), Iraqis (4 percent), Assyrians (4 percent) and Druze (3 percent) have traditionally been well treated by the Assads, in return for loyalty. Largely because of the religious hatred of non-Moslems by Islamic terrorist rebels these minorities have been forced to stick with the Assads. 

Winning: Why The Arab Spring Failed

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20140602.aspx

June 2, 2014

The Arab Spring uprisings that began in early 2011 were a popular movement to replace the many dictatorships and monarchies that have long been the cause of most of the poverty and unhappiness in the Arab world. That has made the Middle East an economic, educational, scientific, military and cultural backwater. While there were some successes during the Arab Spring, the long-standing problems of the Arab world, especially corruption and tribalism, crippled the rebellions and diluted their success. While the first Arab Spring uprising, in Tunisia, was a success, the subsequent ones were not. In Egypt the corrupt businessmen who had backed and benefitted from the military dictatorship for decades retained their power, used it and now another general is poised to become the next leader. In Yemen something similar happened, with the wealthy supporters of the deposed dictator retaining their wealth and influence and still exercising much control over who will rule the country and how. In Libya the dictator was overthrown and killed but here the dictators main backers were tribal leaders and they hung on, only being challenged by the many Islamic terrorists who came to fight for the rebels. But the Islamic terrorist groups made themselves so unpopular that the tribal leaders ended up joining another a popular uprising in 2014 against the Islamic radicals. Syria was the saddest tale of all. The dictator and his wealthy backers (including Russia and Iran) fought the rebels to a standstill then, taking advantage of fighting between Islamic terrorist rebels and less extreme rebel groups, the government is regaining territory. 

The common error many of these uprisings made was accepting help from Islamic terrorist groups, who had long been trying to overthrow all these authoritarian rulers. The Islamic terrorists considered the secular democrats who sparked and initially sustained the Arab Spring as competitors for power, not allies in creating new democracies. This misreading of the Islamic terrorist groups (most of whom consider democracy un-Islamic) proved to be very expensive in terms of lives, property damage and economic losses in general. These popular rebellions led to the fall of several long time dictatorships, and a rush to reform (or the appearance of such) by most other Arab governments. Yet the Arab Spring also proved a major boost for Islamic terrorist morale and numbers. This was not what the Arab world needed. No, it was very much a disaster. 

Islamic terrorists have long been depicted in Arab culture as noble and pure warriors fighting to protect Islam. This is partly religion and partly culture but the reality is no Islamic radicals have ever managed to do any permanent good for the Moslem world. This truth gets realized and accepted from time to time. For example after the 2008 defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, and the 90 percent decline in al Qaeda attacks there it was believed that Islamic terrorism was on the ropes once more and many Arabs were visibly relieved. But the Arab Spring changed all that with terrorist attacks, most of them by Moslem religious radicals, more than doubling from 7,200 in 2009 to 18,500 in 2013. 

Don’t Annex the West Bank

Source Link

JUNE 5, 2014

Shmuel Rosner

JERUSALEM — It’s not easy to mark the exact moment when a peripheral idea suddenly becomes mainstream. But it’s safe to say that in today’s Israel the worrisome idea of annexing land in the West Bank is no longer marginal or considered as extreme as it once was.

The idea is called by different names, and the details of the plan — when there is one — vary. It is often called “applying Israeli law,” which presumably sounds more inviting than “annexation.” It is occasionally a call for only partial annexation. Yet the trend cannot be denied: Up-and-coming leaders of the Likud Party, the speaker of the Knesset and several ministers have come out in support of some form of annexation. On Monday, the idea was even raised in the cabinet, in a discussion concerning measures of retribution for Palestinian transgressions.

Annexation of the territory that was taken from Jordan in the 1967 war (apart from East Jerusalem and the Old City, both of which Israel declared to be legally under its jurisdiction) has long been an option. Yet for decades it wasn’t seriously considered. Two reasons made it unappealing: the expected outrage of the international community that has never accepted Israel as the legitimate ruler of the West Bank, and the demographic implications that annexation would have on Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” character. The territory is largely inhabited by Palestinians. If Israel bestowed citizenship on all of them, it would dramatically erode Israel’s Jewish majority. Why then has annexation suddenly become politically kosher?

The obvious reason is the failure of the peace process. For 25 years, Israelis and Palestinians have tried to negotiate a mutually agreed separation — the so called two-state solution. They failed not for lack of professionalism, but rather because they couldn’t agree on the terms for separation. A growing number of Israeli leaders are reaching the conclusion that this old idea is dead. Since they think the status quo is unsustainable, they are searching for new ideas.

The two available new ideas force Israel to forgo core building blocks of the old peace process: to sacrifice the element of “agreement,” or to sacrifice the element of “separation,” or both.

Giving up on the idea of an agreement led many Israelis to support taking unilateral steps toward separation and drawing of borders. Giving up on the idea of separation led other Israelis to support annexation.

In supporting such ideas, right-wingers have redrawn Israel’s political map: Israel’s right and Israel’s radical left both have toyed with a “one-state solution” in which all Palestinians residing west of the Jordan River (excluding those in the Gaza Strip) would become Israeli citizens, while centrist and left-leaning Israelis still support the principle of separation.

Europe's Deep Right-Wing Logic

June 5, 2014

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/06/05/europes_deep_right-wing_logic.html

By Robert Kaplan

It is undeniable that the right wing is ascendant in Europe. While leftist parties did well here and there in recent elections to the European Parliament, the story over recent years has been mainly about the right, symbolized most dramatically by the soaring popularity of Marine Le Pen's National Front inFrance. But also in Denmark, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Serbia, the one commonality is the dynamism of nationalist-style political movements. Right-wing parties in France and Denmark got a quarter of the vote in late May's elections, while the right in Austria got a fifth. Meanwhile, the Jobbik party in Hungary and Golden Dawn in Greece have garnered headlines the world over for their flamboyant neo-fascist views and popularity among significant swathes of the voting public.

While these numbers may not be enough to propel right-wing parties into executive power, they are, nevertheless, numbers that would have been unthinkable several years ago. While traditionally anti-immigrant, these parties have lately become in many cases pro-Russian. It is not that they like Russia per se; rather, it is that they see a kindred spirit in Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is a reactionary and Revanchist nationalist, embittered by the power balance of the Post Cold War, who thinks in terms of ethnic nations instead of post-national states. Like Putin's Russia, they are especially fearful of Muslims in their midst. Thus Putin has become an avatar to right-wingers from France to Greece.

What is behind this phenomenon?

Years and decades of immigration from Muslim North African countries and other parts of the developing world have seemingly threatened previously cohesive and mono-ethnic societies in Europe. Then there is the half-decadelong economic crisis within the European Union that has led to low or negative growth and indecently high levels of unemployment. And that, in turn, has led to very unpopular austerity measures. The combination of these social and economic stresses has gone a long way to delegitimize the European establishment so that someone like Putin, who challenges that establishment and what it stands for, immediately becomes a pole of attraction.

Admiral hopes to squelch military scandals

http://www.usatoday.com/news/ 

Tom Vanden Brook, USA

June 5, 2014 

WASHINGTON — At least 15 generals and admirals have been disciplined since 2010 for ethical lapses and outrageous behavior, a pattern of high-ranking malfeasance so disturbing that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel named a two-star admiral to police the top brass.

Their offenses range from the tawdry to the mundane to the just plain weird, including an admiral fired for passing counterfeit poker chips at a casino to an Air Force general's drunken binge at a nuclear conference in Russia.

Rear Adm. Margaret Klein has been sent into the ethical breach. Klein came to the job in March with this charge from Hagel: "Improve professionalism, moral and ethical decision-making and the traditional values of military service."

"We've been making news for all the wrong reasons," Klein said in an interview.

Some of those reasons:

•Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair cut a plea deal with prosecutors in March over extramarital affairs he had with subordinates, one of whom accused him of sexual assault and threatening to kill her. Sinclair's deal included a $20,000 fine, but he avoided a jail term.

•Army Gen. Kip Ward was demoted in rank by one star in 2012 and ordered to pay more than $80,000 in restitution for using military planes and staff for personal business. Ward had led Africa Command.

•Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina was fired from his post after being accused in 2013 of passing counterfeit poker chips at a casino in Iowa. He had been the No. 2 officer at the military command in charge of all U.S. nuclear war-fighting forces.

•Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Carey's drunken binge in Russia, detailed in an inspector general's report, outraged members of the contingent he led there to discuss nuclear security. He offended his Russian counterparts and consorted with women whose motives were suspect, according to the report.

•The "Fat Leonard" Navy scandal broke in 2013, involving prostitutes and cash allegedly provided by a contractor in Southeast Asia for steering ships to ports where he charged exorbitant fees. Leonard Glenn Francis, known as "Fat Leonard," pleaded not guilty to bribing Navy officers for classified information. In all, six Navy officers have been implicated in the scandal.

Ethical lapses aren't limited to the upper ranks. Scandals involving cheating on tests have emerged among junior officers charged with handling the Air Force's nuclear missiles and among Navy enlisted personnel who work on nuclear propulsion systems.

And the bad news keeps coming: Tuesday, the Navy reprimanded the commander of its elite flying team, the Blue Angels, for creating "a hostile work environment through pervasive sexual harassment," according to a Navy report.

Implications of new rules in the US for India’s Defence Management

http://idsa.in/idsacomments/ImplicationsofnewrulesintheUSforIndia_sverma_50614

Sandeep Verma

June 5, 2014

Controversies with defence procurement in India can usually be traced to imperfections within its Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP). For instance, despite “indigenisation” being an important policy objective in defence procurement, and despite minimum “indigenous content” requirements being mandatory for various categories of acquisition cases for decades altogether, the DPP till recently lacked a mechanism for computing indigenous content in defence acquisitions. Certain DPP provisions for commercial bids evaluation “kind of” equated foreign-origin parts paid for in domestic currency as “domestic content”—a formulation that was both incorrect and misleading. This deficiency was substantially corrected during the last round of reforms as part of DPP-2013 by incorporating a definition of indigenous content in line with international best practices, clearly recognising that manufacturing state-of-the-art defence equipment requires professionally-worded rules and regulations in the first place to support the acquisition process.

Just as an unambiguous definition of domestic content is a minimum pre-requisite for developing indigenous manufacturing capabilities, the ability to identify the ultimate source of each component that goes into defence weapons and platforms is equally important from contracting as well as strategic perspectives. The former perspective enables establishment of clear contractual liabilities for defects and accidents, while the latter enables blocking of undesirable “sleeper-agent” components from defence supply chains—components that can stop working when needed in war, or components that store and transmit tactical intelligence without user knowledge or consent.1 With this background, this short note traces recent US regulatory developments on detection and avoidance of counterfeit components in defence procurement as a potentially useful trigger for undertaking similar reforms in India.

Early last month, the United States issued a DFARS (Defence Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement) revision2 governing detection and avoidance of counterfeit electronic parts in defence acquisition programmes of its Department of Defence (DoD). The revision applies to allCost Accounting Standards (CAS)-covered prime contractors engaged by DoD, and obligatespass through of responsibility and liability provisions to all subcontractors at all tiers, both domestic and foreign, irrespective of whether the items supplied under such sub-contracts are COTS (Commercial Off-The Shelf) or non-COTS items. These new US developments will impact Indian suppliers acting in any sub-contracting capacity; and could also perhaps inform Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD)’s efforts for streamlining its own Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), which presently lacks similar guidance on detection, reporting and liabilities in respect of counterfeit parts in defence purchases.

ESSAYS & LONGER THOUGHTS

http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2014/06/04/groping-for-a-reset/

© GETTY IMAGES

Published on June 4, 2014

OBAMA'S FAILING FOREIGN POLICY 

Groping for a Reset

From the Middle East to Europe to Asia, the Obama Administration looks increasingly adrift. A serious course-correction has to happen soon.

The world of June 2014 is not a world the Obama Administration wanted or foresaw. The plan was that six years of no-drama, no-stupid-stuff diplomacy would repair the damage of the Bush years, isolate jihadis in a democratizing Middle East, develop a new relationship with Iran, build a businesslike relationship with Russia, and pacify East Asia. Europe would sleep, the Middle East would cool, and by pivoting to Asia the United States would stabilize the world’s most dynamic economic region and enhance American prestige even as it slashed defense budgets and stepped away from the global front lines. It was a beautiful plan, but it hasn’t worked out.

The reset with Russia ended with Putin mounting the most brazen land grab in Europe since World War Two. The pivot to Asia brought us to the point where tense standoffs over half a dozen disputed sites in the waters off China have turned into potential flash points, and where senior Chinese generals use the harshest rhetoric against the United States since before Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Al-Qaeda is no longer “on the run” according to as sober a source as theFinancial Times; it’s in its best shape since October 2001 by some analyses. The Syria horror continues to grow more intense and the consequences, more dire; Western intelligence agencies say they are unable to track the activities of thousands of Western passport holders now being trained in the finer points of jihad as they fight against Assad. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is in ruins despite major pushes by the President in each of his two terms. Saudi Arabia is cold to the Administration’s regional policy. Libya is a disaster. Years of “democracy promotion” in Egypt revealed the depth of American illusions about the Arab Spring and exposed the limits of our influence in Egypt. Congressional support for the Administration’s Atlantic and Pacific trade initiatives appears to be withering away. The President’s surge in Afghanistan (the war, let it be remembered, that he called a just and necessary war and vowed to win) is faltering ingloriously as officials race to redefine “success” faster than conditions deteriorate on the ground.

It increasingly looks as if Secretaries Clinton and Gates made the right move in getting out when they did. The contrast between the hope of the first term and the change of the second could not be more marked. But for the President and his embattled team contemplating the new world disorder, the going keeps getting tougher. And it’s not just that the foreign news makes for unpleasant reading; the sense that the President’s foreign policy has gone seriously awry is undercutting his authority at home and contributing to the GOP’s chances of taking the Senate and blocking the President’s agenda during his remaining two years.

The White House seems aware of the problem; the President’s speech at West Point last week was a rare, high-profile effort to seize control of the foreign policy discussion. But the speech (like so many others by the man once hailed as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln) soon sank without a trace.

At this point, none of President Obama’s foreign policy problems can be solved by a teleprompter. The President doesn’t need more speechwriters or better ones. He needs something totally different: He needs some real-world wins. You don’t demonstrate your mastery of world events by making smart speeches about how intelligent your foreign policy is; you demonstrate your mastery of world events by having things go your way.

If, for example, as America stepped up support for the Syrian rebels, President Assad suddenly found that the climate in Damascus was no longer salubrious and went shopping for a retirement home on the shores of the Black Sea, we would hear much less about a crisis in American leadership. If the United States and its NATO allies committed to major new defense installations in the Baltic republics and Poland, there would be less chest thumping in Moscow. If Ukraine’s military and security forces gradually became more effective, were better equipped, and began to drive the noisy rabble of Russia-sponsored thugs back over the frontier, President Obama wouldn’t need to make speeches about America’s commitment to eastern Europe.

OBAMA’S CLIMATE PLAN IS LEAKING METHANE – ANALYSIS

JUNE 6, 2014 

OILPRICE.COM

Source:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Obamas-Climate-Plan-Is-Leaking-Methane.html

By OilPrice.com

By Nicholas Cunningham

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 30 percent will no doubt lead to a cleaner economy. But the road there will be paved with methane.

By requiring reductions in the energy intensity per megawatt-hour of electricity generation, utilities will have the ability to choose from an array of options for how to meet the targets.

Energy efficiency will likely be the first choice. Renewable energy will certainly play a big part, as well.

But one of the major ways utilities will comply with EPA rules is by fuel switching from coal to natural gas. By the EPA’s own estimate, coal generation will decline by 20 percent to 22 percent by 2020. That will create an opening for natural gas, which could rise by up to 45 percent, jumping from 22 billion cubic feet per day to 32 bcf/d.

The Obama administration has bet its climate legacy on this trend, which was already underway before the EPA regulations. This is why the administration chose 2005 as a baseline, when emissions were near a peak. 2005 predated the shale gas revolution, which led to significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as cheap natural gas displaced coal. By 2013, the U.S. had already achieved about a 10 percent reduction in emissions since 2005 – meaning we are already well on our way to the 2030 goal.

Since natural gas burns much cleaner than coal, producing about half as much carbon dioxide, making the switch from coal to gas can go a long way to achieving the rest of the remaining reductions, the administration seems to be thinking.

The big problem is that we don’t know what’s happening with methane emissions.

Natural gas, which is essentially methane (CH4), may burn cleaner than coal, but what happens when it isn’t burned? As a greenhouse gas, methane emitted into the atmosphere is more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

Natural gas production leaks methane along its entire supply chain – from drilling to storing, processing to distributing. The EPA estimates that methane emissions have actually declined over the past 20 years as technology has improved. And this needs to be true for the EPA’s assumptions to work out with its climate plan.

Don't Be Fooled by the Hamas-Fatah Union

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2014/06/03/fatah-hamas-unity-puts-lie-to-us-middle-east-peace-efforts

The new unity government puts the lie to U.S. peace efforts.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, right, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

By Lawrence J. Haas

June 3, 2014 

The new Palestinian unity government of Fatah and Hamas puts the lie to fundamental assumptions on which the U.S. approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace have long rested, most prominently within the Obama administration.

Washington has long assumed that a two-state solution is attainable, that “land for peace” is the formula for success, that the key remaining issue is final borders for a new “Palestine,” that the main obstacle is Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is the rare Palestinian leader who will make peace and deserves Israel’s support. With the terrorist group Hamas (which runs Gaza) now sharing power with Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority (which runs the West Bank), the new Palestinian government undercuts all of these central assumptions.

[SEE: Political Cartoons on the Middle East]

Indeed, as this newly unified Palestinian leadership makes abundantly clear, the far more fundamental problem is broad Palestinian rejection of Israel to begin with and, with that, continuing Palestinian hopes of a new Palestine “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.”

Almost certainly, apologists for the U.S. approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making, whether in the administration or outside it, will explain that the Fatah-Hamas agreement is something that it isn’t. They’ll tout the new government as a sign of Hamas’ moderation, or they’ll predict that a governing role will force Hamas to moderate its approach to Israel, or they’ll explain that Abbas’ willingness to team with Hamas proves his desire for a peace that includes both the West Bank and Gaza.

Don’t believe any of it.

[READ: The Long Road to Nowhere]

Abbas, the former top aide to Palestinian terror mastermind Yasser Arafat, is now partnering with a terrorist group that remains dedicated to Israel’s destruction. That may surprise some U.S. officials, but it won’t surprise those who watch Abbas closely and track his activities in the West Bank. During his supposedly “moderate” presidency, Abbas has honored Israeli-killing Palestinian “martyrs” and “pioneers” – the latter of whom include Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, who worked with Hitler during World War II and planned to adopt his “final solution” for the Middle East.

Beautiful game, dirty business

Source Link

Football is a great sport, but it could be so much better if it were run honestly

Jun 7th 2014

THE mesmerising wizardry of Lionel Messi and the muscular grace of Cristiano Ronaldo are joys to behold. But for deep-dyed internationalists like this newspaper, the game’s true beauty lies in its long reach, from east to west and north to south. Football, more than any other sport, has thrived on globalisation. Nearly half of humanity will watch at least part of the World Cup, which kicks off in Brazil on June 12th.

So it is sad that the tournament begins under a cloud as big as the Maracanã stadium. Documents obtained by Britain’s Sunday Times have allegedly revealed secret payments that helped Qatar win the hosting rights to the World Cup in 2022 (see article). If that competition was fixed, it has company. A report by FIFA, football’s governing body, is said to have found that several exhibition matches were rigged ahead of the World Cup in 2010. And as usual, no one has been punished.

This only prompts other questions. Why on earth did anyone think holding the World Cup in the middle of the Arabian summer was a good idea? Why is football so far behind other sports like rugby, cricket and tennis in using technology to doublecheck refereeing decisions? And why is the world’s greatest game led by such a group of mediocrities, notably Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s boss since 1998? In any other organisation, the endless financial scandals would have led to his ouster years ago. But more than that, he seems hopelessly out of date; from sexist remarks about women to interrupting a minute’s silence for Nelson Mandela after only 11 seconds, the 78-year-old is the sort of dinosaur that left corporate boardrooms in the 1970s. Nor is it exactly heartening that the attempts to stop Mr Blatter enjoying a fifth term are being led by Michel Platini, Europe’s leading soccercrat, who was once a wonderful midfielder but played a woeful role in supporting the Qatar bid.

Our cheating rotten scoundrels are better than yours

Many football fans are indifferent to all this. What matters to them is the beautiful game, not the tired old suits who run it. And FIFA’s moral turpitude is hardly unique. The International Olympic Committee, after all, faced a Qatar-like scandal over the awarding of the winter games in 2002 (though it has made a much bigger attempt to clean itself up). The boss of Formula One, Bernie Ecclestone, stands accused of bribery in Germany, while American basketball has just had to sack an owner for racist remarks. Cricket, the second-most-global sport, has had its own match-fixing scandals. American football could be overwhelmed by compensation claims for injuries.

#SocialMedia @TheOperationLevelofWar

https://www.usnwc.edu/mocwarfighter/Article.aspx?ArticleID=24

By ENS Kat Dransfield and ENS Chris O’Keefe, USN

For Issue #3, May 2014

As smart phones, digital cameras, and webcams become more prevalent in the battle space, the possibility of an unofficially sanctioned conflict “live feed” reaching a mass audience no longer seems inconceivable. Social media would be the likely delivery vehicle for such content, as evidenced by Pakistani live tweets during the bin Laden compound raid and “selfies” taken by locals in Crimea with Russian soldiers. Social media not only poses practical challenges to operational security, but more fundamentally, redistributes the narrative power previously consolidated in official actors. Formatting and disseminating information related to the conflict environment is no longer the exclusive purview of news outlets and political-military leadership, but rather, any social media user has the potential to create unanticipated effects that could influence the conduct of military operations. As war has become increasingly focused on perception and deception as opposed to the kinetic destruction of military targets,1 public perceptions influenced and shaped by tech-savvy stakeholders may be just as decisive in determining outcomes as the precision of our technologies and the competency of our leadership. Recent developments in social media have profound ramifications for leaders at all levels of warfare (tactical, operational and strategic) and a lack of understanding of the massive amount of new “communication vectors,” particularly by senior leadership, could undermine operational effectiveness and even jeopardize a nation’s ability to prevail in conflict.

The effects of social media at the operational level of war (OLW) can be divided into “first” and “second order” challenges. First order challenges merely amplify existing concerns about operational security (OPSEC). The fundamental OPSEC challenge is how to limit the quantity and quality of information about military operations that reaches adversaries. However, unlike previous major engagements where OPSEC was successful (e.g. the invasion of Normandy), we now live in a world where the ease of collecting data by both active and passive means makes it increasingly difficult to conceal behaviors, motivations and intentions. Social media, including content generated by DoD organizations and personnel, thus threatens to compromise operational security by revealing the locations, capabilities, and intentions of military assets in a variety of ways. Consider, for example, how much information a social media-literate adversary can gain about ship movements simply by aggregating the GPS data tethered to Facebook posts by ship personnel. Similarly, an Instagram photo of naval equipment might reveal information about its technical limitations and modes of implementation. Ironically, a sudden lack of “normal” social media activity by a unit or vessel might indicate operationally-imposed constraints that, if correctly interpreted, could also provide useful information to an adversary. The way in which social media exposes the operating environment thus poses immediate “first order” challenges to not only how a Maritime Operations Center (MOC) is manned, trained, and equipped, but also to operational planning, preparation, and execution.

A “second order” challenge, and one which perhaps has not yet been well understood during the planning and execution of recent military operations, is how social media has restructured the ability to influence public opinion. Social media not only changes what is reported about military operations, but more importantly, who has the ability to “tell the story.” A single photo posted to social media has the potential to spark global outrage and can have tremendous impact at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. (e.g. Abu Ghraib photos of torture). Decision-makers at all levels of war need to understand that changing global opinion often hinges on aggregating a critical mass of “followers” online, rather than the authenticity or credibility of content and authors. The fact that social media content often becomes “representative” of military operations does not always emanate from a judgment of content quality, but only allows us to make a statement about the content's resilience within the “attention economy”2 online. In other words, the average media consumer’s palate is not as sophisticated and discerning as military leadership would desire, often exhibiting a preference for the most shocking, rather than the most reliable and professional content.

Breaking The Prison Of Our Own High-Tech Success

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/breaking-the-prison-of-our-own-tech-success/

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

June 05, 2014

Marines use off-the-shelf Samsung tablets to coordinate an Infantry Officers Course exercise from the back of a V-22 Osprey.

WASHINGTON: High-ranking officials and blue-ribbon commissions have spent decades trying to reform how the Defense Department develops new technologies, buys them, sustains them, and controls their export abroad. Almost everyone has failed. Why? Ben Fitzgerald says they’re thinking too small.

“Hey guys, this is actually a strategic issue. It’s not just an acquisition issue or an ITAR[International Traffic in Arms Regulations] issue,” said Fitzgerald. Even taking on a topic as tangled and sprawling as “acquisition reform” is still addressing only one piece of the fundamental problem: staying on top of technology.

The irony is that the US should be well positioned to compete, said Fitzgerald, who headsthe technology and security program at the Center for a New American Security and who just published a study advocating “Creative Disruption.” The US has innovative companies, an educated workforce, and a highly professional military, he told me, “but we choose to cling to the methods of past success.”

That past success was the “offset strategy” developed in the decade after Vietnam, Fitzgerald said. By systematically exploiting America’s superior technology to “offset” the Soviet bloc’s advantage in numbers, the strategy gave us smart weapons, stealth aircraft, battle command networks, and the whole arsenal of high-tech tools that shattered Saddam Hussein’s forces in two conventional wars and which underlie US military dominance today.

But we became victims of our own success, Fitzgerald argued. “Essentially we are still riding the coattails of that strategy 30 years later,” he told me. “All the things that we have — ITAR, MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime] — all those are optimized for the late 70s, early 1980s and make a lot of sense in that context, but we’re not in that context anymore.”

The current system made sense when America had a tremendous technological lead and the defense industry drove America’s greatest innovations. Jet bombers gave rise to jet airliners, ballistic missiles to moon rockets, electronic connections among Pentagon-funded researchers to the Internet. But the rest of the world is catching up. The defense sector funds an ever-smaller share of US research and development compared to consumer-oriented companies, and the US and Europe fund an ever-smaller share of global R&D compared to East and South Asia. In fact, according to Fitzgerald’s report, Apple — a global consumer electronics company — could buy the two largest defense contractors, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, “with its cash on hand.”

“The military-industrial complex is still significant,” said Fitzgerald, “but it’s not the 800-pound gorilla that it was 40 years ago.” Advances in some of the areas most important to military success — satellites, networks, cybersecurity — are increasingly driven by commercial innovators, not defense contractors, and increasingly outside the United States. Instead of being able to use export controls and security regulations to keep sensitive technologies out of the wrong hands, the US will often have to play catch-up to what’s widely available to everyone, including adversaries.

Intelsat Readies For ‘Epic’ Foray Into Military SatCom

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By COLIN CLARK

June 04, 2014

WASHINGTON: For more than a decade, the US military has fumbled and groped and stumbled and, gradually, figured out ways to buy a mix of commercial satellite communications and dedicated military satellites so it could communicate and watch video from Predator, Global Hawk, and Reaper drones in theaters where military bandwidth was precious.

For much of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the US could easily buy commercial satellite time or transponders because of a fortuitous glut of satellites covering that region. That glut is fast vanishing. And places like the Pacific — marked by vast distances and relatively little commercial satellite coverage — have posed significant problems. Now the world’s largest commercial satellite operator, Intelsat, is buying Boeing-built satellites called Epic that it hopes — combined with changes in space acquisition and the development of secure radio waveforms — will supply the US military with enormous on-call bandwidth.

Boeing has built the Wideband Global SATCOM satellites (originally known as the Wideband Gapfiller, which was a much more honest name) to help plug those holes. But these satellites had to be built into the military’s acquisition budget and were subject to the Pentagon’s space acquisition system, known for its quality but not its speed. In part because of that slow-moving acquisition system, the technology on the WGS has been relatively quickly superseded.

The six Epic satellites, the first of which is due to launch in the third quarter of 2015, will provide five times the bandwidth equivalent of conventional commercial satellites and up to three times that of WGS satellites, Intelsat General President Kay Sears told me. She believes the military can “slowly transition” to using her birds now that the last of the WGS satellites has launched.

Among the keys to making the military a regular customer of the Epic satellites may be a program called COMSATCOM Pathfinder. On March 7, Air Force Space Command issued its first-ever request for commercial satellite communications to cover Africa. Gen. Willie Shelton, outgoing head of Air Force Space Command, has been pushing these changes, apparently as part of his general push for increasing the numbers and resilience of our military satellite architecture, a policy known as “disaggregation.”

Another key to the military using commercial communication satellites is a secure waveforms: algorithms that make the satellite hop to another frequency when jamming or other interference is detected. Boeing successfully tested the waveform in July last year. Last October, Raytheon successfully used a new modem and a highly secure waveform similar to that protecting communications on the most secure military communications satellites, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system used for presidential and nuclear transmissions. Raytheon builds the satellite terminals for AEHF, as well as the terminals used by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), builder and operator of the nation’s spy satellites.

WIPING OUT SPACE GARBAGE: BIG LASER FOR SMALL DEBRIS

JUNE 6, 2014 

EURASIA REVIEW

http://www.eurasiareview.com/06062014-wiping-space-garbage-big-laser-small-debris/

By Eurasia Review

Space debris populations she from outside geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Note the two primary debris fields, the ring of objects in GEO, and the cloud of objects in low earth orbit (LEO). Photo by NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.

(CORDIS) — Remember how Imperial destroyers smashed asteroids in ‘The Empire Strikes backs’? You can almost consider that old fashioned. Thanks to the CLEANSPACE project, space debris as small as 1 cm could soon be tracked down by Earth-based lasers.

The protection of satellites is a pressing issue. If we were to replace the approximately 1 000 active satellites in orbit today, the estimated cost would be around EUR 100 billion. Many sectors of the economy would be impacted, and society as a whole would have to suffer the consequences.

Various technologies have been considered to resolve this issue. From DARPA’s scavenging robots and ESA’s cargo freighters – both due to launch in 2015 – to Japan’s fishing nets, scientists’ brains teem with ideas. Laser technology is one of these. Proposed by NASA in 2011, the concept of a laser station used to modify the trajectory of space debris is increasingly looking like a suitable solution.

The CLEANSPACE (Small debris removal by laser illumination and complementary technology) project, which has been running for three years and is due to end this month, looks into the role laser technology could play in the removal of small debris – the most problematic for orbiting satellites. Their main objective is to define a technology roadmap for surveillance, identification and tracking, to be used with a possible ground-based laser protection system.

Dr Christophe Jacquelard, who coordinates the project, agreed to discuss some of its main outcomes.

What are the main objectives of the project?

The CLEANSPACE study is an answer to FP7 Security research call SPA-2010-2.3.02 ‘Need to protect space assets from on orbit collision’. It aims to answer this need by defining the necessary requirements for the safe and routine removal of small space debris in Low Earth Orbit with a ground-based high-energy laser station. Such technology would protect valuable space assets from destructive on orbit collisions.

What is new or innovative about the project?

Using a laser to modify the trajectory of space debris is new and we defined a global architecture of such a ground-based system. But the more innovative part of the project is at the technical level: laser matter interaction in a vacuum has been studied, coherent coupling of laser beams of moderate energy has been demonstrated, and the suitability of ceramic technology to develop large-size samples with a complex shape and luminescent dopant repartition has been tested. In order to ensure lasting international support and a smooth debris removal process, an international organisation has been proposed and finally simulation tools have been developed to evaluate trajectory modification for single-pass or multiple-pass operation.

The Five Most-Powerful Navies on the Planet

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful-navies-the-planet-10610?page=show

Find out which nations hold the most sway on the high seas. 

Kyle Mizokami

June 6, 2014

It’s a universal truth handed down since antiquity: a country with a coastline has a navy. Big or small, navies worldwide have the same basic mission—to project military might into neighboring waters and beyond.

The peacetime role of navies has been more or less the same for thousands of years. Navies protect the homeland, keep shipping routes and lines of communication open, show the flag and deter adversaries. In wartime, a navy projects naval power in order to deny the enemy the ability to do the same. This is achieved by attacking enemy naval forces, conducting amphibious landings, and seizing control of strategic bodies of water and landmasses.

The role of navies worldwide has expanded in the past several decades to include new missions and challenges. Navies are now responsible for a nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent, defense against ballistic missiles, space operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. With that in mind, here are the five most powerful navies in the world.

United States

First place on the list is no surprise: the United States Navy. The U.S. Navy has the most ships by far of any navy worldwide. It also has the greatest diversity of missions and the largest area of responsibility.

No other navy has the global reach of the U.S. Navy, which regularly operates in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa. The U.S. Navy also forward deploys ships to Japan, Europe and the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. Navy has 288 battle force ships, of which typically a third are underway at any given time. The U.S. Navy has 10 aircraft carriers, nine amphibious assault ships, 22 cruisers, 62 destroyers, 17 frigates and 72 submarines. In addition to ships, the U.S. Navy has 3,700 aircraft, making it the second largest air force in the world. At 323,000 active and 109,000 personnel, it is also the largest navy in terms of manpower.

What makes the U.S. Navy stand out the most is its 10 aircraft carriers—more than the rest of the world put together. Not only are there more of them, they’re also much bigger: a single Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can carry twice as many planes (72) as the next largest foreign carrier. Unlike the air wings of other countries, which typically concentrate on fighters, a typical U.S. carrier air wing is a balanced package capable of air superiority, strike, reconnaissance, anti-submarine warfare and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief missions.

Leadership: Point Of View

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20140605.aspx

June 5, 2014: The U.S. Navy recently (in May) completed its investigation of an incident in the Red Sea last September where a recently landed helicopter was washed off the destroyer before it could be tied down. The destroyer (the William P. Lawrence, DDG 110) was moving a high speed (over 55 kilometers an hour) through rough seas to rendezvous with a carrier task force. The ship was moving through some rough seas and after the helicopter landed the ship was rolling up to 12 degrees and then encountered a “wall of water” that broke over the helicopter platform and sent the helicopter and five sailors overboard. Three of those who went into the water were rescued but the two pilots were not. 

The investigation panel was split on whether the captain (a 20 year veteran) was negligent. The surface warfare officers (SWOs, who run ships) believed the destroyer captain was justified in continuing to move at high speed to make its rendezvous schedule. The aviation officers believed that the captain should have slowed down after the helicopter landed so that the aircraft could be tied down and the aviation personnel could get off the deck. The SWOs pointed out that the DDG 110 captain was maneuvering the ship within the rules for operating in rough seas and it would be unreasonable to expect SWOs to slow down every time they got a helicopter on board in rough weather because of the chance that a large wave might wash over the flight deck before the helicopter could be secured. 

The captain of the DDG 110 left her post on schedule at the end of 2013 and went on to her next assignment (a staff position). While the aviation officers faulted the captain for the incident, the majority of officers on the investigation panel did not and no disciplinary action was taken against the captain. The navy does not train captains for such extreme situations, in large part because such incidents are so rare. The aviation community, especially helicopters who operate off destroyers and frigates take a more personal interest in operating off these small ships in bad weather.

Internal Tensions in Iran: Some Underlying Metrics

By Anthony H. Cordesman

JUN 4, 2014 

Much of the discussion of the pressures on Iran focuses primarily on policy, and political and military issues. There are, however, some statistics and assessments by international bodies such as the World Bank that help illustrate the forces at work within Iran that shape its politics, economy, and ability to compete with the US and its allies in building up its military forces.

The Burke Chair at CSIS has developed an initial set of metrics that help illustrate these forces entitled Internal Tensions in Iran: Some Underlying Metrics, and which is available on the CSIS website athttps://csis.org/files/publication/140604_iran_metrics.pdf.

Like all such data, the reader should be aware that there are major uncertainties in many of the data, and often conflicting views and perspectives.

This report will be updated and expand in the future, and any additional material and comments would be greatly appreciated. Please send such comments and material to Antony H. Cordesman at acordesman@gmail.com. 

Programs

BURKE CHAIR IN STRATEGY, BURKE CHAIR ON LESSONS OF WAR, BURKE CHAIR ON MILITARY BALANCE

Topics

DEFENSE AND SECURITY, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, MILITARY STRATEGY

Regions

IRAN, MIDDLE EAST

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