Will Islamic State wring its hands like us over torture? Not likely

John Kass CHICAGO TRIBUNEjskass​@chicagotribune.com 

John_KassSo what do 2-time losers end up doing, let they become 3-time losers? Great story @jmetr22b How you doin' Marc Z?http://t.co/71uzm6i8fb

American Peter Kassig, shown making a food delivery to refugees in Lebanon in 2013, was recently executed by the Islamic State militant group. (Kassig family photo) 

Kass: U.S. torture report elicits guilt, but the Islamic State isn't squeamish about such things. 

The Islamic State doesn't appear ready to follow our lead, so don't expect it to release its report on the morality of severing American heads any time soon.

Though they call themselves a state, they're actually a mob of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. And when they're not severing the heads of Westerners and Syrian soldiers and putting the hideous acts on video, they're raping women or shooting Christians and others and pushing them into ditches.

But apparently they don't feel guilt, not the way American politicians feel it in Washington. Or at least the Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence feel guilty enough to have released a report condemning the CIA for torturing suspects in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

I'm certainly not advocating torture. It's cruel, it's brutalizing — not only to the victims, obviously, but it also brutalizes the culture that supports such acts. But it might be useful to realize that while we might feel queasy about what we did, the Islamic State is immune from hand-wringing after they cut American throats.

The recent murder of Peter Kassig, an American, was particularly brutal. Kidnapped, held hostage for months, he converted to Islam. Later, his head was cut from his body in an act broadcast last month on video. President Barack Obama called it an act of "pure evil."

I don't know how many of you have watched those videos. I haven't. I've seen one, years ago, the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and that was enough. A friend who'd spent time in the special forces told me it was important to watch it, in order to fully comprehend the cruelty of al-Qaida. He was right. There are ways to talk about such things and maintain distance. But seeing it is another matter. There is nothing abstract about the knife and the throat.

Seeking Europe's Future in the Ancient Hanseatic League

By Mark Fleming-Williams

A bargain, forged in the fires of 2012's economic emergency, has defined the European Union for the past two years. It was an agreement made between two sides that can be defined in several terms - the center and the periphery, the north and the south, the producers and the consumers - but essentially one side, led by Germany, provided finance, while the other, fronted by Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece, promised change. In order to gauge this arrangement's chances of ultimately succeeding, it is important to understand what Germany was hoping to achieve with its conditional financing. The answer to that question lies in Germany's own history.

Last week, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank's monthly meeting left financial markets feeling frustrated. Instead of announcing the beginning of a highly anticipated bond-buying program known as quantitative easing, the European Central Bank, or ECB, only slightly changed the vocabulary it used to describe its plans: "We expect" became "we intend." Pulses did not race with excitement.

In fact, the most interesting news of the day was that seven of the 22 members of the council apparently voted against the change in vocabulary. Those opposed included four governors of national central banks and three of the EU executive board's six members, who, in theory, are responsible for shaping ECB policy. This ongoing debate over finances is deeply important to Europe's future because it touches on a key question at the heart of the European project: Is Germany willing to underwrite the whole venture? Germany gave a partial answer to this question in 2012 when it financed the EU rescues of several member states, but the conditions it attached have since created more problems.

The trouble began with 2008's economic crash and peaked four years later with a sovereign bond crisis. Germany reacted by creating various mechanisms and funds to bail out stricken countries, including Outright Monetary Transactions to safeguard sovereign bond prices. In return, the bailed-out nations had to enact painful changes to increase their competitiveness - at a lifestyle cost to their citizens. The rest of the union had to commit to financial reform by signing the European Fiscal Compact. With these conditions, Berlin hoped to bring the rest of Europe through a process Germany had already undergone.

The Makings of an Economic Miracle

After the Second World War, Germany found itself occupied and split in two. It was positioned in the middle of a continent that feared it, and its economy had been wrecked by 30 years of war and turmoil. Militarism had failed repeatedly and spectacularly. Germany needed a new ethos, so it returned to its roots.

Before the German unification of 1871 set the new nation on a course to its own demise, the great behemoth known as the Holy Roman Empire had stretched across Central Europe for over a thousand years, from 800 to 1806. It was a patchwork of states varying in size. Some were ruled by princes while some were independent cities, but all owed ultimate allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, whose real power over his vassals was paltry in comparison to that of the French kings or Russian tsars at his flanks. The Holy Roman Empire was a network of Germanic peoples, where no unit was powerful enough to militarily dominate its neighbors or to truly unify the region into a single state. The result was a competitive market where each princedom, duchy and city's survival was largely based on its own efficiency and resources, along with those of any peers with which alliances were formed. Local resources were leveraged, and skilled craftspeople trained through lengthy apprenticeships, forming guilds that created products recognized for their excellence across the Continent.

At Least 300 Pro-Moscow Chechen Troops Fighting With Ukrainian Rebels, Report

December 11, 2014

Chechens loyal to Russia fight alongside east Ukraine rebels

1 of 8. One of the pro-Russian separatist leaders from the Chechen ‘Death’ battalion, identified as his nickname ‘Stinger’, speaks during a training exercise in the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, eastern Ukraine, December 8, 2014.

(Reuters) - Chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), dozens of armed men in camouflage uniforms from Russia’s republic of Chechnya train in snow in a camp in the rebel-held east Ukraine.

India and Russia: Putin Visit to Boost Ties

Dr Nivedita Das Kundu

http://www.vifindia.org/article/2014/december/10/india-and-russia-putin-visit-to-boost-ties

The India-Russia Strategic partnership was formed in the year 2000. Russia was the first country with whom India established a strategic partnership and in the year 2010 during the 11th Summit, India and Russia elevated their relationship to a “Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership” status, indicating a mutual desire to emphasize the exceptional closeness of ties. In today’s complicated and fast changing geopolitical situation, both countries have wisely diversified their foreign policy options, yet have been careful not to abandon a mutually beneficial partnership of trust built up over decades between them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forthcoming visit to India on 11th December, 2014, will be an extremely significant event as far as India-Russia relationship is concerned. This will be the first visit of President Putin to New Delhi after formation of the new government in India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The bilateral summit between India and Russia takes place every year alternatively in Moscow and in New Delhi. The forthcoming summit will be the 15th annual bilateral summit between the two countries. During the Summit, there will be full-fledged discussion on various issues and concerns related to India-Russia bilateral relationship. The leaders of the two countries are expected to discuss and sign a number of important bilateral agreements, review the entire range of India-Russia bilateral ties and also lay down a broad agenda to be followed for the coming year for strengthening the strategic partnership.

Historical Connections

The deep roots of India-Russia relationship go back to the early 20th century when India was under British rule and the Czars ruled Russia. The Russian Revolution of 1905 inspired Indian freedom fighters. Russia's communist leader V.I. Lenin followed with interest and sympathy the nascent Indian freedom struggle. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet leaders understood that their revolution stood better chance of success and encouraged India to become free and independent. Many Indian freedom fighters who were greatly inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution established personal contacts with the Soviet leaders; it was India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who laid the foundation of the policy of closeness towards the Soviet Union. After visiting Soviet Union in 1927, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Nehru came back deeply impressed with the Soviet experiment. He was emphatic that India must develop close and friendly relationship with the Soviet Union. It is noteworthy that even before India became independent, an official announcement was made on 13th April 1947, pertaining to the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and the Soviet Union.

They’re Back: A New Generation of Russian Spies Deluge Europe

Elisabeth Braw

December 10, 2014

Russian Spies Return to Europe in ‘New Cold War’

Caught Red Handed: Two men were arrested by polish authorities on suspicion of spying for the Russian government in October. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Earlier this month, experts convened in Brussels for a conference titled ‘The Second Cold War: Heating Up?’ Even among the plethora of current ‘New Cold War’ themed events, this one stood out: the organiser, Latvian MEP Tatjana Zdanoka, has been accused of being a Russian agent of influence – a spy.

Zdanoka, who is also chair of the EU Russian-­Speakers Alliance insist there is no truth to the allegations, adding that the accusation was part of a ‘dirty tricks’ operation against her at home by domestic opponents – a tactic familiar from the Cold War days to those who remember them. In any event, the criminal investigation against her has been closed, Latvia’s DP intelligence service says. Yet the allegations point to the new – or revived – espionage game that is now playing out in Europe. Intelligence agencies everywhere are upping their games, with Western agencies putting particular efforts into data collection – “snooping”.

The West’s efforts, though, pale into insignificance compared to those of Russia. Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution reports growing instances of Russian espionage, and a spokesman for Sweden’s Säpo intelligence agency says that Russia has increased its intelligence agencies’ activities in Sweden since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. A senior European intelligence official estimates that intelligence agency employees now account for one third of Russia’s diplomats.

Of course, after the Cold War, espionage never completely ceased. Last month, Heidrun Anschlag, a Russian spy who had arrived in Germany with her husband in 1988, was released from prison after serving a year’s sentence. The two had spied on Germany for more than 20 years, until they were caught two years ago.

Japan needs a real debate about the falling yen

BY WILLIAM PESEK

DEC 10, 2014

Nearly two decades after America rolled out its strong-dollar mantra, Japan seems to have adopted the opposite chant. Finance Minister Taro Aso reminded reporters Tuesday about the yen’s vital role in boosting job and wage growth: In the opaque world of currency predictions, that counts as a pretty clear sign that he expects the currency to drop even further than its current rate of 120 to the dollar, down 16 percent since mid-year.

How low might the yen go? Opposition lawmaker Takeshi Fujimaki, a former banker, may be off-base when he warns the currency could eventually hit 200 per dollar. But with growth faltering and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doing far more talking than restructuring, Japan is depending on a weaker exchange rate to boost export earnings. A rate nearer to 150 is hardly out of the question.

There’s a view in Tokyo — and a certain tolerance in Washington for it — that if a weaker yen helps Japan whip deflation, then the end justifies the means.

But this reasoning suffers from two big flaws. First, while the yen’s plunge has filled the coffers of large exporters and boosted tourism receipts, overall it’s doing more harm than good by making imports much more expensive. Windfall corporate profits are lifting the onus off Japan Inc. to innovate and Abe to deregulate the economy.

The second problem involves the economic and geopolitical fallout of the yen’s swoon. Just as the Federal Reserve needs to think carefully about how raising U.S. interest rates will affect developing nations, Japan must consider the damage caused by a continuing free fall. It’s no coincidence that China’s yuan plunged the most in six years Tuesday, spurring fears of a new currency war in Asia.

“The Bank of Japan’s effort to weaken the yen is a beggar-thy-neighbor approach that is inducing policy reactions throughout Asia and around the world,” Nouriel Roubini warned in a recent op-ed. “Central banks in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand, fearful of losing competitiveness relative to Japan, are easing their own monetary policies, or will soon ease more.”

Exchange-rate battles are largely a zero-sum game. For one currency to drop, another must rise — just as when one government’s trade balance brightens, another’s darkens. In 1997, a round of competitive devaluations rocked the region. This time around, a regional currency war could encourage Europe to follow suit, complicating America’s recovery as the dollar soars.

U.S. senators will have a hard time demanding that China stick to a stronger yuan while giving ally Japan a free pass. President Barack Obama is sure to hear complaints from key U.S. allies as well. Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju Yeol has already warned, “We will not stand pat” as Japan devalues. If China follows suit, countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam that are competing at the lower end of the manufacturing spectrum will face a rough 2015.

For such an advanced economy, Japan takes an almost developing-nation view of exchange rates. Remember that Washington’s strong-dollar policy, the brainchild of then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, began in 1995 just as deflation was wrapping its tentacles around Japan. Nearly 20 years on, Japan still favors the quick-and-easy fix afforded by a falling currency. Its competitiveness has only suffered.

Bank of America sees $50 oil as Opec dies

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

09 Dec 2014

"Our biggest worry is the end of the liquidity cycle. The Fed is done. The reach for yield that we have seen since 2009 is going into reverse”, said Bank of America.

The Opec oil cartel no longer exists in any meaningful sense and crude prices will slump to $50 a barrel over the coming months as market forces shake out the weakest producers, Bank of America has warned.

Revolutionary changes sweeping the world’s energy industry will drive down the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), creating a “multi-year” glut and a much cheaper source of gas for Europe.

Francisco Blanch, the bank’s commodity chief, said Opec is “effectively dissolved” after it failed to stabilize prices at its last meeting. “The consequences are profound and long-lasting,“ he said.

The free market will now set the global cost of oil, leading to a new era of wild price swings and disorderly trading that benefits only the Mid-East petro-states with deepest pockets such as Saudi Arabia. If so, the weaker peripheral members such as Venezuela and Nigeria are being thrown to the wolves.

The bank said in its year-end report that at least 15pc of US shale producers are losing money at current prices, and more than half will be under water if US crude falls below $55. The high-cost producers in the Permian basin will be the first to “feel the pain” and may soon have to cut back on production.

The claims pit Bank of America against its arch-rival Citigroup, which insists that the US shale industry is far more resilent than widely supposed, with marginal costs for existing rigs nearer $40, and much of its output hedged on the futures markets.

Bank of America said the current slump will choke off shale projects in Argentina and Mexico, and will force retrenchment in Canadian oil sands and some of Russia’s remote fields. The major oil companies will have to cut back on projects with a break-even cost below $80 for Brent crude.

It will take six months or so to whittle away the 1m barrels a day of excess oil on the market – with US crude falling to $50 - given that supply and demand are both “inelastic” in the short-run. That will create the beginnings of the next shortage. “We expect a pretty sharp rebound to the high $80s or even $90 in the second half of next year,” said Sabine Schels, the bank’s energy expert.

Torture report highlights consequences of permanent war

By Andrew J. Bacevich 

DECEMBER 09, 2014

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein spoke with reporters as she walked to the Senate floor. The California Democrat is the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

THE JUST-RELEASED Senate report on CIA interrogation practices since 9/11contains nothing that would have surprised the journalist and critic Randolph Bourne. Back in 1918, in an essay left unfinished at the time of his death later that year, Bourne had warned that “war is the health of the state.”

And so it is. War thrusts power into the hands of those who covet it. Only the perpetuation of war, whether under the guise of “keeping us safe” or “spreading freedom,” can satisfy the appetite of those for whom the exercise of power is its own reward. Only war will perpetuate their prerogatives and shield them from accountability.

What prompted Bourne’s pungent observation was US intervention into the disastrous European war that began a century ago this summer. In 1917, Congress had acceded to President Woodrow Wilson’s request to enter that stalemated conflict, Wilson promising a world made safe for democracy and vowing to end war itself.

Bourne foresaw something quite different. War turned things upside down, he believed. It loosened the bonds of moral and legal restraint. It gave sanction to the otherwise impermissible. By opting for war, Bourne predicted, the United States would “adopt all the most obnoxious and coercive techniques of the enemy,” rivaling “in intimidation and ferocity of punishment the worst government systems of the age.”

Grand Strategy Is Bunk

By JAMES CARDEN 

December 3, 2014

Theories of global power just excuse U.S. hubris.

Since the 1990s, the teaching and advocacy of “grand strategy” has become something of a cottage industry. Degree programs and courses are on offer at Duke, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the City University of New York, Temple University, Columbia University, Bard College, MIT, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The country’s leading grand-strategy program, Yale University’s, is supported by a $17.5 million endowment and has received generous backing from the legendary financier Roger M. Hertog.

Yale’s program is apparently so well-heeled that in recent years it has been able to recruit such luminaries as retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Henry Kissinger, andNew York Times columnist David Brooks to hold forth on the wisdom and rightness of America’s foreign-policy master plans.

In his unimaginatively titled 2010 book, Grand Strategies, Yale’s Charles Hill, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State George Shultz, sought to subordinate the Western literary canon to the service of an interpretive history of interstate politics. The phenomenon of intellectuals who deploy higher (artistic) means to serve base (political) ends is not a new one. As the Soviet dissident Andrei Sinyavsky noted, “Soviet literature of the twenties and thirties reveals an odd and unusual friendship between writers and Chekists.”

That aside, grand strategy has a pedigree that reaches as far back as the fin de siècle—around the time, not coincidentally, that America emerged as a world power in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. That year, while visiting his friend John Hay—soon to be secretary of state—Henry Adams recalled in his characteristic third-person prose: “listening to any member of the British Cabinet, for all were alike now, discuss the Philippines as a question of balance of power in the East he could see that the family work of a hundred and fifty years fell at once into the grand perspective of true empire-building.”

Was this the first insider account of the nascent art of Anglo-American grand strategizing? Perhaps. But Henry Adams was too wise to give it overmuch thought. The grand-strategy enthusiast in the family was his younger brother, Brooks. In 1900, Brooks Adams released his book America’s Economic Supremacy in eager anticipation of the time—soon, in his telling—when the British would be obliged to pass the torch of world leadership to their former colonial subjects. According to Brooks, in bumptious Teddy Roosevelt-like prose very much the opposite of his older brother’s, “America must fight her own battles whether she wills or no. From the inexorable decree of destiny she cannot escape. … All signs point to the approaching supremacy of the United States.”

Hackers Now Placing Sony’s Dirty Laundry Online

Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes

December 11, 2014

Emails From Hacking Reveal Studio’s Dirty Laundry

LOS ANGELES — Salaries of its top executives. Unpublished scripts. Sensitive contracts. Aliases that stars use to check into hotels. 

Those are just some of the disclosures from a devastating hacking attack on Sony’s movie studio last month. But among all of the information that has spilled forth, perhaps nothing has riveted Hollywood more — and laid bare the machinations at the highest levels of the film industry — than a humiliating email exchange between Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, and the producer Scott Rudin over Angelina Jolie and a planned Steve Jobs biopic. 

On Wednesday, Sony was scrambling to cope with the fallout from the incendiary emails posted by Gawker, the tabloid news site, that revealed an ugly internal battle over “Jobs,” an Aaron Sorkin-scripted biopic of the Apple co-founder. Mr. Rudin, who is widely known for his razor-toothed missives and temper, was upset that his favored director for the picture, David Fincher, was being pulled by Ms. Jolie toward a competing Sony movie, a remake of “Cleopatra” with Ms. Jolie in the title role.

Michael Lynton, a Sony official, is trying to return the studio to normalcy. CreditToshifumi Kitamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Rudin referred to Ms. Jolie as “a minimally talented spoiled brat” and pressured Ms. Pascal to shelve “Cleopatra.”

Ms. Pascal at times tried to calm Mr. Rudin, whose company is supported financially under a deal with Sony, writing, “This doesn’t need to get crazy.”

By the end, however, “Jobs” had moved to Universal, and Mr. Rudin, according to the emails, told Ms. Pascal that she had “behaved abominably, and it will be a very, very long time before I forget what you did.”

Ms. Pascal then wrote a lieutenant to “get rid of him,” an apparent reference to Mr. Rudin’s deal.

Ms. Pascal declined a request to discuss the exchange. A spokesman for Ms. Jolie said she had no comment.

“This is not about salacious emails being batted around by Gawker and Defamer,” Mr. Rudin said on Wednesday. “It’s about a criminal act, and the people behind it should be treated as nothing more nor less than criminals.”

For Michael Lynton, the chief executive of a music, television and movies unit called Sony Entertainment, the hacking scandal has ensnared him and his company at a time when he was supposed to be on a victory lap. Some in the film industry have speculated that he soon planned to climb the corporate ladder into a job that would add to his responsibilities, perhaps to coincide with a planned move of his home base from Los Angeles to New York.

Thailand Denies That It Hosted CIA Black Prison

December 11, 2014

Thailand Denies Hosting Any Secret CIA Prisoner Center

BANGKOK — Thailand has never allowed the United States to detain or torture terrorism suspects on its soil, a senior Thai official said on Thursday, contradicting reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran a secret prison in the country.

A U.S. Senate report released on Tuesday revealed torture by the CIA at sites around the world and could have legal consequences for governments and officials involved.

"We have never allowed the U.S. to use our space for detention or torture and there have never been any requests to do so," Paradorn Pattanathabutr, a former National Security Council chief who advises Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, told Reuters.

The redacted U.S. Senate report did not identify the countries where CIA agents carried out torture, which included sleep deprivation, mock executions and simulated drowning or “water boarding”.

The Thai government has repeatedly denied that the CIA operated a secret prison in Thailand, despite numerous international media reports over the past decade in which U.S. intelligence officials have identified the country as the host of a so-called black site.

"We confirm that there are no secret prisons," Suwaphan Tanyuvardhanam, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, told reporters.

"There have never been cases of bringing in these sort of prisoners. This is something that has been talked about for many years and we have never conducted any illegal activities with the U.S.," said Suwaphan, a former chief of Thailand’s National Intelligence Agency.

The U.S. Senate report details the role of Thai authorities in capturing Indonesian militant leader Hambali in Ayutthaya, Thailand, in 2003.

Hambali was the head of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah militant group and is suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the bombing of a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali the following year in which more than 200 people were killed.

The capture of Hambali is often touted by the U.S. intelligence community as evidence that hard interrogation produces results, although the Senate report quotes the head of the Central Intelligence Agency as saying the agency “stumbled” upon Hambali.

Rather than CIA interrogation, the capture came through email monitoring, a tip off from a CIA source, and Thai investigative activities, the reports stated.

House Passes 2015 Intelligence Funding Bill That Gives Spies More Than They Asked For

Cristina Marcos

December 11, 2014

House clears intelligence authorization bill

The House on Wednesday cleared the intelligence authorization for fiscal 2015 with little opposition a day after the release of a Senate report asserting that the CIA used torture on detainees and misled lawmakers.

Passage of the measure by a 325-100 vote now sends it to the White House for President Obama’s signature. Specifics of the intelligence authorization are limited because much of it is classified. It authorizes activities and funding for the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said the authorization increases the president’s budget request by less than one percent and is consistent with the 2013 budget pact.

"The bill’s modest increase reflects the committee’s concern that the president’s request does not properly fund a number of important initiatives and leaves several unacceptable shortfalls when it comes to the matters of national security," Rogers said. 

Rogers hinted at the controversy over the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture, suggesting it overshadowed the overall contributions of intelligence workers.

"We should not condemn them. We should be proud of their work," Rogers said. 

Lawmakers also noted the measure authorizes additional resources to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"This bill acknowledges the need to step up intelligence efforts to counter evolving threats such as ISIS. It’s a dangerous world out there and our bill accounts for that," said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel.

One provision of the legislation requires the DNI to submit a report to Congress on ways to reform its declassification process. Another would require a report on political prison camps in North Korea.

The Senate passed the bill by voice vote Tuesday night. It originally passed in the House in May by a vote of 345-59, but it had to go through the House again after Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) amended it.

Old alliances don’t serve our new multipolar world

Sholto Byrnes

December 9, 2014 

Delegates walk past the UN building in New York (AFP PHOTO/Jewel SAMAD)

The International Organisation of Francophone countries (OIF) recently held a summit in Dakar. While the debate inside the conference centre in the Senegalese capital over who should be the new head of the 57-nation group was intense, TV news crews found few outside who were interested in the meeting. Including observer countries, the OIF represents 900 million people, which sounds impressive, but when an Al Jazeera reporter talked to locals this was the typical response: “Frankly we don’t understand what La Francophonie is. We’re not paying attention. We’ve heard people talking about it, but nobody has explained what it is.”

Such apathy is not surprising given that the OIF, based around a core of French-speaking countries, is essentially an effort by France to continue to project the great power status that it lost in 1940, after the capitulation to the Germans. That was the reality, as the well-known Parisian commentator Andre Geraud acknowledged seven years later. “As a factor in power politics, then,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, “France counts for very little”.

Membership of supranational bodies like the United Nations Security Council has, however, given a different impression. The same, to an extent, applies to Britain, which was also to lose an empire and struggle to find a role, to paraphrase the US secretary of state Dean Acheson. When the UN was set up in 1946, permanent membership of the security council was awarded to the US, Soviet Union, China, Britain and France on the grounds that they were the victors of the Second World War. The truth of the matter at the time, as the American historian James E Cronin points out in his new book, Global Rules: America, Britain and a Disordered World, was that “Only three states really mattered in 1945 – the US, the UK and the USSR – and the Soviets had a limited agenda focused primarily on defence. The other states to which a veto was accorded in the UN Security Council – China and France – were in no position to lead.”

But China clearly had the capacity to rise again, and it maintained France’s feelings of self-worth, just as the Allies had allowed Paris to “liberate itself”, as General Charles de Gaulle preposterously declared, to help put aside the less palatable facts of collaboration.

How Was Militant Indonesian Cleric Hambali Captured? Senate Report Says Not As a result of Torture

December 11, 2014

Did torture really help U.S. find al Qaeda chief Hambali?

An undated photo of regional militant network leader Hambali wasreleased by Indonesian police during a news conference in JakartaAugust 21, 2003.

(Reuters) - Hailed as a major success in the U.S. “war on terror,” the capture of Indonesian cleric Hambali if often touted by the U.S. intelligence community as evidence that harsh interrogation produces results.

But the U.S. Senate report on CIA interrogation methods released this week suggests that more mundane steps - email monitoring, a tip off from a CIA source and help from Thailand - may have been what brought down Hambali, head of militant group Jemaah Islamiah. 

”Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali,” the report quoted the head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism center in southeast Asia as saying in 2005.

Conflicting stories about the trail of clues that led investigators to Hambali illustrate one of the main disputes over the U.S. interrogation of terror suspects: Awful as it was, did it actually work?

Senior CIA officials told Congress, the White House and the Justice Department for years that a snippet of information from the brutal interrogation of senior al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led to Hambali’s capture.

Accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Mohammed was repeatedly subjected to some of the CIA’s harshest methods after he was captured. He was waterboarded - a technique intended to simulate drowning - 183 times, and was slapped, grabbed and deprived of sleep, according to the Senate report.

Mohammed told CIA interrogators in early 2003 about a plan to have a former resident of Baltimore, Majid Khan, send $50,000 to southeast Asia to fund al Qaeda attacks.

The spy agency says that information helped investigators uncover a network of terror suspects in southeast Asia that led to Hambali himself. Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, was detained in Ayutthaya, Thailand, in 2003.

Described by former President George W. Bush as “one of the world’s most lethal terrorists,” Hambali is suspected of having been involved in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed more than 200 people. He has been held at the Guantanamo U.S. military prison in Cuba without trial since 2006.

TORTURE PLAYED “NO ROLE”

Although the CIA frequently presented the capture of Hambali as evidence that torture did produce valuable intelligence, the Senate report said that the harsh treatment of Mohammed, known as KSM, did not help catch Hambali.

How Grassroots Initiatives are Spanning The Civilian-Military Gap

Nathan K. Finney

December 9, 2014

There is an increasing number of grassroots initiatives taking place across digital and physical spaces that are re-engaging the civilian-military relationship in America.

There’s been a lot of press on the breaking down of the civilian-military relationship in America. I speak here not of the inherent friction between those providing civilian oversight and control of the military and the leaders in the Pentagon and the regional combatant commands around the world. Instead, I want to address a more positive aspect of the interaction of civilians and the military — that between our service members and their civilian peers. This interaction comes in multiple forums, from writing to organizing, to daily interactions, and will be the most successful path to re-engaging the civilian-military relationship in America.

There are many blogs by military members talking about their service, their struggles, and their aspirations — many of them have been published here on Task & Purpose, including Don Gomez from Carrying the Gun, Crispin Burke from Wings Over Iraq, Andrew Steadman from The Military Leader, and Joe Byerly who writes atFrom the Green Notebook. There are also numerous groups of service members and veterans striving to understand, and help their peers to understand, the joys, dangers, and loss of war. Forums such as Words After War and Red Bull Rising encourage veteran authors to write their experiences, while those like War Stories and the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project provide opportunities to envision the future through military and civilian experiences over the last decade.

Moving out of the digital realm, there are organizations and events created by service members to leverage their skills and build relationships with their civilian counterparts. Such organizations include the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, which was developed to fuse the energy, cognitive surplus, and innovative ideas of younger military members and their civilian peers. Together, they can help develop practical solutions to today’s (and tomorrow’s) most important national security challenges. Ideas from this previously relatively, untapped well could enable more flexibility for senior decision makers, a process that would undoubtedly increase the sense of buy-in, empowerment, and impact that men and women brimming with valuable tactical and strategic contributions from overseas and here at home.

The Year of Living Dangerously The Education of an Operational Planner

https://medium.com/@Doctrine_Man/the-year-of-living-dangerously-3e37c085bdc7

After a year in purgatory as a division plans chief, I added a cynical comment to my Officer Evaluation Report Support Form: “Planned the invasion of 42 countries on three separate continents.” The comment was only half in jest. It was a long year.

The year began with a series of planning conferences for the Korean theater exercise Ulchi Focus Lens, rolled into the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the deployment of the first conventional forces into Afghanistan, mounted a false summit with a division warfighter exercise, reached a crescendo with the initial planning for the invasion of Iraq, and finished with another summer of conferences for Ulchi Focus Lens. Between the peaks and valleys, there were any number of “what if” drills that involved detailed plans for everything from anti-piracy efforts along the coast of Somalia to operations deep into the heart of regions unfriendly and inhospitable.

Yeah, it was a long year. A very, very long year.

Looking back, I can see now that it was an unparalleled learning experience. Everything we discussed in the School of Advanced Military Studies proved true. The hours spent with Clausewitz, Corbett, and Douhet were reflected again and again in our work. We became masters of our craft, journeymen in the operational art of war. We earned the title “Jedi Knights,” first bestowed upon our predecessors during the Gulf War.

Along the way, I found the dry sarcasm and gallows humor common to planners. A year locked in the basement of a secure facility will do that to you. That, and not seeing the sun. PX pizza, leftover bags of Cheetos, stale coffee, Girl Scout cookies sold during the Reagan Administration. The glamorous life of a war planner is anything but. Those long days – and longer nights – also produced planning “truisms.” Not exactly the type you would find in On War, but something more reminiscent of “Murphy’s Law.”

1. Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate: Everything comes down to how you seal the deal. Inside the beltway, the people in $5,000 suits call it “conflict termination.” We call it “imposing your will on the enemy.” If you don’t break the will of other guy, you’re going to have to fight him again. And again. And again.

2. Nothing spurs adaptability like a genuine lack of planning: “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” – Carl von Clausewitz

Your plan won’t survive first contact. No plan does. The more time you spend building excessive detail into a plan, the less time you have to think through the problem, and the more crap you put your subordinate headquarters through. Sometimes, commander’s intent, planning guidance, and a clear mission statement is all you need.

“I Want to Develop My Lieutenants, But….”

DECEMBER 9, 2014 

In the numerous conversations I have had with current and former company commanders, the phrase “I want(ed) to develop my lieutenants, but…” comes up a lot. As always, the intention is always there. Most company commanders want to set time aside on a recurring basis, but the burdens of command gets in the way. Many feel that there are so many competing requirements that there is never enough time to develop a quality program or session that young officers will feel is valuable. To help current and future commanders avoid the word “but” in conversations about leader development, the team behind Company Commandand Platoon Leader professional forums has created mini-digital LPDs that commanders can quickly incorporate into their development programs with little effort. Here is a quick explanation from their website:

The CC/PL Team has developed a “Hip pocket” digital LPD to support leader development programs at the company/platoon level. The concept is to provide a ready to go, mobile friendly LPD that can be executed anywhere providing the user has a smartphone or tablet, and has wifi access or a data plan.

Using a file hosting service, we provide content for discussion that includes a short video, related article and some recommended questions for discussion. This is designed for mobile platforms, though it can be used on a regular computer.”

I have used several of these quick vignettes to keep my boots close to the ground while studying at the Naval War College. It’s very easy to become enamored with Clausewitz, and forget about the daily problems that tactical leaders face. The questions provided with each video enables commanders to engage in quality conversations that will aid in not only in the development of subordinates, but also in furthering trust-the cornerstone of mission command. If I would have had a product like this in command, I definitely would have used it on a regular basis.

The CCLPD- Digital Leader Professional Development(LPD) 

The CC/PL Team has developed a “Hip pocket” digital LPD to support leader development programs at the company/platoon level. The concept is to provide a ready to go, mobile friendly LPD that can be executed anywhere providing the user has a smartphone or tablet, and has wifi access or a data plan.

A 3-Star General Explains Why America Lost The Global War On Terror

RETIRED ARMY LT. GEN. DANIEL BOLGER

DEC 9, 2014

Source Link

Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Dempsey, left, meets with Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, the commander of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 23, 2012.

In this excerpt from Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, retired 3-star Army Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger, who led NATO training mission in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, describes the root cause of the military's failure in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism.

It's like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem.

Well, I have a problem.

So do my peers.

And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.

We should have known this one was going to go bad when we couldn't even settle on a name. In the wake of the horrific al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, we tried out various labels.

The guys in the Pentagon basement at first offered Operation Infinite Justice, which sounded fine, both almighty and righteous. Then various handwringers noted that it might upset the Muslims.

These were presumably different kinds of followers of Islam than the nineteen zealots who had just slaughtered thousands of our fellow citizens. Well, better incoherent than insensitive, I guess.

Welcome to the Post-Precision World

Welcome to the Post-Precision World

In terms of strategy, there’s still no replacement for landpower in this age of high technology

Irvin Oliver is the author of this post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author. No endorsement by the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense is implied or expressed.

Landpower is Indispensable

The development and advancements in precision-guided munitions have increased the military’s ability to successfully strike target with a level of accuracy previous generations of weapons couldn’t match. While the exponential increase in accuracy and lethality of today’s weapons have increased the efficiency of our killing power, the ability to be discriminate in its use has not kept pace. This fact makes landpower unique and indispensable in discussions on the use of force.

In the application of force, landpower has the most precise rheostat and as populations move closer together and live in the complex terrain of urban areas, landpower will only grow in importance. Its role in the application of military power is irreplaceable. Modern weapon systems clearly have the ability to kill and destroy on an unprecedented scale, but their use needs discernment to be effective tools of policy.

Clausewitz Had It Right

Precision-guidance technology has evolved substantially since the advent of airpower and the dawn of the missile age, which has arguably changed the character of war, but the nature of war remains the same.

An early V-1 flying bomb

The German V-1 flying bomb and the larger V-2 rocket of World War II heralded the arrival of the precision era. Against these crudely steerable yet deadly projectiles there was little British air defenses could do, especially against the larger, faster, and relatively more accurate V-2 rockets that did considerable damage to British cities. Allied air forces had to deliver over 100,000 pounds of bombs to suspected V-2 launch sites to destroy these airborne threats. Ultimately, however, army forces had to seize the launch sites to eliminate the V-2 threat. Precision technology has continued to advance but hasn’t become the panacea many of its advocates hope.

SIGAR: Major investments in Afghan security at risk

U.S. forces help train new Kabul police recruits to fire the AK-47 assault rifle on the grounds of the Kabul Military Training Center in this 2009 photo. A Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report found that the Defense Department has not accurately tracked 747,000 weapons purchased for Afghan National Security Forces. 

STARS AND STRIPES 

By Carlo Munoz

Published: December 10, 2014

After 13 years of war and billions in aid, Afghanistan’s security forces are “not fiscally sustainable” at current levels, a U.S. government watchdog said Wednesday, raising questions about whether the Afghans can maintain the fight against the Taliban as U.S. and NATO troops leave the country.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, in a new report, also criticized the Afghan government’s inability to curb rampant official corruption and rein in the escalating narcotics trade.

Those findings are at odds with the upbeat assessment of Afghanistan’s military by the top NATO commander, Gen. John Campbell, who spoke Monday at the closing ceremony for the Joint Command of the International Security Assistance Force. He said that Afghanistan’s army and police “overmatch the enemy wherever and whenever they meet.”

The SIGAR report says that more than half of the $62 billion the U.S. has spent in reconstruction programs has gone toward building and maintaining the security forces.

Nonetheless the report adds: “This substantial investment in Afghanistan’s security is at risk … Much work remains to be done to develop and maintain a modern army and national police.”

The situation is likely to get only worse as the current U.S. and NATO mission winds down and as international donors cut back funding. The risks include “renewed civil war in Afghanistan and increased instability in the region,” SIGAR says, citing an assessment of Afghanistan’s security situation by the Center for Naval Analyses.

Syria, ISIS Have Been 'Ignoring' Each Other on Battlefield, Data Suggests

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/syria-isis-have-been-ignoring-each-other-battlefield-data-suggests-n264551

Syria's military and ISIS may be sworn enemies but instead of wiping each other off the battlefield they have been delicately dancing around each other, according to new data exclusively obtained by NBC News.

Both sides in the bloody conflict appear to be eliminating smaller rivals ahead of a possible final showdown.

Around 64 percent of verifiable ISIS attacks in Syria this year targeted other non-state groups, an analysis of the IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center's (JTIC) database showed. Just 13 percent of the militants' attacks during the same period — the year through Nov. 21 — targeted Syrian security forces. That's a stark contrast to the Sunni extremist group's operations in Iraq, where more than half of ISIS attacks (54 percent) were aimed at security forces.

U.S. Airstrikes on ISIS Are Not Enough

"In Iraq, it's a very clear insurgency: them against the Iraqi state," said Matthew Henman, head of JTIC. "In Syria, it's a different situation because you have such a proliferation of competing, non-state armed groups in the country in addition to Assad."

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been accused of encouraging the rise of Islamist extremist groups, like ISIS, in order to discredit opposition to his rule. He lashed out at the suggestion in arecent interview with Paris Match, describing ISIS as an enemy and saying that the "army is winning" its fight against terrorists.

"They both recognize there's a mutual benefit in crushing other groups"

However, JTIC's data shows that his counterterrorism operations — more than two-thirds of which were airstrikes — skew heavily towards groups whose names aren't ISIS. Of 982 counterterrorism operations for the year up through Nov. 21, just 6 percent directly targeted ISIS.

Henman said the figures suggest ISIS and Assad's security forces have embraced the "clever strategy" of mostly "ignoring each other."

For now, ISIS appears focused on emerging as the dominant Islamist, non-state actors and operating in areas where Assad's troops have largely withdrawn. Assad is focused on destroying opposition to his rule from the same groups ISIS wants to dominate — and engaging more in recent months with ISIS as that comes to pass.

"They both recognize there's a mutual benefit in crushing other groups," Henman said. That's because eventually ISIS is going to have to take on Assad's government — and both sides want the battlefield to be clear of other potential competitors.

"It's a confrontation that's coming — and both sides know it," he added.

Just ask Abu Hafs, a local ISIS leader from Aleppo who is intent on expanding the militants' Islamic state —or caliphate.

What is a Caliphate?

"We are not ignoring the Syrian regime but we are focusing on the rebel areas," he explained to NBC News. "You can't jump to step two. You have to do the first step first. To fight successfully against Bashar Assad's regime, we must first take over the rebel areas."

That doesn't mean his fighters haven't directly fought the regime. Abu Hafs said they had "achieved great victories," such as taking over the Tabqah military airport.

"We are fighting for the expansion of the Islamic caliphate area to include all the liberated areas and also the regime areas," he added.

For the year until November 21, ISIS carried out at least 923 verifiable attacks in Syria — an average of 2.84 per day. During that time period, ISIS attacks resulted in the deaths of 4,990 militants — including its own fighters.

Analysis of the JTIC database on a regional level showed that there were 238 counterterrorism operations in Aleppo for the year through Nov. 21 — but just 14 of those targeted ISIS. In the militants' stronghold of Raqqa, there were 22 counterterrorism operations but just half targeted ISIS.

Some rebels suspect coordination between the Syrian regime and ISIS. Yusuf Abu Abdullah, one of the leaders of the Al-Mujaheddin Army in Aleppo, said when his fighters have attacked regime bases, they have come under separate attacks from ISIS. That's forced them to withdraw and battle the other militants instead of Assad's forces.

"Most of the front lines between ISIS and the regime are very quiet — you wouldn't even hear the sound of firing," he said. "The exact opposite is on our frontlines, which are very dangerous and where the fights don't stop for 24 hours."

If ISIS was interested in fighting the regime, he said, they would have gone to Aleppo — a city besieged by Assad's forces. Instead, they chose to fight for Kobani where there is no Syrian army presence.

"Kobani revealed ISIS and showed to the world that this terrorist organization doesn't seek to fight the regime, but is trying to kill the rebels and end the Syrian revolution, Abu Abdullah said.

Signs are emerging that the final showdown may soon be approaching. In the past several weeks, Assad's forces have been stepping up their attacks against ISIS. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented more than 2,000 regime airstrikes around Syria in the past 50 days. It said Wednesday that nine airstrikes hit an ISIS regional office in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.

Inside Kobani: Behind Kurdish Lines as Fighters Confront ISIS

The information provided from the IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center Database was mined from open sources and double-sourced wherever possible to ensure the greatest level of accuracy. It does not include information from social media that cannot be verified through conventional and trusted news sources.

IHS JTIC / NBC NEWS Data on Syrian regime operations against ISIS and ISIS attacks against Syrian government forces.