A Turning Point in China’s Anti-Graft Campaign

By James Char

January 11, 2015

A key phase of the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign has concluded 

The political downfall of a former aide to Hu Jintao was finally confirmed some two years after a speeding Ferrari first crashed along a Beijing street in 2012. In a brief statement released last week, the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced that Ling Jihua, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, had been indicted for “serious discipline violations.” Following the impeachments of Zhou Yongkang and Xu Caihou, Ling was the third high-profile politician to be ensnared in China’s anti-graft movement in 2014.

Ling’s fall from grace is particularly stark, considering that his political star was on the rise in the lead-up to the 18th Party Congress, where he had been primed for a seat on the 25-member Politburo. As a key member of Hu Jintao’s inner circle, Ling’s access to China’s former top leader meant that he had been favored to join the ranks of the country’s most powerful politicians. Following the car crash involving his son and two female passengers, however, Ling subsequently failed to make the cut and was also stripped of his post as director of the influential General Office of the CCP’s Central Committee.

While Ling had largely stayed out of the political limelight in the past two years, it became clear earlier in the year that the CCP had not forgotten his previous indiscretions, when the party’s anti-corruption agency began initiating proceedings against Ling Zhengce and Ling Wancheng. The two – respectively a provincial official of Shanxi, and a businessman – are brothers of Ling Jihua. In the same manner in which other senior party officials such as Zhou Yongkang had been toppled, the CCDI steadily worked its way towards Ling – its intended target and big “tiger” – by first taking out the small “flies” associated with him.

A Political Storm Two Years in the Making

What then, are the regulations Hu Jintao’s former “political fixer” had supposedly contravened? According to media sources, Ling had ordered the unauthorized use of state security forces to cover up the details of his son’s accident. Possibly motivated by the rivalry between Hu’s Communist Youth League (CYL) – of which Ling was a representative figure – and Jiang Zemin’s followers, Ling also allegedly misled Hu and the rest of the party leadership regarding the driver’s identity by passing his son off as the offspring of a member of Jiang’s faction in order to discredit his political rivals.

Sorry, China: Japan Has the Better Claim over the Senkakus

Ryan Scoville

January 11, 2015

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Commentary on the long-standing contest over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands may be entering a new and more conciliatory phase. A lot of early scholarship focused on the zero-sum question of who has proper title under international law, but more recent analyses have started to explore paths toward a cooperative resolution.

Last month, Akikazu Hashimoto, Michael O’Hanlon and Wu Xinbo offered a multipronged plan under which China and Japan would promise not to raise new territorial disputes in the future, the parties would agree to decouple EEZ determinations from sovereignty over the islands themselves, each side would acknowledge the other’s territorial claims and Japan would delegate rights of administration to a joint oversight board with authority to regulate patrols and usage. The authors view their approach as “designed to respect the core interests and nonnegotiable demands of both claimants to the islands.” Under a separate proposal by Mark Rosen, Tokyo would concede that the islands are not entitled to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), Beijing would pull back excessive straight baselines along the coast of the Chinese mainland and acquiesce to Japanese effective control over the Islands, and the two sides would divide the sea space opened up as a result of their respective concessions. Rosen frames his plan as a simple application of international law and asserts that it will resolve tension by “tak[ing] the Senkaku off the table in terms of the effect that those islands have in establishing a maritime boundary in the East China Sea.”

These scholars share a commitment to the idea that a grand bargain is the most likely path to a peaceful resolution, and their proposals are admirably creative. But they also share a common problem in that they misapply international law in ways that uniformly disfavor Japan. Consider two key points:

First, Japan has a superior claim to title over the islands. I acknowledge that it may be difficult for readers to view this argument as anything other than yet another partisan salvo in what has become a tired and seemingly intractable debate. But the characteristics of the debate itself should not obscure the fact that the law supplies a doctrinal resolution. The best answer to the question of title is not an unknowable mystery, obscured by rhetorical heat, high stakes and history, but a simple puzzle very similar to dozens of others that international tribunals have resolved over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And on balance, the best solution to that puzzle is that the relevant historical facts and legal doctrines favor Japan, which has exercised effective control over the Senkaku Islands for over a century, with prolonged periods of Chinese acquiescence. Those who remain skeptical should consider the views of other thoughtful analysts (here and here) who have reached the same conclusion.

Second, the Senkaku Islands probably create an EEZ. Article 121(3) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides that land features can have no EEZ if they are “[r]ocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own.” But the Senkakus do not appear to be rocks of that type. It is widelyacknowledged that Tatsuhiro Koga—a longtime lessee of the islands—brought scores of seasonal workers to live there and operate businesses processing bonito and collecting albatross feathers in the early twentieth century. In carrying out those activities, Koga demonstrated that the Senkakus are capable of sustaining both human habitation and economic life of their own. To conclude that the islands are rocks, despite this history, one must find that they are no longer capable of fulfilling functions that they previously fulfilled for extended periods of time. I have seen no evidence to support such a finding.

These observations suggest that the recent proposals for a grand bargain are unfair to Japan. Equipped with the better legal argument, why would Tokyo agree not only to acknowledge the Chinese claim, but also to delegate administrative rights? And given that the islands probably add significantly to Japan’s EEZ, why would Tokyo accept that they do not? For advocates of conciliation, the answer is that Japan would win concessions in return. O’Hanlon has emphasized that Japan could gain a Chinese promise not to raise additional territorial disputes or contest Japan’s rights of administration, while Rosen proposes that Japan could win Beijing’s agreement to pull back straight baselines along the coast of the Chinese mainland. But from a legal perspective, these are sour deals for Tokyo. None but the most ardent Chinese nationalists think that the PRC has anything better than a frivolous claim to other territories currently administered by Japan, and even Rosen describes the Chinese straight baselines as “excessive.”

In truth, what these commentators are proposing is that Japan give up comparatively strong legal claims in exchange for China's abandonment of comparatively weak claims. This might be sensible for any number of reasons, including the trajectory of the regional balance of power, but none of those have anything to do with international law. If the parties achieve a diplomatic solution, it will be in spite of the law, rather than with its assistance.

Ryan Scoville is an Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School. This piece first appeared on the author’s blog, here.

5 Chinese Weapons of War Japan Should Fear

Kyle Mizokami

January 10, 2015

Over the last several years Sino-Japanese relations have reached low after new low—all thanks to claims and counterclaims over the Senkaku islands (China refers to them as the Diaoyu islands). The relationship between the two countries, which had been tepid at best—quickly cooled beginning in 2010 as both sides jockeyed for position over the disputed islands.

Japan’s Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, threatened the country primarily in the north with submarines, bombers, fighters, and a theoretical invasion by sea. China is a different sort of strategic threat to Japan, being most active in the more southern East China Sea, with its military reach extending to the Senkaku and Ryukyu Islands as well as the Japanese mainland.

The challenge posed by the People’s Liberation Army has shaken a complacent Japanese government, which had left its national security establishment virtually unchanged since the 1980s. A national security council similar to that in the United States has been formed, secrecy laws have been passed and Japan’s defenses are shifting southward. Here are a five weapon systems that Tokyo should worry about as tensions with Beijing continue to simmer:

J-20 Stealth Fighter:

Japan lost control of her airspace during the Second World War to devastating effect. The result: as many as 900,000 people killed in aerial bombing raids. Since then, Japan has invested in only the best American fighters.

China: The Real Reason for the Great Oil-Price Crash?

Anthony Fensom

January 9, 2015

Plunging oil prices have sent shockwaves around the world, threatening to topple governments and bankrupt businesses even while U.S. consumers celebrate cheap gasoline.

Yet while rising supply has been largely blamed for the precipitous price fall, China’s lower demand growth and its long-term implications for the global economy have been largely ignored. Is Beijing a winner or loser from cheap oil?

On January 7, U.S. benchmark oil prices dipped below $48 a barrel, the lowest since April 2009 and half the level of just five months ago. The slump follows November’s decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) not to curb production, despite surging U.S. shale supply and weakening Asian and European demand.

China’s role in oil’s rise and fall reflects its re-emergence on the world stage. During the past decade, the communist giant’s industrialization spurt saw it become the world’s second-biggest economy and top consumer of resources such as iron ore and coal, as well as the world’s largest net oil importer.

According to Societe Generale, a French multinational banking and financial services company, Beijing’s opening to world trade at the start of the 21st century, signified by its joining of the World Trade Organization in 2001, was responsible for increasing the oil price from around $20 a barrel to $100. During this period, China’s demand grew by the equivalent of Japan and the United Kingdom’s total oil consumption, giving oil markets a similar shot in the arm to that of other commodities.

DEMOCRACY AND THE THREAT OF REVOLUTION: NEW EVIDENCE – ANALYSIS

By Toke S. Aidt, Gabriel Leon, Raphael Franck and Peter S. Jensen*

JANUARY 12, 2015

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Some theories suggest that the threat of revolution plays a pivotal role in democratisation. This column provides new evidence in support of this hypothesis. The authors use democratic transitions from Europe in the 19th century, Africa at the turn at the 20th century, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 in Great Britain. They find that credible threats of revolution have systematically triggered pre-emptive democratic reforms throughout history.

The threat of revolution hypothesis

The wave of violent protests that swept across north Africa and parts of the Middle East during the Arab spring between 2010 and 2012 coincided with the fall of several long-established autocracies; in those that survived, policy reforms and redistributive policies aimed at calming the masses were hastily implemented. A century and a half before, something similar happened in western Europe. The revolutions in France and parts of Germany in 1848 were followed by democratic reforms in Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Episodes like these lend credence to the hypothesis that revolutions, riots, and other types of violent protest can trigger democratic change. The hypothesis is appealing because it resolves the franchise extension puzzle, namely why would incumbent autocrats with a monopoly on political power, and often on economic resources, agree to share their power with broader segments of the population whose goals they do not share? The threat of revolution hypothesis, developed in the work of Acemoglu and Robinson (2000, 2006) and Boix (2003) amongst others, suggests that autocrats might do so when they face a credible threat of revolution that, if successful, would eliminate their entire power base. Seen in this perspective, the reactions of autocrats in the Arab world today, and of monarchs in western Europe 150 years ago, are pre-emptive responses to a credible threat of revolution.

Not everyone agrees with this interpretation, however. In his discussion of democratic reforms between 1830 and 1930, Roger Congleton (2010, p. 15), for example, argues that: “In essentially all cases [countries], liberal reforms were adopted using pre-existing constitutional rules for amendment. In no case [country] is every liberal reform preceded by a large-scale revolt, and in most cases, there are examples of large-scale demonstrations that failed to produce obvious reform”.

Thinking the Unthinkable: Rise of ISIS

By Anant Mishra

10 Jan , 2015

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The United Nations Security Council has given a top priority to eliminate the threat of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL popularly known as IS or ISIS) that posses a grave danger to the international community and global peace. However adequate steps are already taken in the past but further action is required. Severe human rights violations, mass killings and executions have been reported ever since the ISIL took control over parts of Syria and Iraq; in the previous weeks alone, numerous reports on mass executions, beheadings, rapes, torture, sexual enslavement and kidnappings were submitted to the UNHCR.

However air raids and aerial bombings from US and allied nations have assisted them in recovering some territories from ISIL; a more extensive and coordinated military strategy is required to eliminate the militants from their territories and stop human rights violations. With the increase in returning fighters from militant occupied regions throughout the world to the western civilization only creates a need of more urgency to address this situation. This concern of international community has to be addressed through the Security Council’s resolution.

Background

In October 2004, United Nations officially designated the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) as terrorist organization. Right after seizing significant territories of Iraq and Syria with approximately eight million civilians residing, ISIL proclaimed its world leader, Caliph Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi as the leader of worldwide Muslim populations and successor to the Prophet. They crowned him the king slayer of infidels. ISIL is probably the only militant organization that uses social media applications like twitter and YouTube for military propaganda, beheadings and mass execution. During its course of operation ISIL has been responsible for countless human rights violations and atrocities against civilians. Force religious conversions and physical torture are normal operations of ISIL.

Although most of the Islamic communities have condemned the “actions in the name of religion” by ISIL; recently the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia declared ISIL as “enemy number one” of Islam.

Blasphemy and the law of fanatics

By Fareed Zakaria 

January 8

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As they went on their rampage, the men who killed 12 people in Paris this week yelled that they had “avenged the prophet.” They followed in the path of other terrorists who have bombed newspaper offices, stabbed a filmmaker and killed writers and translators, all to mete out what they believe is the proper Koranic punishment for blasphemy. But in fact, the Koran prescribes no punishment for blasphemy. Like so many of the most fanatical and violent aspects of Islamic terrorism today, the idea that Islam requires that insults against the prophet Muhammad be met with violence is a creation of politicians and clerics to serve a political agenda. 

One holy book is deeply concerned with blasphemy: the Bible. In the Old Testament, blasphemy and blasphemers are condemned and prescribed harsh punishment. The best-known passage on this is Leviticus 24:16 : “Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death.” 

By contrast, the word blasphemy appears nowhere in the Koran. (Nor, incidentally, does the Koran anywhere forbid creating images of Muhammad, though there are commentaries and traditions — “hadith” — that do, to guard against idol worship.)Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has pointed out that “there are more than 200 verses in the Koran, which reveal that the contemporaries of the prophets repeatedly perpetrated the same act, which is now called ‘blasphemy or abuse of the Prophet’ . . . but nowhere does the Koran prescribe the punishment of lashes, or death, or any other physical punishment.” On several occasions, Muhammad treated people who ridiculed him and his teachings with understanding and kindness. “In Islam,” Khan says, “blasphemy is a subject of intellectual discussion rather than a subject of physical punishment.” 

Somebody forgot to tell the terrorists. But the gruesome and bloody belief the jihadis have adopted is all too common in the Muslim world, even among so-called moderate Muslims — that blasphemy and apostasy are grievous crimes against Islam and should be punished fiercely. Many Muslim-majority countries have laws against blasphemy and apostasy — and in some places, they are enforced. 

Isis has conquered the media. It's not doing as well on the ground

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross 

10 January 2015

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9410252/the-hype-jihad/

At this point in the war between the jihadist group known as the Islamic State and a US-led international coalition, many observers are wondering how Isis keeps winning. Isis is up against western air power and powerful regional opponents, and yet has apparently seized a territory larger than the United Kingdom, and is expanding into Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, and elsewhere. It seems incredible.

But the truth is that it’s difficult to say Isis is winning by any objective measure. In Iraq, the group has been put on the defensive in the provinces of Nineveh, Salahaddin, and Diyala, and may soon face a major offensive on its stronghold of Mosul. It’s true, unfortunately, that Isis is on the offensive in Anbar province, and could potentially capture new territory there. In eastern Syria, too, Isis is well-established, having brutally suppressed a tribal uprising in Dayr al-Zawr, and it faces no significant resistance in its holdings in Raqqa and Hasaka. Isis can’t be said to be losing, exactly, but it has lost its momentum — having failed to take and hold major new territory since capturing the Iraqi city of Hit in October — and its position in northern Iraq looks increasingly shaky.

More to the point, Isis’s international expansion seems more of a success in press reports than it is in fact. The question observers should be asking is not why Isis is winning; rather, how it has managed to convince us of its growing power while actually treading water.

Part of the answer lies in the Islamic State’s marketing genius, and another part in our own willingness to believe its propaganda — and the inability, or unwillingness, of western governments to counter this. A good example of Isis’s flair for PR could be glimpsed on 10 November, when it received public oaths of allegiance from groups in Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Yemen. Though these simultaneous oaths had clearly been coordinated, seeing groups in various countries express loyalty at the same time created the perception that Isis was winning support and assuming leadership over the global jihadist movement.

Killing Those Who “Defame” Islam

By Peter Bergen

JAN. 08, 2015

In the modern era killing those who purportedly have defamed Islam began with the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini’s infamous fatwa—religious ruling—thatcondemned the British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie to death in 1989 because of his book, The Satanic Verses, which was deemed to have insulted the Prophet Mohammed.

As a result of that fatwa Rushdie lived for many years in hiding and required extensive police protection but, so far, he has survived without bodily harm.

Others were not so lucky. Rushdie’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarshi, wasstabbed to death in 1991 and his publisher in Norway, William Nygaard, was shot two years later, but survived.

A protest condemning the publication of Rushdie’s book outside the American Center in the Pakistani capital Islamabad turned deadly in 1989 and five people died.

Since 9/11 we have seen many more of these kinds of incidents.

Since 9/11 we have seen many more of these kinds of incidents. On November 2, 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was bicycling in Amsterdam when Mohammed Bouyeri shot him. Bouyeri killed van Gogh because of a film he had directed that showed verses of the Quran projected onto the bodies of several naked young women.

A year later, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, that set off a series of protests and attacks.

In 2008 al Qaeda bombed the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six. The group said the powerful suicide car bomb was to avenge the offensive cartoons.

German Militant Arrested After He Returns From Fighting With ISIS in Syria

January 11, 2015

Germany arrests suspected Islamic State militant after return from Syria

German police arrested a suspected supporter of the insurgent group Islamic State (IS) who was recently in Syria and raided his apartment in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, federal prosecutors said on Sunday.

The 24-year-old suspect, who has German citizenship, was suspected of having joined Islamic State during a stay in Syria from October 2013 until November 2014, a spokeswoman of the federal prosecutor general said.

There were no indications, however, that the man identified as Nils D. had concrete plans for an attack and there was also no connection to the Jan. 7-9 Islamist militant attacks in Paris in which 17 people were killed, she said.

The arrest took place on Saturday in the city of Dinslaken.

As with other west European countries, Germany is struggling to stop the radicalization of young Muslims, some of whom want to become jihadist insurgents in Syria or Iraq. Officials also worry that they might return to plot attacks on home soil.

German intelligence authorities estimate that at least 550 people have left Germany for Syria and around 180 have returned. Many are under criminal investigation.

Wednesday’s deadly attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has fueled fears of assaults on similar targets also in other European countries.

According to a report in the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Western intelligence agencies have tapped conversations of senior Islamic State members in which they said the Paris attack was the start of a series in Europe.

Earlier on Sunday, a building of German newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost was the target of an arson attack and two suspects were arrested, police said. Like many other newspapers, the Hamburg daily re-printed cartoons from Charlie Hebdo after the attack on Wednesday in Paris.

You Can’t Kill An Idea: Anwar Al-Awlaki Still Inspiring Terrorist Attacks From the Grave

Scott Shane

January 11, 2015

In New Era of Terrorism, Voice From Yemen Echoes

The radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, shown in a video lecture, has proved to be a sinister and durable inspiration after his death in a C.I.A. drone strike in September 2011. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For more than five years now, as Western terrorism investigators have searched for critical influences behind the latest jihadist plot, one name has surfaced again and again.

In the failed attack on an airliner over Detroit in 2009, the stabbing of a British member of Parliament in London in 2010, the lethal bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 and now the machine-gunning of cartoonists and police officers in Paris, Anwar al-Awlaki has proved to be a sinister and durable inspiration.

Two of those four attacks took place after Mr. Awlaki, the silver-tongued, American-born imam who joined Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike in September 2011.

In the age of YouTube, Mr. Awlaki’s death — or martyrdom, in the view of his followers — has hardly reduced his impact. The Internet magazine Inspire, which he oversaw along with another American, Samir Khan, has continued to spread not just militant rhetoric but also practical instructions on shooting and bomb-making.

A man in Yemen watching coverage of the attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris. Credit European Pressphoto Agency

Paris Terrorists Fell Through the Gaps in French Security Net

Patrick J. McDonnell and Brian Bennett

January 11, 2015

Fledgling Paris terrorists fell through the cracks

They were a career criminal and his girlfriend, a failed rapper and his older brother. At least two had spent time in French jails.

All seemed to fit a now-familiar profile: Disenchanted young Europeans of working-class immigrant backgrounds who become radicalized through exposure to Islamist extremists.

All were well-known to authorities, but somehow fell through security cracks in a nation that is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population — and exports a steady stream of Islamic militants abroad.

The brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, French born but of Algerian heritage, were on U.S. no-fly lists, and Yemeni officials had reportedly passed on intelligence that Said, 34, had trained with militants in Yemen. The younger sibling, 32, had been jailed for recruiting Islamic militants for Iraq.

Posters are hung near the Place de la Republique in Paris ahead of a mass unity rally against last week’s terrorist attacks.

Still, in a nation with strict gun-control laws, the siblings and their ex-convict confederate were able to obtain an arsenal of heavy arms and cut a swath of terror through Paris for three days, roiling the nation and killing at least 17 people — 12 on Wednesday at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, long in extremist crosshairs for mocking Islam; a female police officer gunned down Thursday in southern Paris; and four hostages who police say were executed Friday at a kosher grocery on the city’s eastern periphery.

The rampage ended abruptly Friday during a pair of near-simultaneous police raids that left three attackers dead. But many questions — and concerns — remain.

Chief among them is whether the assailants acted on their own or under direction of Al Qaeda or another transnational terrorist network, and whether additional attacks are likely to occur in a nation that is home to multitudes of Muslim immigrants, many of whom live in overcrowded, impoverished suburbs.

Where the Pivot Went Wrong – And How To Fix It

By Joshua Kurlantzick

January 12, 2015

“The Obama administration’s Southeast Asia policy has been badly misguided.” 

Since the start of President Barack Obama’s first term, the United States has pursued a policy of rebuilding ties with Southeast Asia. By 2011 this regional focus had become part of a broader strategy toward Asia called the “pivot,” or rebalance. This approach includes shifting economic, diplomatic, and military resources to the region from other parts of the world. In Southeast Asia, a central part of the pivot involves building relations with countries in mainland Southeast Asia once shunned by Washington because of their autocratic governments, and reviving close U.S. links to Thailand and Malaysia. The Obama administration has also upgraded defense partnerships throughout the region, followed through on promises to send high-level officials to Southeast Asian regional meetings, and increased port calls to and basing of combat ships in Southeast Asia.

Yet despite this attention, the Obama administration’s Southeast Asia policy has been badly misguided. The policy has been wrong in two important ways. First, the White House has focused too much on the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, which—with the exception of Vietnam—have provided minimal strategic benefits in return. This focus on mainland Southeast Asia has distracted attention from the countries of peninsular Southeast Asia—Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore—that are of greater value strategically and economically. Indonesia, in particular, is a thriving democracy and an increasingly important stabilizing force in regional and international affairs. Second, increased U.S. ties with mainland Southeast Asia have facilitated political regression in the region by empowering brutal militaries, condoning authoritarian regimes, and alienating young Southeast Asian democrats. This regression is particularly apparent in Thailand. It seemed to have established a working democracy in the 1990s, but has regressed politically more than any other state in Southeast Asia over the past twenty years. In May 2014, Thailand was taken over by a military junta. Reform also has stalled in Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia. This political regression has had and will have strategic downsides for the United States as well. In the long run, young Southeast Asians—the region’s future leaders—will become increasingly anti-American and an authoritarian and unstable mainland Southeast Asia will prove a poor partner on economic and strategic issues for the United States.

THE ECONOMICS AT THE HEART OF ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS – ANALYSIS

JANUARY 12, 2015

The Israeli settlement of Ariel. Photo by Ori, Wikipedia Commons. 

Of all the hurdles to peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, perhaps the largest is the 150 or so Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These communities, considered illegal by the UN, are fracturing Israel’s relationship even with its allies: The pro-Israeli head of the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee this year declared that a decision to develop a new settlement “outraged me more than anything else in my political life”.

Despite an unofficial freeze on settlement planning, in late December the Jerusalem Planning and Budget Committee set the stage for approving building permits for some 400 homes on Palestinian land in Jerusalem, and approved a plan for 1,850 more homes in a neighbourhood that sits on the border.

While they are often thought of as the result of a religious quest by Jews to claim new territory, in fact for most settlers the reasons for moving are economic – encouraged through government-planned incentive schemes to relocate. But for some, the process of living in a settlement may have a radicalizing effect.

“Quality of life”

It’s a weekday in the West Bank town of Ariel. Students share a cigarette break on the university campus. Two women walking their dogs chatter in Russian-accented Hebrew. Nothing suggests this is anything other than an ordinary Israeli town.

But while it is not known for a strong ideological bent or violent attacks on its Palestinian neighbours, jutting out some 16km east of the Green Line that divides Israel from the Occupied West Bank, this town of 19,000 is very much a settlement.

In Ariel, many residents live the Israeli commuter lifestyle. There is a direct motorway to Tel Aviv, less than 40km away, with buses running frequently to the city and less often to Jerusalem, 50km away.

A Different Perspective: Understanding the Charlie Hebdo Attack

Robert S. Leiken

January 9, 2015

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Tuesday’s attack on the Parisian satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo was performed by what one could describe as European Holy Warriors—an important point various media outlets are missing in their 24/7 coverage of this tragic event that continues to unfold before our very eyes. They are part of a larger European movement that is internally generated. Understanding this important point and what it means for Europe and eventually the United States is critical.

This European jihadi movement is not made up of “immigrants” as is commonly presumed and published. Most are home-grown children of immigrants, the so-called “second generation.” That status stands in marked contrast to the (first generation) immigrants and visitors who carried out 9/11, the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Subway Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the 2002 attack on LAX, the Boston Marathon massacre, the Times Square failed bombing attack, and the planned “Millennium” attack on LAX.

The Holy Warriors targeting Europe typically have been born, bred and socialized in Europe itself. That was true of the French Algerian Khaled Kelkal, who in 1995 attacked the French transit system. It was the case in the Amsterdam murder of Theo van Gogh, the attack on the editor of the Danish cartoon, the planned attack on Frankfurt airport and the Ramstein and Hanau American army base in Germany, for all the major failed attacks in the UK, including one originating at Heathrow Airport, for the London Bombers, for Mohammed Merah, the butcher of Toulouse and, yes, for the three men who attacked Charlie Hebdorecently.

Russia’s new military doctrine: an attempt at deterrence

By Pranay Kotasthane 

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The new doctrine seeks to assert Russia’s position in the neighbourhood and salvage Putin’s position domestically

Only a few days after Ukraine moved closer to NATO, relinquishing its troubled “non-aligned” status, Russia announced its new military doctrine which was signed by President Putin on December 26, 2014.

This update has garnered a lot of attention in the US, EU, and NATO nations, which I argue was its sole objective. A few frantic reports from the US termed this new doctrine as an escalation, culminating in a “Cold War 2.0” or “The New Cold War”.

The updates in the military doctrine by themselves are cursory in nature. First, the doctrine singles out the NATO expansion in Eastern Europe as the primary threat to Russia’s national interest. As a result, military measures such as anti-missile shields, ‘global strike’ concept, plans of placing weapons in space are spotted as the dangers to watch out for. Considering the upheavals in Ukraine and fomenting troubles in Estonia, Lithuania and Moldova, this move is in line with Russia’s previous versions of the doctrine, which explicitly state that protecting Russian “compatriots”, a loose term meaning any ethnic Russian in the former CIS states is a duty of the Russian Federation.

Second, analysts have highlighted that the new doctrine is belligerent because it mentions that Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons against its enemies if it faces aggression of any type that threatens the security of the Russian State. This is again consistent with Russia’s earlier stance of retaining the right to the “first use” of nuclear weapons. Indeed, deterrence as a policy rests on the foundation of extremely destructive consequences.

‘@War’ details rising military-Internet link

By Tony Perry

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A thought commonly attributed to George Orwell holds that good people can sleep at night only because rough men are awake and ready to protect them. But in the modern world, two other groups are also vital to a sound sleep: software engineers and computer geeks.

That’s the scary but well-documented thesis of “@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex” by Shane Harris, a deep dive into the world of cyberwar and cyberwarriors. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks involved planes crashing into buildings; the next could be a surprise shutdown of computer systems that control the U.S. economy and government and much of its military capability.

“There is no concept of deterrence today in cyber,” a former hacker turned security executive tells Harris. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”

The U.S. military and intelligence community, Harris reports, were slow to join the cyberarms race but are now muscling up apace, only modestly slowed by the revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about domestic intelligence gathering that smacked of Big Brother.

Harris is even-handed in his references to Snowden, seeing him as neither whistle-blowing hero nor treasonous narcissist: “It turned out that the NSA, which wanted to protect computers from Wall Street to the water company, couldn’t keep a twenty-nine year-old contractor from making off with the blueprints to its global surveillance system.”

Harris, a fellow at the New America Foundation, knows his stuff: the people, the agencies, and the dizzying array of acronyms and clever mission names like Starburst, Buckshot Yankee, TAO (Tailored Access Operations) and ROC (Remote Operations Center). His reporting is thorough and his narrative is smooth in conveying that nearly everybody is spying on and hacking everybody else.

The U.S. hacked the president of Mexico to determine if he was a dupe of the drug cartels. The Chinese slipped a bug into the laptop of the U.S. secretary of Commerce during a trip to Beijing. The email of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates was hacked.

“Chinese cyber forces, along with their counterparts in Russia, have designed technologies to hack into U.S. military aircraft,” Harris reports. “The Chinese in particular have developed a method for inserting computer viruses through the air into three models of planes that the air force uses for reconnaissance and surveillance.”

Chinese hacking is aimed not just at the U.S. military but also military contractors, including those working on the newest U.S. warplane, the Joint Strike Fighter, Harris reports. “Cyber espionage and warfare are just the latest examples in a long and, for the Chinese, proud tradition.”

Are Paris-Style Attacks the Future of Terrorism?

By Joshua Keating

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Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said Kouachi, 34.

This week’s assault on Paris does not fit into the mold of what we typically think of as a terrorist attack. The attackers employed guns, rather than bombs, fled the scene of the initial attack rather than martyring themselves, and displayed some level of tactical acumen without it being clear that they were trained professionals.

It’s not that commando-style raids have never happened. They just receive less attention than suicide bombings because they more often take place in war zones, where there’s less media coverage than in major international cities. A U.N. report released last July, in fact, found that the Taliban had shifted their tactics from improvised explosive devices to gun battles in heavily populated areas. This is one major reason for the recent increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan. And this weekhundreds are believed to have been killed in a series of shooting raids by Boko Haram on a town in northern Nigeria.

“I would place [the Paris attack] into the ‘urban warfare’ model of attacks,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and co-author of a 2012 report commissioned by the U.S. Congress on the use of small arms by terrorists. “First, it’s an attack that’s designed to make use of a broader urban area as a battleground. Second, the attackers intend to survive long enough to extend this out over a couple of days, thus to prolong the terror and keep a place feeling skittish. Urban warfare attacks also often involve taking hostages in one place or another.”

The first example of such an attack on a city at peace was Mumbai in 2008, when about two dozen militants from the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked multiple locations in the Indian city, firing on civilians, setting off explosives, and taking hostages. The attacks “were perceived as being hugely successful, and al-Qaida has been talking about how to emulate this for some time,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London. In 2010, intelligence services of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany claimed to have disrupted a plan to carry out “Mumbai-style” attacks on several European cities.

Exclusive: Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare

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By James Bamford and Tim De Chant 

08 Jan 2015 

Cyber warfare used to be the stuff of sci-fi movies and military exercises. But with the advent of the Stuxnet worm, the Sony Pictures hacking—which was allegedly carried out with the backing of the North Korean government—and this week’s assault on German government websites, large-scale cyber attacks with suspected ties to nation states are growing increasingly prevalent. 

Few people have lifted the veil on cyber warfare like Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who leaked a massive number of documents to the press. 

Highlights from Edward Snowden's interview with NOVA 

Last June, journalist James Bamford, who is working with NOVA on a new film about cyber warfare that will air in 2015, sat down with Snowden in a Moscow hotel room for a lengthy interview. In it, Snowden sheds light on the surprising frequency with which cyber attacks occur, their potential for destruction, and what, exactly, he believes is at stake as governments and rogue elements rush to exploit weaknesses found on the internet, one of the most complex systems ever built by humans. The following is an unedited transcript of their conversation. 

James Bamford: Thanks very much for coming. I really appreciate this. And it’s really interesting—the very day we’re meeting with you, this article came out in The New York Times, seemed to be downplaying the potential damage, which they really seem to have hyped up in the original estimate. What did you think of this article today? 

Edward Snowden: So this is really interesting. It’s the new NSA director saying that the alleged damage from the leaks was way overblown. Actually, let me do that again. 

Denmark throws down $75m to build up offensive cybersecurity capabilities

By Liam Tung

January 9, 2015

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Following a serious breach at a Danish arms makers last year, the nation is to spend millions on beefing up its offensive cybersecurity capabilities.

Denmark is equipping its intelligence services for the first time with the tools and skills that will allow it conduct cyber-offensive operations, according to a recent report in Danish publication Politiken.

The Danish government has allocated DKK 465m ($73.6m) up to 2017 to ensure the Defence Intelligence Services (FE) are capable of launching cyber-attacks this year, a move away from its current focus on defence only. It's a sizeable spend for the country: byy way of comparison, the UK - whose population is around 11 times larger than Denmark's - spends around £93m ($140m) on its cyber-offensive and defensive capabilities every year.

It's unclear from the report exactly what offensive capabilities Denmark wants its intelligence agents to have. The move is apparently outlined in a defence bill and in a report from the Ministry of Defence that recommended such capabilities be given to the FE.

ZDNet has asked the Danish Ministy of Defence for more details on the capabilities.

News of the planned offensive capabilities follows the release of Denmark's new national strategy for cyber and information security in December. Most of the initiatives outlined in the strategy however discuss better cyber-preparedness by government agencies, their suppliers, and private sector critical infrastructure providers. Danish defence minister Nikolaj Wammen said of the threats facing the country: "there are external actors exploiting the internet to spy on Denmark and to steal trade secrets."

If Denmark is building up its cyber-offensive capabilities, it joins a growing list of nations whose intelligence services have used malware to spy on foreign targets or, as in the case of Stuxnet, used it to target other countries' national infrastructure. Sweden's armed forces in 2013 urged the government to give it with offensive cyber-capabilities in order to keep in step with other nations already using such tactics.

Drones: Can we make in India?

By Admin-Artemis 

http://logos.nationalinterest.in/2015/01/870/

Indigenously designed and manufactured UAVs might be right around the corner. Indeed, by leveraging our pool of software engineers and applying the lessons learned from the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), such UAV programs could serve as ideal flagships for the entire ‘Make in India’ brand. However, loosening the government’s hold on the local defense space and encouraging more private players to enter is key.

While government departments have done a great deal to develop local defense capabilities up till now, a question mark still remains over their ability to deliver competitive world-class projects in a timely fashion. The ever-present elephant in the room, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), is a prime example, and has taken over two decades to develop. In the context of UAVs, the LCA should act as an introductory exercise in building experience in flight dynamics, sensors, simulation, hardware and composite materials.

The LCA’s Achilles heel has undoubtedly been the locally-developed Kaveri engine. Luckily, UAVs could give the Kaveri a new lease of life, since they require less from their engines than manned aircraft. Indeed, the DRDOs latest project, the AURA unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), is set to employ this engine. Conversely, UAVs make ideal test beds for further engine development since pilot risk is not a factor when testing the operational limits of the engine.

For its own efforts, the government should not necessarily shy away from hiring foreign talent either. The advanced HAL HF24 ground strike aircraft from the 1960s is a prime example of how our government fast tracked progress by bringing in a team of German engineers. If rapid progress is to be made in a similar way, these high-tech specialists should also be allowed a certain degree of freedom from restrictive and often time consuming bureaucratic procedures.

India’s promising beginning: the HAL HF-24 Marut – now all but forgotten

Cumulative Warfare: War by Statistics

By James R. Holmes

January 10, 2015

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Life is cumulative — usually. War may unfold sequentially, but that’s the exception to the rule.

Or at least that’s the basic idea behind a lecture the Naval Diplomat delivered this week on “cumulative” operations such as air power, certain modes of naval operations, and insurgency and counterinsurgency. In keeping with the nonlinear nature of the subject matter, I wrote the lecture first before superimposing a thesis on it afterward. Admittedly, this inverts the customary pattern in social-science research. Standard practice has you write the conclusion first and retrofit the evidence and arguments to it!!!

But I digress, as usual. Used in this context, of course, the term cumulative comes from Admiral J. C. Wylie, a fellow NWC alumnus and one of my predecessors on the Newport faculty. Wylie distinguishes cumulative endeavors from sequential ones, in which each tactical action occurs after and depends on the one that came before. It’s a linear approach to strategy. Sequential enterprises can be plotted on the map using vectors or curves leading to some geographic objective. But, notes the author,

[T]here is another way to prosecute a war. There is a type of warfare in which the entire pattern is made up of a collection of lesser actions, but these lesser or individual actions are not sequentially interdependent. Each individual one is no more than a single statistic, an isolated plus or minus, in arriving at the final result.

Parsing Wylie’s somewhat arcane language, what he means is that individual actions are dispersed from one another in space, and in all likelihood in time as well. Plotting cumulative campaigns on the map or nautical chart is like dipping your fingers in paint and splattering it on the paper. No action is connected to another. Few yield massive effects. Over time, though, a cumulative campaign can wear down an enemy if prosecuted zealously, employing sufficient resources, and if directed against something that enemy holds dear.

Think about it. Strength is a product of material resources and resolve. Cumulative campaigns chip away at both factors. Drive either to zero and strength is zero. If Clausewitz has war-by-algebra, it seems Wylie has war-by-statistics.

US military back in Iraq to train troops, but this time it's different

By Loveday Morris

January 9, 2015

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CAMP TAJI, Iraq — Years after the U.S. military tried to create a new army in Iraq — at a cost of over $25 billion — American trainers have returned to help rebuild the country’s fighting force.

But this time, things are different.

With the Iraqis dependent on their own logistics, there is a shortage of weapons and ammunition available for training. For the time being, soldiers at Camp Taji are restricted to shouting “bang bang” to simulate firing during exercises. And, mindful of how Iraqi troops fled their positions last June during a major offensive by Islamic Stateextremists, U.S. trainers have added some new elements to boot camp.

“We are giving classes on the will to fight,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston, who instructed Iraqi troops in 2006 and 2007 and is now overseeing the U.S. training program. There is also more focus on training senior officers.

The new U.S. program, which began late last month, aims to give 5,000 Iraqi soldiers basic weapons and tactics training within six to eight weeks. The U.S. military hopes to eventually build a force capable of mounting counteroffensives against the Islamic State, which has taken control of large swaths of northern and western Iraq.

But a day at Camp Taji, where a small group of reporters was allowed access to the program this week for the first time, highlighted the challenges.