Indian Strategic Studies

2 February 2015

Jaipur Literature Festival Steers Clear of Controversy

By Sanjay Kumar

January 31, 2015

On January 25th, the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), the world’s biggest free symposium of its kind, closed with liberal authors in India facing withering attacks from right wing Hindu groups.

That issue set an unspoken tenor for the festival. The plight of writer Perumal Murugan, who announced plans to commit suicide on Facebook after getting hounded by right wing groups for his fictional depiction of women in Tamil Nadu, where he grew up, proved especially troublesome.

Murugan’s 2012 novel, Mathorubhagan (Other Part Woman), is a sensitive portrayal of the lives of a childless peasant couple in Tiruchengode, a small Tamil town. The story, which takes place at the dawn of the 20th century, focuses on the practice of ‘niyog.’ The wife is cajoled by her family to attend a temple ritual where she begets a child with a stranger. The child born from this ritual is called sami pillai or “god’s child,” since tradition paints the stranger as a representative of God. The fundamentalist group Sangh Parivar has denounced the book as degrading to women and the Hindu faith.

That isn’t the only book that right wing groups have recently pillared. American scholar Wendy Doniger’s 2009 book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, has been pulled from shelves in India because of a concerted campaign by a Hindu radical, Dinanath Batra, who finds the tome objectionable for its supposed denigration of Hindu gods and goddesses. The JLF was also held against the backdrop of a large scale systematic attempt is being made by the present regime in New Delhi to mix myth into India’s history.

The Guardian view on Afghanistan: war quickens as politicians falter

30 January 2015

Wars fade from consciousness as new conflicts seize attention. The war in Afghanistan, once constantly in the headlines, has slipped down the agenda since the American-led coalition forces formally ended combat operations in December last year. But it goes on, and it goes on pretty ferociously. This week three American contractors and an Afghan were killed in the base near Kabul from which air strikes on Taliban targets are mounted, while 16 people were killed and 39 injured in a suicide bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. Another 11 were killed and several injured in a Taliban attack on a checkpoint.

Both the major attacks seem to have been insider operations of the kind which plagued Afghan and coalition forces in the past, and they indicate the vulnerability of the remaining western military missions in the country, of the civilian contractors who work with them, and of the Afghan security forces themselves. A man joins the police, or gets a job with a contractor, or enrols in a village militia. In spite of tightened vetting procedures, he is not recognised as an infiltrator, and a few days or weeks later he blows himself and many others up, or opens fire on his supposed comrades. An appalling toll of lost lives is the consequence. The war is stealthy, unfair and cruel: open combat between armed fighters is probably now the exception rather than the rule.

Measuring how that war is going will be harder in the future because the US government has decided to classify information which has been publicly available for the last six years. Figures on American military spending and on the state of the Afghan forces will from now on be unavailable, and critics suspect the motive is to avoid publicity when those figures look bad, although the stated reason is that the information could be useful to the enemy. The truth about the war may well be that neither side is in good shape. Unlike Islamic State, with which dissidents within the Taliban are reportedly drawing unfavourable comparisons, the Taliban does not control a large tract of territory and certainly not one including urban centres.

What John Campbell Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Afghan Army

Gary Owen

Jan 30, 2015

This week, breaking coverage by the New York Times of a three month old Afghanistan story interrupted eulogies to the passing of the blog age just long enough for BuzzFeed to explain Matthew Rosenberg’s reporting in seven GIFs.

Per the Times, General John F. Campbell, the American commander of all foreign forces in Afghanistan, doesn’t want us to know how things are going in the graveyard of common sense. Which means we won’t know how the money gets spent anymore. But what he’s hiding isn’t money, it’s people.1

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in his bid to stay relevant by telling everyone stuff they already know (Afghanistan sucks! We screwed up!) asked General “Full Disclosure” Campbell how the war was going. Apparently, since October, Campbell can’t answer that, because it’s classified. And the reasoning?

The military command’s explanation for making the change is that such information could endanger American and Afghan lives, even though the data had been released every quarter over the past six years, and Afghan officials do not consider the information secret.

The internet was outraged with the kind of outrage it usually reserves for the outrage over casting choice outrages for movie franchises that mean Hollywood never has to have an original thought because we’re all nostalgic saps and would shell out cash for a Look Who’s Talking reboot if we put Channing Tatum and Jennifer Lawrence in it somewhere.2 But since it was a slow news day what with the world peace and the end of poverty, the interwebs were ready to pounce on the fact that the United States appears to be hiding all the Afghan info from the general public.3

Why China is nervous about its role in the world

By Sanjay Sanghoee

JANUARY 29, 2015

In the wake of President Obama’s historic trip to India, China issued an unsolicited and perplexing statement downplaying the relevance of the visit. As the White House pointed out in response, the only thing significant about China’s statement was the fact that the Asian nation felt the need to make it in the first place.

The rivalry between China and India for economic power and strategic control in Asia is longstanding and is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. But China’s taunt is not necessarily a sign of its hostility towards India but an inadvertent admission of its declining supremacy in the region.

China, once an accepted economic and military juggernaut and the darling of investors the world over, is now facing both economic and strategic challenges which could slow down its progress.

First, China’s economy seems to be shrinking. Withindustrial activity trending down and interest rate cuts yet to produce results, it’s looking likely that China’s meteoric economic rise may have peaked and, according to a report from the Conference Board, could lead to a 4% GDP growth rate in the future, which is considerably lower than in previous decades. Further problems plaguing China include a debt overhang, a real estate bubble, lack of competition, and an old-world industrial economy instead of a more modern information economy such as that of the U.S.

The Final Solution: a Nuclear Iran

By Charles Krauthammer

Amid the ritual expressions of regret and the pledges of “never again” on Tuesday’s 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a bitter irony was noted: Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe. With a vengeance.

It has become routine. If the kosher-grocery massacre in Paris hadn’t happened in conjunction with Charlie Hebdo, how much worldwide notice would it have received? As little as did the murder of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. As little as did the terror attack that killed four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

The rise of European anti-Semitism is in reality just a return to the norm. For a millennium, virulent Jew-hatred — persecution, expulsions, massacres — was the norm in Europe until the shame of the Holocaust created a temporary anomaly wherein anti-Semitism became socially unacceptable.

The hiatus is over. Jew-hatred is back, recapitulating the past with impressive zeal. Italians protesting Gaza handed out leaflets calling for a boycott of Jewish merchants. As in the 1930s. A widely popular French comedian has introduced a variant of the Nazi salute. In Berlin, Gaza brought out a mob chanting, “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone!” Berlin, mind you.

Is Iran Preparing for a Two-Front War Against Israel?

Jonathan S. Tobin

01.30.201

The outbreak of violence along Israel’s northern border appeared to have died down by the end of the week. Hezbollah claimed a victory with a cross border shelling that left two Israeli soldiers dead. For the moment that appears to be enough for them and their Iranian paymasters as they contemplate their next move in a struggle that is as much about defending the Islamist regime’s gains in Syria and its nuclear program as anything else. But for residents of northern Israel, the attack was a reminder that at any moment, their lives could be turned upside down by a decision taken in Tehran to either turn up the heat on the Jewish state or perhaps even launch a war. The same is true of those living within range of Gaza, where terrorists also rule. Though those who claim to be Israel’s friends speak of its security concerns as if they were fictions created by Prime Minister Netanyahu to justify his policies, this week’s events once more made it clear that a two-front war in which both missiles and terror tunnels will play a major role are threats that cannot be dismissed.

The aftermath of the dustup along the Lebanese border has been characterized mostly by renewed Israeli efforts to search for evidence of tunnels being dug across the border to facilitate more terror attacks. The construction equipment that has been reported in the vicinity of this week’s assault was widely assumed to be a sign that Hezbollah is preparing for more attacks perhaps this time aimed at killing and kidnapping civilians as well as soldiers.

The context was not just the usual tensions with the terror group but signs that Iran was upping the ante with Israel as it continued to refuse to budge in nuclear talks with the United States and its Western allies. Far from being separate issues, the ability of Iran to deploy its Hezbollah auxiliaries to pressure Israel must be understood as integral to its overall goal of seeking regional hegemony via the chaos in Iraq and the survival of its ally Bashar Assad in Syria.

Paul Krugman’s Unpleasant Peasant Arithmetic

BY SIMON COX

JANUARY 30, 2015

China’s vast $10-trillion economy is a source of angst, as well as awe, for many prominent foreign economists. Larry Summers of Harvard believes its miraculous “Asiaphoric” growth may soon regress to a mediocre rate. Kenneth Rogoff, his sometime quadmate, believes China is a big economic risk for the year. Nouriel Roubini argues that China’s growth model, characterized by high saving and investment, is unsustainable — and the authorities know it.

But how does China look to the most prominent economist of them all — the one with a Nobel Prize, a regular opinion column in the New York Times, and a photo-portrait hanging in the economics department of one of Beijing’s most prestigious universities? As it happens, Paul Krugman was in Hong Kong recently to answer that very question.

Read the headline coverage of his visit in China’s official press and you will discover that Krugman “believes in [the] future of China,” which is fortunate, because both the country and the future are real. Watch him yourself, however, and the emphasis is a little different.

“China is a very scary prospect,” he says, which might suffer “a very nasty recession — maybe worse — along the way.”

There will be no swift victory over ISIL in Mosul

Alan Philps

January 31, 2015

On Monday, Kurdish forces recaptured the town of Kobani in northern Syria, having driven out the jihadists of ISIL after four months of fighting. This is a symbolic defeat for ISIL and has prompted speculation that this might mark the point when the all-conquering jihadists are rolled back.

From a military point of view, the loss of Kobani, which ISIL had been so confident of taking, will not change much. There was no pressing reason for ISIL to take Kobani apart from propaganda: the town is within sight of the Turkish border and the raising of the black flag on the ridge behind the town could be caught by the TV cameras watching over the border fence.

After Kobani, ISIL appears to have two faces. Its initial push in Iraq, which began on January 1 last year in Anbar province, was a well-executed piece of military planning, showing the influence of trained officers from the old Iraqi army. The Kobani operation shows ISIL as a movement driven by its social media output.

The media war is a vital part of any battle plan. The ISIL threats to kill the captured Jordanian pilot, Maaz Al Kassasbeh, shook public opinion in Jordan, revealing cracks in support for the anti-ISIL coalition more effectively than any bombing campaign.

Davos and Climate Change: ‘Warning Shots’ From Africa and Pacific

By Maarten van Aalst

January 31, 2015

Weeks of heavy rains have caused extensive flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. People are seeking shelter in schools and churches, while others are living under the canopies of trees. Immediate needs include shelter and the provision of clean water and adequate sanitation as water sources have been contaminated and sanitation facilities damaged or destroyed.

When global figures gathered in the Swiss resort of Davos last week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) – its 45th – they were facing potentially the close of one era and the start of another.

In its introduction to the meeting, the Geneva-based WEF secretariat said “complexity, fragility and uncertainty” could end the period of economic integration and international partnership that began in 1989, and would now involve major political, economic, social and technological transformation.

The result: an “entirely new” context for global decision-making.

Global Risks 2015, the featured WEF report released just ahead of Davos, placed conflict at the top of a list of global hazards by likelihood – to no one’s surprise, sadly, given the ongoing tragedy in the Middle East.

Time for Plan B on Ukraine?

Andrew S. Weiss

In his State of the Union address, President Obama appeared eager to declare victory in Ukraine, saying the united front against Vladimir Putin had worked and that “Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters.” The ever-touchy Russian president appeared to respond a few days later, through his separatist proxies, with a dramatic surge in violence in south-eastern Ukraine and last Saturday’s deadly artillery attack on the strategic port city of Mariupol, which killed at least 30 people.

Thus far, Obama seems to be sticking to his administration’s customary response, emphasizing that sanctions are the primary tool to force Putin to reverse course and that the West is not prepared to confront Russia militarily. “We will continue to take the approach that we have taken in the past, which is to ratchet up the pressure on Russia," he said at a news conference in New Delhi on Sunday.

The question is whether this approach is enough to prevent the full unraveling of the cease-fire and shield the fragile Ukrainian state from what George Soros has aptly described as Putin’s true intention: to “destroy the new Ukraine before it can establish itself … while maintaining deniability.” The immediate violence around Mariupol and elsewhere in the Donbas may pause, but the pattern is clear—Russia will back the separatists in order to disrupt Ukraine and keep the West off-balance. Barring any changes, this is what we can expect for the long term.

There aren’t many credible options for averting this outcome. But perhaps the least unpalatable of an array of unsavory options is for Obama to take another look at a serious diplomatic effort with the Europeans to end the conflict once and for all. While there are new hints that Secretary of State John Kerry is eager to throw himself into the crisis, such moves are unlikely to pay off unless Obama personally gets involved. The president’s clear reluctance to engage in direct dialogue with Putin has been a curious feature for U.S. policy, given his readiness to engage with the leaders of longtime adversaries such as Iran and Cuba without pre-conditions. The Europeans lack credibility on two items important to Putin: ensuring recognition of Russia's global role and stirring Russian anxieties about possible direct military support to Ukraine.

Donetsk People's Republic Has ‘Full Support of Texas’, Says Pro-Russian Rebel

By Damien Sharkov

1/30/15

The self-proclaimed foreign minister for the pro-Russian separatist group the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), which is currently battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine, has announced plans to host a “summit of unrecognized states” such as Flanders, the Basque country and Texas in a video initially broadcast on the local pro-separatist channel Oplot TV earlier this week.

The DNR representative, Alexander Koffman, said he plans to host the summit in either February or March, inviting representatives from regions with separatist leanings around Europe such as Spain's Basque region, Belgium's Flanders region, Italy’s Venetian region and even the American state of Texas hoping to create a “League of New States”.

“We already have agreement from representatives of these states,” Koffman said, arguing the only reason such a meeting has not yet happened is out of fear the movements will make it easier for political opponents to attack them at once.

Assessing Threats to U.S. Vital Interests

The United States is a global power with global interests. Scaling its military power to threats requires judgments with regard to the importance and priority of those interests, whether the use of force is the most appropriate and effective means of addressing the threats to them, and how much and what types of force are needed to defeat such threats.

This Index focuses on three fundamental, vital national interests:

Defense of the homeland;

Successful conclusion of a major war having the potential to destabilize a region of critical interest to the U.S.; and

Preservation of freedom of movement within the global commons: the sea, air, and outer space domains through which the world conducts business.

The geographical focus of the threats in these areas is further divided into three broad regions: Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

This is not to say that these are America’s only interests. Among many others, the U.S. has an interest in the growth of economic freedom in trade and investment, the observance of internationally recognized human rights, and the alleviation of human suffering beyond our borders. None of these interests, however, can be addressed principally and effectively by the use of military force, nor would threats to these interests result in material damage to the foregoing vital national interests. These additional American interests, however important they may be, therefore will not be used in this assessment of the adequacy of current U.S. military power.

We reference two public sources throughout the document as a mechanism to check our work against that of other recognized professional organizations in the field of threat analysis: the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annualThe Military Balance1 and the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community (WWTA).2 The latter serves as a reference point produced by the U.S. government against which each threat assessment in this Index was compared. We note any differences between assessments in this Index and the work of the two primary references in summary comments.

Europe Sits on the verge of Regime Collapse

Europe won the Cold War.

Not long after the Berlin Wall fell a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States squandered its peace dividend in an attempt to maintain global dominance, and Europe quietly became more prosperous, more integrated, and more of a player in international affairs. Between 1989 and 2014, the European Union (EU) practically doubled its membership and catapulted into third place in population behind China and India. It currently boasts the world's largest economy and also heads the list of global trading powers. In 2012, the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize for transforming Europe "from a continent of war to a continent of peace."

In the competition for "world's true superpower," China loses points for still having so many impoverished peasants in its rural hinterlands and a corrupt, illiberal bureaucracy in its cities; the United States, for its crumbling infrastructure and a hypertrophied military-industrial complex that threatens to bankrupt the economy. As the only equitably prosperous, politically sound, and rule-of-law-respecting superpower, Europe comes out on top, even if -- or perhaps because -- it doesn't have the military muscle to play global policeman.

And yet, for all this success, the European project is currently teetering on the edge of failure. Growth is anemic at best and socio-economic inequality is on the rise. The countries of Eastern and Central Europe, even relatively successful Poland, have failed to bridge the income gap with the richer half of the continent. And the highly indebted periphery is in revolt.

Go ahead, Angela, make my day

31st Jan 2015

IT WAS in Greece that the infernal euro crisis began just over five years ago. So it is classically fitting that Greece should now be where the denouement may be played out—thanks to the big election win on January 25th for the far-left populist Syriza party led by Alexis Tsipras (see article). By demanding a big cut in Greece’s debt and promising a public-spending spree, Mr Tsipras has thrown down the greatest challenge so far to Europe’s single currency—and thus to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who has set the austere path for the continent.

The stakes are high. Although everybody, including Mr Tsipras, insists they want Greece to stay in the euro, there is now a clear threat of Grexit. In 2011-12 Mrs Merkel wavered, but then decided to support the Greeks to keep them in the single currency. She did not want Germany to be blamed for another European disaster, and both northern creditors and southern debtors were nervous about the consequences of a chaotic Greek exit for Europe’s banks and their economies.

This time the odds have changed. Grexit would look more like the Greeks’ fault, Europe’s economy is stronger and 80% of Greece’s debt is in the hands of other governments or official bodies. Above all the politics are different. The Finns and the Dutch, like the Germans, want Greece to stick to promises it made when they twice bailed it out. And in southern Europe centrist governments fear that a successful Greek blackmail would push voters towards their own populist opposition parties, like Spain’s Podemos (see article).

Will Spain join the Greek revolution? Don’t bet on it

Natalie Nougayrède

If first impressions count, then the political force that wants to transform Spain in 2015 consists mainly of student types and self-conscious outsiders. That, at any rate, is the scene when you enter Podemos’s crammed, disorderly office in Madrid’s popular Lavapiés district. Posters are being prepared for the movement’s first big street demonstration, planned for 31 January. A young woman sitting in front of a computer says she has no job and decided to become a Podemos volunteer because “if we don’t start taking things into our hands, la casta will just continue as before”.

This is the closest thing Spain has to Syriza, the radical leftwing party that just came to power in Greece. Only a year after its launch last January, Podemos (“We can”) is riding high in opinion polls. General elections are due at the end of the year. Just like Syriza, Podemos has a charismatic leader, the pony-tailed 36-year-old professor of political science, Pablo Iglesias. Like Syriza, Podemos calls for an end to traditional politics and rolling back austerity. Its key target is la casta (“the caste”), the dominant two-party system that has ruled Spain since democracy was restored in the late 1970s, after Franco’s death.

Opposite the Podemos office, there’s a book shop run by some of its activists. Browsing through it feels like you’ve stepped into a time-machine: there are collections of Lenin’s works, and books on the Italian communist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the French 19th-century revolutionary Louise Michel.

This chart shows all of the versions of Russia's fifth-generation fighter jet

JEREMY BENDER

JAN 30, 2015

A prototype version of Russia's T-50

The US and Russia have been competing arms exporters since the dawn of the Cold War.

Although the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the deep-seated rivalry between the US and Russia never fully died out and is now stronger than it's been in decades thanks the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. The same goes for the countries' rivalry in the realm of military hardware.

The US and Russia are both producing their own fifth-generation fighters. While the US is developing the F-35 in conjunction with select worldwide partners, Russia is developing its own fifth-generation fighter, the Su-50.

And like the F-35, the Su-50 will have multiple variants. The following chart from Russian arms manufacturer Sukhoi shows the intended plan for all versions of Russia's most advanced fighter jet.

Russia Says It Will Not Allow Other Countries To Gain 'Military Superiority' Over Russia

REUTERS

JAN. 30, 2015

Defense minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday he would not let anyone gain military superiority over Russia and that he would fulfill a plan to modernize the armed forces by 2020.

Russia, hit by Western sanctions over Ukraine and a fall in oil prices, is expected to enter recession this year, but Shoigu said he would carry out the multibillion-dollar plan approved by President Vladimir Putin.

"The task set by the president — to prevent (others') military superiority over Russia — will be fulfilled unconditionally," Interfax news agency quoted Shoigu as telling a Defense Ministry meeting.

"For that, we plan to fulfill the government armament program and reach by 2020 the intended quantities of modern weapons systems," he added.

Tensions between Russia and the West have risen over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where the United States and Europe say Moscow is fueling an insurgency by sending in troops and weapons. Moscow denies this.

Russia has criticized NATO expansion in eastern Europe, and Putin has accused the Ukrainian army, which is fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, of being puppets of NATO with a policy of "containing" Russia.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

You’re Doing it Wrong

Rule No. 13: “When in charge, take charge.” — General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Saturday, November 22 started as a day like any other day. Get up, let the dogs out, hit the gym. Feed the dogs, make a cup of coffee, turn on This Old House, and begin the morning social media ritual. ISIS? Still a problem. Afghanistan? Still unsustainable. Russia? Still in Ukraine. Then, from out of nowhere, a strange retweet from @USAFPABoss, the U.S. Air Force Chief of Public Affairs, Brigadier General Kathleen Cook.

I sat back, took a long drink of coffee, and thought to myself “What a monumentally stupid thing to do.” Forget the disclaimer ‘RTs & links ≠ endorsement.’ That’s just not true. If you’re active on social media, you own what you post. That’s why you’ll never see @CocaCola retweet anything negative about one of its competitors, no matter how tempting it might be to do so. You post it, you own it. It’s really that simple.

Russia May Need to Say ‘Do Svidaniya’ to Belarus

BY REID STANDISH

JANUARY 30, 2015

Over the course of his two decades in power, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’s autocratic president, has perfected the art of weaving between Russia and the West. But with the fighting in eastern Ukraine approaching his country’s doorstep and Russia’s struggling economy weighing down his own, Lukashenko has begun an unprecedented tilt away from Moscow.

Despite occasional swipes at the Kremlin, Lukashenko has rarely strayed too far from Russia in the past, but the Ukraine crisis seems to be slightly altering his calculations. At his annual news conference Thursday, the Belarusian leader made his most overt maneuver yet away from the Kremlin. With Belarus hampered by Russia’s struggling economy, Lukashenko said that if these problems persist, his country would consider leaving the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, which has left Belarus — and the other members — sharing in Russia’s fiscal woes.

The union — a trade bloc consisting of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia that came into effect on Jan. 1 — is off to a rocky start. About 40 percent of Belarus’s exports go to Russia, and much of the rest goes to other former Soviet countries closely linked to the Russian economy,according to Belarus’s Foreign Ministry. Due to Western sanctions, the collapse of the ruble, and global oil prices hammering Russia, the Eurasian Union has already been marred by a series of currency devaluations and trade spats, which have brought the union’s founding premise of economic growth into question.

The Belgium Question: Why Is a Small Country Producing So Many Jihadists?

By Katrin Kuntz and Gregor Peter Schmitz

Relative to the size of its population, no other country in Europe sends as many young jihadists to Syria as Belgium does. But why? Some say one problem lies with the fractured nature of the country itself.

Chantal Lebon last saw her son at a bus stop in Brussels. That was two years ago in October "at exactly 10:25 p.m.," she says. Abdel had driven his mother there in a car, stopped in a parking spot and lifted her suitcase onto the sidewalk.

"Au revoir, maman," he said. "Au revoir, mon fils," she replied. It was only months later that she would again see her son's face -- in a YouTube video. It showed him wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh and holding a Kalashnikov. The video was stamped with the flag used by the Islamic State in Syria.Chantal Lebon is a small, energetic 64-year-old retired nursery school teacher with blue eyes and graying hair. She has come to a café to tell us the story of her son Abdel, the story of a Belgian child who became a radical Islamist fighter at the age of 23. Abdel had nothing to do with the attack plans in Belgium, his mother says. But, she confirms, her son is a jihadist.

On the way to the Brussels café, she saw the soldiers standing guard in front of police stations, court houses and the city hall. The Belgian government raised the country's terror alert to the second highest level after officials were able to foil attacks targeting police and Jewish schools earlier this month. At the European Parliament, events with more than 100 foreign guests have been banned and a military vehicle guards the entrance to the European Commission.

The 5 Most Dangerous Nuclear Threats No One Is Talking About

Zachary Keck

February 1, 2015

Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have occupied a hallowed place in U.S. national security. Indeed, during the dawn of the nuclear era, a whole new academic discipline—strategic studies—sprung up to provide the intellectual foundations for policy makers grappling with these earth-shattering issues. Moreover, while easy (convenient?) to forget today, nuclear weapons were central to America’s strategy for defending Europe from the numerically superior Soviet military.

During the Cold War, much of the debate centered on the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance. And for good reason; this was both the most likely and most dangerous flashpoint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons have continued to be a major preoccupation of American statesmen. However, instead of being concerned by existing nuclear arsenal, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment has been most consumed by the nuclear weapons “rogue” states and terrorist groups don’t have. Meanwhile, outside of government, the strategic-studies community has been replaced by the arms-control crowd, who pours most of its energies into trying to abolish nuclear weapons instead of trying to minimize the danger of them.

None of these pursuits are unworthy in and of themselves. Nonetheless, they’ve created a vacuum whereby few are talking about (much less solving) the nuclear dangers that actually confront the world today. Unfortunately, these haven’t gone away. With the hope of sparking these necessary conversations, here are the five most dangerous nuclear threats no one is talking about:

If President Obama Can Get Home for Dinner, Why Can’t You?

Dan McGinn

No matter how challenging a C-suite job may be, it is surely dwarfed by the pressures of the U.S. presidency. No matter how many vacations they take or how much they exercise, presidents seem to visibly age faster than other people; among the White House staff, there’s frequent talk of burnout leading to turnover. In her 2012 book “The Obamas,” New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor offers an unusually detailed account of how the Obamas tried to maintain a sense of balance even as they moved to Washington. They’ve maintained the same loyal network of friends, stuck to disciplined diet and exercise regimens, eschewed the Washington social scene to spend time with their children, and kept a raised eyebrow at some of the pomp and privilege that comes with the presidency. HBR asked Kantor what C-suite executives might learn from how the First Couple deals with one of the world’s most stressful jobs. Excerpts:

Your book contains rich detail on how hard the Obamas worked to preserve a sense of normalcy when they moved to the White House. Why was that so important to them?

I started covering the Obamas in 2007, so I watched their transformation. They very quickly went from being the sort of parents who dropped their kids off at school to being president and first lady. Their change in status was so extreme — normally in politics and in business, people rise slowly and pay their dues. When they got to Washington, they really tried to preserve as sense of normalcy, but that’s almost impossible in the White House, which is a combination museum, office, residence, and secure military compound. In the business world, even the most public CEO still has a place he or she can retreat to that’s out of the public eye. That’s not true for a president.

Mind the Gap

By Jay Ogilvy

JANUARY 28, 2015

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/mind-gap#axzz3Py6b0Mnu

The Charlie Hebdo attackand its aftermath in the streets and in the press tempt one to dust offSamuel Huntington's 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Despite the criticisms he provoked with that book and his earlier 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, recent events would seem to be proving him prescient.

Or was he?

While I am not about to deny the importance of religion and culture as drivers of geopolitical dynamics, I will argue that, more important than the clashes among the great civilizations, there is a clash within each of the great civilizations. This is the clash between those who have "made it" (in a sense yet to be defined) and those who have been "left behind" — a phrase that is rich with ironic resonance.

Before I make my argument, I warn that the point I'm trying to make is fairly subtle. So, in the interest of clarity, let me lay out what I'm not saying before I make that point. I am not saying that Islam as a whole is somehow retrograde. I am not agreeing with author Sam Harris' October 2014 remark on "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas." Nor am I saying that all religions are somehow equal, or that culture is unimportant. The essays in the book Culture Matters, which Huntington helped edit, argue that different cultures have different comparative advantages when it comes to economic competitiveness. These essays build on the foundation laid down by Max Weber's 1905 work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is only the "sulfuric odor of race," as Harvard historian David Landes writes on the first page of the first essay in Culture Matters, that has kept scholars from exploring the under-researched linkages between culture and economic performance.

Making It in the Modern World

The U.S. Army's Next Big Challenge: Training Civilians as Cyber Warriors

James Jay Carafano

February 1, 2015

"Past experiences with turning civilians into instant military assets show why the practice isn’t the Easy Button the Army might desire."

The new arms race scrambles for bytes, not bombs. To take and hold the cyber high ground, the armed services (and just about everybody else) want more fingers on keyboards and eyes on screens.

Army leaders have kicked around the idea of filling the cyber-ranks by grabbing talent off the street rather than combing through boot camps to find folks who can boot-up computers. But co-opting geeks and hackers doesn’t add up to a sustainable human-capital strategy. America’s Army will have to do more to be a superpower in cyberspace.

Enlisting private-sector operatives to fight public wars is nothing new. General Daniel McCallum outsourced strategic intelligence to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Commercial teamsters carted Union ammo to Gettysburg. Harnessing the free market in the fight for freedom is an integral part of the Western way of war.

Last December, Lt. Gen. Robert Brown, commander of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, publicly suggested it might be time to apply this approach to cyberwar. “We need to give serious consideration to how the U.S. Army could combine the technical expertise of the ‘Google’ generation with its more traditional military skills,” Brown said.

He also noted a possible conflict of culture: “They grew up on Google and wear ponytails. We need to look at ways to bring them into the Army without necessarily going through the same training procedures as our combat troops."

US ups stakes in cyberwarfare

Daniel Stuckey

January 29, 2015

In the wake of the network intrusion that embarrassed Sony and put corporations across the nation on alert, it’s clearer than ever that the U.S. is embroiled, willingly or not, in cyberwar.

But aside from having imposed economic sanctions on North Korea, Washington has not declared any further official response to the Sony Pictures hack.

While President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address this month proposed an update to cybersecurity laws to strengthen protections, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has been building and training one of the most formidable state-sanctioned hacking groups in the world: its Cyber Command. Since 2009 the Pentagon has been role-playing what cyberattacks against U.S. systems could look like and how to respond.

“We train units using realistic scenarios, including force-on-force exercises against a simulated adversary on a closed, virtual exercise network,” said DOD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson.

She said Cyber Command is “working to improve the quality and capacity of individual and unit training as we build out the 133 teams [with more than 6,000 people] of the Cyber Mission Force over the next two years.” The commander is Michael S. Rogers, who is also the director of the National Security Agency.

Located in Fort Meade, Maryland, Cyber Command is the hub for military cyberwar, synchronizing operations and resources with other agencies. According to Henderson, the command is “complementary to the authorities and capabilities of the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community.”

Army sets up new brigade 'for information age'

31 January 2015

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31070114

The Army is setting up a new unit that will use psychological operations and social media to help fight wars "in the information age".

Head of the Army General Sir Nick Carter said the move was about trying to operate "smarter".

The 77th Brigade, made up of reservists and regular troops and based in Hermitage, Berkshire, will be formally created in April.

It has been inspired by the Chindits who fought in Burma in World War Two.

'Bespoke skills'

An Army spokesman said the unit would "play a key part in enabling the UK to fight in the information age" and that it "consists of more than just traditional capabilities".

The Hack That Warmed the World

MCKENZIE FUNK

JANUARY 30, 2015

Europe’s carbon-trading market was supposed to be capitalism’s solution to global warming. Instead, it became a playground for gangsters, international crime syndicates, and even two-bit crooks -- who stole hundreds of millions of dollars in pollution credits.

The client wanted carbon credits: tradable serial numbers that confer the right to pollute the Earth with invisible, odorless gas. Jugga, as the client called himself, planned to steal the credits, quickly resell them, and become rich overnight—but he needed the Black Dragon to hack into a computer system to help him do it. The Dragon, who in online forums advertised his services as a corporate spy, was sure he could hack anything. But when Jugga contacted him in June 2011, the hacker had no idea what carbon credits even were. “I didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to come up with that,” the Dragon says of the concept.

The two men communicated via secure online chats, using their pseudonyms. In real life, the Dragon was 31-year-old Matthew Beddoes, a coal miner’s son, high-school dropout, and self-taught computer whiz who collected thousands of strangers’ credit card numbers and floated from couch to couch in central England’s Midlands region. Jugga was 36-year-old Jasdeep Singh Randhawa, who was previously part of a cigarette-smuggling network in Leicestershire.

Cyber warfare: Army seeks Twitter troops and Facebook warriors

By Olivia Solon

31 January 2015

A crack team of social media specialists is being formed within the British Army to engage in cyber warfare.

The 77th Brigade and they will focus on non-lethal psychological operations and using social networks like Facebook and Twitter to control the narrative and fight "in the information age".

They will try to develop "means of shaping behaviour through the use of dynamic narratives" and will also provide training and support to local security forces.

The 1,500-strong unit will fight against the sort of propaganda peddled so effectively by terrorist organisations like ISIS.

The head of the army - General Sir Nick Carter - thinks the radical unit is required to deal with the "asymmetric" battlegrounds of the 21st century, where the rules of engagement vary dramatically between enemies.

Senior military personnel believe that ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq show that the information war is just as critical as battles fought with weapons.

It will be based near Newbury and is seeking new recruits with experience in journalism and social media, starting in spring.

The new unit has been named after the legendary Chindits who fought in Burma in World War II. These soldiers were known for a “spirit of innovation” and daring missions as they operated deep behind enemy lines, targeting the Japanese.

Sebastian Junger Knows Why Young Men Go to War

MATTHEW GAULT

Sebastian Junger is a rare filmmaker. His trio of documentaries about soldiers fighting in Afghanistan neither praise nor demonize America’s troops. Unlike most popular war films, he doesn’t turn soldiers into superheroes.

The Oscar-nominated Restrepo is about the job. Korengal is about the men.The Last Patrol is about those men trying to come home. In a long and discursive interview, we talked with Junger about warped perceptions of the troops, why he went to war and modern conceptions of manhood.

Junger argues that Americans are enamored with war, even when they say they don’t believe in it. He also thinks young men in the west no longer have a sense of what it means to be a man—and some of them go to war to find out.

“I’m a journalist,” he tells me. “I don’t put any political agenda into my work. I think the right wing tends to idolize soldiers—you can’t talk about them critically in any way. The left wing went from vilifying them in Vietnam to seeing them as victims of a military-industrial complex.”

He laughs over the phone. “Both views of soldiers are just absurd.” More than just absurd, Junger sees both views as harmful.

“No one should be beyond commentary and criticism,” he says. But he also cautions against thinking of soldiers as victims. The way Junger sees it, soldiers choose to fight.

Into the Breach Lessons Learned as a Brigade Planner

Members of the 442nd Troop Carrier Group plan missions into Europe during World War II.

This post was provided by Captain W. Paul Hill, an Army officer currently serving as a brigade assistant operations officer in the 4th Armor Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armor Division at Fort Bliss, Texas. He previously commanded C Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment and B Company, 1st Battalion, 50th Infantry Regiment. He is a graduate of the Maneuver Captain’s Career Course and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace from Middle Tennessee State University.

I remember the first major exercise I was responsible for as a brigade planner. I had been in the brigade a few weeks and was still learning to recognize the brigade’s staff primaries. The brigade S3 called me up to his office and informed me that one of the other staff captains was leaving to take a command, and he asked me if I had any issues taking over planning for the brigade FTX. Being the good staff officer I responded, “No sir. We will start right away.” Following that brief conversation, I went to the other officer’s cubicle so that we could start the handover process and he could go over where he was in the planning process. As soon as we got back to his cubicle, he told me that his computer had problems and he only had two products to give me. He showed me a slide depicting a company defense with the unit on the wrong terrain facing the wrong way and another showing that we were behind on 12 of 17 requirements.

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