Raja Mandala: Regional India, global South Asia

by C. Raja Mohan

May 31, 2016

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As other powers engage South Asian nations, Delhi must deal with a changing Subcontinent.

Narendra Modi

Their presence at the G-7 summit at Ise-Shima, Japan, last week was hardly noticed in India. But among the six leaders of the developing world present in the outreach session were Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh, and Maithripala Sirisena, president of Sri Lanka.

The Japanese invitation to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka underlines the remarkable rise in Tokyo’s strategic interest in the Subcontinent. It also highlights the growing salience of South Asian nations on the international stage.

Japan is a late entrant to this game; China has already begun to integrate India’s neighbours into its larger international and regional strategies. The $ 46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor is only one example. In another, Beijing has given Colombo and Kathmandu the status of a “dialogue partner” in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

India: Sonowal Takes Responsibility For Assam – Oped

BY NAVA THAKURIA 
MAY 30, 2016

http://www.eurasiareview.com/30052016-india-sonowal-takes-responsibility-for-assam-oped/

It was a spectacular show, where a young tribal leader took the pledge to serve over 30 million people of Assam with all his sincerity and commitment.

Braving the bright afternoon sunshine of the summer season, over one hundred thousand euphoric well-wishers assembled at the venue to witness the historic moment, as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sarbananda Sonowal was sworn-in as the State chief minister on 24 May 2016.

Unlike the previous Congress government at Dispur, the swearing-in ceremony of the BJP led regime was organized at a city college playground, where many high profile dignitaries including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former deputy PM LK Adwani, BJP president Amit Shah etc were present. Assam Governor PB Acharya administered the oath of office and secrecy to eight more cabinet ministers along with two ministers of State (independent charge) belonged to BJP, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF).

Assam witnessed a similar swearing-in ceremony three decades back in the city’s Nehru stadium, when the PK Mahanta led AGP came to power defeating the Congress for the first time. The AGP leaders, then fresh student activists belonged to All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), in 1985 successfully concluded the historic Assam movement against the unabated Bangladeshi influx to the State.

Pakistan's Options on India's BMD Defence

May 31, 2016 

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Ali Ehsan Discusses Pakistan's Options on "India going ‘ballistic’?"

An article by Muhammad Ali Ehsan in The Express Tribune on May 21, says that considering the no-first use nuclear doctrine that India follows and Pakistan does not, the lack of an anti-ballistic missile technology was a gap in Indian security. But has that gap been filled now by the test-firing of the missile? Asked Ehsan , saying , If not, how long will it take for India to build up an anti-missile defence shield? What are the implications and strategic effects of this renewed Indian interest in the development, induction and expansion of missile systems in its armed forces? And how is Pakistan likely to respond to this Indian development?

According to Ali Ehsan in his article in Express Tribune, all indicators suggest that India is in the process of developing a nuclear missile shield. This won’t be a defensive arrangement as the name might suggest but an offensive deployment of radars and ballistic missiles designed and deployed to take down incoming missiles at a far-off distance. Reportedly, India has already placed two long-range missile tracking radars (supplied by Israel) in New Delhi. Ehsan stated in his Article that this is the beginning of an accelerated process that will see India deploying radars and missiles to provide a nuclear missile shield to its major cities and join the list of countries that already have such shields for their cities, including Paris, London, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington. Building this nuclear missile shield will require the deployment of hundreds of ballistic missiles. For this, India is simultaneously working on both indigenous development as well as imports. The current five-year import figures of heavy weapons by India, according to a report, are 140 per cent higher than the spending in this regard in the previous five years.

Sticks And Carrots: Elusive Quest For Afghan Peace – Analysis

By Kriti M Shah* 

MAY 31, 2016

The Afghan government signed a draft peace agreement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami on May 18, its first peace agreement with an insurgent group ever since the Afghan Taliban decided to withdraw itself from the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG)-led peace process. The deal, among other things, would see the safe return of Hekmatyar to Kabul after a hiatus of two decades that were ostensibly spent in exile, shunting between Pakistan and north-east Afghanistan.

In the midst of deteriorating security situation and failure of the peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, the National Unity Government (NUG) will view the peace deal as a huge success. The recent killing of the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Mansour in a drone strike, which was expected to have dealt a major blow to the Taliban leadership, already divided after Mullah Omar’s death, however is yet to be witnessed. Instead, the succession of Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada as the new leader of this insurgent movement and in a rather noise-less manner has come to indicate that despite the apprehensions, the group is still going strong. The hope was that the Afghan Taliban will abandon its violent actions, and resolve to disarm instead, but the new leader has kept the resolve to not to participate in the QCG-led peace process intact.

Pakistan In The US, The US In Pakistan: Self-denial Is Biggest Threat To World Peace -OpEd

BY RAKESH KRISHNAN SIMHA 
MAY 30, 2016

One of the ironies of being a Pakistani living abroad, especially in the West, is having to pose as Indian. According to Asghar Choudhri, the chairman of Brooklyn’s Pakistani American Merchant Association, a lot of Pakistanis can’t get jobs after 9/11 and after the botched Times Square bombing of 2010, it’s even worse. “They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job,” he told a US wire service.

That is because while Indians are highly integrated immigrants – besides being the highest educated and best paid of all ethnic groups in the US – Pakistanis have taken part in terrorist activities in the very lands that gave them shelter. (Even the frequent Gallup surveys conducted in the US, found out repeatedly that the biggest threat to the international security and peace are: nr. 3 Saudis; nr. 2 Pakistanis, and nr.1 – surprise, surprise – the US itself.)

From Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 (8 years before Bin Laden) and is now serving a 240-year prison sentence to Mir Aimal Kansi, who shot dead CIA agents and was later executed by lethal injection, to Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square “Idiot Bomber”, there is a long line of Pakistanis who have left a trail of terror.

The San Bernardino, California, attack of December 2015 by a Pakistani American couple was the most spectacular in recent times. The husband was American-born raised and yet he chose to launch a terror act against the people of the United States.

But while Pakistanis wear an Indian mask for Western consumption, back home it’s business as usual.

Bangladesh at the crossroads

By Scott Gilmore 

MAY 29, 2016

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LAST MONTH IN DHAKA, the capital of Bangladesh, six men pounded on the door of Xulhaz Mannan, an employee of the US embassy. When he opened, they hacked him and a friend to death with machetes. A group affiliated with Al Qaeda claimed responsibility, condemning the men for their gay rights activism.

Brutal attacks like this are increasingly common in Bangladesh. According to a recent internal memo from the United Nations Department of Safety and Security, there have been 30 similar extremist attacks since January 2015, resulting in 23 deaths and more than 140 injured. Western governments are increasingly worried, saying the country of 168 million people is starting to come undone.

As a state, Bangladesh is not very old. It was born by breaking away from Pakistan in 1971 in a brief and violent civil war. In that conflict, the Pakistani army or its proxy Islamic militia Jamaat-e-Islami killed 300,000 to 500,000 people by independent estimates. After that, Bangladesh largely slipped off the radar screen for most of the Western world. Only the occasional cyclone would grab our brief attention.

Yet, as unlucky as the country seemed, the last 40 years have been good to Bangladesh on many fronts. It is not blessed with many natural resources, but it does have people. Their low wages began to attract garment manufacturers who built factories and paid taxes. The GDP per capita tripled. Hospitals were built, and schools improved. Life expectancy increased by a stunning 20 years, and child mortality rates dropped by a factor of four.

Revealed: How the U.S. Navy Would Destroy a Chinese Aircraft Carrier

James Holmes

May 30, 2016

Source Link

Ah, yes, the “carrier-killer.” China is forever touting the array of guided missiles its weaponeers have devised to pummel U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs). Most prominent among them are its DF-21D and DF-26 antiship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has made a mainstay of China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses.

Beijing has made believers of important audiences, including the scribes who toil away at the Pentagon producing estimates of Chinese martial might. Indeed, the most recent annual report on Chinese military power statesmatter-of-factly that the PLA can now use DF-21Ds to “attack ships, including aircraft carriers,” more than nine hundred statute miles from China’s shorelines.

Scary. But the U.S. Navy has carrier-killers of its own. Or, more accurately, it has shipkillers of its own: what can disable or sink a flattop can make short work of lesser warships. And antiship weaponry is multiplying in numbers, range, and lethality as the navy reawakens from its post-Cold War holiday from history. Whose carrier-killer trumps whose will hinge in large part on where a sea fight takes place.

That carrier-killer imagery resonates with Western audiences comes as little surprise. It implies that Chinese rocketeers can send the pride of the U.S. Navy to the bottom from a distance, and sink U.S. efforts to succor Asian allies in the process. Worse, it implies that PLA commanders could pull off such a world-historical feat without deigning to send ships to sea or warplanes into thecentral blue. Close the firing key on the ASBM launcher, and presto!, it happens.

Revealed: How the U.S. Navy Would Destroy a Chinese Aircraft Carrier

James Holmes

May 30, 2016 

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-the-us-navy-would-destroy-chinese-aircraft-carrier-

Blogmaster. Can somebody put Indian aircraft carrier in place of US and tell us what would be India's response.

Ah, yes, the “carrier-killer.” China is forever touting the array of guided missiles its weaponeers have devised to pummel U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs). Most prominent among them are its DF-21D and DF-26 antiship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has made a mainstay of China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses.

Beijing has made believers of important audiences, including the scribes who toil away at the Pentagon producing estimates of Chinese martial might. Indeed, the most recent annual report on Chinese military power statesmatter-of-factly that the PLA can now use DF-21Ds to “attack ships, including aircraft carriers,” more than nine hundred statute miles from China’s shorelines.

Scary. But the U.S. Navy has carrier-killers of its own. Or, more accurately, it has shipkillers of its own: what can disable or sink a flattop can make short work of lesser warships. And antiship weaponry is multiplying in numbers, range, and lethality as the navy reawakens from its post-Cold War holiday from history. Whose carrier-killer trumps whose will hinge in large part on where a sea fight takes place.

Why China Is Using NPT To Block India’s Entry Into NSG – Analysis

By Sheel Kant Sharma*

MAY 30, 2016

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There is unusual and shocking stridence in China’s very vocal stand, and its timing, demanding adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the criterion for India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Such insistence on being party to NPT as condition is just a foil to China’s opposition to India’s NSG entry. Are the roots of China’s opposition geopolitical?

NSG’s objectives in regard to non-proliferation are met by India’s consistent policies and practices conforming to global export control norms, non-proliferation goals and nuclear disarmament. The exemption granted to India by the NSG in 2008 was in recognition of India’s record, commitment and responsible behaviour.

Over the past decade or so since that exemption was given, nothing has been done that should give rise to any doubts about India’s commitments and performance as a recipient of nuclear transfers to meet its mounting energy needs.

As the US qualified in its ‘food for thought’ paper before the NSG in 2011, adherence to NPT was one of the factors for consideration but not mandatory for entry to NSG which in the US view rested on a combination of several factors.

China's Evolving Approach to "Integrated Strategic Deterrence"

by Michael S. Chase, Arthur Chan

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Research Questions 

How does China see and implement integrated strategic deterrence? 

How are China's strategic-deterrence concepts evolving in response to external circumstances? 

What are China's evolving deterrence capabilities? 

What are the implications of China's growing capabilities in strategic deterrence? 

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including Chinese-language publications, this report finds that China's strategic-deterrence concepts are evolving in response to a changing assessment of its external security environment and a growing emphasis on protecting its emerging interests in space and cyberspace. At the same time, China is rapidly closing what was once a substantial gap between the People's Liberation Army's strategic weapons capabilities and its strategic-deterrence concepts. Chinese military publications indicate that China has a broad concept of strategic deterrence, one in which a multidimensional set of military and nonmilitary capabilities combine to constitute the "integrated strategic deterrence" posture required to protect Chinese interests. For China, powerful military capabilities of several types — including nuclear capabilities, conventional capabilities, space capabilities, and cyberwarfare forces — are all essential components of a credible strategic deterrent. Chinese military publications indicate that nonmilitary aspects of national power — most notably diplomatic, economic, and scientific and technological strength — also contribute to strategic deterrence alongside military capabilities.

Key Findings

ISIS, losing territory in Syria, signals strategic shift

By Taylor Luck

MAY 27, 2016

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Its threat to attack the West during Ramadan, which begins next month, comes as the group is losing a key recruiting tool: the ability to capture and hold territory. 

AMMAN, JORDAN — With the territory of the Islamic State cut by a third and Kurdish militias launching an offensive into its proclaimed capital of Raqqa, the group appears to be preparing its followers for a new, drawn-out phase of warfare. 



In a rare recorded audio message released May 21, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani conceded that the group has lost territory to the US-backed international coalition and its allies, and vowed that IS will still strike the West even if it is “driven into the desert.”

He called on IS supporters across the world to carry out attacks during the month of Ramadan, which starts in early June.



“We will make this month, inshallah, a month of calamities for the infidels everywhere,” said Mr. Adnani, also known as Taha Subhi Falaha. “This call specifically goes out to the supporters of the Islamic Caliphate in Europe and America.”



The announcement signals a shift away from the traditional military campaign that enabled IS to rapidly capture large swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq and establish the so-called “Islamic Caliphate,” a jihadist’s utopia where its ultra-extremist interpretation of Islam is enforced in all aspects of life.

Assessment of the Politico-Military Campaign to Counter ISIL and Options for Adaptation

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Research Questions 

What are the results of the U.S. strategy against ISIL in its first 18 months of implementation? 

How capable are the military forces countering ISIL? 

What are the principal gaps in capability that the United States or other partners would need to fill in order to achieve a successful counteroffensive? 

What are the political intentions and conflicting interests that impede a successful counteroffensive? 

What shortcomings exist in the overall conception or implementation of the current strategy? 

Are other approaches more likely to succeed at lower cost and/or lower risk? 

What measures might produce greater results in the near term? 

This report assesses the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIL), focusing on the military and political lines of effort. The capabilities and motivations of the various counter-ISIL forces on the battlefield are assessed, as well as the U.S.-led efforts to provide training, equipment, advice, and assistance, including air support. While the campaign has degraded ISIL by targeting leadership and retaking a portion of territory, achieving lasting defeat of ISIL will be elusive without local forces capable of holding territory. Successful conclusion of the campaign will require significantly increased effort on two fronts. First, more-comprehensive training, advising, and assisting will be required to create more-capable, coordinated indigenous forces of appropriate composition and enable them to regain and hold territory. Second, political agreements must be forged to resolve key drivers of conflict among Iraqis and Syrians. Without these elements, resurgent extremist violence is likely. Many factors complicate the prospects for success, including sectarian divisions in Iraq, Iranian support for Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, the Syrian civil war, and Russian intervention to support the besieged regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, the Syrian regime also lacks sufficient competent local forces and is heavily reliant on external militia support. The government in Iraq, led by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, has pledged decentralization efforts to address Sunni concerns, but lacks sufficient Shia support to enact them. This report offers recommendations for a more comprehensive advisory approach, emphasizing the political line of effort, and achieving synergy between the military and political efforts.

Key Findings

Online Harassment and Abuse by Pro-Russian Troll Army Becoming a Major Problem in Europe

Andrew Higgins

May 31, 2016

Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

HELSINKI, Finland — Seeking to shine some light into the dark world of Internet trolls, a journalist with Finland’s national broadcaster asked members of her audience to share their experience of encounters with Russia’s “troll army,” a raucous and often venomous force of online agitators.

The response was overwhelming, though not in the direction that the journalist, Jessikka Aro, had hoped.

As she expected, she received some feedback from people who had clashed with aggressively pro-Russian voices online. But she was taken aback, and shaken, by a vicious retaliatory campaign of harassment and insults against her and her work by those same pro-Russian voices.

“Everything in my life went to hell thanks to the trolls,” said Ms. Aro, a 35-year-old investigative reporter with the social media division of Finland’s state broadcaster, Yle Kioski.

Abusive online harassment is hardly limited to pro-Russian Internet trolls. Ukraine and other countries at odds with the Kremlin also have legions of aggressive avengers on social media.

How big a deal is Microsoft and Facebook's underwater Internet cable?

By Max Lewontin, Staff 

MAY 27, 2016

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By creating the first underwater cable to connect the United States with southern Europe, the tech giants are joining Google in developing networks to better move massive amounts of data around the globe.

Microsoft and Facebook are joining together to build an underwater Internet cable across the Atlantic Ocean.

The cable, known as MAREA, or "tide" in Spanish, will connect hubs in northern Virginia and Bilbao, Spain, helping the tech giants increase their capacity to carry data for a growing number of online customers and businesses that use their services.

By designing and creating their own private networks to move massive amounts of data necessary to run popular services such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Microsoft's Bing, and Office 365, the tech companies are increasingly expanding into an area traditionally dominated by telecom companies.

The project, which comes in the wake of a similar effort by Google in the Pacific, is particularly intended to reduce latency, or the time it takes information to get from data centers to its destination.

Cheap Technology Will Challenge US Tactical Dominance – Analysis

By T.X. Hammes* 

MAY 30, 2016

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The convergence of dramatic improvements in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, materials, additive manufacturing, and nanoenergetics is dramatically changing the character of conflict in all domains. This convergence is creating a massive increase in capabilities available to increasingly smaller political entities—extending even to the individual.

This new diffusion of power has major implications for the conduct of warfare, not the least of which are the major hazards or opportunities that it presents to medium and even small powers. The outcome will depend on the paths they choose.

Historical Case

Fortunately, this level of technological change and convergence is not unprecedented. From 1914 to 1939, there were technological breakthroughs in metallurgy, explosives, steam turbines, internal combustion engines, radio, radar, and weapons. In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, battleships were considered the decisive weapon for fleet engagements, and the size of the battleship fleet was seen as a reasonable proxy for a navy’s strength. The war’s single major fleet action, the Battle of Jutland, seemed to prove these ideas correct. Accordingly, during the interwar period, battleships received the lion’s share of naval investments. Navies took advantage of rapid technological gains to dramatically improve the capabilities of the battleship. Displacement almost tripled, from the 27,000 tons of the pre–World War I U.S. New York-class to the 71,660 tons of Japan’s Yamato-class. The largest main batteries grew from 14-inch to 18-inch guns with double the range. Secondary batteries were improved, radar was installed, speed increased from 21 to 33 knots for U.S. fast battleships, cruising range more than doubled, and armor improved. Yet none of these advances changed the fundamental capabilities of the battleship; they simply provided incremental improvement on existing strengths. This is typical of mature technology—even massive investment leads to only incremental improvement.

Army tests tactical network for advanced Adversaries

Jen Judson

May 26, 2016 

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Doug Wiltsie, assistant secretary of the Army and director for System of Systems Engineering and Integration, says you have to look at all the disparate networks as one system. Staff 

FORT BLISS, Texas and WASHINGTON — The Army was preparing to ship out after helping Gorgas defend itself from the belligerent state of Donovia. Gorgas and Donovia are in peace talks — or so the Army thought.

Donovia is again up to no good along the border. Gorgas fears it is using separatist regions, which claim Donovian descent and wish to align with the country, to try to seize terrain and resources in Gorgas.

Sound familiar? That’s because the scenario mimics the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict. But the Army isn’t in Russia, it’s in the expansive, desolate desert of Texas along the US-Mexico border for Network Integration Evaluation 16.2.

The Army is using a scenario similar to what it might encounter in a conflict with Russia, which involves full-spectrum operations to prove out and refine emerging aspects of its tactical network.

“It stresses the network differently than it would if, say, we were just doing counterinsurgency or just doing offensive operations,” Doug Wiltsie, executive director of the Systems of Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate with the Army’s Acquisition, Logistics and Technology branch, told Defense News in an interview May 26 at the C4ISR & Networks conference in Arlington, Virginia. “It really stresses the network in how we are moving, so nodes are moving, and then how much information is being passed.”

8 Defenses Against Phishing and Social Engineering

by Tobias Naegele 

May 11, 2016

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When the executive’s office phone rang, he reluctantly set aside his work and answered.

“Mr. Simms?” said a voice, “this is George, in IT security. I’m sorry to bother you. The system flagged a security problem with your login credentials. I can fix it, but first I need to confirm a few details.”

Mr. Simms was busy, but he knew IT security was a concern. For the next few minutes, he answered questions. Then “George” asked him to log off, and together, they went through the login procedures again, with Mr. Simms answering still more questions as they went.

In the course of just a few minutes, Mr. Simms had given up his date of birth, mother’s maiden name and password. “George” had scored a coup.

Government and corporate employees are routinely targeted by attackers seeking access to personal information, financial accounts, sensitive records and protected intellectual property.

It costs almost nothing to mount an attack, and no organization or individual is immune, says James White, chief information security officer at General Dynamics Commercial Cyber Services. “It’s not a matter of if, but when,” he says. The key is being prepared.

What’s the Best Way to Wargame Cyberwarfare?

by Michael Peck 

May 18, 2016

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Faced with a variety of new threats, from hypersonic ship-killing missiles to anti-satellite weapons and terrorist attacks, top Pentagon leaders are pushing for more analytical wargaming to devise strategies to counter such threats.

But in an era where information can be an instrument of war, the question of how to effectively wargame cyber attacks is a critical issue for military planners.

Modeling cyberwarfare resembles the philosophical question of whether a tree actually fell in a forest if no one heard it fall. How does a wargame designer realistically depict a stealth weapon like a computer virus, whose very effectiveness depends on the victim not knowing that the virus exists or how it works?

“We have been trying to integrate stuff like that [cyberwarfare] into operational games, but the weapons themselves are so highly classified and tightly held that we don’t really know what capabilities exist,” says Peter Perla, a defense wargaming expert and senior research scientist with the Center for Naval Analyses.

** Dear fellow veterans: Tell your war stories

By Clinton Romesha 

May 29 

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Sgt. Bradley Larson and First Lt. Andrew Bundermann, kneeling, lead a patrol into the mountains surrounding Saw village in eastern Afghanistan in March 2010. The two soldiers played critical roles in holding off a massive Taliban attack on Combat Outpost Keating six months earlier. The attack killed eight U.S. soldiers. (Greg Jaffe/The Washington Post) 

Clinton Romesha is a former Army staff sergeant and author of “Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor.” He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the defense of Combat Outpost Keating. 

In October 2009, my cavalry troop was preparing to shut down a remote outpost in Afghanistan when we were assaulted by more than 300 Taliban-led insurgents. In violation of the most basic principles of warfare, our base, Combat Outpost Keating, had been built in a valley surrounded by three mountains. It is almost impossible to hold and defend your ground when the enemy is free to shoot from above while observing every move you make. Within the first hour of the attack, the insurgents had breached our wire, driving most of Keating’s 50 U.S. guardians into our final defensive formation inside a cluster of three hard-shelled buildings, known as the Alamo position. 

Paula Broadwell, David Petraeus And The Afterlife Of A Scandal

by Jessica Bennett 

May 28, 2016 

WEST POINT, N.Y. – It was 6:30 a.m. at the United States Military Academy, the sun was rising over the Hudson River, and Paula Broadwell was in athletic gear. With a half-dozen women, she rotated between sprints and burpees. Sweating onto the pavement, the group was perched atop an overlook called Trophy Point, in the shadow of a 46-foot battle monument memorializing those killed in the Civil War. There is a female statue in bronze at the top, arms outstretched regally, who is said to represent “fame.”

Ms. Broadwell was here in April for a 40th anniversary celebration for the academy’s first class of women, who enrolled two decades before she would graduate at the top of her class, with multiple varsity letters. It was also the first time she had been back to campus since 2012, when she achieved her own kind of unwanted fame.

Yes, this is that Paula Broadwell, the mentee-turned-biographer of David H. Petraeus; the West Point graduate and military intelligence officer who was revealed, through a high-profile F.B.I. investigation, to have had a romantic relationship with Mr. Petraeus, a former C.I.A. director and the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also the Paula Broadwell who would be publicly portrayed as a “homewrecker,” a “stalker,” a “temptress,” the woman who “brought down the director of the C.I.A.” And, perhaps with the most frequency, as the “mistress,” a word for which there is no male equivalent.

* History isn't a 'useless' major. It teaches critical thinking, something America needs plenty more of

James Grossman

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The metal plaque on the front door of the Shrine at the Alamo in San Antonio Texas. (Los Angeles Times) 

Since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2007, the history major has lost significant market share in academia, declining from 2.2% of all undergraduate degrees to 1.7%. The graduating class of 2014, the most recent for which there are national data, included 9% fewer history majors than the previous year’s cohort, compounding a 2.8% decrease the year before that. The drop is most pronounced at large research universities and prestigious liberal arts colleges.

This is unfortunate — not just for those colleges, but for our economy and polity.

Bombing Hiroshima changed the world, but it didn't end WWII Of course it’s not just history. Students also are slighting other humanities disciplines including philosophy, literature, linguistics and languages. Overall, the core humanities disciplines constituted only 6.1% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2014, the lowest proportion since systematic data collection on college majors began in 1948.

Conventional wisdom offers its usual facile answers for these trends: Students (sometimes pressured by parents paying the tuition) choose fields more likely to yield high-paying employment right after graduation — something “useful,” like business (19% of diplomas), or technology-oriented. History looks like a bad bet.

The Return of Wargaming: How DoD Aims to Re-Imagine Warfare

by Michael Peck

Apr 5, 2016

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When the Deputy Secretary of Defense says to play more games, take note.

Over the past year, at least four directives from the highest levels of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the services, including a February 2015 memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, called for more wargaming.

“I was concerned the Department’s ability to test concepts, capabilities and plans using simulation as well as other techniques, had atrophied,” Work said by email to GovTechWorks. “While resetting and reconstituting the Joint Force after so many years of war, we needed to turn our attention toward numerous emerging challenges to U.S. global leadership.

“In this dynamic environment, Department leaders are making important programmatic decisions to meet those challenges. Wargaming is an important means of informing those decisions and spurring innovation.”

The Pentagon requested more than $55 million for wargaming for fiscal 2017, and more than $525 million over the five-year Future Years Defense Program spending plan.

Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics

by David A. Shlapak, Michael Johnson

PDF file

Research Questions 

What might the consequences be if Russia decided to reclaim the territory of the three Baltic republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — which are NATO members? 

What might be done to prevent or mitigate such a scenario? 

Russia's recent aggression against Ukraine has disrupted nearly a generation of relative peace and stability between Moscow and its Western neighbors and raised concerns about its larger intentions. From the perspective of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the threat to the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — former Soviet republics, now member states that border Russian territory — may be the most problematic of these. In a series of war games conducted between summer 2014 and spring 2015, RAND Arroyo Center examined the shape and probable outcome of a near-term Russian invasion of the Baltic states. The games' findings are unambiguous: As presently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members. Fortunately, it will not require Herculean effort to avoid such a failure. Further gaming indicates that a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades — adequately supported by airpower, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities — could suffice to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states.

Key Findings

As Presently Postured, NATO Cannot Successfully Defend the Territory of its Most Exposed Members 

Across multiple games using a wide range of expert participants in and out of uniform playing both sides, the longest it has taken Russian forces to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and/or Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga, respectively, is 60 hours. 

360-Degree Assessments Are They the Right Tool for the U.S. Military?

by Chaitra M. Hardison, Mikhail Zaydman, Oluwatobi A. Oluwatola, Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, Thomas Bush, Heather Peterson, Susan G. Straus

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Technical Details » 

Research Questions 

What is known about 360-degree assessments? 

Are the military services already using 360s? If so, how are they using them? 

Would it be advisable to implement 360s for development or evaluation purposes for all officers in the military? Why or why not? 

What implementation challenges should the services be aware of to ensure success? 

In response to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2014, which directed the Secretary of Defense to assess "the feasibility of including a 360-degree assessment [360] approach... as part of performance evaluation reports," the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD/P&R) asked the RAND Corporation to provide an outside assessment of the advisability of using 360s for evaluation purposes in the military. In addition, OUSD/P&R also requested information on the role of 360s more broadly. Thus, this report explores the pros and cons of using 360s for evaluation and development purposes in the military.

The research was based on information gleaned from a number of sources: existing research literature and expert guidance on 360 best practices; policy documents and other sources summarizing current performance and promotion practices in the military services, including the use of 360s; and interviews with a sample of stakeholders and subject-matter experts in the Department of Defense. The results suggest that using 360 feedback as part of the military performance evaluation system is not advisable at this time, though the services could benefit from using 360s as a tool for leader development and to gain an aggregate view of leadership across the force.

Key Findings

The Hiroshima touchstone

 RAKESH SOOD

June 1, 2016

The centre of gravity of today’s nuclear world is shifting to the Asia-Pacific. The number of nuclear players has grown, and asymmetry in doctrines and arsenals makes the search for security more elusive

On May 27, Barack Obama became the first serving American President to visit Hiroshima, 71 years after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons. Richard Nixon visited Hiroshima in 1964, four years before he won the presidential election, and Jimmy Carter had visited in 1984, three and a half years after he left the White House. Mr. Obama’s historic visit will go down as part of his nuclear legacy, which remains a mixed one. Though the visit took place when he has no more elections to fight, it was nevertheless an act of political conviction reflecting his deep disdain for the “Washington playbook”.

Obama’s nuclear legacy

Since the fateful decision by U.S. President Harry Truman in 1945 to use the nuclear bomb, none of Mr. Obama’s predecessors has been willing to court the inevitable controversies that would surround a presidential visit. The most significant was the question of an “apology” which the Obama administration laid to rest early on by making clear that there would be no revisiting the 1945 decision, and, consequently, no apology. Yet, the symbolism of the imperative for moral reflection was very apparent, both in President Obama’s speech and his gesture of meeting the hibakushas (atomic bomb survivors).

*** Pakistan’s Jihadist Heartland: Southern Punjab

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Asia Report N°27930 May 2016

Southern Punjab must be central to any sustainable effort to counter jihadist violence within and beyond Pakistan’s borders, given the presence of militant groups with local, regional and transnational links and an endless source of recruits, including through large madrasa and mosque networks. The region hosts two of Pakistan’s most radical Deobandi groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed, held responsible by India for the 2 January 2016 attack on its Pathankot airbase; and the sectarian Laskhar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which was at least complicit in, if not solely responsible for, the 27 March Easter Sunday attack that killed more than 70 in Lahore. To reverse the jihadist tide, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s federal and Punjab province governments will have to both end the climate of impunity that allows these groups to operate freely and address political alienation resulting from other governance failures these groups tap into.

Southern Punjab was once known for a tolerant society, but over the past few decades, state support for jihadist proxies, financial support from foreign, particularly Saudi and other Gulf countries, combined with an explosive mix of political, socio-economic, and geostrategic factors, has enabled jihadist expansion there. Bordering on insurgency-hit and lawless regions of the country and also sharing a border with India, it has long provided a convenient base where these outfits can recruit, train and plan and conduct terror attacks. Although jihadist groups still harbour a fringe minority in a region where the vast majority follows a more tolerant, syncretic form of Islam, their ability to operate freely is largely the result of the state’s policy choices, particularly long reliance on jihadist proxies to promote perceived national security interests. The absence of rule-of-law, combined with political dysfunction and inept governance, also allows these organisations to exercise influence disproportionate to their size and social roots.

*** Our Strategic Culture

By Lt Gen SC Sardeshpande

31 May , 2016

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/our-strategic-culture/

An article by a senior army officer on “Strengthening Our Strategic Culture” in an eminent weekly recently, lands one in confusion as the article rolls national unity, national education, accountability, national productivity, value-based conduct, nation building eco-system, national strategic culture and a lot of rhetoric all into one amorphous mix. One sorely misses a studied, cogitative, analytical examination and presentation of our strategic culture in a dispassionate assessment.

The strategic grasp of India’s political leadership at independence was weak, narrow, often indifferent. Pre-eminence of the idea of democratic rule and the idea of civil authority being supreme, the military advise was relegated, kept away.

National strategic culture, a socio-politico-psychological legacy bestowed by history to the people, distinguishes them, based on their character, thinking and life style, with particular reference to defending themselves and asserting their way of life and thoughts among other polities and societies.

Its two dominant facts can be said to be

security evoked by nationalistic spirit (that includes people’s thinking, philosophy, aspiration, attitude, socio-cultural tradition and their glue of togetherness);

territorial security, which in turn concerns with

security outside the national border along outlying area (friendly/ inimical/ neutral/ weak/ strong/ susceptible/ sensitive)

security of the border itself – border security – which affects the border area population; and

security within the country –internal security.