Post-Uri attack: Coordination between India, Iran and Afghanistan needed to cut Pakistan to size

By Lt Gen P. C. Katoch

Sep 19, 2016 

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php?type=sl&nid=19390

The slanging match at UN General Assembly (UNGA) is already underway. Pakistan has already accused India of stage managing the terrorist attack in Uri to divert attention from Kashmir. And this is not the first time Pakistan has displayed such brazenness. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will go hyper to talk about Indian atrocities in Kashmir and need for plebiscite in accordance with the 1948 UN Resolution on Kashmir. The world is perhaps unaware that: one, the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was legally ceded to India in 1947; two, the said UN resolution marked Pakistan as aggressor and that is why Pakistan was required to withdraw its forces from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK); three, issue of plebiscite is dead because Pakistan has deliberately changed the demography of PoK and the 1972 India-Pakistan Shimla Agreement made the UN resolution redundant; four, result of the first ever poll on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC ) in J&K conducted by Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), UK in conjunction with King’s College during 2009-2010 brought out that 98% of people in J&K do not wish to be part of Pakistan and 50% of people in PoK do not wish to remain with Pakistan; five, Pakistan has been waging a proxy war in J&K and inducing Wahabism but only 15% population on 7% territory of J&K is affected, and; six, pellet gun casualties in J&K are nothing compared to the aerial and artillery bombardment and genocide that Pakistan has been doing in Baluchistan, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The Uri terrorist attack was masterminded by Pakistan through Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists surprising the army in the early hours of the morning, lobbing incendiary grenades and then spraying bullets, some of the grenades setting the diesel dump on fire. 19 soldiers are already reported dead and some 30 injured. 13 of those reportedly killed were in two tents that caught fire. The four terrorists, all foreigners, were eventually gunned down. All four were carrying items with Pakistani markings including map, GPS, explosives (RDX and TNT), a matrix sheet of codes and notes in Pashto besides AK 47 rifles and under-barrel grenade launchers. This is not the first time that Pakistan has used JeM to attack India. 

Militants attack an Indian army base

Sep 19th 2016

http://www.economist.com/comment/3250798#comment-3250798 

Indian leaders blame Pakistan for the deadliest such incident in the past quarter century 

The Economist welcomes your views. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers.

War is very much an option for India. Nukes or no nukes. All it requires is political will and the willingness to win in accordance with military imperative.

It can be done with existing resources. This requires focused intelligence, planning, logistics and follow through to defined conclusion without brooking interference from Left-Liberals and other Anti Nationals inside India or outside India.

Giving Pakistan (aka Islam) the quietus, is an economic imperative too, as stability is essential for development. But remember that Pakistan and every Mosque inside India are Proxies of Islam.

It was Pakistan that brokered the entente cordiale between China and the US and it was the US that facilitated Pakistan to become a Nuclear power through South Africa. Pakistan (A.Q.Khan) procured its enrichment centrifuges from the same Dutch Source as US Ally Apartheid South Africa did and helped fashion both it own and Israel's clandestine bombs. Saudi Arabia financed the entire caper. The entire A. Q. Khan story has been conveniently obfuscated by Pakistan's staunch and loyal ally, the United States and its NATO poodles. This has its roots in the US-NATO-Sunni Axis that was forged by Nixon, Kissinger and Sheikh Yamani. China later helped Pakistan (and North Korea) with missiles as well as tactical (battle field) nuclear weapons and other weapon (fighters, stealth etc) programs.

After terror attack in Uri staged by Pakistan, how can India hold a rogue state accountable?

Manmohan Bahadur

September 20, 2016

Source Link

In an article in Dawn, published just hours before ‘Uri’ happened, Munir Akram, a former Pakistani ambassador to the UN, has written about the pressure being brought on Pakistan in Washington and said that, “Hopefully, the next US administration will carefully review the implications of sanctioning Pakistan – chaos in Afghanistan, end of counterterrorism, non-proliferation and arms control cooperation and a heightened danger of an India-Pakistan conflict – and come to the conclusion that coercion is not an option in the conduct of relations with Pakistan.” This should certainly go down in textbooks of international relations as a perfect example of blackmail by a rogue state.

Now that Pakistan has thrown the gauntlet by staging ‘Uri’, it is time to see how events pan out. The setting is exactly how all war games, whether conducted in India or abroad, involving the two nations envisage hostilities to commence – a major terrorist strike, after several smaller ones, that inflames public opinion to such an extent that enormous pressure is brought on Indian political leadership to ‘punish Pakistan.’

The timing is important. Jammu & Kashmir has been under curfew for a prolonged period and Pakistan is raising the issue in international fora. PM Nawaz Sharif is in New York and going to address the UN General Assembly where world leaders would be present. While Pakistan will blame Uri on non-state actors not under its control, any military riposte by India would be projected as action by a state against another. Even as diplomatic traffic burns the airwaves to calm things down, Indian intelligence agencies would be gathering evidence to link the Uri terrorists to Pakistan and its armed forces would be conveying available options to the government.

A Campaign Of Terror: The Pakistanis may never have Kashmir, but their violence has transformed it

C Christine Fair

September 20, 2016

Source Link

Feigning outrage at the killing of Pakistan-backed Hizbul Mujahideen commanderBurhan Wani, Pakistan’s civilian-led government decried his killing by Indian security forces as “deplorable and condemnable”. This group is considered to be a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union, and India alike. This conniption once again exposed Pakistan’s unstinting support for the zoo of Islamist terrorists that it uses to achieve its foreign policy objectives in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The timing of this charade is not coincidental: it is contemporaneous with mounting criticisms over Pakistani human rights abuses in Balochistan as it tries to crush any and all opposition to the infamous “China Pakistan Economic Corridor”. Pakistan explicitly counters criticism over its activities in Balochistan with reference to Indian security force’s killings in Kashmir. This is yet another Pakistani false equivalence.

It must be said bluntly that in Kashmir, Pakistan has no legal equities. Neither theIndian Independence Act of 1947 nor the Radcliffe Boundary Commission accord Pakistan any right to Kashmir. As is well-known, the Maharaja of Kashmir Hari Singh only acceded to India after Pakistan dispatched irregular forces to seize the terrain by force.

As the work of Shuja Nawaz – the brother of a deceased army chief – makes clear, these were not non-state actors. In its effort to seize Kashmir through warfare in 1947-48, 1965 and 1999 and by supporting a menagerie of terrorists since 1947 and an intense proxy war since 1989, Pakistan has demonstrated that it actually has little regard for the Kashmiris themselves.

India Is Building Up 36.87-Million-Barrel Strategic Oil Reserve; Iran And Iraq Emerge As Large Suppliers

Swarajya Staff

20 Sep, 2016

Source Link

India is importing six million barrels of oil from Iran to stock up its emergency oil reserves. These will be stored in vast underground caverns across the country. The total capacity of these reserves - around 36.87 million barrels - will be enough to cover India’s oil demand for two weeks.

India went in for this deal with Tehran after negotiations with the United Arab Emirates went nowhere. This now comes at a time when India’s oil import from Iran has reached its highest in fifteen years.

The Iranian Mix crude will come from National Iranian Co in October and November this year. It will be stocked up in the storage facility in Mangaluru, the chief port city of Karnataka, and occupy half of its capacity.

Meanwhile, the 9.75-million-barrel strategic storage facility in Vizag is being filled up with oil imported from Iraq.

India’s attempts to lease part of its reserve storage space to Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) has not taken off despite continued negotiations.

What the Soviet Defeat in Afghanistan Tells Us about Syria

Vince Tumminello

September 19, 2016

Source Link

“If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many more years. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.” These words, spoken on March 10, 1992, through an overwhelmed translator, stand in time as the final plea of a man at the helm of a dying regime.

The speaker was Dr. Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai, the former head of the state intelligence service, leader of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), and President of Afghanistan. He was also the last client of the Soviet Union, which provided direct military and monetary support to the PDPA government until the Soviet withdrawal in February 1989 (and indirect support after).

Najibullah was widely considered a Soviet stooge. He had some initial successes in restoring his reputation among some Afghan civilians and won several military victories against the mujahedeen resistance as they struggled to convert their approach from guerrilla to conventional. By March 1992, none of that mattered. A loosely knit collection of mujahedeen factions surrounded Kabul, poised to crush the remains of the PDPA government.

On April 17, 1992, a palace coup preempted a formal transition of power, and Najibullah absconded to a UN compound in the city. Four years later, abandoned by a now-defunct superpower, he would be tortured, castrated, dragged through the streets, and hung from a traffic light by invading Taliban forces.

Today, echoes of the Afghan-Soviet struggle have begun to re-emerge in Syria, challenging the Putin-Assad alliance and the future of Syrian governance. The story of how hundreds of competing mujahedeen commanders united to defeat the Soviet-backed PDPA holds many lessons for those competing in the “New Great Game.” It may also hold the key for how the United States can gain back strategic leverage against its geopolitical foes, end the civil war, and avoid the chaos of post-Cold War Afghanistan. The lessons are simple:

Post-Uri attack: Coordination between India, Iran and Afghanistan needed to cut Pakistan to size

By Lt Gen P. C. Katoch

Sep 19, 2016 

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php?type=sl&nid=19390

The slanging match at UN General Assembly (UNGA) is already underway. Pakistan has already accused India of stage managing the terrorist attack in Uri to divert attention from Kashmir. And this is not the first time Pakistan has displayed such brazenness. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will go hyper to talk about Indian atrocities in Kashmir and need for plebiscite in accordance with the 1948 UN Resolution on Kashmir. The world is perhaps unaware that: one, the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was legally ceded to India in 1947; two, the said UN resolution marked Pakistan as aggressor and that is why Pakistan was required to withdraw its forces from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK); three, issue of plebiscite is dead because Pakistan has deliberately changed the demography of PoK and the 1972 India-Pakistan Shimla Agreement made the UN resolution redundant; four, result of the first ever poll on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC ) in J&K conducted by Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), UK in conjunction with King’s College during 2009-2010 brought out that 98% of people in J&K do not wish to be part of Pakistan and 50% of people in PoK do not wish to remain with Pakistan; five, Pakistan has been waging a proxy war in J&K and inducing Wahabism but only 15% population on 7% territory of J&K is affected, and; six, pellet gun casualties in J&K are nothing compared to the aerial and artillery bombardment and genocide that Pakistan has been doing in Baluchistan, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The Uri terrorist attack was masterminded by Pakistan through Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists surprising the army in the early hours of the morning, lobbing incendiary grenades and then spraying bullets, some of the grenades setting the diesel dump on fire. 19 soldiers are already reported dead and some 30 injured. 13 of those reportedly killed were in two tents that caught fire. The four terrorists, all foreigners, were eventually gunned down. All four were carrying items with Pakistani markings including map, GPS, explosives (RDX and TNT), a matrix sheet of codes and notes in Pashto besides AK 47 rifles and under-barrel grenade launchers. This is not the first time that Pakistan has used JeM to attack India. 

The terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in January this year too was the handiwork of JeM, as also terror attacks in Gurdaspur and Pampore. JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are also operating with impunity in Afghanistan as clearly brought out in the report release this July by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) headed by Tadamichi Yamamoto

If India has to hit terror factories in Pakistan, be ready for a war with China!

http://kiranasis.blogspot.in/2016/09/if-india-has-to-hit-terror-factories-in.html?m=1

It is about 32 hours since the attack on Uri army camp in India, by Pakistani terrorists. There is tremendous amount of anger in India, specifically in the sections of society which I normally don't see overreact on social media.

This was the front page of paper at my home - "We have had enough!" 

Front page of New Indian Xpress, the day after Uri Attack 

The overwhelming majority are screaming - Dear Prime Minister.. do something. do quickly..

That "do" can be full fledged war. 

It can be economic blockade. 

It can be water stoppage for Sindhu and five rivers of Punjab going into Pakistan. 

It can be surgical strikes inside Pakistan like India did inside Myanmar last year. 

It can be as many as there are opinions on social media, papers and TV. 

But the big question is.. Can India attack Pakistan this week? 

I am sure there is military will power. 

I am sure there would be enough political will power. 

I am sure India has plenty of financial cushion to do this. (Pakistan's GDP is smaller than just one state's in India - Maharashtra) 

I am sure internally there won't be much opposition to India for a small scale surgical strike. 

Prachanda’s India Visit: China Is Angry, Very Angry About India-Nepal Bonhomie

Swarajya Staff

20 Sep, 2016

Source Link

In an article published by the Global Times, the hawkish mouthpiece of China’s ruling establishment, the writer targeted Nepal’s newly-appointed Prime Minister of tricking China and putting Kathmandu’s relations with Beijing on the back-burner. 

In the article, the writer accuses Nepali politicians of being short-sighted and lacking ‘morality, justice and integrity.’ Can Nepal’s attempt to improve relations with India be termed short-sightedness? Where do ‘morality, justice and integrity’ take refuge when China finds itself entangled hands-and-tail with a nation that sponsors terror? Further, the writer states that a nation’s foreign policy should not be based on national interests. What should foreign policy be based on if not on the country’s national interest? The writer talks about the opportunism of Nepali politicians. What is more opportunistic than trying to drift a country away from its all-weather ally? The writer seems to have lost objectivity. 

The crisis in Nepal, that emerged following the Madhesi movement, was diffused carefully by the government in New Delhi. The tools used, as always, were sensible diplomacy and engagement. Prachanda’s successful visit to New Delhi and the developments surrounding this visit confirmed the goodwill in India-Nepal relations. For China, this was an opportunity lost. While Beijing tried hard, it lost a chance to drift Kathmandu away from India.

Angry at Prachanda’s successful India visit, China cancelled President Xi’s visit to Nepal. The disappointment is palpable.

If Chinese Weapons Are So Great, Why Won’t Anyone Buy Them?

Richard A. Bitzinger

September 19, 2016

If Chinese weapons are so great, how come hardly anyone wants them?

Though most Chinese arms are better than what they used to be, Western, Russian, and Israeli weapons systems still outclass them. Most of what China sells is low-end kit and its main arms buyers are from South Asia and Africa. To remain a leading arms exporter, Beijing needs to come up with more competitive products and expand its customer base.

One of the frequent arguments made about China’s 20-year-long military buildup is that its locally produced weapons are better than they used to be. To a certain extent this is true, if hardly surprising. Relatively modern systems, such as the J-10 fighter jet, the Yuan-class submarine, and the Type-99 main battle tank, are certainly superior to the weapons systems they replaced, that is, the J-7, theMing-class sub, and the Type-59 tank – all basically copies of Soviet weaponsdating back to the 1950s. They could not help but be better.

China’s advanced fighter jet, JF-17, has so far been purchased only by Pakistan

At the same time, it is true that some current Chinese arms are highly competitive with their Western or Russian counterparts. These include unmanned aerial vehicles, anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and lightweight trainer jets. But all this raises an important point: if Chinese weapons are supposed to be so great, how come hardly any other country wants to buy them?

The Truth about Foreign-Born Domestic Terrorists

Alex Nowrasteh

September 19, 2016

Source Link

There were two potential terrorist attacks this weekend. The first was a stabbing-rampage by Dahir Adan in a Minnesota mall that injured several people but didn’t kill anyone. Adan was shot dead by off duty part-time police officer Jason Falconer. Shortly thereafter ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The second attack was a bombing in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood and an attempted bombing in Seaside Park, New Jersey—the former woundedtwenty-nine people. The suspect of the bombings is twenty-eight-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami.

These two men share many characteristics: their Islamic faith, sex and age are nearly identical. They were also both born abroad. Adan immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was two years old, according to theWashington Post. Rahami was a naturalized citizen who was born in Afghanistan but it is unclear when and what visa he used to arrive.

Neither of the attacks this last weekend succeeded in killing anybody but they do fit into a few patterns I identify in a new paper from the Cato Institute, which catalogues all foreign-born terrorists from 1975 to the end of 2015, how many people they killed and what visa they used to enter the country. Two facts about these terrorists are related to patterns I uncovered.

First, last weekend’s terrorists didn’t kill anyone in their attacks. During the time period I studied, 74 percent of all foreign-born terrorists did not murder anyone. We should be grateful that they are so incompetent.

Why Arab States Have Failed

Mohammed Ayoob

September 19, 2016

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/why-arab-states-have-failed-17734?page=show

The recent killing of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, ISIS’s propaganda chief, has been touted as a great success by the countries trying to decimate ISIS capabilities. It was seen as such a great achievement that both the United States and Russia claimed that their air attacks were responsible for his death. The forces ranged against ISIS—the United States, Turkey, the Iraqi government and Shia militias, the Syrian Kurds, Iran, and Russia—have also been chipping away at the territory controlled by ISIS despite the rifts and rivalries among them.According to one estimate, ISIS has lost a quarter of the territory it controlled at the zenith of its success.

However, denigrating ISIS’s capabilities and recapturing lost territory in Syria and Iraq will not solve the problem of anarchy and violence in these countries. The problem underlying the emergence of violent, transnational jihadi forces is the lack of state capacity in these countries. In other words, it is the failure of states to provide adequate security to their populations and to regulate intra-societal interactions in a predictable manner that has provided the space for groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS to flourish in Iraq, Libya and Syria. These groups buy the loyalties of populations that they aspire to control by, among other things, invoking religious militancy. Furthermore, as the ISIS example demonstrates, they set up surrogate state structures to provide a degree of security to people willing to provide them with men and money, in exchange for protection.

The proliferation of sectarian and ethnic rivalries and conflicts in these states can also be traced to the same cause. For, when states fail to perform their primary task—namely, provide security to their populations—individuals and groups look for alternative protection rackets and security providers. Sectarian and ethnic entrepreneurs take over the functions of state agencies, and segments of the citizenry transfer loyalties and resources to them in exchange for protection and security. This also unleashes competition among sectarian and ethnic groups for the limited resources available, andeventually leads to the intensification of inter-sectarian and interethnic conflicts, if not all-out war.

ISIS Is Full of Pragmatic Ideologues

Craig Noyes

September 19, 2016

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/isis-full-pragmatic-ideologues-17760?page=show

Over two years ago, Islamic State invested its ideological legitimacy in a caliphate. Its total state experiment in Syria and Iraq embodied the group’s strategic ambitions. More recently, much has been made of Islamic State’s territorial contraction and decline in foreign fighter recruitment. Many analysts, policymakers, and commentators interpret its reversion to guerrilla tactics in Iraq—as well as its metastasizing global terrorism network—as signs of weakness. Others are captivated by the threat of a burgeoning cyber caliphate. It is important to identify and mitigate the threats posed by these shifting trends. However, they must not distract us from Islamic State’s grand strategic goals of building a takfirist caliphate.

Islamic State explicitly states its ideological intentions time and time again, including in an issue of its English language magazine, Dabiq. Such propaganda is complemented by other indicators of Islamic State’s ambitions, such as its investment in education and youth indoctrination. These reveal a group intent on redefining Islam in its image, extinguishing all other interpretations of the religion, and compelling everyone within reach to submit to its will. Policymakers and analysts are wise to maintain focus on these variables. We must not forget the long-term, cultural threats posed by the group.

Case study analyses of Islamic State’s governance indicate the group’s operational flexibility. A recent paper published in Small Wars Journaldelves further into this research. The author concludes that Islamic State is a resilient and adaptive group whose operational decision-making is based on efficacy rather than ideology. It adopts economic models, security apparatus designs, and bureaucratic procedures regardless of provenance. Identifying these instances of Islamic State’s ideological hypocrisies is helpful. Broadcasting the group’s opportunistic impurities is one way to delegitimize the movement and dissuade prospective recruits from joining.

New York Bombing: Pakistan Radicalised Ahmad Khan; An Indian American Helped Police Nab Him

Swarajya Staff

20 Sep, 2016

Source Link

The Chelsea bombing suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, wanted in connection with the 17 Septemeber blast that rocked Manhattan, is now in police custody. He was arrested from New Jersey after a shootout.

Harinder Bains, an Indian American and the owner of Merdie’s Tavern in Linden, New Jersey, told CNN that he spotted Rahami sleeping in the doorway of his bar Monday morning and called the police. Bains recognised Rahami from the photos he saw on CNN of the suspect.

The bombing in the Chelsea district on Saturday night injured 29 people. A backpack full of unexploded bombs was later found in New Jersey.

According to law enforcement officials, a fingerprint collected from an unexploded device in New Jersey was key in nailing Rahami. Officials are now focusing on determining if he acted alone or had some help.

CNN tells us that Rahami majored in criminal justice at Middlesex County College in Edison, New Jersey. His family runs a chicken store which they kept open 24/7 in violation of the city’s ordinance and this led to clashes with the community.

Afghanistan-born American, Rahami made frequent trips to Pakistan which many law enforcement officials believe helped radicalise him. He visited Karachi in 2005. Six years later, he travelled to Quetta, a Taliban stronghold. He married a Pakistani woman there. He also made a trip to Kandahar, Afghanistan during his Pakistan trip. In 2013, he went back to Pakistan and stayed there for over a year.

Is fear of change at the root of Europe’s anti-immigrant backlash?

Matthew Groh and Tara Vishwanath

September 14, 2016 

Source Link

For Syrian refugees, Europe is the land of hopes, dreams, and contradictions. On one hand, the job opportunities, formalized asylum processes, and relatively generous resettlement programs in countries such as Germany and Sweden are much preferred to United Nations refugee camps in Jordan or informal settlements in Lebanon. On the other hand, Europe has the strongest anti-immigration attitudes in the world. Even before the first major influx of Syrians in 2015, Europeans were more likely than people from any other continent to be opposed to immigration, according to Gallup opinion research.

Today, over one million Syrian refugees live in Europe, and 4.4 million live in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. To better understand refugees’ diversity of experience and opinions towards them, we fielded an opinion survey across Europe and the Middle East. We sought to answer: What drives negative opinions on immigrants and refugees? Are people worried that immigrants will take their jobs, change their culture, or create security problems? Do negative opinions of host country residents affect where Syrian refugees want to migrate? Do Syrians face similar or different problems across destination countries?

Previous research has focused on how demographics explain public opinions. Pew’s Global Attitudes Survey and research using data from the British Social Attitudes Surveys reveal that being male, white, conservative, and uneducated are consistently associated with negative attitudes towards immigration. We explore how environmental factors affect attitudes to immigration.

Getting to know your neighbor

Term Limits for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Ratification?

John Deutch

September 19, 2016

Source Link

In 2009, in Prague, President Obama pledged his administration would “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” (CTBT). This August, it was reported that since there was no progress in seven years, the president would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution that calls for an end to nuclear testing. This action only temporarily bypasses a debate on ratification in the U.S. Senate, and will nevertheless open a new round in the already bloody fight between supporters and opponents of the CTBT. In the unlikely event that the Senate takes up the CTBT debate in the first two years of the next administration, the probable outcome is still no ratification. A path has not been found to bridge the bitter divide between those who support and those who oppose passage of the CTBT.

Supporters believe that U.S. adoption of the CTBT will slow the spread of nuclear weapons and strengthen the resolve of Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories to take robust actions against those who seek to acquire weapons, without risking the safety or reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Supporters correctly underscore the cumulative risk that the existence of any nuclear weapons presents for accident, unauthorized use and theft. Opponents believe that with appropriate measures, these risks are acceptable compared to foregoing nuclear testing forever in an uncertain world. Opponents also doubt that U.S. accession to the treaty will dissuade some countries, such as North Korea, or subnational groups, such as ISIS, from pursuing the bomb.

The CTBT debate has gone on so long and with such intensity that it is hard to avoid the impression that the proponents and opponents would rather fight than win. It has become a symbolic issue. Proponents no longer claim that testing is necessary for a country to acquire or be perceived to have acquired a nuclear capability—e.g., Israel. Opponents have greatly reduced their concern about CTBT “cheating” (the clandestine testing of a low-yield nuclear device in an underground cavity that is seismically decoupled from the surrounding earth), due to the deployment and operation of the nuclear global seismic detection network.

U.S. Military Unhappy About the ‘Mission Creep’ in Syria

Andrew Tilghman

September 19, 2016

U.S. military commanders are ‘pissed off’ about the mission creep in Syria

The deal for U.S. military cooperation with Russia would expand the current mission in Syria far beyond it’s exclusive focus on the Islamic State group. 

And the Pentagon is not happy about it. 

The agreement forged by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart could, for the first time, broaden the American-led air campaign’s target list to include al Nusra, the notorious al Qaida-linked group that is a major actor in the multi-sided Syrian civil war. Until now, the two-year-old U.S. air campaign in Syria has been limited to ISIS. 

“This could be massive mission creep,” said Josh Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “The military is pissed off because they’re being asked to do two jobs now. They were asked to do one job, which is kill ISIS. Now John Kerry is asking them to do another job, which is cooperate with Russia and kill al Nusra.” 

The cease-fire deal reached Sept. 9 calls for the two former Cold War rivals to set up a joint facility for sharing intelligence and coordinating airstrikes against ISIS and al Nusra. The key requirement is adherence to a seven-day cease fire that calls on the Syrian regime and Russia to halt attacks around the city of Alleppo, which has experienced some of the war’s most horrific violence, and allow for sustained delivery of humanitarian aid. 

Why the Powell Email Controversy Shows That Big Government Doesn't Work

Kristofer Harrison

September 19, 2016

Source Link

The insults against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have hogged the headlines about Secretary Powell’s leaked emails. Yet buried in the release lays a fascinating exchange about Ambassador Paul Bremer, who served as President Bush’s Presidential Envoy to Iraq. Superficially, Powell’s email exchanges are about disbanding the Iraqi army and de-Baathification. More significantly, they reveal two issues deserving examination: White House leadership and how the Iraq experiment glossed over conservative small government orthodoxy.

Technically, Paul Bremer worked for the Defense Department. In reality, defense officials felt that he did not answer to them and was instead the White House representative to the Defense Department. Powell’s emails gloss over this detail. Powell complains about major Pentagon policy failures...which no Pentagon official believed came from the Defense Department.

It underscores the terribly undisciplined nature of Bush administration policy decision-making. Fundamental questions hung in the air. Who was in charge of the war, for example? Yes, everyone claims to have had the lead on this policy or that; or, more accurately, all complained that the “other guy” had the pen. Powell made precisely this point, “Bremer worked for him. . . It wasn’t State, it was the President and the guy who reported to Paul [Wolfowitz].”

How is it that thirteen years after the supposedly critical decision of disbanding the Iraqi army our Secretaries of Defense and State and the national security advisor still bicker about who made it? Indeed, a legal answer exists about who reported to whom, but, clearly, the principals disagreed—and still do—about who made policy decisions. The situation groaned for White House intervention, yet, too often, the White House stood on the sidelines. The Defense and State Departments experienced this situation on issue after issue.

Cyber attack threats to be focus of Australia’s intelligence agencies review

Michael Edwards

September 19, 2016

Cyber attack threats to be focus of Australia’s intelligence agencies review

The rising threat posed by cyber attacks is set to be the focus of a review of Australia’s intelligence agencies.

The nation’s six intelligence agencies will be subject to the probe, which the Government has said will ensure they can appropriately respond to security threats.

The agencies involved include ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service), ASIO (Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation) and the Australian Signals Directorate.

National security officials said attacks on sensitive Australian computer networks were occurring on a daily basis, and were being carried out by hackers sponsored by foreign powers — especially China.

In recent times, China and Russia have stepped up their cyber warfare activities with Australia among their targets.

Experts have also pointed to jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq as the other major threat facing the country.

Defence Minister Marise Payne spoke to AM this morning and said one of the focuses of the review would “most certainly go to changes in technology”.

“[The changes] … are happening extremely rapidly and [have elevated] the challenges in terms of intelligence collection and analysis even higher than they have been previously,” she said.

TECH ADVANCES MAKE CYBERSPACE MOST LIKELY THREAT

WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)

Glenn Greenwald

September 19, 2016

WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)

Three of the four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian,the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the NSA whistleblower to return to the U.S. with no charges. That’s the normal course for a news organization, which owes its sources duties of protection, and which — by virtue of accepting the source’s materials and then publishing them — implicitly declares the source’s information to be in the public interest.

But not the Washington Post. In the face of a growing ACLU and Amnesty-led campaign to secure a pardon for Snowden, timed to this weekend’s release of the Oliver Stone biopic “Snowden,” the Post editorial page today not only argued in opposition to a pardon, but explicitly demanded that Snowden — the paper’s own source — stand trial on espionage charges or, as a “second-best solution,” accept “a measure of criminal responsibility for his excesses and the U.S. government offers a measure of leniency.”

In doing so, the Washington Post has achieved an ignominious feat in U.S. media history: the first-ever paper to explicitly editorialize for the criminal prosecution of its own source — one on whose back the paper won and eagerly accepted a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. But even more staggering than this act of journalistic treachery against the paper’s own source are the claims made to justify it.

Third offset strategy challenges

By: Mark Pomerleau

September 19, 2016 

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There has been much mystic surrounding the third offset strategy. A pet project of Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, the strategy aims to undercut advances made by peer competitors to blunt U.S. advantages through innovation and technological development. Work has described the third offset, in simple terms, as hypothesizing “that the advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy — autonomous systems — is going to lead to a new era of human-machine collaboration and combat teaming.”

However, the strategy, is really just an “ambitional idea,” not born out into official documentation — as the Pentagon does typically with new concepts or plans.

“There is no third offset strategy document that’s sitting in a drawer in a desk in my office or in a safe in Deputy Secretary Work’s office,” said Stephen Welby, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, at a Sept. 15 event hosted at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s really an ambitional idea, it’s an attempt to focus and drive the thinking that’s going on across the department around the broad nature of the capability needs realized pursuing develop experimentation and ultimately deployment of the advanced capabilities of advanced concepts that allow us to maintain advantage in the future.”

Such a construct can make it difficult to measure tangible results, especially when compared to previous so-called offset strategies. “One challenge with the third offset label is that the second offset — the first and second offsets — are recognized in retrospect,” Welby said. “We never put labels on the second offset, we were pursuing technologies against problems and today we’re pursuing technologies against problems, too.”

GERMANY EMBRACES REALPOLITIK ONCE MORE

JOHN R. DENI

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/germany-embraces-realpolitik-once-more/

The recently released German defense white paper, or Weissbuch, represents a significant step forward in Germany’s ongoing transformation to a “normal” power. Although it has received limited attention in the Anglophone media, the Weissbuch marks a fundamental shift in several respects. Whether and how Germany follows through on the potential embodied in this historic document will determine the degree to which Europe is able to play a role in security and defense commensurate with its economic strength and its transatlantic responsibilities.

The 2016 Weissbuch is the first German national security and defense strategy produced in a decade. The last iteration,published in 2006, was very much a product of the circumstances confronting German policymakers. At the time, Germany possessed a relatively short track record of exercising power abroad in the post-Cold War era, including participation in multinational interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Both of these occurred under the mandate of international organizations — the United Nations for the former, and NATO for the latter.

These experiences informed Germany’s decision to participate in NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, which was also sanctioned by the United Nations and well underway by 2006. However, like several other allies, Germany imposed strict caveats on where and how its forces in Afghanistan could be used. This amounted to an incremental acceptance of Germany’s shifting role in the world. It evinced a readiness to see that role broadened through, for example, participation in military missions far beyond Europe, but an unwillingness to do so outside the confines of multilateralism and the legitimacy conferred by international sanction. This careful balancing act is manifest in the 2006 White Paper.

THE POST-COUP PURGE OF TURKEY’S AIR FORCE

MIKE BENITEZ AND AARON STEIN

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/the-post-coup-purge-of-turkeys-air-force/

On July 15, 2016, members of the Turkish Air Force and Army attempted to topple Turkey’s elected government by coup. In the wake of the failed coup, over 80,000 civil servants have been suspended, including over 100 admirals and generals. Among those, an astonishing 274 Turkish Air Force pilots have been discharged — comparable to the entireannual production of fighter pilots in the U.S. Air Force. As a result, Turkey — a crucial ally with historic (and current) strategic geography and a key player in the fight against the Islamic State — will likely face long-term gaps in self-defense and its ability to actively contribute to its military and alliance commitments.

The Coup Pilot Exodus

In an air force, a pilot shortage is simple to compute, but difficult to comprehend. It is generally thought of as either a production issue (recruitment and/or training) or retention issue (separation from service, attrition to warfare, etc.). Though comprehending the contributing factors are often difficult (note the current U.S. Air Force pilot retention crisis), Turkey’s situation is quite simple in this regard.

Owing to the purges, Turkey now faces an acute fighter pilot shortage, with the number of F-16 pilots dropping from a healthy (by Western standards) 1.25:1 pilot-to-cockpit ratio to a paltry 0.8:1 following the discharges. A 1.25:1 ratio is the accepted norm for sustainment in numerous air forces.

Armed forces chiefs confirm sense of Obama distrust

By Rowan Scarborough 

September 18, 2016

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As the four armed forces chiefs testified in the Senate about the national security dangers of mandated budget caps, Sen. Lindsey Graham asked each officer if he had discussed the readiness crisis with President Obama.

Their unanimous answers before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week underscored a key aspect of the Obama presidency, noted by his own past defense secretaries and, in a recent disclosure, a former NATO commander: The president maintains a wary approach in dealing with the four-star generals and admirals who direct his wars.

“Have you told the president what you’re telling us about the state of the military under sequestration?” asked Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican. “Have you had a conversation with the commander in chief, telling him what you just told us?”

Army Gen. Mark Milley was the first to answer. “I have not personally had a conversation.”

As Mr. Graham’s roll call continued, Navy Adm. John Richardson, Marine Corps. Gen. Robert Neller and Air Force Gen. David Goldfein gave the same answer: “No.”

We Asked Gen Mattis About Why Civilians Don’t Understand War

By JAMES CLARK 

September 20, 2016

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Marine Gen. James Mattis and Kori Schake, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, on the risks posed by a broadening civil-military divide.

The civil-military divide is a term that refers to a growing cultural gap between the broader civilian society and the small percentage of people who currently serve, or have served in the military. But the term and its implications have yet to be clearly defined and understood.

This is the driving force behind “Warriors & Citizens” but it’s only the first part of a more critical line of thinking explored in the book by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and Kori Schake, a fellow of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Published in June, “Warriors & Citizens” features research into thousands of surveys of Americans about their views of the military. In-depth analysis from a diverse group of contributors offers a range of perspectives on the civil-military gap and what effect this divide has on civilian-military relations, strategy, and national security.

In 2013 Mattis, stepped down his post as commander of U.S. Central Command and retired after 44 years in the Corps. A renowned Marine general, Mattis holds a sort of cult status among enlisted service members and is widely revered for his candor. He has led U.S. troops at multiple levels during a career that spanned decades and numerous battlefields. Mattis is now a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in California, with Schake. She was the deputy director for policy planning at the State Department from 2007 to 2008, director for defense strategy and requirements on the National Security Council during President George W. Bush’s first term, and is a former Pentagon official.